"It is _an infatuation_ for women to demand their right!" _An infatuation_ like that of slaves, pretending that they were created freemen; of the citizens of '89, proving that men are equal before the law. Do you know who were, who are the infatuated? The masters, the nobles, the whites, the men who have denied, who do deny, and who will deny, that slaves, citizens, blacks, and women, are born for liberty and equality. "The sex to which I belong is incapable of understanding and governing itself," say you! Prove that it is destitute of intellect; Prove that great empresses and great queens have not governed as well as great emperors and great kings; Prove against all the facts patent that women are not in general good observers and good managers; Then prove that all men understand themselves perfectly and govern themselves admirably, and that progress moves as if on wheels. "Woman is neither the _half_ nor the _equal_ of man; she is _the complement that finally makes him an individual_; the two sexes form _the human androgynus_." Come; seriously, what means this jingle of empty words? They are metaphors, unworthy to figure in scientific language, when our own and the other higher zoölogical species are in question. The lioness, the she-wolf and the tigress are no more the halves or the complement of their species than woman is the complement of man. Or Nature has established two _exteriorities_, two wills, she affirms two unities, two entireties not one, or _two halves_; the arithmetic of Nature cannot be destroyed by the freaks of the imagination. Is equality before the law based upon _individual_ qualities? Proudhon replies in the "Creation of Order in Humanity": "Neither birth, nor figure, _nor faculties_, nor fortune, nor rank, nor profession, nor talent, nor anything that distinguishes individuals establishes between them a difference of species; all being men, and _the law regulating only human relations, it is the same for all_; so that to establish exceptions, it would be necessary to prove that the individuals excepted are _above_ or _beneath_ the human species." Prove to us that women are _above_ or _beneath_ the human species, that they do not form a part of it, or, _under penalty of contradiction_, submit to the consequences of your doctrine. You say in the "Social Revolution;" "Neither conscience, nor reason, nor liberty, nor labor, pure forces, _primary and creative faculties_, can be made mechanical without being destroyed. Their reason of existence is in themselves; in their works they should find their reason of action. In this consists the human person, a sacred person, etc." Prove that women have neither conscience, nor reason, nor moral liberty, and that they do not labor. If it is demonstrated that they possess the _primary and creative faculties_, respect their human person, for it is sacred. In the "Creation of Order in Humanity," you say: