"No, Madam, you know nothing of your sex; you do not know the first word of the question that you and your honorable confederates are agitating with so much noise and so little success. And, if you do not comprehend this question; if, in your eight pages of reply to my letter, there are forty paralogisms, it results precisely, as I have told you, from your _sexual infirmity_. I mean by this word, the exactness of which is not, perhaps, irreproachable, the quality of your understanding, which permits you to seize the relation of things only as far as we, men, place your finger upon them. You have in the brain, as in the body, a certain organ incapable by itself of overcoming its native inertia, and which the masculine spirit alone is capable of setting in motion; and even this does not always succeed. Such, Madam, is the result of my direct and positive observations; I make them over to your obstetrical sagacity, and leave you to calculate therefrom the incalculable consequences to your thesis. "I will willingly enter into an elaborate discussion with you, Madam, on this obscure subject, in the _Revue Philosophique_. But--as you will comprehend as well as I--the broader the question, the more it affects our most sacred, social, and domestic interests, the more important is it that we should approach it with seriousness and prudence. "The following course, therefore, appears to me indispensable: In the first place, you have promised us a book, and I await it. I need this work to complete my documents and to finish my demonstration. Since I had the honor of receiving and replying to your letter, I have made earnest and interesting studies on woman, which I ask only to rectify if they are erroneous; as I also desire to set a seal on them if, as I have every reason to presume, your publication brings me but one confirmation more. "I have verified by facts and documents the truth of all the assertions which you call on me to retract, namely: "That the difference of sex raises up between man and woman a separation ANALOGOUS--I did not say equal--to that which the difference of races and species establishes between animals; "That by reason of this separation or difference, man and woman are not _associates_; I did not say that they could not be anything else; "That, consequently, woman can only be a _citizen_ in so far as she is the wife of a citizen; as we say _Madame la Presidente_ to the wife of a President: which does not imply that no other rôle exists for her.