What follows from all this? That your series is false, since facts destroy it. How did you form it? The process is a curious study. You chose a few remarkable men, in whom, by a convenient process of abstraction, you beheld _all_ men, even to cretins; you here took a few women, without taking into account in the slightest degree any differences of culture, instruction, and surroundings, and compared them with these eminent men, taking care to forget those that might have embarrassed you; then, deducing generals from particulars, creating two entities, you drew your conclusions. A strange manner of reasoning, truly! You have fallen into the mania of _imposing rules on Nature, instead of studying Nature's rules_, and deserve that I should apply your own words to you: "The greatest part of the philosophical aberrations and chimeras have arisen from attributing to logical series _a reality that they do not possess, and endeavoring to explain the nature of man by abstractions_." Still, if this were to strengthen your doctrines concerning the _basis_ of right, it might be comprehended; but it is to overthrow them! You transform yourself into a Sphinx, to propose to me a riddle. "What is that right," you say, "_which is not justice, and which, notwithstanding, would not exist without it_, which presides over the relations of both sexes, the _jus strictum_ governing only individuals of the same sex. If you divine it, you will have given me the cause." It is not necessary to be _the great Apollo_, to divine that it is the _right of grace, of mercy_, towards an inferior that is not armed with strict right. If I have divined rightly, you have simply begged the question by supposing _that resolved which I dispute_. I maintain that there is only one _right_, that _one single_ _right presides over the rights of individuals and of sexes_, and that the right of mercy belongs to the domain of sentiment. You wish it proved that the new emancipators of woman are the most elevated, the broadest, and the most progressive minds of the age. Rejoice, your wish is accomplished: a simple comparison between them and their adversaries will prove it to you. The emancipators, taking woman in the cradle of humanity, see her marching slowly towards civil emancipation. The intelligent disciples of progress, they wish, by extending a fraternal hand to her, to aid her in fulfilling her destiny. The non-emancipators, denying the historical law, regardless of the progressive and parallel movement of the populace, woman, and the industrial arts towards affranchisement, wish to thrust her back far beyond the Middle Age, to the days of Romulus and the Hebrew patriarchs.