To woman: for you is history in madrigals, the reading of prayer-books and novels. You have nothing to do with lyceums, special schools, high prizes, anything that would elevate your mind and enlarge your views; a learned woman is ridiculous! Man must display the knowledge that he often possesses but superficially, woman must hide what she really possesses. Man must appear courageous when he is often but a coward; woman must feign timidity when in reality she is not afraid. For where man is reputed great and sublime, woman is found ridiculous, sometimes odious. If you had verified as you should have done, these diametrically opposite systems of training, the one tending to develop and ennoble the being, the other to degrade it and render it imbecile, instead of writing such absurdities, you would have said to yourself: woman must really have the initiative to resist the iniquitous system of repression that weighs upon her; she must have great elasticity to show herself so often superior to the majority of men in intellect, and _always in morality_. I am curious to know what you males would be if subjected to the same system as we. Look at those who have not studied like you, and tell me whether they are not in general beneath uncultivated women. Look then at the men who have received a feminine education; have they not all the affectation, all the narrowness of mind of silly women? Look, on the contrary, at those women who, through the wish of their teachers or their own energy, have been subjected to masculine discipline, and tell me, on your conscience, whether they do not equal the most intelligent, the firmest among you? 7. You say: intellectual force is in proportion to physical force. _Facts_ reply: great thoughts, useful works, date from the period when the physical forces began to decline. _Facts_ say also: the athletic temperament, which is the most vigorous, is _the least intellectual_: statuaries fully comprehend this, and sculpture Hercules with a large body and a small head. 8. You say that morality is in a direct ratio to physical and intellectual force combined. This pleasantry we will not refute; every one knows too well that these things have no relation, and that facts contradict your assertion. 9. You say: woman being one third weaker, should have in social labor one third the privileges of man. Upon what elements do you base this proportion? In order to establish it, did you carry a dynamometer about through our districts and measure the strength of each man and of each woman? But were your affirmation true, is naught but _strength_ employed in labor? Then, great economist, what do we do with _skill_? What Samsonian muscles are needed to keep books, dispense justice, measure cloth, cut and sew garments, etc.! And what is the end of civilization if not to shift the employ of our strength from ourselves to machinery that we may be at liberty to use only our intellect and skill?