10. You say: the infirmities, the weaknesses, the maternity of woman, and her aptitude for love, exclude her from all functions; she is _judicially and absolutely_ excluded from all political, industrial and doctrinal direction. She cannot be a political leader.... Yet history shows us numerous empresses, queens, regents and sovereign princesses who have governed with wisdom and glory, and have shown themselves far superior to many male sovereigns, unless Maria Theresa, Catherine II, Isabella and Blanche of Castile, and many others, are but myths. Woman cannot be a legislator.... All the women whom I have just cited have been so, and many more beside. Women can be neither philosophers nor professors. Hypatia, massacred by the Christians, taught Philosophy with luster; in the Middle Age and later, Italian women filled chairs of Philosophy, Law and Mathematics, and excited admiration and enthusiasm; in France, at the present time, the Polytechnists are making great account of _the geometrician_, Sophie Germain, who has taken it into her head to study Kant. Woman cannot be a merchant or an administratrix... Yet a great portion of the feminine population devote themselves to trade, or fill commercial positions. It is even admitted that the prosperity of commercial establishments is almost always due to the administrative genius of woman. Woman cannot be an overseer, a foreman of a workshop... Yet a host of women superintend workshops, invent, improve, carry on manufactures alone, and contribute, by their taste and activity, to the increase of the national wealth and the industrial reputation of France. Woman cannot be artist... Yet every one knows that the greatest literary artist of our age is a woman, George Sand; yet every one bows before Duchesnois, Mars, Georges, Maxime, Ristori, Rachel, Dorval; yet every one pauses before the beautiful paintings of Rosa Bonheur; yet since the revival of the fine arts, every century has registered many celebrated women. We meet women everywhere, working everywhere, competing with man.... Yet Proudhon pretends that she can be nowhere, that she is excluded from every place absolutely and _judicially_; that if she governs and legislates like Maria Theresa, it is a contradiction; That if she philosophises like Hypatia, it is a contradiction; That if she commands an army and wins victories like the wife of the conqueror of Calais; if she fights like Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne Hachette, Madame Garibaldi and thousands of others, it is a contradiction; That if she is merchant, administratrix, superintendent of a workshop, like thousands of women, it is a contradiction; That if she is learned like Dr. Boivin, Sophie Germain, and many others, if she is a professor as are many among us, it is a contradiction.