AUTHOR. Then you make woman re-enter humanity through the door of Androgyny, in order to restore to her her share of rights.... This is absurd; no matter. PROUDHON. Not so! not so! Women have rights! Never, so long as I am Proudhon! She is indeed the complement of man, who, without her, would be only a brute. AUTHOR. Ah! my learned Master, how do these things harmonize in your brain? You have said hitherto that _woman owes everything to man_, you tell me now that, without woman, man would be only a brute. Is he not then, _adequate to his destiny_, as you have affirmed? And if woman is nothing without him, and he nothing without woman, I can see no longer upon what you rest in making him the guide of this poor unfortunate. PROUDHON. I need not explain myself, such is my idea. I am simply comparing the respective qualities of the sexes, and, as I find, they are _incommutable_. AUTHOR. Ah! I catch a glimpse of your meaning; then you do not weigh them in the balance since they are not alike, and, being unable to prejudice the rights of woman, you leave her free. PROUDHON. What! what! Woman free! Horrible! Are you resolved to throw me into convulsions? Woman, however eminent may be her talents, should serve man in silence and in all humility. AUTHOR. Frankly, Master, all this appears to me nonsense, which, satanic as you are, you cannot yourself understand in the least. PROUDHON. Listen without interrupting me further, if you wish to comprehend me. "Without feminine grace, _man would not have emerged from the brutality of the early ages; he would violate his female, smother his little ones, and give chase to his fellows in order to devour them_. "_Woman is the conscience of man personified_, the incarnation of his youth, _his reason and his justice, of all within him that is purest, most sacred, most sublime_.--_Justice_, _Vol._ III., etc. "The ideality of his being, she becomes to him a _principle of animation_, a gift of strength, of prudence, of justice, of patience, of courage, of sanctity, of hope, of consolation, without which he would be incapable of sustaining the burden of life, of preserving his dignity, of enduring himself, _of fulfilling his destiny_. "It is through her, through the grace of her divine word, that man gives life and reality to his ideas, by bringing them back unceasingly from the abstract to the concrete. "_The auxiliary on the side of justice_, she is the angel of patience, of resignation, of tolerance, the guardian of his faith, the mirror of his conscience, the source of his devotion. Vanquished, guilty, it is still in the bosom of woman that he finds consolation and pardon." Man has strength, woman beauty. Through her beauty, she should be the expression of Justice, "and the attraction that draws us to it.... _She will be better than man_.... She will be the motor of all justice, all knowledge, all industry, all virtue."--_Id._