This little book of one hundred and ninety-six pages, polished off in two months, naturally makes no pretence at being an adequate answer to Proudhon’s great work, the result of years of laborious effort. It is, indeed, only with the last part of the book, that treating of women and of marriage, that the authoress of _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_ is concerned. “Therein,” she writes, “are things which every woman who knows how to hold a pen has the right to regard as personal insults, and it is to these personalities that I intend to reply.” Nevertheless, in her first chapter, entitled “Generalities,” she permits herself a few remarks on the main trend of her adversary’s book. She blames the narrow dogmatism which blinds him to the complexity of the social problem. A pure economist, this founder of the People’s Bank had attempted to solve the social problem in terms of pounds, shillings and pence. This Proudhon was the J. A. Hobson of that day. His absorption in the idea of justice caused him to forget what is equally important, passion, affection, solidarity and mercy. “There is no heart in your dialectics,” writes Juliette. “Now to understand life, you must be yourself alive. Had you the most powerful brain in the universe, you would never comprehend man and humanity.” “Justice,” wrote Proudhon, “had been nothing, it must be everything.” But for this hide-bound economist justice could exist only between man and man, for all men should be equal; but between man and woman, who must ever be unequal, justice need not be considered, for man must ever dominate woman. And why? Because man regarded as a working member of the community is more productive than woman, who is physically, intellectually and morally man’s inferior. Such an argument gives us pause in these days of the Great War, when manufacturers are telling us that the average output of women in factories is twenty per cent. higher than that of men. Woman, man’s inferior physically, maintains Proudhon, must necessarily be mentally his inferior also. For physical strength is no less necessary to the work of the mind than to the work of the body. Here the retort was obvious; and we may be sure Proudhon’s young opponent did not miss it. “What, M. Proudhon,” she rejoins; “then a porter will be a better thinker than a philosopher. M. Proudhon’s God is obviously the dynamometer.... Force, always force. In force lies the millennium. That was the opinion of the Prætorian Guard when they chose for emperor the great Maximin, because he was stronger than a horse.”