At this stage it well may be asked if women are really to be considered human beings at all, or if my theory does not unite them with plants and animals? For, according to the theory, women, just as little as plants and animals, have any real existence, any relation to the intelligible whole. Man alone is a microcosm, a mirror of the universe. In Ibsen’s “Little Eyolf” there is a beautiful and apposite passage. “Rita. ‘After all, we are only human beings.’ “Allmers. ‘But we have some kinship with the sky and the sea, Rita.’ “Rita. ‘You, perhaps; not me.’” Woman, according to the poet, according to Buddha, and in my interpretation, has no relation to the all, to the world whole, to God. Is she then human, or an animal, or a plant? Anatomists will find the question ridiculous, and will at once dismiss the philosophy which could lead up to such a possibility. For them woman is the female of _Homo sapiens_, differentiated from all other living beings, and occupying the same position with regard to the human male that the females of other species occupy with regard to their males. And he will not allow the philosopher to say, “What has the anatomist to do with me? Let him mind his own business.” As a matter of fact, women are sisters of the flowers, and are in close relationship with the animals. Many of their sexual perversities and affections for animals (Pasiphäe myth and Leda myth) indicate this. But they are human beings. Even the absolute woman, whom we think of as without any trace of intelligible ego, is still the complement of man. And there is no doubt that the fact of the special sexual and erotic completion of the human male by the human female, even if it is not the moral phenomenon which advocates of marriage would have us believe, is still of tremendous importance to the woman problem. Animals are mere individuals; women are persons, although they are not personalities. An appearance of discriminative power, though not the reality, language, though not conversation, memory, though it has no continuity or unity of consciousness--must all be granted to them. They possess counterfeits of everything masculine, and thus are subject to those transformations which the defenders of womanliness are so fond of quoting. The result of this is a sort of amphi-sexuality of many ideas (honour, shame, love, imagination, fear, sensibility, and so on), which have both a masculine and feminine significance. There now remains to discuss the real meaning of the contrast between the sexes. The parts played by the male and female principles in the animal and vegetable kingdoms are not now under consideration; we are dealing solely with humanity.