“The drudgery of the home, the servitude to their children. No, Bogardus, at thirty-five or before when men were still young, women were ended. They had lost their value as women and were esteemed according to their value as nurses and housekeepers. The final cruelty you inflicted on them was to let them grow old. We are much more humane.” “You look on history as simply a war of the sexes?” I said hotly, for the degradation of my sex as I successively comprehended it, made it difficult to restrain my anger. “Of course. So long as civilization had to rise through physical force, the male ascendency was inevitable. Granted. But the moment that scientific discoveries did away with the necessity of multitudes for cannon fodder and replaced blind hands by intelligent machines women were freed from their need of your physical protection. In the last phases of your civilization, though you did not perceive the underlying conflict, were you not aware that economically, and in a measure morally, the women you rated as the weaker sex were really the despots of your existences?” Some curious trick of habit made me glance over my shoulder for the shadow of my mother-in-law before replying: “When you say morally, I do not entirely agree. Economically, yes, there is no doubt that the expenditure of women for luxuries was out of all proportion. But allowing the past to lie,” I said, striving to be diplomatic, “tell me, Acquilla, in your opinion, is this warfare of the sexes, as you call it, to endure forever? Do you not in some future state of society conceive of the possibility of men and women equally intelligent living together in harmony? For, after all, without too much vanity, do you not prefer to converse on equal terms as you have with me, than to treat men simply as playthings of your passions?” “Possibly,” she said after a moment, “what you suggest is in the future when we have completely achieved the freedom of the individual, but the moment is not now.” “Why not? Men educated by women will be different,” I suggested. “That is not quite honest,” said Acquilla reprovingly. “The nature of man cannot be changed in a few hundred years.” “Why not experiment? What is there to fear now that the age of reason is so completely achieved?” “The passion for conquest. Even today, despite all our discoveries in the field of Eugenics the male child’s first impulse is to wrestle down his companions. What is the passion for sport you have just witnessed--more intense than ever--but an evolution of the desire to kill? You men seek to destroy your opponents not to play with them. You make of your games battles. You hate those with whom you contend.” “That is an exaggeration,” I interrupted, and then stopped. “At least in my day it was only when we were young, when in school and college we were given an exaggerated idea of winning for the glorification of a mass ideal. Besides, even then, we did not take ourselves too seriously.”