Yet, in this connection, it is necessary to say emphatically that, in its origin, there was nothing arbitrary in this division between the sexes. It was, in itself, a natural outcome of natural causes, arising out of the needs of primitive societies. There is nothing derogatory to woman in accepting the passive or, more truly, the constructive power of her nature; rather it is her chief claim for the regaining of her true position in society. I wish at once to say how far it is from my desire to judge woman from a male standpoint. The power and nature that are woman's are not secondary to man's; they are equal, but different, being co-existent and complementary--in fact, just the completion of his. There is another point that must be made clear. The separation in the social activities of women and men was not brought about, as is stated so frequently, by men's injustice to women. There is an unfortunate tendency to regard the subjection of woman as wholly due to male selfishness and tyranny. Many leaders of woman's freedom hold to this view as their broad exposition of principle. Such belief is illogical and untrue. It cannot be too often repeated that sex-hatred means retrogression and not progress. I do not mean to say that women have not suffered at men's hands. They have, but not more than men have suffered at their hands. No woman who faces facts can deny this truth. Neither sex can afford to bring railing accusations against the other. The old doctrine of blame is insufficient. Women's disabilities are not, in their origin at least, due to any form of male tyranny. I believe, moreover, that any solution of the woman problem, and of woman's rights, is of ridiculous impotence that attempts to see in man woman's perpetual oppressor. The enemy, if enemy there is, of woman's emancipation, is woman herself. But, on the other side, it is certain that the long-held opinion--what we may call "the male view of women"--which believes that the position woman occupies in society and the duties she performs are, in the main, what they should be, she being what she is, is equally false. Such theorists throw upon Nature the responsibility of the evils consequent on the deviations from equality of opportunity in the past lives of women. Truly we credit Nature with an absurd blunder do we accept this inferiority of the female half of life. _Woman is what she is because she has lived as she has._ And no estimate of her character, no effort to fix the limit of her activities, can carry weight that ignores the totally different relations towards society that have artificially grown up, dividing so sharply the life of woman from that of man. I am brought back to the object of this book.