That is a far greater number than the number of men killed in the various wars during the same time. To this tremendous number of women who die in child-birth must furthermore be added the still greater number of those who become sickly as a result of child-birth and die young.[186] This is another reason why woman is entitled to full equality with man. Let these facts be especially noted by those persons who advance the military service of men as an argument against the equal rights of women. Moreover, our military institutions enable a great many men to escape the performance of this duty. All these superficial objections to the public activity of women would be impossible if the relation of the sexes was natural, instead of there being an artificially stimulated antagonism between them. From their early childhood on the sexes are separated in their education and their social intercourse. It is especially the antagonism we owe to Christianity that keeps the sexes apart and maintains one in ignorance about the other, whereby free social intercourse, mutual confidence and the ability to supplement each other’s traits of character are prevented. One of the first and most important tasks of a rationally organized society must be to remove this detrimental discord and to restore the rights of nature. We begin by making even the little children in school unnatural, firstly, by separating the sexes, and secondly, by failing to instruct our children as to the sex nature of human beings. In every fairly good school natural history is being taught at present. The child learns that birds lay eggs and hatch them. He learns when birds mate and that both the male and female bird build the nest, hatch the eggs and feed the young. He also learns that mammals bring forth their young alive. He hears of the mating season and that the male animals fight one another for possession of the females. Perhaps he even learns how many young one or another species of animal usually brings forth and how long the female is pregnant. But profoundest secrecy is maintained in regard to the origin and development of the human being. When the child seeks to satisfy its natural curiosity by questioning his parents, especially his mother--he rarely ventures to question the teacher--he is told the most ridiculous fairy tales that cannot satisfy his thirst for knowledge and that must exert an all the more harmful influence when, some day, he nevertheless learns the true nature of his origin. There are few children who have not learned of it by the time they are twelve years old. In every small town, and especially in the country, even very young children have occasion to observe the pairing of poultry and domestic animals at close range in the yards, in the streets and on pasture. They hear that the pairing of domestic animals and the birth of the young is discussed without a sense of shame by their parents, their elder brothers and sisters and the servants.