VI. There is now hardly any need for a special demonstration that such being the differences between the sexes, such being the nature and destiny of their union, a complete equality of woman with man in familial and in public rights and obligations, in the direct exercise of the same, runs counter to human destiny and happiness and would destroy a dignified family life, that in the process women would renounce their high destiny in the domestic sphere and in the education of the next generation, the ornament and dignity of women, true femininity and their loveliest happiness, and would expose themselves to the gravest dangers.
It is undoubtedly clear, first, that a lasting, dignified, and peaceful marital and familial life would be impossible with such unwomanly viragos, who do not recognize the man as the head of the family and want to assert, next to and against him, direct rights of voting and decision-making over joint social matters, and who want to exercise the same warlike military service. Never can a society – and most definitely not a society about the most important conditions of life – endure in which participants always wish to stand side by side with equal votes, with no decision-making in cases of differences of opinions about communal matters. That is why the Romans were right in declaring a mere society as dissolvable at will by every member at any time and over any difference of opinion. But are a true Christian marriage and family and family education of children still compatible with this? Because they are not, the Saint-Simonians allowed women to engage in arbitrary unions with strange men and to dissolve marriages as desired, though of course they could not escape the penal laws that protect the order of our families and our state. And so the two extremes come full circle. Those theories which, indifferent toward the rights of women, abuse them despotically as an instrument for men and their society, had to give up the noblest gift for men and the state, domestic or family life and an ethical family upbringing of children. Those theories which, in their one-sided pursuit of an abstract rule of equality, overlook the laws and boundaries of nature and claim more rights for women than they could even want according to these laws and boundaries, [and] likewise destroy this, the holiest, most solid foundation of human and civic virtue and happiness.
Moreover, it is also a truth that is grounded just as deeply in nature and confirmed by experience that woman everywhere has no more effective title to man’s highest respect and love, to his protection, sacrifice, and forbearance, than through her female weakness, her female love, devotion, and gentleness. Should weaker women be so foolish as to venture into unnatural and unwomanly battles with the stronger men – think of everything they will wager and lose!
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