Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/358

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THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

whenever the talk is of "ideas," "principles," "humanity," and "radicalism." But I am not so fainthearted as to fear that our aims could be frustrated by this vulgar opposition of the German subject. No, this movement, because it is based upon reason and right, will overcome every obstacle, and will not rest until its last demand is fulfilled, exactly as in the question of negro rights. And exactly like this will be its practical course, after the victory of the principle has once been acknowledged; the sanguine will, therefore, be as much disappointed as the whiners. The negroes, after attaining the suffrage, didnot all immediately turn politicians and hasten to the polls in a body in order to rule the state, neither will the women immediately come in multitudes to take part in political life; the emancipated negroes do not now claim the daughters of their former masters as wives, or turn communists, as some brilliant "Democrats" had feared; neither will the emancipated women change into masculine beings, and sacrifice their domesticity. Their pioneers will have to continue to break the way, after the attainment of the suffrage, as well as before, and only very gradually will the participation in public life become general. At the same time nature will continue to assert her rights, in private or family life, as hitherto, but according to humane agreement, and not by a one-° sided dictatorship. Thus gradually a condition of society will be developed that has sacrificed nothing that was good and tenable, but that, by abolishing