Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/374

So far, for the sake of realizing a picture of true womanliness, I have taken a point of view from which intellectual endowment is one of the indispensable attributes of woman. It is self-evident that this presupposes all the accompanying results of intellectual endowment, such as participation in all the achievements of education and science, interest in everything that is good and beautiful, the taking of an active part in the humanization of human society, the noble assertion of nature and truth in manners and life. Now let us see what will become of our ideal picture if we leave our point of view, to step down into the street, and place it face to face with reality, with the present. To the great annoyance of our musical or music-making German countrymen I once asked the question: "Need a musician have brains?" At the risk of incurring the illwill of the entire fair sex, I would like, in reviewing the great majority of our present female world, to put the question: "Must a woman have brains?" When I began my campaign of the so-called emancipation of woman in New York, twenty-two years ago, a German woman said to me: "What do you want with this‘emancipation? We women do not need to be emancipated. If my husband beats me, I scratch his eyes out." Well, this woman was modest enough to consider security against conjugal blows as sufficient emancipation, and had sense and courage enough to obtain this security for herself by means of her own natural weapons. But how many