xxxii INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION xxxiii and youth to be clothed in the same social dignity as the adult males. masculine arrogance has made of it a"quarrel";and when quarreling Later on,the young man,desiring and loving,experiences the resist- ance,the independence of the woman desired and loved;in marriage, one no longer reasons well.People have tirelessly sought to prove that woman is superior,inferior,or equal to man.Some say that,having he respects woman as wife and mother,and in the concrete events of been created after Adam,she is evidently a secondary being;others say conjugal life she stands there before him as a free being.He can there. fore feel that social subordination as between the sexes no longer on the contrary that Adam was only a rough draft and that God suc- ceeded in producing the human being in perfection when He created exists and that on the whole,in spite of differences,woman is an Eve.Woman's brain is smaller;yes,but it is relatively larger.Christ equal.As,however,he observes some points of inferiority-the most was made a man;yes,but perhaps for his greater humility.Each argu- important being unfitness for the professions-he attributes these to ment at once suggests its opposite,and both are often fallacious.If natural causes.When he is in a co-operative and benevolent relation with woman,his theme is the principle of abstract equality,and he we are to gain understanding,we must get out of these ruts;we must does not base his attitude upon such inequality as may exist.But when discard the vague notions of superiority,inferiority,equality which he is in confict with her,the situation is reversed:his theme will be have hitherto corrupted every discussion of the subject and start afresh. the existing inequality,and he will even take it as justification for Very well,but just how shall we pose the question?And,to begin denying abstract equality. with,who are we to propound it at all?Man is at once judge and So it is that many men will affirm as if in good faith that women are party to the case;but so is woman.What we need is an angel-neither the equals of man and that they have nothing to clamor for,while man nor woman-but where shall we find one?Still,the angel would at the same time they will say that women can never be the equals of be poorly qualified to speak,for an angel is ignorant of all the basic man and that their demands are in vain.It is,in point of fact,a diffi- facts involved in the problem.With a hermaphrodite we should be no better off,for here the situation is most peculiar;the hermaphrodite 品 cult matter for man to realize the extreme importance of social dis- criminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce is not really the combination of a whole man and a whole woman,but in woman moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear consists of parts of each and thus is neither.It looks to me as if there to spring from her original nature.The most sympathetic of men are,after all,certain women who are best qualified to elucidate the never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation.And there is no situation of woman.Let us not be misled by the sophism that because reason to put much trust in the men when they rush to the defense Epimenides was a Cretan he was necessarily a liar;it is not a mys- of privileges whose full extent they can hardly measure.We shall not, terious essence that compels men and women to act in good or in bad then,permit ourselves to be intimidated by the number and violence faith,it is their situation that inclines them more or less toward the of the attacks launched against women,nor to be entrapped by the search for truth.Many of today's women,fortunate in the restoration self-seeking eulogies bestowed on the "true woman,"nor to profit by of all the privileges pertaining to the estate of the human being,can the enthusiasm for woman's destiny manifested by men who would afford the luxury of impartiality-we even recognize its necessity.We not for the world have any part of it. are no longer like our partisan elders;by and large we have won the We should consider the arguments of the feminists with no less sus- game.In recent debates on the status of women the United Nations has persistently maintained that the equality of the sexes is now be- picion,however,for very often their controversial aim deprives them of all real value.If the "woman question"seems trivial,it is because coming a reality,and already some of us have never had to sense in our femininity an inconvenience or an obstacle.Many problems ap- a For example,a man will say that he considers his wife in no wise degraded pear to us to be more pressing than those which concern us in par- because she has no gainful occupation.The profession of housewife is just as lofty, ticular,and this detachment even allows us to hope that our attitude and so on.But when the first quarrel comes,he will exclaim:"Why,you couldn't will be objective.Still,we know the feminine world more intimately make your living without mel" The specific purpose of Book II of this study is to deseribe this process. than do the men because we have our roots in it,we grasp more im- mediately than do men what it means to a human being to be fem-