L E T T E R S

257Christian morality also aims at the perfection of morals andbrotherhood, but the miracles and mysteries surrounding it have made it aneasy prey for bad-intentioned men and power has changed it into a mortalwound for humanity and especially for women. Power still remains to destroyor pervert the godlike efforts of great generous men who have devotedthemselves to the elaboration and propagation of the St. Simon doctrine givingit a high degree of atattractiveness; their great ability and knowledge of humannature and past human history are thus perverted.I cannot express all my admiration for the great wisdom of the appeal towomen, who at present, by their profound ignorance of the social causes oftheir misery, exert such a fatal influence on human destiny, obliged as they areto cherish and respect those selfish prejudices by which their masters haveblinded them for the sole purpose of making them rut in superstitious fear andto give a religious prop to an authority which is unjust and irrational, anauthority which men hold over them. Men do not feel the need of being loved,they ask only to be served, and among the most odious services we have toperform is like the fabled Pandora’s box, it is to recapture error, prejudice,hatred, malice, envy, selfishness and every vicious and uncharitable passion inthe whole of society. Thus excluded from all the social rights, woman by thenature of her position, to be a remote but always a cause acting against thehappiness and liberty of men themselves. Giving the allegory its mostreasonable interpretation, the fall of man represent to us the human species inthe relations of one sex with the other. Man the arbitrator is at the same timeboth jailer and prisoner. The shadow of liberty for both sexes always is t o beweak. The one who after having enslaved the other considers as his mostpressing interest the matter of keeping the partner, and he or she for all usefulpurposes must be considered enslaved until each partner consent that both getup and walk together.When will it come about that such general consent is granted by men?However, nothing is better calculated to effect this most important reform than