ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 555 



which I think are implied in or may be collected from the extracts 

 given above. They are as follows : 



1. Justice requires that all people should live in society as equals. 



2. History shows that human progress has been a progress from a 

 " law of force " to a condition in which command and obedience be- 

 come exceptional. 



3. The " law of the strongest " having in this and one or two other 

 countries been " entirely abandoned " in all other relations of life, it 

 may be presumed not to apply to the relation between the sexes. 



4. The notorious facts as to the nature of that relation show that 

 in this particular case the presumption is, in fact, well founded. 



I. dissent from each of these propositions. In the present letter I 

 shall examine the first and the fourth, which may be regarded as an 

 illustration of the first. On a subsequent occasion I shall consider the 

 second and third. First, as to the proposition that justice requires 

 that all people should live in society as equals. I have already shown 

 that this is equivalent to the proposition that it is expedient that all 

 people should live in society as equals. Can this be proved ? for it is 

 certainly not a self-evident proposition. 



I think that if the rights and duties which laws create are to be 

 generally advantageous, they ought to be adapted to the situation of 

 the persons who enjoy or are subject to them. They ought to recog- 

 nize both substantial equality and substantial inequality, and they 

 should from time to time be so moulded and altered as always to rep- 

 resent fairly well the existing state of society. Government, in a word, 

 ought to fit society as a man's clothes fit him. To establish by law 

 rights and duties which assume that people are equal when they are 

 not is like trying to make clumsy feet look handsome by the help of 

 tight boots. No doubt it may be necessary to legislate in such a man- 

 ner as to correct the vices of society, or to protect it against special 

 dangers or diseases to which it is liable. Law in this case is analogous 

 to surgery, and the rights and duties imposed by it might be compared 

 to the irons which are sometimes contrived for the purpose of support- 

 ing a weak limb or keeping it in some particular position. As a rule, 

 however, it is otherwise. Rights and duties should be so moulded as 

 to clothe, protect, and sustain society in the position which it naturally 

 assumes. The proposition, therefore, that justice demands that people 

 should live in society as equals may be translated thus : " It is inexpe- 

 dient that any law should recognize any inequality between human 

 beings." 



This appears to me to involve the assertion, " There are no inequali- 

 ties between human beings of sufficient importance to influence the 

 rights and duties which it is expedient to confer upon them." This 

 proposition I altogether deny. I say that there are many such differ- 

 ences, some of which are more durable and more widely extended than 

 others, and of which some are so marked and so important that, un- 



