I did not wonder at your letter, though there is in it what calls for wonder. For the views you express are in truth only the elucidation of a mystical, pessimistic idea that in the past lay hidden behind rationalist progressive principles. Or say that there are two poles in your thinking, forever pulling at it, and you swing between them.

Some right may be on your side, but part of the right is not the whole of it; and in my view the part disfigures the whole instead of representing it.

It is hard for me, my friend, to plunge with you into discussions for which I have made no prepa-ration. But be sure that however artfully you try to persuade me, you will not persuade me that socially productive work robs woman of what you call her truth — that is, the secret of her femininity and the inspiration of her beauty.

Or do you believe that woman is nothing but a picture which contemplators contemplate, until, tiring of it, they lay it away in the corners of oblivion? Or an idol which worshippers worship, until, its uses served, they smash it! Quickly wilts the fair one who squats in her house worshipping her beauty all day long, for she folds in upon her selfishness — and selfishness is death — and collapses under the weight of her pride — and pride is extinction. Is she not one of the surges of life, and life is realization and work? Then she must take the nature of those who labor in life's greater field, so that her beauty may spend itself each day in a new form. Is she not a wave of the supreme wellspring? Then she must unfold in activity and effectiveness, not sink into the folds of nothingness.

Man may lose the way and

overturn the order of things, and he may err in choosing the work suited to woman's nature and set her in the place prepared for man; but error does not disgrace man, for life is trials and mistakes, and she who has gone forward on her way has straightened the crooked and mended the spoiled — and shame upon whoever stays behind the caravan.

Man cannot judge the measure of success he has achieved or will achieve while he strives to win his liberty and fulfill his mission, and

every word said on this subject is exposed to disputes without end; but all theories collapse when man crosses the line of wrangling to throw himself into the great battle — the battle of life and liberation.

And if work is the first and last law, why should woman be the exception to it? And if liberty is earned — I say liberty, not chaos — why should woman not struggle in the cause of her liberation and the realization of her possibilities?

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