The difference
of our faces or our voices is a mere symbol of differences no less
universal but vastly more important. It is these differences, in
reality, that are the cause of the development of human society and of
that division of labour upon which it depends. In providing for the best
development of all these various individuals we at the same time provide
for the division of labour that we need; nor can we in any other fashion
provide so well. Thus we shall attain a society which, if less certainly
stable than that of the bees, is what that is not--progressive, and not
merely static; and a society which is worth while, justified by the
lives and minds of the individuals composing it.
We are not, then, to make a factitious differentiation of set purpose in
the interests of society and to the detriment of individuals. We are not
to take a being in whom Nature has differentiated a thousand parts, and,
in effect, reduce him, in the interests of others, to one or two
constituents and powers, thus nullifying the evolutionary course. But we
shall frame a society such as the past never witnessed, and we shall
achieve a rate of progress equally without parallel, by consistently
regarding society as existing for the individual, and not the individual
for society, and by thus realizing to the full his characteristic powers
_for himself and for society_.
In so far as all this is true it is true of woman.
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