Thus far, the benefits which it has appeared that the world would gainby ceasing to make sex a disqualification for privileges and a badge of subjection,are social rather than individual; consisting in an increase of the generalfund of thinking and acting power, and an improvement in the general conditionsof the association of men with women. But it would be a grievous understatementof the case to omit the most direct benefit of all, the unspeakable gainin private happiness to the liberated half of the species; the differenceto them between a life of subjection to the will of others, and a life ofrational freedom. After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedomis the first and strongest want of human nature. While mankind are lawless,their desire is for lawless freedom. When they have learnt to understandthe meaning of duty and the value of reason, they incline more and more tobe guided and restrained by these in the exercise of their freedom; but theydo not therefore desire freedom less; they do not become disposed to acceptthe will of other people as the representative and interpreter of those guidingprinciples. On the contrary, the communities in which the reason has beenmost cultivated, and in which the idea of social duty has been most powerful,are those which have most strongly asserted the freedom of action of theindividual -- the liberty of each to govern his conduct by his own feelingsof duty, and by such laws and social restraints as his own conscience cansubscribe to.
He who would rightly appreciate the worth of personal independence asan element of happiness, should consider the value he himself puts upon itas an ingredient of his own. There is no subject on which there is a greaterhabitual difference of judgment between a man judging for himself, and thesame man judging for other people. When he hears others complaining thatthey are not allowed freedom of action -- that their own will has not sufficientinfluence in the regulation of their affairs -- his inclination is, to ask,what are their grievances? what positive damage they sustain? and in whatrespect they consider their affairs to be mismanaged? and if they fail tomake out, in answer to these questions, what appears to him a sufficientcase, he turns a deaf ear, and regards their complaint as the fanciful querulousnessof people whom nothing reasonable will satisfy. But he has a quite differentstandard of judgment when he is deciding for himself. Then, the most unexceptionableadministration of his interests by a tutor set over him, does not satisfyhis feelings: his personal exclusion from the deciding authority appearsitself the greatest grievance of all, rendering it superfluous even to enterinto the question of mismanagement. It is the same with nations. What citizenof a free country would listen to any offers of good and skilful administration,in return for the abdication of freedom? Even if he could believe that goodand skilful administration can exist among a people ruled by a will not theirown, would not the consciousness of working out their own destiny under theirown moral responsibility be a compensation to his feelings for great rudenessand imperfection in the details of public affairs? Let him rest assured thatwhatever he feels on this point, women feel in a fully equal degree. Whateverhas been said or written, from the time of Herodotus to the present, of theennobling influence of free government -- the nerve and spring which it givesto all the faculties, the larger and higher objects which it presents tothe intellect and feelings, the more unselfish public spirit, and calmerand broader views of duty, that it engenders, and the generally loftier platformon which it elevates the individual as a moral, spiritual, and social being-- is every particle as true of women as of men. Are these things no importantpart of individual happiness? Let any man call to mind what he himself felton emerging from boyhood -- from the tutelage and control of even loved andaffectionate elders -- and entering upon the responsibilities of manhood.
Was it not like the physical effect of taking off a heavy weight, or releasinghim from obstructive, even if not otherwise painful, bonds? Did he not feeltwice as much alive, twice as much a human being, as before? And does heimagine that women have none of these feelings? But it is a striking fact,that the satisfactions and mortifications of personal pride, though all inall to most men when the case is their own, have less allowance made forthem in the case of other people, and are less listened to as a ground ora justification of conduct, than any other natural human feelings; perhapsbecause men compliment them in their own case with the names of so many otherqualities, that they are seldom conscious how mighty an influence these feelingsexercise in their own lives. No less large and powerful is their part, wemay assure ourselves, in the lives and feelings of women. Women are schooledinto suppressing them in their most natural and most healthy direction, butthe internal principle remains, in a different outward form. An active andenergetic mind, if denied liberty, will seek for power: refused the commandof itself, it will assert its personality by attempting to control others.
To allow to any human beings no existence of their own but what depends onothers, is giving far too high a premium on bending others to their purposes.
Where liberty cannot be hoped for, and power can, power becomes the grandobject of human desire; those to whom others will not leave the undisturbedmanagement of their own affairs, will compensate themselves, if they can,by meddling for their own purposes with the affairs of others. Hence alsowomen's passion for personal beauty, and dress and display; and all the evilsthat flow from it, in the way of mischievous luxury and social immorality.
