Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/84

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76
MARRIAGE AS A TRADE

ings with others as well as to our dealings with our own hearts.

I cannot better explain what I mean by the essential servility of woman's code of morals than by quoting Milton's well-known line—

"He for God only; she for God in him."

That one brief verse condenses into a nutshell the difference in the moral position of the two sexes—expresses boldly, simply, straightforwardly, the man's belief that he had the right to divert and distort the moral impulse and growth in woman to serve his own convenience. No priesthood has ever made a claim more arrogant than this claim of man to stand between woman and her God, and divert the spiritual forces of her nature into the channel that served him best. The real superiority of man consists in this: that he is free to obey his conscience and to serve his God—if it be in him so to do. Woman is not. She can serve Him only at second hand—can obey His commands not directly but only by obeying the will of the man who stands between her and the Highest, and who has arrogated to himself not merely the material control of