In theory as in practice the answer to the question varies with the view one takes of life. Christianity with its unchangeable principles, and without misjudging the justifiable demands of the age, undertakes to guide the woman movement also into the right path.
The life-task of woman is a double one. As an individual woman has the high destiny obligatory upon every human being of acquiring moral perfection. As a member of the human race woman is called in union with man to represent humanity and to develop it on all sides.
Both tasks are indissolubly united, so that the one cannot be fully accomplished without the other. The freedom of the woman consists in the possibility of fulfilling unimpeded this double task with its rights and privileges both in public and private life.
The limitation of this freedom, whether actual or merely imaginary, necessarily calls forth the effort to do away with the obstructing barriers. For this purpose, however, the first thing necessary is the proper conception of the feminine personality. The sources from which this definition is to be drawn are nature and history. On the other hand, there is no neutral human person without distinction of sex. It is, therefore, not permissible to take one sex as the one absolutely perfect and as the standard of value for the other.
Tournay, , II, a. The female sex is in some respects inferior to the male sex, both as regards body and soul. On the other hand, woman has qualities which man lacks. The one designation is the invention equally of sensuality and of flattery; the other owes its currency to masculine arrogance. In its way the female sex is as strong as the male, namely in endurance and patience, in quiet long-suffering, in short, in all that concerns its real sphere, viz.
