Women say of the beloved one: "A bouquet he brings smells better than
one another brings."
You are weak, dear one, God help you! And you help! and I help!
These thoughts have wrought a man of me, have finally wrought me to a
man.
I procured all that was accessible to me in modern French and English
literature on the woman subject.
In the year 1869 my thoughts on the subordinate position of women in
society began to assume shape, and I attempted a connected record of
them. I adopted as my starting point Soeren Kierkegaard's altogether
antiquated conception of woman and contested it at every point. But all
that I had planned and drawn up was cast aside when in 1869 John Stuart
Mill's book on the subject fell into my hands. I felt Mill's superiority
to be so immense and regarded his book as so epoch-making that I
necessarily had to reject my own draft and restrict myself to the
translation and introduction of what he had said. In November, 1869, I
published Mill's book in Danish and in this manner introduced the modern
woman's movement into Denmark.
The translation was of this advantage to me that it brought me first
into epistolary communication, and later into personal contact with one
of the greatest men of the time.
XVI.
There was one of the political figures of the time whom I often met
during these years.
Pages:
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321