Under the skin of the civilised being there lurks almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear.
True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little, created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience; but it progresses towards the highest with heartbreaking slowness.
It was only yesterday that slavery finally disappeared: the basis of the ancient social organism; only yesterday was it realised that man, even though black, is really man and deserves to be treated accordingly.
What formerly was woman?
She was what she is to-day in the East: a gentle animal without a soul.

The question was long discussed by the learned.

The great divine of the seventeenth century, Bossuet himself, regarded woman as the diminutive of man.

The proof was in the origin of Eve: she was the superfluous bone, the thirteenth rib which Adam possessed in the beginning.

It has at last been admitted that woman possesses a soul like our own, but even superior in tenderness and devotion.