Considered from these two standpoints, we find so many similarities and differences that it is perhaps one of the marvels of nature that two beings could be so alike and yet so different. How far such differences may extend we cannot tell all we know for certain is that everything they have in common is from the species and that all their differences are due to sexual difference. However, they are related, but by connections that elude our observations. From the standpoint of comparative anatomy and even upon cursory inspection one can see general differences between them which do not seem connected to sex. The difficulty in comparing them lies in our inability to decide in either case what is due to sexual difference and what is not.

Yet where sex is concerned woman and man are both complementary and different. In whatever way one looks at them, the difference is only one of degree. The machine is constructed the same way, the pieces are the same, they work the same way, the face is similar. Thus let us begin by examining the similarities and differences between her sex and our own.Įxcept for her sex, woman is like a man: she has the same organs, the same needs, the same faculties. Sophie should be as truly a woman as Emile is a man, that is, she must possess all those characteristics of her species and her sex required to allow her to play her part in the physical and moral order.

Emile by rousseau