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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER S DIARY
longer be confined to the home. For the sake of making a home, worth the name at all, they must transcend the limits of domesticity. To-day, social equality of the scxes is necessary for the performance of their respective functions, which in the past could be done under a different relation. Th: recognition o{ woman as an individual inember of society is necessary for Ure preservation of family, of course, in a different form. The new type of family, which is bound to replace the disrupted joint fainily, shall have to be a voluntary association of individuals, both the sexes having the samc status as individual members of society.
Society originated as a voluntary association of individuals. But the old patriarchal family eclipsed the individual. A society which suppresses the individual runs, contrary to its own historica! purpose. The individual-inan as well as woman -is prior, not wily to family, but society itself, the latter being a creation and an association of individuals. Therefore, the assertion of the individual 28 the component of family is historically necessary; it is a progressive step which has to be taken under the pressure of the changed social conditions.
Independent economic activities on the part of women will necessarily mean some competition with men. But there will be no antagonism. For, generally, they will represent co-operation between the sexes on a larger sphere. As inde166
