Chapter VI · MODERN COMMUNISTS. (continued 2)

It was necessary to struggle and fight in order to establish justice and to subject nature to humanity; this belonged of right to man, who represents muscular force, the spirit of conflict; but as we already foresee in the approaching future, the coming of peace, the substitution of pacific labor and negotiations for war, it is clear that woman will take rightfully the direction of human affairs, to which she will be called by her faculties, found better adapted to the end henceforth to be pursued.

Woman should be the last to develop and manifest herself socially, for the same reason that the human species is the last creation of our globe; the perfect being always appears after those that have served to pave the way.

As it is demonstrated, on the other hand, that, in the scale of the various organisms, the organ that is superadded to the others to constitute a change of species, governs those which the individual derives from inferior species, so woman, fully developed in a social body organized for peace and pacific labor, will be the new organ that will govern the social body.

Does this signify that woman should oppress man? By no means; she would thus be ungrateful for the services rendered her, and would trespass against her gentle nature; but she will teach him to comprehend that his glory is to obey, to become subordinate to the other sex, because he is less perfect, and because his qualities are no longer necessary to the general good.

You laugh, gentlemen, at this second theory; you think it absurd.... So it is; for it is the counterpart of the thetic woman of Proudhon. Let us proceed then to the third theory.

III.

Every classification of the human species is a pure subjective creation; that is, one which exists only in the form given to the perception by the intellect; the very conception of humanity with the enumeration of the characteristics which are reputed to distinguish it from the other species, is stamped with subjectivity.

The truth is that not a single human being resembles his neighbor; that there are as many different men and women as there are men and women composing the species.

Classifications, in all things, are illusions of the mind, for nature hates identity and never repeats herself: there are not two grains of sand, not two drops of water, not two leaves alike; and most probably the sun, since the commencement of its existence, has not appeared twice identically the same at its rising. Yet despite the evidence of these truths, despite the conviction which we have attained of the illusion of the senses, of the weakness of our intellect, which can know nothing of the inmost nature of beings; which can only seize upon a few fleeting traces of their personal characteristics; yet despite all these things we dare establish series, attribute to them characteristics which are speedily contradicted by facts, and torture and do violence to the only beings that really exist; namely, individuals, in the name of that other thing which exists only in our sick brain: kind, class!

The bitter fruits that have been produced by our mania for classification ought to cure us of this. Has not this malady, impelling theocratists and legislators to divide humanity into castes and classes, caused most of the calamities of our species? Have we not, thanks to these execrable divisions, a hideous past, the echoes of which bring back to our shrinking ears naught but sobs, cries of anger, rebellion, malediction and vengeance, and sinister clanking of weapons and chains?

Have we not also to thank them that, on the pages of our history, all stained with blood and tears and exhaling an odor of the charnel house, we read nought but tyranny, brutishness and demoralization?

Have we not further to thank them that king and subject, master and serf, white and black, man and woman become demoralized by oppression, injustice and cruelty on one hand; and intrigue, baseness, and vengeance on the other?

Are not wrong and wretchedness found everywhere, because inequality, the offspring of insane classifications, is found everywhere?

Ah! who shall deliver us from our infatuation!

Let us class animals, vegetables, minerals if we will! our errors do not influence and cannot disturb them; but let us respect the human species which will escape all classification, however reasonable the process may be, because every human being is changeable, progressive, and differs far more from his fellows than the most intelligent animal from the rest of his species.

Let us leave each one then to make his own autonomic law and to manifest himself in conformity with his nature, and take care only that right shall be equal for all; that the strong shall not oppress the weak; that each function shall be entrusted to the one individual that is proved the best qualified to perform it; this is all that we can do, all that we should do, if we seek to show ourselves wise and just.

Harmony exists in nature, because each being in it follows peaceably the laws that govern his individuality; it will be the same in humanity, when universal reason shall comprehend that human order is pre-established in the co-operation of individual faculties left free in their manifestations; and that to establish a factitious, wholly imaginary order; that is, true disorder, is to retard the coming of order, peace and happiness.

Let us refrain then from all classification of faculties and functions according to the sexes: besides being false, they will lead us to cruelty; for we shall oppress those, whether men or women, who are neither yielding enough to submit to it nor hypocritical enough to appear to do so; and we shall do this without profit to human destiny, but, on the contrary, to its detriment.

Here, gentlemen, is a nominalistic theory which I challenge you to overthrow by sufficient reasons: for, as in the first, I shall have answers to all your objections.

We now come to our last theory, which is yours in the major and minor terms, but the opposite in the conclusions.

IV.

All the different parts of the same organism are modified by each other, and in this manner the functions become mutually modified.

Now, man and woman differ from each other in important organs.

Each of the sexes must therefore differ from the other not only through the organs that distinguish them, but through the modifications produced by the presence of these organs.

This, gentleman, is my first syllogism: I know that we shall not contest this point—it is classical Biology.

Let us investigate anatomically the organic differences to which sexuality subjects man and woman.

Nervous System. The so called nerves of feeling are more fully developed in woman than in man, those of motion are less developed in the former than in the latter; the cerebellum is more fully developed in the head of man than in that of woman; in the latter, the antero-posterior diameter of the brain preponderates over the bi-lateral, which is greater in proportion in the masculine sex: it is also observed that the organs of observation, circumspection, subtleness and philoprogenitiveness are more prominent in the head of woman than in that of man, in which the reasoning organs, with those of combativeness and destructiveness predominate.

Locomotive System. Man is larger than woman, he has more compact bones, and larger and better developed muscles, his thorax is the reverse of that of woman, in which, the greatest breadth is between the shoulders, while, with him, it is at the base; the pelvis is larger and broader in the female than the male sex.

Epidermic and cellular systems. Man has a more hairy skin than woman; what is called fat is less abundant in the masculine than in the feminine organism; in general, the skin of man is rougher, and his form less round; woman has longer and more silky hair. Splanchnic organs. The cerebral mass is the same in proportion in both sexes, as well as the organs of the brain, with the exception of the predominances which we have pointed out; the respiratory systems differ somewhat; woman breaths higher than man; in the latter, the circulation is more active and energetic.

To these physical differences correspond intellectual and moral differences.

Woman, having the nerves of feeling more fully developed, is more impressionable and more mobile than man.

Being weaker and as persistent, she obtains by address and stratagem what she cannot obtain by force; her weakness gives her timidity, circumspection, the necessity of feeling herself protected.

The kinds of labor that require strength are repugnant to her.

Her maternal destiny renders her an enemy of destruction, of war; and her more delicate organization makes her dread and shun contention. This same maternal destination impresses a peculiar stamp on her intellect; she loves the concrete, and is always inclined to transform thought into facts, to incarnate it, to give it a fixed form; her reasoning is intuition or quick perception of a general relation, of a truth that man elucidates only with great difficulty, by the aid of stilted logic.

Woman is a better observer than man, and carries induction farther than he; she is consequently more penetrating, and is a much better judge of the moral and intellectual value of those about her.

She has, more than man, sentiment of the beautiful, delicacy of heart, love of good, respect for modesty, veneration for everything superior.

More provident than he, she has more order and economy, and looks after administrative details with a carefulness which is often carried to puerility.

Woman is adroit, sedulous; she excels in works of taste, and possesses strong artistic tendencies.

Gentler, more tender, more patient than man, she loves everything that is weak, protects everything that suffers; every sorrow, every calamity brings a tear to her eye and draws a sigh from her breast.

This is woman, such as you paint her, gentlemen.

You then add:

The vocation of woman therefore is love, maternity, the household, sedentary occupations.

She is too weak for occupations that demand strength, and for those of war.

She is too impressionable and too feeling, too good, too gentle to be legislator, judge or juror.

Her taste for household details, a retired life, and the grave functions of maternity indicate clearly that she is not made for public employments. She is too variable to cultivate science with profit; too feeble and too much occupied beside to pursue protracted experiments.

Her kind of rationality renders her unsuited to the elaboration of theories; and she is too fond of the concrete and of details to become seriously interested in general ideas; which excludes her from all high professional functions and from those requiring serious study.

Her place is therefore at the fireside to make man better, to sustain him, to care for him, to procure him the joys of paternity, and to fill the place of a good housewife.

Such are your conclusions: here are mine, admitting as a hypothesis, what I affirm with you of woman.

V.

1. Woman carrying into Philosophy and Science her subtleness of observation, her love of the concrete, will correct the exaggerated tendency of man for abstract reasoning, and demonstrate the falsity of theories constructed, à priori, on a few facts alone. Then only will ontology disappear, then will it be recognized that a hypothesis is merely an interrogation point; that truth is always intelligible in its nature, however unknown it may be; we shall generalize nothing but known facts, we shall carefully avoid erecting simple generalities into laws, and we shall thus have veritable philosophy, and true human science, because they will bear the imprint of both sexes.

2. Woman carrying her peculiar faculties into the arts and manufactures, will increasingly introduce therein art, perfection in details. Cultivated in the direction of her aptitudes, she will find ingenious methods of application of scientific discoveries.

3. Patient, gentle, good, more moral than man, she is the born educator of childhood, the moralizer of the grown man; the majority of the educational functions revert to her of right, and she has her assigned place in special instruction.

4. By her quick intuition and her acuteness of observation, woman alone can discover the therapeutics of nervous affections; her dexterity will render her valuable in all delicate surgical operations. On her should devolve the care of treating the diseases of women and children, because she alone is capable of fully comprehending them; she has her especial place in hospitals, not only for the cure of disease, but also for the execution and surveillance of the details of management and the care of the patients.

5. The presence of woman in judicial functions, as juror and arbiter, will be a guarantee of veritable human justice to all; that is, of equity.

Woman alone through her gentleness, her mercy, her sympathetic disposition, and her subtleness and observation, can comprehend that society has its share of culpability in every fault committed; for it should be organized to prevent wrong rather than to punish it. This point of view, especially feminine, will transform the penitentiary system and raise up numerous institutions. Then only will the world comprehend that the punishment inflicted on the guilty should be a means of reparation and regeneration; society will no longer slay its prisoners as if weak and fearful: it will amend the assassin instead of imitating him; it will force the thief to work to make restitution of what he has stolen; it will no longer believe that it has the right by imprisoning a criminal to deprive him of his reason, to drive him to despair, to suicide by solitary confinement; to deprive him completely of marriage; to couple him with those more corrupt than himself. Conscious of its own share of culpability, society will repair in penitentiaries the fault of its carelessness: it will be firm, yet kind and moralizing: it will give in them the education which it ought to have given outside, and will prepare work houses for the liberated convicts in order that the contempt and horror often shown toward them by men worse than they may not drive them to a second offence.

7. Woman, carrying into the social household her spirit of order and economy, her love of details and abhorrence of waste and foolish expense, will reform government: she will simplify everything; will suppress sinecures and the accumulation of offices, and will produce much from little instead of, like man, producing little from much: the purse of the tax-payers will not complain of the change.

8. Under the direct influence of woman as legislator, we shall have a reconstruction of all laws; first and before everything, we shall have preventive measures, a compulsory education; then the form of legal proceedings will be simplified, the civil code recast, and all laws concerning illegitimate children and the inequality of the sexes banished from it; the laws concerning morals will be more severe, and the penal code more rational and equitable.

By her administrative reforms born of the economical instinct of woman, taxes will be diminished; her abhorrence of blood and war will greatly reduce the fearful impost of blood-shed. Having a deliberative voice, and knowing, by her griefs and love the value of a man, it will be only from sheer necessity that she will consent to vote bevies of citizens for the shambles called wars: she will do this only when her country is menaced or when it is necessary to protect oppressed nationalities; in all other cases, she will employ the system of conciliation.

9. Woman, being much more economical and a better analyst than man, when thoroughly instructed, will soon perceive that nations, like individuals, differ in aptitudes, and that the end of these differences is union and fraternity through exchange of products: she will therefore deter her country from cultivating certain branches of the acts and manufactures in which other nations excel and which they can produce to better advantage; she will cure it of the foolish pretension of being sufficient unto itself, and will prevent it from sacrificing the interest of the mass of consumers to that of a few producers: thus the barriers and custom duties that separate the different organs of humanity will fall by degrees; there will be treaties of free trade, and all will be gainers by the cheapness of products, and the suppression of the expenses of maintaining a too often annoying department of customs.

The qualities and faculties of woman not only make her an educator, but assure her preponderance in all functions arising from social solidarity; she alone knows how to console, to encourage, to moralize with gentleness, to comfort with delicacy; she has the genius of charity; to her therefore should revert the superintendence and direction of hospitals and prisons for women, the management of charitable institutions, the care of abandoned children, etc. She should create institutions to furnish employment to workmen out of work, and to save liberated convicts from indolence and relapse into crime.

Thus, gentleman, without departing from the data of your theory, you behold woman placed everywhere by the side of man, except in the hard labor from which you yourselves will soon be released by machinery, and in the military institutions which, in all probability, will some day disappear.

Hitherto institutions, laws, sciences, philosophy have chiefly borne the masculine imprint; all of these things are only half human; in order that they may become wholly so, woman must be associated in them ostensibly and lawfully, consequently, she must be cultivated like you; culture will not make her like you, do not fear it; the rose and the carnation growing in the same soil, under the same sky, in the same sunshine, with the cares of the same gardener, remain rose and carnation: they are more beautiful in proportion as they are better cultivated, and as the elements which they absorb are more abundant: if man and woman differ, a similar education will only make them differ still more, because each will employ it in the development of that which is peculiar to himself.

For the interest of all things and people it is necessary that woman should enter all the avocations of life, that she should have her function in all the functions: after the general interest of humanity, comes that of the family; it cannot go before it.

Since woman now is generally mother and housewife while performing at the same time a host of other functions, she will become none the less so in taking upon herself a few more; besides, the time of life at which an individual enters certain important functions is that at which woman has finished her maternal task. A few women acting as public functionaries will not hinder the great majority of their companions from remaining in private life, any more than a few men in the same position hinder the mass of men from continuing there.

VI.

You admit a classification at last, you say, and still more you grant that there are masculine and feminine functions. You are mistaken, gentlemen: you accused me of being incapable of giving you a complete theory, I have given you the outlines of four—outlines which it would be easy for me to extend and perfect. But I do not admit a single one of these theories as a whole.

Are you eclectic, then?

The gods forbid! I have as much repugnance to eclecticism, as to mystic trinitarianism and androgyny.

I do not admit the theory of the identity of the sexes, because I believe with Biology that an essential organic difference modifies the entire being; that therefore woman must differ from man.

I do not admit the theory of the superiority of either sex, because it is absurd; humanity is man-woman or woman-man; we do not know what one sex would be if it were not incessantly modified by its relations with the other, and we know them only as thus modified: What we know to a certainty is that they form together the existing condition of humanity; that they are equally necessary and equally useful to each other and to society.

I do not admit my third theory because it is ultra-nominalism nominalism; if it is really true that all the individuals of both sexes differ among themselves in a far more remarkable manner than those of the other species, it is none the less true that a classification, founded upon a constant anatomical characteristic, is legitimate, and that the principle of classification lies in the nature of things, for if things appear to us classified, it is because they are so; the laws of the mind are the same as those of Nature so far as knowledge is concerned; we must admit this, unless we are sceptics or idealists, and I am neither the one nor the other; neither am I a realist in the philosophic acceptation of the word, for I do not believe that the species is something apart from the individuals in which it is manifested; it is in them and through them; this repeats the affirmation that there are individuals identical in one or several respects, although different in all others.

Lastly, I do not admit the fourth theory, although it may be true in principle, because the numerous facts that contradict the distinguishing characteristics, do not permit me to believe that these characteristics are laws established by sexuality.

In fact, there are brains of men in heads of women, and vice versa.

Men mobile and impressionable; women firm and insensible.

Women large, strong and muscular, lifting a man like a feather; men small, frail, and of extreme delicacy of constitution.

Women with a stentorian voice and abrupt manners; men with a soft voice and graceful manners.

Women with short, harsh hair, bearded, with rough skin and angular figures; men with long, silky hair without beard, round and portly.

Women with an energetic circulation of blood; men in whose veins it courses feebly and slowly.

Women frank, inconsiderate and daring; men strategic, dissembling and timid.

Women violent, loving strife, war and contention, and wont to storm on every occasion; men gentle, patient, dreading strife, and exceedingly timid.

Women loving abstract reasoning, generalizing and synthetizing much, and without intuition of any sort; men intuitive, acute observers, good analysts, incapable of generalizing.... I know many such.

Women insensible to works of art, and without the sentiment of the beautiful; men full of enthusiasm for both.

Women immoral, immodest, respecting nothing or no one; men moral, chaste and reverential.

Women extravagant and disorderly; men economical and parsimonious to avarice.

Women thoroughly selfish, rigid, disposed to take advantage of the weakness, kindness, folly or misery of others; men full of generosity, mansuetude, and self-sacrifice.

What follows from these undeniable facts? that the law of sexual differences is not manifested through the several characteristics which have been laid down.

That these characteristics may be only the result of education, of the difference of prejudices, of that of occupations, etc.

That, as these generalities may be the fruit of the difference of training and surroundings, nothing can be legitimately deduced from them as to the functions of woman; would it not be absurd, in fact, to pretend that a woman who is organized for philosophy and the sciences can not, ought not to occupy herself with them because she is a woman, while a man, who is incapable of them but foolish and vain enough to be ignorant of his incapacity, can and ought to engage in them because he is a man?

Functions belong to those who prove their aptitude for them, and not to an abstraction called sex, for, definitively, every function is individual in its aggregate or in its elements.

VII.

We have explained why we reject the theories that we have sketched; we will now explain why we neither give nor wish to give a classification of the sexes.

We do not give a classification, because we neither have nor can have one; the elements for its establishment are lacking. A biological deduction permits us to affirm that such a one exists; but it is impossible to disengage its law in the present surroundings; the veritable feminine stamp will be known only after one or two centuries of like education and equal rights: then there will be no need of a classification, for the function will fall naturally to the proper functionary under a system of equality in which the social elements classify themselves.

My belief and my hopes concerning the future, I shall not confess; for I may be in error, since I have no facts to control my intuitions, and everything that is purely Utopian has always a dangerous side. Besides have I not said that, had I formed a classification, I should not give it? Why not? Because, a detestable use would be made of it, as usual, if it were adopted.

Hitherto, have not men availed themselves of classifications based upon characteristics afterwards recognized as purely imaginary to oppress, distort and calumniate those banished to the inferior ranks?

History is at hand to give us this salutary lesson. Where is now to-day the ville-pedaille, the villains and base-tenants, fit only to drain ditches and to be stripped to the skin? Inventing, governing, making laws for, and gradually transforming our globe, devastated by the superior and only capable species, into a smiling and peaceful domain.

Upon all classification of the human species, whether in castes, in classes, or in sexes, are based three wrongs.

The first is to make it a crime in the individual degraded into the lower series, that he does not resemble the conventional type that has been formed of this series, while the so called superior being is not required to resemble his type; thus a weak, cowardly, unintelligent man, a man milliner or an embroiderer, is none the less a man, while a virago, a firm and courageous woman, a great queen, a woman philosopher are not women, but men whom none love and who are given over as a prey to wild beasts, jealous, effeminate men, to devour.

The second wrong is to take advantage of the conventional type to deform the being classed in the inferior series in order to kill his energies and to hinder his progress. Then, to attain this end, education, social surroundings are organized, prejudices are invented; and so successfully is this done in general that the oppressed, ignorant of himself, believes himself really of an inferior nature, resigns himself to his chains, and is even indignant at the rebellion of those of his series who are too energetic and individual not to react against the part to which social imbecility has condemned them.

The third wrong is to take advantage of the state of debasement to which the oppressed has been reduced, to calumniate him and deny his rights; men exclaim, Look! See the serf! see the slave! see the negro! see the workingman! see woman! What rights would you grant these inferior and feeble natures? They are incapable of knowing and ruling themselves: we must therefore think for them, wish for them, and govern them.

Ah no, gentlemen, these are not men and women; they are the deplorable results of your selfishness, of your frightful spirit of domination, of your imbecility.... If there were infernal gods, I should devote you to them relentlessly with all my heart. Instead of calumniating your fellows that you may preserve your privileges, give them instruction and liberty; then only will you have the right to pass judgment on their nature: for we can only know the nature of a human being when it has become freely developed in equality.

I think that I have justified my repugnance to give a classification of the sexes, both by the impossibility of actually establishing a reasonable one, and by the very legitimate fear of the bad use that would be made of it.

But it will be objected, and not without reason, that a classification is necessary for social practice.

I consent to it with all my heart, since I have reserved my positions, and proved the worthlessness of existing classifications.

As it is my principle that the function should fall to the functionary who proves his capacity, I say that at present, through the difference of education, man and woman have distinct functions; and that we must give to the latter the place that in general she deserves.

I add that it is a violation of the natural right of woman to form her with a view to certain functions to which she is destined; she should in all respects enjoy the rights common to all; it cannot rightfully be said to her any more than to man, "your sex cannot do that, cannot pretend to that;" if it does it and pretends to it, it is because the sex can do it and pretend to it; if it could not, it would not do it; the first right is liberty, the first duty, the culture of one's aptitudes, the development of his reason and his power of usefulness: if a god should affirm the contrary, not conscience, but the god would speak falsely.

Let woman take the place therefore that is suited to her present development, but let her never cease to remember that this place is not a fixed point, and that she should continually strive to mount upwards until, her peculiar nature revealing itself through equality of education, instruction, right and duty, she takes her rightful place by the side of man and on a level with him.

Let her laugh at all the utopian follies elaborated concerning her nature, her functions determined for eternity, and remember that she is not what nature, but what subjection, prejudice, ignorance has made her; let her escape from all her chains, and no longer permit herself to be intimidated and debased.

Thus, gentlemen, all my ideas on the nature and functions of woman may be summed up in these few propositions:

I believe, because a physiological deduction authorizes me to do so, that general humanity common to both sexes is stamped by sexuality.

In fact, I know not, and you know no better than I, what are the true characteristics arising from the distinction of the sexes, and I believe that they can be revealed only by liberty in equality, parity of instruction and of education.

In social practice, functions should belong to those who can perform them: woman therefore should perform those functions for which she shows herself qualified, and society should become so organized that this may be possible.

What are these functions relative to her degree of present development? I will tell you directly.

LOVE; ITS FUNCTION IN HUMANITY. I.

You tell the child that lies, "it is wrong to deceive; you would not wish others to deceive you."

You tell the child that pilfers, "it is wrong to steal; you would not wish others to steal from you."

You tell the child that takes advantage of his strength and knowledge to torment his younger companion; "you would not wish others to do these things to you; you are wicked and cowardly."

These are good lessons. Why then, when the child has become a young man, do you say: Young men must sow their wild oats?

To sow their wild oats is to deceive young girls, to destroy their future, to practice adultery, to keep mistresses, to visit brothels.

Yet mothers, women thus consent to the profanation of their sex!

Those who forbade their child to steal a toy, permit him to steal the honor and repose of human beings!

Those who shamed their son for falsehood, permit him to deceive poor young girls!

Those who made it a crime in their son to oppress those weaker than themselves, permit him to be oppressive and perfidious toward women!

Then they complain later that their sons treat them ill; that they dishonor and ruin themselves;

That they desire the death of their parents, in order to enrich the usurers from whom they have borrowed money to maintain their mistresses in luxury.

They complain that they destroy their health, and give their mothers puny grandchildren, for whose existence they are in continual anxiety.

Ah! ladies, you have only what you deserve; bear the weight of a joint responsibility which you cannot escape. You authorized your sons to sow their wild oats; endure the consequences.

But a mother cannot be the confident of her son, it is said.

Why not, madam, if you have brought him up in such a way as to have no dishonorable confidence to make to you.

He would have none to make, if you had accustomed him to conquer himself, to respect every woman as though she were his mother, every young girl as though she were his sister; to treat others as he would think it right to be treated by them; if you had fully inculcated on him that there is but one system of morality, which both sexes are equally bound to obey; if you had caused him to honor, love and practice labor; if you had told him that we live to improve ourselves, to practise justice and kindness, and to render back to humanity what it does for us in protecting us, enlightening us, rendering us moral, surrounding us with security and comfort; that in fine our glory lies in subjecting ourselves to the great law of Duty.

If you had reared him in this manner, madam, on surprising in your son the first signs of the ardent attraction that man feels toward the other sex, far from abandoning the education of this instinct to the chances of inexperience, you would do for it what you did for the others; you would teach the young man to subject it to a wise discipline.

Instead of repeating the stupidly atrocious phrase; young men must sow their wild oats, you would have taken your son's hand affectionately in your own, and, looking in his face, would have said: "My child, Nature decrees that a woman should henceforth attract you more strongly than I, and should maintain or destroy what I have so laboriously built up: I do not murmur at this; it must be so. But my affection and duty require me to enlighten you in this grave juncture. Tell me, if a young man, to satisfy the instinct which is now awakening in you, should corrupt your sister, should sacrifice her life, what would you think of him? what would you do?"

The young man, accustomed from childhood to practise Justice, would not fail to reply: "I should think him depraved and cowardly. Would he not be punished?"

"No, my son, the seducer is not punished by the law."

"Well! I would kill him, for my right of justice reverts to me when the law makes no provision."

"Right, my child. Then you will be neither depraved nor cowardly with respect to any young girl; you will not deserve the sentence which you have pronounced; namely, death. You will respect all young girls and women as you would wish your sister, your daughter to be respected.

"Another question: what would you think of a man who should persuade me to betray your father; who should rob him of my heart and cares; who should draw me aside from the grave duties of maternity? What would you think of the man who should act thus with respect to your own companion?"

"I would judge him like the former and would treat him no better."

"Right again. Then you will respect all married women as you would wish your mother and your wife to be respected; and if you should meet any one towards whom you should feel attracted, or who should be disloyal enough to seek to attract you, you will shun her: for flight is the sole remedy for passion.

"A multitude of women, innocent at first, have been turned aside from the right path by men who do not think as you do. They now avenge themselves upon your sex for the evil it has done them. They corrupt and ruin men who, in their company, lose all sense of morality, who learn to laugh at what you believe and venerate, and undermine and destroy their health. Do you feel the deplorable courage to expose yourself to such risks?"

The young man, practised from childhood to subject his inclinations to reason and justice, would reply: "No, mother, I will not do what I would not wish my companion to do; I will neither degrade myself morally, nor destroy my health, nor contribute my share towards perpetuating a state of things which degrades the sex to which belongs my mother, my sister, my wife and my daughters, should I be so happy as to possess them.

"I acknowledge frankly that I foresee a violent struggle with myself, but, thanks to the moral training to which you have accustomed me, thanks to the ideal of destiny which you have given me, which I have accepted in the plenitude of my reason, and which my duty marks out for me, I do not despair of subduing myself."—"This victory will be less difficult to obtain, if you employ yourself usefully and seriously; for you will thus attract your vitality to the superior regions of the brain. You will do wisely to add to this, much physical exercise; to abstain from too substantial a diet, and especially from stimulating drinks! you know the reaction of the physical upon the moral system. Carefully avoid licentious reading and improper conversation; give a place in your mind to the virgin who will be united to you; think and act as if in her presence; it will guard you and keep you pure. This sweet ideal will strengthen you against temptation, and contribute greatly to render you insensible towards those women who should have no place in your heart."

"Love, my child, is a thing most serious in its results; for the beings whom it unites become modified by each other; it leaves its traces, however short may be its duration.

"Its end is Marriage, one of the ends of which is the continuity of the species. Now, you know the effects of solidarity of blood; it is most important therefore that you should choose for your companion a woman whose character, morals and principles are in unison with your own; not only for your happiness, but for the organization of your children, the harmony of their nature and conduct.

"If passion does not leave you sufficiently free in your judgment, come to me: I will see for you, and if I say: my son, this woman will debase you, will cause you to commit faults; be sure that your children will have evil propensities; she is not adapted to rear them according to your ideal, which she will never accept, because she is vain and selfish; if I tell you this, I know, my son, that whatever may be your suffering, you will renounce a woman whom you would cease to love after a few months' union, and will prefer a transient sadness to a life of unhappiness."

II.

The mother who has just shown her son why love should be subjected to Reason and Justice, and has pointed out to him what he should do to subdue its animal phase, perceives also the awakening of this instinct in her daughter. She wins her attention and gains her confidence by revealing to her what is passing within her heart, telling her that, at her age, she felt the same.

"Hitherto," continues she, "you have been but a child; your career as a woman is now commencing. You desire the affection of a man, and your heart is moved at the sweet thought of becoming a mother. Do not blush, my daughter; it is lawful, on condition that your desires are made subject to Reason and the law of Duty.

"Many snares will be spread before your steps; for men of all ages address to a young girl innumerable flattering speeches, and surround her with homage which renders her vain and coquettish if she has the weakness to suffer herself to be intoxicated thereby. Persuade yourself fully that all this adoration is not addressed to you individually, but to your youth, to the brightness of your eyes, to the freshness of your complexion, and that, were you far better than you are and far superior in intellect, these men would be ceremoniously and frigidly polite, were you thirty years older. This thought present in your mind will make you smile at their frivolous and common-place jargon, and will preserve you from many weaknesses, such as rivalry of dress, petty jealousies, and the ridiculous blunder of playing the young girl at fifty.

"As you can espouse but one man, it is sufficient to be loved by one in the manner that you wish. A woman who comports herself voluntarily so as to captivate the hearts of many men, and leaves each to believe that she prefers him above all, is an unworthy coquette, who sins against Justice and Kindness: against Justice, inasmuch as she demands a sentiment for which she can make no return; as she acts towards others as she would think it unjust that others should act towards her; against Kindness, inasmuch as she risks causing suffering to sincere hearts and sacrificing their repose to a pleasurable impulse of vanity: such a woman, my child, is contemptible; she is a dangerous enemy of her sex; first, because she gives a bad opinion of it; next, because she is an enemy to the repose of other women; I know that you are too ingenuous, too true and too worthy to fear that you will fall into such errors.

"You have acknowledged to me that your young imagination had pictured to itself a man. Far from banishing this ideal, let it be always present to your mind, much less in its physical aspect than in that of intellect, morality and industry. This image will do more to keep you safe than all my counsels, than all the surveillance that I might, but never would exercise over you, because this would be unworthy of us both.

"Do not forget however that an ideal is absolute; that the reality is always defective; do not therefore seek in the man to whom you shall give your heart, a realization of the ideal, but the qualities and faculties which, with your aid, will permit him to approximate to what you wish to see him. You yourself are the ideal of a man, not such as you are, but such as he will aid you to become.

"I dwell upon this point, my daughter, because nothing is more dangerous than to insist on finding the ideal in the reality; this makes us over difficult and lacking in indulgence; and, if we have a lively imagination and little reason, renders us unhappy and involves us in innumerable errors.

You know and feel that the end of love is Marriage; now one of your duties as lover and spouse is the improvement of the one to whom you shall be united. You will stand with him in two different relations! first as his betrothed, afterwards as his wife. Your modifying power will, in the first case, be exercised in a direct proportion to his desire to please and to be worthy of you; in the second, in proportion to his confidence, esteem and affection for you. In the first case, he will wish to modify himself; in the second, he will do so without knowing it."

"What, mother, will he not always love me the same?"

"Love, my child, undergoes transformations which we should expect and to which we should submit; in the beginning it is a fever of the soul; but fever is a condition which cannot last without destroying life. Your husband, while loving you perhaps more deeply, will love you less ardently than before Marriage. Your love will become transformed, why shall not his be the same?

"You cannot imagine how much trouble results from the ignorance of women on this point, and from the vain pursuit of the ideal in love. Many women, believing that their husband loves them no longer because he loves them in a different manner, become detached from him, suffer, and betray their duties; others, dreaming of perfection in the loved one, fancy that they have found it, and becoming disabused after the fever has past, quit him, accusing him of having deceived them; they love others with the same illusion, followed by the same disenchantment, until age creeps on without curing them of the chimera. Lastly, there are others who, comprehending only the first period of love, cease to love the man who has passed beyond it, and pursue another love which will bring them the same fever; these, as you comprehend, have not the slightest idea of woman's grave duties in Love.

"What I have just said of women is equally true of men. You will avoid these dangers, my daughter, you who have been accustomed from childhood to submit to reason; who know that all reality is imperfect, that habit weakens sentiment, you will therefore take the man who suits you, as he is, designing to improve him and to render him happy, knowing in advance that his love will change without becoming extinguished, if you succeed in gaining his affection, confidence and esteem, so that he will find in you good counsel, peace, assistance and security. You are too pure, my daughter, to foresee all the snares that will be spread for you. It belongs to me therefore to arm your youthful prudence: You will perhaps encounter men married or betrothed who, according to the common expression, will pay court to you, and will utter innumerable sophisms to justify their conduct."

"Their sophisms would fall to the ground before the simple answer: Sir, as I should be driven to despair if another woman should rob me of him whom I loved, as I should despise and hate her, all your compliments cannot persuade me that it is right for me to do what I would not that others should do to me. If you return to the subject, I shall inform the person interested.

"Right, my child: but if a young man who was free should speak of love, and urge you to write to him in secret?"

"Might he not have good reason for acting in this manner?"

"None, my child. You must know that men are exceedingly corrupt; that many among them eschew marriage, flit from one woman to another, take advantage of our credulity, and make use of the most impassioned language to lead us in the way of shame and perdition. Now, my child, know besides that we bear the weight of men's faults as well as of our own; the verbal and written promises of a man bind him to nothing. If, suffering yourself to be led astray, you should become a mother, the child would remain your charge; and you could no longer hope for marriage; I say nothing of our grief and shame, nor of the terrible risks to which you would expose your brother, who might perish in punishing the vile seducer whom the law does not touch. If a man seeks you therefore unknown to us, be sure that it is because his intentions are evil; that he considers you as a toy which he purposes to break when it ceases to amuse him. Now, my daughter, you know that woman is created to be the worthy companion of man; that she is not born to be sacrificed to him as an object of pleasure. Instead therefore of suffering yourself to be seduced, profit by the influence over men which is given you by your beauty and grace, to recall them to their duties: in this manner, you may be the means of saving many women; you will give a favorable opinion of your sex, and will prepare a good example for your daughter by setting one to your companions, many of whom will follow it in order to share in the esteem that will surround you; always remember that our acts not only injure ourselves, but we have a joint responsibility with others, and consequently no one can be lost or saved alone.

"One word more, my child. In your uncertainties, do not hesitate to confide your troubles to me; do not say, My mother is too reasonable to understand me in this. Was it not by becoming a child again in order to comprehend you, that I fulfilled my sacred task of instructor? be persuaded that it will not be more difficult for me to become a young girl again in order to comprehend, while remaining a tender and experienced mother to advise you.

"You are free: I am not your censor, but your elder sister, who loves you with devotion and desires your happiness before all things. As a recompense for my love and my long-continued cares, I only ask to be your best friend; that is, the one in whose presence you will think and speak aloud. Is this asking too much of you, who are my joy and crown."

This is the way, ladies, in which the woman who has attained majority, strives to educate the world in Love.

III.

The young girl and young man enter into society. The prudent mother knows that it is gently insinuated to her son that she is a prude, a dotard who knows nothing of the passions; who does not suspect that everything in nature is good, and should be respected; and who has read the history of our species to so little purpose that she has not perceived that humanity has love in all forms: the polygamic and polyandric, and even ... the ambiguous.

She knows also, that he is told that the satisfaction of the animal instinct is necessary to the health of man, and that brothels are places of public utility.

She knows, lastly, that young and giddy girls, with lax principles, make dangerous confidences to her daughter.

It is time, in opposition to these lax doctrines and pernicious examples, to give to her children the philosophy of Love. According to her method, she suffers is to elucidate itself.

My son, says she, what is the end of the attraction of mineral molecules towards each other?

SON. The production of a body having a determined form.

MOTHER. What is the end of the attraction of the plant for heat, light, air, the elements which it absorbs?

SON. The production of its own body, the development of its organs, and of its properties, its preservation.

MOTHER. And do you know, my daughter, what is the end of the attraction of the pistil and stamens of the flower.

DAUGHTER. The production of a being resembling its parents.

MOTHER. Why do we as well as the animals experience an inclination or attraction for certain kinds of food?

SON. It is evidently in order to incite to action the organs which procure to the organism the elements adapted to produce blood.

MOTHER. Why do both sexes of the same species experience an attraction towards each other?

DAUGHTER. For the production of young to perpetuate the species.

MOTHER. Why do the females, and often males among animals experience an inclination or attraction to take care of the young?

DAUGHTER. In order to preserve them and to educate them as far as is in their power, that they may be able to provide for themselves.

MOTHER. Are you quite sure, my children, that the end of these attractions is not the attraction itself, the procurement of a pleasure?

SON. The pleasure seems to me only the means of impelling the being to fulfill a necessary or useful function. Thus the end of our scientific, artistic and industrial inclinations or attractions is not the pleasure which we take in their satisfaction, but the production of science, art and industry.

DAUGHTER. That is, the increase and progress of our intellect through the knowledge of the laws of Nature, in order to modify this nature with a view to our wants and pleasures.

MOTHER. To what inclination or attraction is Society due?

SON. To our attraction for our fellow beings.

DAUGHTER. This attraction is the father of Justice and of Goodness: it produces them.

MOTHER. Will you generalize the character of this inclination or attraction in accordance with what we have just said?

SON. The end of all attraction or inclination is the production, progress and preservation of beings.

MOTHER. Are all instincts good which are merely inclinations or attractions?

SON. For animals, which are subject to fatality, they are; because they tend directly to their end, without ever appearing to deviate from it. In our species, they are good in principle, if we regard their end; but they may become evil through the deviation to which our liberty subjects them.

MOTHER. By what token can we know that our instinct has a right tendency?

DAUGHTER. By comparing its use with its end; by assuring ourselves that this use is not prejudicial to the practice of justice, that it does not detract from the right of any of our faculties; that is, that it disturbs neither our individual harmony nor that of others; for it is on these conditions alone that it can coöperate in the realization of the social ideal.

MOTHER. Very well. Now apply this general doctrine to human love, my children.

SON. Since love is one of the forms of attraction, and since the general end of attraction is the production, progress and preservation of beings and species, it is evident that human love should possess these characteristics. Its principal function appears to me to be the reproduction of the species.

DAUGHTER. It seems to me, brother, that this is not enough; since true husbands and wives do not cease to love each other after this end has been fulfilled, and since persons may love without having children.

MOTHER. You are right, my daughter; our faculties being more numerous and more fully developed than those of the animals, our love cannot be incomplete like theirs; it cannot be of the same nature in our progressive species as in those species fatal and unprogressive of themselves. In us, each faculty, properly employed, aids in the improvement of all the rest, wrongly employed, it interrupts our harmony and lowers us; it is the same with our love. Or rather this passion is the one that most of all causes us to grow or to decline.

You know, my children, that humanity advances only by forming itself an ideal and endeavoring to realize it. Every passion has its ideal, which is modified by that of the whole. In the beginning, man, in the animal state, made the end of love the pleasure resulting from the satisfaction of a wholly physical want: he cared nothing for the most evident aim—progeny. A little later, man less gross, loved woman for her beauty and fruitfulness; this was the patriarchal age of love. Later still, the Northern races wrought a change in this instinct; love became decomposed, as it were; the lover possessed the love of the soul; the woman was loved not only for her beauty, but as the inspirer of lofty deeds; the husband was the possessor of the body alone and the children were the fruit of marriage; this was the chivalrous age of love. Since pacific labor has been organized and has gained a place in public opinion, love has entered a new phase; many among the moderns consider it as the initiative of labor. Some regard the attraction of pleasure as playing the chief part in industrial production, and leave full liberty to the attraction, however inconsistent it may be; others preserve the couple, and transform woman into the moving power of action; the love that she inspires excites the efforts of the worker.

The progress hitherto made by humanity is therefore that love has now for its end the perpetuation of the species, the modification of man by woman, and the production of labor.

In a higher ideal of Justice, the sexes being equal in rights, love will have a higher end; the spouses will unite on account of conformity of principles, union of hearts, wedding of intellects, common labor: love will join them to double their strength, to modify them by each other, from the friction of their hearts will be struck out sentiments which neither would have had alone; from the union of their intellects will be born thoughts which neither would have had alone; from the aid that they will lend each other in their common labor will proceed works that neither would have accomplished alone, as from the union of their whole being, will be born new generations more perfect than the preceding because they will be the product of the greatest possible harmony. It will be only when woman shall take her lawful place that humanity will see love in all its splendor, and that this passion, subversive to-day in inequality and incoherence, will become what it should be; one of the great instruments of Progress.

We, my children, who are too rational to mistake the means by which Nature impels us to accomplish her designs for the designs themselves, will take care not to fancy that the end of love is pleasure; on the other hand, we have too much respect for equality to imagine that it is for the benefit of one sex alone. We will remain faithful to the ideal of our lofty destinies, in defining love as the reciprocal attraction of man and woman with the end of perpetuating the species, of improving the partners mutually with respect to intellect and feeling, and of advancing science, art and industry by the labor of the pair.

IV.

Sophists have told you, my son, that all our inclinations are in Nature; that they are good and should be respected.

You asked them doubtless whether the inclinations to theft, to assassination, to violation, to anthropophagy, which are in Nature, are good, and why, instead of respecting them, society punishes their manifestation.

You demonstrated to them, I hope, that there is nothing commendable in the exaggeration or the perversion of instincts.

You demonstrated to them, I hope, that Nature is brutal fatality against which we are bound to struggle both within and without ourselves; that our Justice and virtue are composed only of conquests made over it in us, as all that constitutes our physical well-being is only the result of conquests made over it outside of us.

These sophists have told you that love comes and goes without our knowing how or wherefore; and that we can no more command it to spring up than to endure.

This is true, my son, of the brutal desires of the flesh, which is the passion of animals alone, and is extinguished by possession.

This is also true of that complex passion which has its seat in the imagination and the senses, and ends with the illusion that is always of short duration.

But it is not true of genuine love; this sees both the faults and the virtues of the loved one; but softens the first and exalts the last, and hopes by degrees to put an end to that which wounds it.

This sentiment which takes possession of the heart, is patient; it bears lest it become effaced, it surrounds itself with precautions in order to remain constant; if it becomes extinct, it is not unconsciously: for we suffer cruel tortures before resolving to cease to love.

You have been told that love is irrepressible; are we then beings of fatality? This sophism renders man cowardly and depraves him; for what is the use of struggling against what we know to be unconquerable, and why not sacrifice to it the best of our tendencies? Examine the conduct of the partisans of such a doctrine.

The human ideal requires that they shall not do to others what they would not think it just that others should do to them; yet they seduce maidens, make them mothers, and abandon them without caring about the children born of these unions; without caring whether the young mother commits suicide, dies of grief, or becomes depraved; without caring whether the parents go down to the grave.

Like deadly reptiles, they glide to the domestic fireside of others, rob their friend of the affection of his wife, and force him to labor for the children of adultery.

The woman who believes in irrepressible love breaks her pledges to her husband; lives a life of deceit; brings trouble and sorrow into the houses of other women, whose lives are blighted by her.

It is in this way that those who practice this sophistry fulfil their duty to be just, not to afflict their fellows, to labor for the happiness and improvement of those about them, to preserve the weak from oppression and wrong. To this pretended irrepressibility of love, they sacrifice Justice, goodness, the happiness, repose and honor of others; lead them into the path of dissipation; bring dissolution into the family and society; in a word, offer up as a sacrifice to animal instinct, moral sense and reason.

You have also been told that every species of love is found in Nature; the polyamic and polygandric, as well as that of the constant pair.

Yes, my child, every species of love is found in Nature, as is every species of vice and every species of virtue. But you know that it is not enough that a thing exists within us to prove it to be good; it must be in conformity with the ideal of our destiny, with our harmony: it is wrong in the opposite case.

Love, such as we have defined it, needs duration and equality; duration, because we do not become modified in a few months; because we do not accomplish great works in a few months; because we do not rear children in a few months; duration is so truly an aspiration of love, that it imagines that eternity will hardly suffice for it. It must have equality; division is hateful to it; it will therefore have a unit for a unit, both male and female. Now polygamy and polyandria are the negation of equality, of dignity in love.

Let us consider the effects of these two deviations of instinct.

Oriental polygamy renders human beings profoundly unequal, transforms women into cattle, mutilates thousands of men to guard the harems, depraves the possessor of women by despotism and cruelty, concentrates all his vitality upon a single instinct at the expense of intellect, reason and activity; whence it follows that he is lost to science, art, industry, society according to right: that he submits without repugnance to despotism, and passively extends his neck to the halter. There, no influence is wielded by woman, who is subjected to designed enervation, who is depraved in as hideous a manner as the eunuch, her keeper. Thus, inequality in love and in right, abandonment of art, science and industry, intellectual and physical enervation, debasement of the moral sense—such are vices inherent to the polygamy of the East. You see that this is far from the ideal of our destinies.

In our West, polygamy de facto produces the cattle of the brothel, legions of courtesans who ruin families. As many of these women are diseased, they infect those who associate with them with fearful maladies which undermine their constitutions, and thus pave the way for puny offspring, consequently, for weak minds and feeble intellects. I appeal for proof to the conscription; never were so many exemptions seen as now on account of under size, although the standard has been lowered, never were so many exemptions seen as now for constitutional imperfections and acquired disease.

To vitiate the generation in its germ is not the only crime of our polygamy; it enervates those who practice it, for nothing leads to excess, consequently to enervation, so much as the change of relations. On the other hand, our polygamists become transformed into machines of sensation; then intellect grows weak; they become stupid and selfish. Look at the pitiable young men of the present time, emaciated by their vices and by those of their sires; scoffers, faithless, jesting at the most sacred things, despising, not only the corrupt women, their worthy companions, but also the whole sex to which their mothers belong; look at them; so gross as to sicken the observer, nothing longer commands their respect; they thrust aside gray haired women from the sidewalk into the gutter; they are impertinent to old men; they put young girls to the blush with their cynical speeches; polygamy has rendered them ignoble, and has destroyed our native urbanity as well as all dignity.

They will tell you that women are but little better than they. But this result becomes inevitable in a country in which women are not kept in seclusion. Polyandria becomes the necessary companion of polygamy; for since men consider themselves at liberty to have more than one woman, why should women consider themselves forbidden to have more than one man?

Finally, my son, the results of irrepressible love, Polygamy and Polyandria in our Western country are:

The seduction and corruption of women;

Adultery, debasement of character; the moral and intellectual enfeebling of both sexes;

The enervation and degeneracy of the race;

Falsehood, deceit, cruelty, injustice of every kind, the use of woman by man for her beauty, that of man by woman for his money or position;

The dissolution and ruin of the family;

Several thousand illegitimate children annually, without counting abortions;

Such is the value of these theories put in practice.

Is this in conformity with our ideal of human love? Is it in conformity with our ideal of human destiny, which requires that we shall progress and cause others to progress in good; that we shall practice Justice and Goodness?

A word more, and we have done.

When Rome had ceased to believe in chastity, in the sacredness of oaths; when she wallowed in polygamic and polyandric customs; when she took pleasure for her end, tyranny appeared. Nothing was more natural: man binds captive those only who have first suffered themselves to be bound under the yoke of bestial instinct: he who knows how to govern himself does not yield obedience to man; he bows only before the law when it is the expression of Reason.

Remember, my son, that we are powerful only through chastity; only thus can we produce great works in science, art and industry; only thus can we practice Justice, be worthy of liberty. Outside of chastity, there is nothing but degradation, injustice, impotence, slavery; and every nation that forsakes it falls from the arms of despotism into the grave.

Do not suffer yourself therefore to be moved by modern sophisms, have always before your thoughts your obligations as a moral and a free being, your duties as a member of humanity; subject all that is within you to Reason, to Justice, to the sentiment of your dignity, and live like a man, not like a brute.

MARRIAGE, A DIALOGUE. I

READER. We are about to speak of Marriage from the stand point of the modern ideal—how do you define it?

AUTHOR. Love, sanctioned by Society.

READER. Do you consider Marriage as indissoluble?

AUTHOR. Before the law, I do not; but at the moment of their union, the spouses should have full confidence that the bond will never be dissolved.

I believe that Marriage becomes indissoluble by the will alone of the spouses; that it can be so only in this manner.

READER. What part do you assign to Society in Marriage?

AUTHOR. You shall fix it yourself after recalling our principles.

If man and woman are free beings at any period of their life, they cannot legally and validly lose their liberty.

If man and woman are beings socially equal in any of their relations, the one cannot legally, validly be subordinated to the other.

If the continual end of the human being is to become perfected through liberty, and to seek happiness, no law can legitimately, validly turn him aside from its pursuit.

If the end of society should be to render individuals equal it cannot, under penalty of forfeiting its mission, constitute inequality of persons and of rights.

If Society cannot without iniquity enter the domain of individual liberty, it cannot lawfully, validly prescribe duties that pertain only to the jurisdiction of the conscience, and annul moral liberty.

Now draw your conclusions.

READER. From these principles, it follows that man and woman should remain free and equal in Marriage; that Society has no right to intervene in their association except to render them equal; that it has no right to prescribe to them duties which proceed only from love, nor consequently to punish their violation, that it cannot in principle grant or refuse divorce, because it belongs to the husband and wife alone to know whether it is useful for their happiness and progress to be separated from each other.

AUTHOR. Your conclusions are right, but if Society has no right over the body or the soul of the husband and wife in their capacity of spouses, if it cannot without abuse of power interfere in any of their intimate relations, it is its right and duty to intervene in Marriage as regards interests and children.

READER. In fact, in the union of the sexes, there is not merely an association of two free and equal persons, but also a partnership of capital and labor; then, from the marriage, children are born for whose education, occupation and subsistence it is necessary to provide.

AUTHOR. Now, the general protection of material interests and of the rising generation devolves of right upon Society. In the sight of the law, the husband and wife ought to be regarded only as partners, engaging to employ a certain share of capital, together with their labor, for a definite purpose. Society takes note only of a contract of interests, the execution of which it guarantees like that of any other contract, and the breach of which it makes public, should it take place by the wish of the parties interested. On the other hand, the education of the rising generation is a question of life and death to Society. The children being free with respect to development, and liable to be useful or injurious to their fellow citizens according to the training which they have received, society has a right to watch over them, to secure their material support, their moral future, to fix the age of marriage, to entrust the children to the more deserving parent in case of separation, and if both are unworthy, to take them away entirely.

READER. Do you not go a little too far; on the one hand, do not children belong to their parents, on the other, may not Society err with respect to the choice of the principles to be instilled in them?

AUTHOR. Children do not belong to their parents because they are not THINGS: to those who obstinately persist in believing them property, we say that Society has the right of dispossession for the public good. Then the social right over children is limited so far as principles are concerned to those of morality. Society has no right over religious beliefs which belong to the domain of spiritual jurisdiction. The power that should take away children from their parents because they were not of a certain religious faith would be guilty of despotism, and would merit universal execration. If you say that Society has no right to impose a dogma upon children, you speak truly; but I cannot conceive how you can entertain the thought of forbidding it the right to teach them, even against the will of their parents, enlightening science, purifying morality. Is it not the duty of society to secure the progress of its members, and can any one have a right to keep a human being in ignorance and evil?

READER. You are right, and I condemn myself. Let us return to Marriage. I see with pleasure that you differ in opinion from a number of modern innovators who deny the lawfulness of social interference in the union of the sexes.

AUTHOR. If the union were without protection, who would suffer by it? Not men, but rather women and children.

No one can compel a man to live with a woman whom he has ceased to love; but he must be constrained to fulfill his duties with respect to the children born of this union, and to keep his business engagements: in wronging his companion and escaping from the burdens of paternity, he takes advantage of his liberty to the detriment of others: Society has a right to prevent this.

READER. So you do not grant to Society the right of binding souls or bodies; but that of guaranteeing the contract of Marriage, and the obligations of the spouses towards their future children; of forcing them, in case of separation, to fulfill this last obligation?

AUTHOR. Yes; thus in case of the rupture of the marriage tie, society has only to state publicly the responsibilities of the spouses, the number of children, and the name of the parent on whom their guardianship devolves, either by mutual consent or by social authority. And in confining itself to this part, Society would do more to prevent the separation of married couples than by all that it has hitherto foolishly invented for the purpose. The parties would be free to marry again; but what woman would be willing to unite herself to a man who was burdened with several children, or who had treated his first companion unkindly? What man would consent to wed a woman in the same position?

Do you not think that the difficulty that would be experienced in contracting a new marriage would be a curb on the inconstancy and bad conduct that lead to a rupture?

READER. I believe indeed that marriage, as you understand it, would have more chances of duration than ours: first, because it is our nature to cling most closely to that which we may lose. I have often asked myself why many men remain faithful to their mistresses and treat them kindly, while they are disrespectful and unfaithful to their wives; I have asked myself also why many couples who had long lived happily together when voluntarily united, were unhappy and often driven to a legal separation when they had finally married; and the only reason that I have been able to find is that we set the most value on that which we know may escape us. Man has more respect for a woman who is not his legal property, his inferior, than for her who is thus transformed by the law. Notwithstanding, it must be acknowledged that your ideas appear eccentric.

AUTHOR. Yet they are nothing more than an application of our laws; indeed, do they not decree that covenants can have things only, not persons for their object. That Society does not recognize vows, and that proceedings cannot be instituted against their violation?

Now the existing law of marriage alienates one of the partners in favor of the other; the wife belongs to the husband; she is in his power. What is such a contract, if not the violation of the principle which affirms that no covenant can be made involving persons? can it be more lawful to alienate one's person by a contract of slavery?

Some say that we are at liberty to dispose of our freedom as we choose, even though it be to renounce it. Indeed, we may do this, as we may commit suicide, but to make use of our liberty to renounce it or to commit suicide is much less to use aright than to violate the laws of moral or physical nature; these are acts of insanity which we should pity, but which we are not at liberty to erect into a law.

Why does Society refuse to recognize vows and to punish their violation, if not because it admits that it is forbidden to penetrate into the jurisdiction of the conscience? if not because it does not admit that an individual may alienate his moral and intellectual being any more than his body, and devote himself to immobility when it is his duty, on the contrary, to go forward?

I ask then if this same Society is not inconsistent in exacting perpetual vows from the husband and wife, in exacting from the wife a vow of obedience, a tacit vow to deliver up her person to the desires of the husband?

Is not the moral liberty of the spouses as worthy of respect as that of nuns, priests and monks?

Have married persons more right in Nature and Reason, to alienate their moral and intellectual being, their liberty and their person than the celibates of the Church?

Another inconsistency of the law is that it declares Marriage an association; the contract of Marriage is therefore a contract of partnership. Now I ask whether, in a single contract of this kind, it is enjoined by law on one of the partners to obey, to be subjected to a perpetual minority, to be absorbed?

I doubt not that the law would declare such a contract between independent partners void; why then does it legalize such a monstrosity in the partnership of husband and wife? It is a relic of barbarism, as you will see if you reflect on it.

READER. I hope that, through reason and necessity, the law will be reformed sooner or later: but a reformation which will not take place is that of the forms of religious marriage, which prescribe to the spouses the same oaths as the code, and like it, subject the wife to the husband.

AUTHOR. Well, what matters it to us, since, thanks to liberty, the religious marriage is merely a benediction with which we can dispense. Those who have a disposition to go to the Church, the Temple, or the Synagogue should have full liberty to receive the blessing of their respective priests! this does not concern Society. What we need is that, if afterward their vows should not seem to them binding, social authority should not make them obligatory; they have a right to be absurd, but society has no right to impose absurdity on them. Its duty is, on the contrary, to enlighten them, and to render them free.

II.

READER. Those who subordinate woman in marriage rest on the assertion that unity of direction, consequently a ruling power, is needed in the family; now, your theory evidently destroys this ruling power.

AUTHOR. What is the ruling power? Practically, it is manifested through the function of government. Formerly, it was based upon two principles, now recognized as radically false: Divine right and inequality. It was the right of those who exercised it to call themselves kings, autocrats, priests, men; it was the duty therefore of the people, the church, woman to obey the elect of God, their superiors by the grace of right delegated from on high.

But in modern opinion, the ruling power is nothing more than a function delegated by the parties interested in order to execute their will.

It is not our business to inquire here whether this modern interpretation has become incarnated in facts; whether the old principle is not still struggling with the new; whether the holders of political and familial authority are not still making insane pretensions to divine right; we have only to show what the notion of the ruling power has become in the present state of thought and feeling.

What will be the ruling power in marriage, in accordance with modern opinion, if not the delegation by one spouse to the other of the management of business and of the family—a delegation of function; no longer a right?

And if man and woman are socially equal in principle, if the aptitudes, upon which all functions are based, are not dependent on sex, by what right does society interfere to give the authority either to the husband or the wife?

If there is need of a ruling power in the household, are not the parties themselves best capable of bestowing it on the one who can best and most usefully exercise it?

But among partners, is there really room for a ruling power? No, there is room only for division of labor, mutual understanding with respect to common interests. To consult each other, to come to an agreement, to divide the tasks, to remain master each of his own department; this is what the spouses should do, and what they do in general.

The law has so little part in our customs that to-day things happen in this wise: many rich women translate two articles of the Code as follows; the husband shall obey his wife, and shall follow her wherever she sees fit to dwell or sojourn. And the husbands obey, because it would not do to offend a wife with a large dowry; because it would make a scandal to thwart their wife; because they need her, being unable, without dishonoring themselves, to keep a mistress.

Husbands in the great centres of population escape obedience through love outside of marriage; they lay no restrictions on their part; Madame is free.

Among the working classes of the citizens and the people, it is practically admitted that neither shall command, and that the husband shall do nothing without consulting his wife and obtaining her consent.

In all classes, if any husband is simple enough to take his pretended right in earnest, he is cited as a bad man, an intolerable despot whom his wife may hate and deceive with a safe conscience; and it is a curious fact that the greater part of the legal separations are for no other cause at the bottom than the exercise of the rights and prerogatives conceded to the husbands by law.

I ask you now, what is the use of maintaining against reason and custom, an authority which does not exist, or which is transferred to the spouse condemned to subjection.

READER. On this point, I am wholly of your opinion; not a single woman of modern times takes the rights of her husband in earnest. But your theory not only attacks his authority; it also wages war against the indissolubility of marriage, which it is affirmed, is necessary to the dignity of this tie; to the happiness and future of the children, to the morality of the family.

AUTHOR. I claim, on the contrary, that my theory secures, as far as is humanly possible, the perpetuity and purity of marriage. At present, when the knot is tied, the spouses, no longer fearing to lose each other, find in the absence of this fear the germ of a mutual coolness; they may quarrel, be discourteous or unfaithful to each other; there will be scandal, a legal separation perhaps, but they are riveted together; they can never become strangers. Contrast with this picture a household in which the bond is dissoluble; all is changed; the despotic or brutal husband represses his evil propensities, because he knows that his companion, whom after all he loves, would quit him and transfer to another the attentions she lavishes on him; and that no honest woman would be willing to take her place.

The husband disposed to be unfaithful would continue in the path of duty, because his abandonment and offences would alienate his wife, blast his reputation, and prevent him from forming an honorable alliance.

The worn out profligate would no longer espouse the dowry of a young girl, because he would know that, promptly disenchanted, the young wife, instead of having recourse to adultery, would break the ill assorted union.

The woman who should take advantage of her dowry, of the necessity of her husband to remain faithful, to tyrannise over him, would fear a divorce which would throw the blame on her and condemn her to a life of solitude.

A shrewish wife would no longer dare to inflict suffering on her husband, or a coquette to deceive or torment him; who would marry them after a separation?

Do you not see that free marriages are happier and more lasting than any others?

Have you not yourself admitted that to separate the parties in these unions, it often suffices to join them legally?

I know myself of a voluntary union that was very happy during twenty-two years, and was dissolved by separation at the end of three years of legal marriage; I have known of many others of a shorter duration which legality contributed to dissolve instead of rendering eternal.

You would hardly believe how many married couples reformed in their treatment of each other in 1848, when they feared that the law of divorce might be accepted. If the simple expedient of divorce has power to produce good results, what may not be expected from a rational law.

We need only to reflect in order to comprehend that voluntary dissolubility, without social intervention, would render unions better assorted, for it would be for one's interest, for his own reputation, to enter into them only with the moral conviction of being able to preserve them; then only would no excuse be found for infidelity; loyalty would make part of the relations of the spouses. The law of perpetuity has perverted everything, corrupted everything; on the side of the woman, it favors, yes, necessitates stratagem; on the side of the man, it favors brutality and despotism; it provokes on both sides adultery, poisoning and assassination; and leads to those separations which are daily increasing in number, and which, by giving the lie to the indissolubility of marriage, place the partners in a painful and perilous situation, and bring in their train a host of irregularities.

In fact, if the spouses are separated while young, concubinage is their refuge. The man in this false position finds many to excuse him; but the woman is forced to conceal herself, to tremble at the thought of a pregnancy and to make it disappear. Legal separation leads the spouses not only to concubinage, to mutual hatred, but causes the birth of thousands of children whose future is compromised, destroyed by the fact of their illegitimacy. Let the spouses be free in accordance with their right, and all will fall into its proper order, for all will be done openly and truly.

READER. But the future of the children?

AUTHOR. The morality of the children is better insured under the system of liberty than under that of indissolubility, for they will not be witnesses for years of the bitter contention and licentiousness which now render them deceitful and vicious, and inspire them with contempt or hatred for one of the authors of their being, sometimes of both, when they do not take them for models; if life in common becomes impossible to the parents, which will be more rare under the law of liberty, the children will not be subjected to the power of those who violate the law of received morality; they may see these parents contract a new alliance as now, but this alliance will be honored by all.

From these unions children may be born as now, but these children, instead of being cast into the hospital, will share with the first the affection and inheritance of their father or mother. The so-styled legitimate children will lose in fortune, it is true; but they will gain in good examples; many children who are now in the category of the illegitimate will be ranked among the former, and will be no longer condemned by desertion to die young, or else to grovel in ignorance, vice and misery; to see their brow branded with the fault of their parents as of their own by a host of imbeciles and men without heart, who have no other guarantee for what they call their legitimacy than the presumption accorded them by the law.

III.

READER. It will be long yet, perhaps, before collective Reason comprehends liberty in the union of the sexes as you do, and men will ascribe to themselves the right not only of binding the interests, but the souls and bodies of the spouses.

AUTHOR. As far as we can foresee, Society must necessarily? pass through two stages to realize our opinion; it must first grant divorce for a declared cause; later it will grant divorce decreed in private on the petition of one or both of the spouses. We will not take up this last form of the rupture of the conjugal tie, but that which is nearest us—divorce for a declared cause.

What are the reasons which you would consider valid for a petition for divorce?

READER. First, those which now give rise to separation from bed and board: adultery of the wife, cruelty, grave abuses, condemnation of one of the spouses to punishment affecting the liberty or person, the fraudulent management of the property by the husband; next, infidelity of the husband, qualified adultery, incompatibility of temper, notable vices, such as drunkenness, gaming, etc.

AUTHOR. Very well; these causes suffice.

READER. During the proceedings for divorce, the wife should be as free as the husband. The child that should be born to her after more than ten months' separation should be reputed natural, even though the divorce had not been pronounced; and should bear her name and inherit from her like one of her legitimate children.

AUTHOR. Who should take custody of the children and the property during the proceedings?

READER. The court should decide who should have the care of the children, in accordance with the causes for the petition for divorce and the testimony of the parents, friends and neighbors.

AUTHOR. But if the spouses ask to be divorced only on account of incompatibility of temper, and are both honorable?

READER. They should be requested to agree mutually either to share the children, or to entrust them to one of the two, or to give the younger children to the mother, leaving the sons over fifteen to the father. The court, besides, should appoint from the family of the mother, a guardian to watch over the conduct of the father towards the children left in his care; and from the family of the father, a similar guardian to the mother and the children remaining with her. This guardianship, which should be strictly moral, should continue till the children had attained majority.

AUTHOR. And in case the parents should be alike unworthy?

READER. In such a case, which would seldom happen, the judge, in behalf of society, should deprive them of the custody of the children, and entrust it to a member of the family of one of the parents, appointing a guardian to watch over his conduct and protect the interests of his ward from the family of the other.

AUTHOR. Very well; I see with pleasure that you are cured of the erroneous belief that the children belong to the parents, and that you comprehend the high function of society as the protector of minors.

During the suit for divorce, who shall have the control of the property?

READER. If the contract has been made under the system of separation of property, and for paraphernalia, there is no need of putting the question; each one will manage his own.

But I am somewhat puzzled how to answer you in case of communion of goods, or in case the capital is embarked in a common business, carried on solely by one of the parties. The present law does not seem to me sufficiently to protect the interests of the wife in case of separation.

AUTHOR. Without entangling ourselves in a host of individual cases which modify or contradict each other, let us provide that in case of communion of goods, the administration of the property shall be taken from the spouse holding it if the petition for divorce be based on his bad management, his dissipated habits, or his condemnation to a penalty affecting his liberty or person; that in all other cases, he shall make an inventory of the property and the condition of the business; and a person shall be appointed from the family of the spouse excluded from the management to watch over the conduct of the spouse to whom it is entrusted, who shall be bound to pay alimony to the other until the divorce shall be decreed.

READER. And if there is no fortune?

AUTHOR. Until the spouses become strangers, they owe assistance to each other: the court should therefore require the spouse that earns the more to aid the other.

READER. How long a time should elapse between the admission of the petition and the judgment of divorce?

AUTHOR. A year, in order that the parties may have time for reflection.

READER. The divorce being granted, and the ex-partners restored to liberty, would you permit them to marry others?

AUTHOR. Most assuredly; else what signifies our arguments against separation?

READER. What! the adulterous and brutal spouse, he who has inflicted suffering on his partner, who has been wholly in the wrong, should enjoy like the other the privilege of marrying again? I confess that this shocks me.

AUTHOR. Because you are not sufficiently imbued with the doctrines of liberty and the sentiment of right. Marriage is the natural right of every adult; society has no right therefore to prohibit it or to make it a privilege; on the other hand, in every divorce, there is wrong or the lack of something on either side with respect to the other; the man or woman who commits adultery may be a model of fidelity to a partner better suited to his or her temperament and disposition; he who has been brutal and violent may be wholly different with a wife possessing a different character; in short, we repeat, to prohibit marriage is to permit libertinism, and it is not the interest of society to pervert itself. Both partners therefore should have a right to marry, but the law should take care that all should be informed of the burdens resting upon them by reason of their first marriage, and know that they are divorced. Consequently, society has a right to publish the bill of divorce, and to require that the parties divorced should provide for the necessities of their minor children, and that the bill of divorce, joined to the one setting forth this obligation, should accompany the publication of the bans of a new marriage; in this, there is neither injustice nor abuse of power; for each one will submit to the consequence of what he has done in perfect freedom.

READER. And would you not fix the number of times that a divorced person might re-marry?

AUTHOR. Why fix it? do you fix the number of times that a widow or widower may marry again?

READER. But a libertine, a bad man might marry ten times, and thus render ten women unhappy.

AUTHOR. What are you talking of! do you seriously believe that there would be a woman insane enough to marry a man nine times divorced, a man obliged to accompany the publication of his bans with nine bills of divorce, with nine judgements compelling him to pay so much yearly for the support of seven, eight or nine children. Do you seriously believe that a woman would consent to become the companion of such a man! This man might indeed marry twice—but three times! do you think that it would be possible?