The rights of women and the sexual relations

THE RIGHTS OF
WOMEN AND THE
SEXUAL RELATIONS

From the German of

KARL HE1NZEN

BERKEUV

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY Of
CALIFORNIA

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

AND THE

SEXUAL RELATIONS

BY KARL HEINZEN.

PART I.

AN ADDRESS TO AN UNKNOWN LADY READER

PART II.

LUISE MEYEN ON MEN AND WOMEN

The Convention of German Women in Frauenstadt

Concerning Womanhood and Manhood

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

56 Fifth Avenue

I

Copyright, 1891. by Karl Rchmrmann

Copyright. 1898, by Kakl Schmemann

Utj

$9$

PREFACE.

The following treatise comes from the pen of
one of the most enlightened and humanitarian
spirits of our time, whose libertarian and reforma-
tory labors were not limited to his German father-
land and this republic, his adopted home, but
extended to the entire civilized world by their
unique and masterful many-sidedness. The author,
who, after he had broken his fetters in despotic
Europe, lived in this country during the larger
and most fertile period of his life and brought to
light his ripest spiritual treasures here, unfortu-
nately remained unknown to the great majority
of his American fellow-citizens. He counted as
his friends only the most enlightened men of his
time who could appreciate his quiet greatness.
This remarkable fact, I believe, may be explained
by the observations which the life-long friend of
Karl Heinzen, Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska of Boston,

033

IV PREFACE.

embodied in her autobiography,* dedicated to
the well-known American poetess, Mary L. Booth :
" The German mind, so much honored in Europe
for its scientific capacity, for its consistency re-
garding principles, and its correct criticism, is not
dead here ; but it has to struggle against diffi-
culties too numerous to be detailed here ; and
therefore it is that the Americans don't know of
its existence, and the chief obstacle is their dif-
ferent languages. A Humboldt must remain un-
known here, unless he chooses to Americanize
himself in every respect : and could he do this
without ceasing to be Humboldt, the cosmopoli-
tan genius?"

Among the friends of Heinzen referred to,
Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and
Charles Sumner are especially to be mentioned.
At the memorial gathering held on February 22,
1 88 1 (Heinzen died November 12, 1880), Wendell
Phillips said concerning him :

* Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor; or, A
Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Edited by Caroline
H. Dall, author of " Historical Pictures Retouched," etc., etc.
Boston: Walker, Wise & Co. i860. A book that ought to be
read by everybody who is interested in the solution of the
woman's question.

PREFACE. V

" I never met him on the streets without a feel-
ing of the highest respect, and this respect I
paid the rare, almost unexampled courage of the
man. Mr. Heinzen in this respect stands almost
alone among the immigrants to these shores. His
idea of human right had no limitation. His re-
spect for the rights of a human being as such
was not to be shaken. The temptation to use
his talent to gain reputation, money, power, at a
time when, a poor emigrant, he lacked all these
and was certain of acquiring them, was great ; yet
all these he laid calmly aside for trie sake of the
eternal principle of right, of freedom. He es-
poused the detested slave cause at a time when
to do so meant poverty, desertion of fellow-coun-
trymen, scorn, persecution even. Thus he acted
in every cause. What seemed to him right, after
the most unsparing search for truth, he upheld
no matter at what cost During the war, feeling
that through ignorance or timidity on the part of
Lincoln's government precious lives and treas-
ures were being wasted, he was foremost among
a few leading men who proposed the nomination
of Fremont for the presidency. We had many
private meetings and much correspondence with
leading men in New York. I shall never forget

VI PREFACE.

some of these conversations with Mr. Heinzen.
He was so far-seeing and sagacious ; he was so in-
genious and contriving; his judgment so penetrat-
ing.

" One other characteristic he had, belonging only
to truly great men. There was a kind of serenity
and dignity about him, as one sure of the right in
the course which he took, in the principles which
he stated. He was far in advance of other minds ;
but he was sure in his trust in human nature that
all others would come, must come to the same
point with himself. He could wait. Few pos-
sessing equal mental ability are able also to do
this. The greatest courage is to dare to be
wholly consistent. This courage Heinzen showed
when a little yielding, so little as would have been
readily pardoned on the ground of common-sense,
would have gained him popularity, fame, money,
power. He remained true to himself.

" Prominent men gained much from him, but
never acknowledged their obligations. He shaped
many minds that led and created public opinion.
His indeed was a life of trial, gladly borne with-
out murmur of complaint, and his reward must
be in the future.

" When I think of that lofty life there come

PREFACE. VI 1

always to my mind those words of Tocqueville
which Sumner loved to quote: 'Remember life
is neither pain nor pleasure ; it is serious busi-
ness, to be entered upon with courage, with the
spirit of self-sacrifice.' Surely if any life ever
exemplified that ideal, it is the one we meet to
remember and, as far as we can, to imitate — that
of Karl Heinzen."

As a German-American writer has said of him,
Heinzen was what Goethe called eine Natur ; that
is, a character of singularly original development,
a man of one mould, who remained true to him-
self-in all conditions of life, and who valued this
fidelity to self higher than all external positions
and all the favors of the world. He knew of no
loftier ambition than obedience to his own teach-
ings: "Learn to' endure everything, only not
slavery; learn to dispense with everything, only
not with your self-respect ; learn to lose every-
thing, only not yourself. All else in life is worth-
less, delusive, a»nd fickle. Man's only sure sup-
port is in himself, in his individuality, resting in
its own power and sovereignty." Besides he was
a writer who knew how to wield his pen as almost
none of his contemporaries, certainly not one of
the writers of the German tongue in this coun-

Vlll PREFACE.

try ; who as none else knew how to express his
thoughts in the most pregnant, incisive, and
energetic form — a master of pure classical style.

That a spirit who could proclaim such princi-
ples was bound to throw his entire revolutionary
energy on the side of the liberation of woman
from the fetters of social and political slavery is
a matter of course.

The treatise here submitted, which appeared
for the first time in the German language in 1852
and later in an expanded form in 1875, iS trans-
lated into English by an American lady of German
descent, Mrs. Emma Heller Schumm, of Boston ;*

* Perhaps this is the proper place to state that, greatly as I
admire and esteem the character and genius of Karl Heinzen,
I cannot entirely agree with all the views laid down in the
following treatise. From some of the positions taken therein
I emphatically dissent. Not where he is most radical and
thoroughgoing in his advocacy of liberty in the sexual relations
and of the independence of woman, for I am with him there ;
but where he seems to forget his radicalism, and to lose his
grand confidence in the power of liberty to rejuvenate, to regu-
late, and to moderate, and falls back upon the State for that
readjustment and guidance of human affairs which one day will
be accomplished only in liberty and by liberty, — it is there
where I radically dissent; and I make this statement for the
sake of setting myself right with those who happen to be ac-
quainted with my views on these points.

Goethe says somewhere: " Die Menschen werden durch
Meinungen getrennt, durch Gesinnungen vereinigt" — Men are

PREFACE. IX

and it is the intention of the publisher, in case
the demand for this treatise should give him any
encouragement, to continue the publication in
English translation of the immortal treasures of

separated by their opinions, but united by the spirit that
governs them. Thus, notwithstanding our disagreement as
regards the manner of attaining a desirable end, I am proud to
call myself a follower of Karl Heinzen as regards the spirit
with which he approached all questions of human concern.
This spirit, as well as the fundamental ideas underlying the
following treatise, cannot, as I take it, be better epitomized
than by the following quotation from the pen of one of the con-
tributors to " Liberty " of Boston :

" Woman's emancipation means freedom, liberty. It means
liberty pure and simple; failing of which, it is, according to its
degree, oppression, suppression, tyranny. It means liberty to
enter any and all fields of labor,— trade, profession, science,
literature, and art, — and liberty to compete for the highest
positions in the land. Liberty to choose her companion, and
equal liberty to change. Liberty to embrace motherhood in
her own way, time, and place, and freedom from the unjustly
critical verdict and action of society concerning her move-
ments. She will no longer recognize society's right to con-
demn in her practices condoned in man. No more a slave, she
will be a true comrade; independent of man, as he is inde-
pendent of her; dependent on him, as he is dependent on her.
And the sex question will be settled. All this, and more, when
woman shall be free, and enjoy an equality of liberty with
man."

And in this view my task in getting out the treatise now for
the first time submitted to the English-reading public has been
a source of great delight to me, and I can only join with Mr.
Schmemann in the hope that women will give it the welcome
it deserves, and that it may point out the way to liberty to
many an oppressed sister. — Translator.

X PREFACE.

Heinzen's thought and thus make them accessible
to the American reading public.

In this treatise the cause of the emancipation
of woman finds its most brilliant championship,
as it has hardly ever before been discussed with
less reserve and greater freedom. I cherish the
hope that its circulation will largely contribute
towards enlightening the public on this most im-
portant question, in order thereby to hasten its
speedy solution. The translator as well as the
publisher would in that 'case feel themselves
amply rewarded for their unselfish labor, while
the lofty intentions of the author would meet
with their full realization.

Karl Schmemann.

Detroit, June, 1891.

CONTENTS.

PART I. Page.

An Address to an Unknown Lady Reader I

Historical Review of the Legal Position of Women. . . 6

The Emancipation of Woman 30

The Passive Prostitution of Women 41

The Active Prostitution of Men 47

The Excuses of Men 55

Love and Jealousy 62

Morality 70

Marriage 80

Adultery 104

Divorce 113

Is Marriage a Contract? 121

"Hanging a Woman" 128

Religion 135

The Economic Independence of Woman 149

Liberty and the Revolution the Allies of Women 154

Conclusion 162

Postscript 167

PART II.

Luise Meyen on Men and Women —

The Rights and Condition of Women 181

Men 195

Women 214

The Convention of German Women in Frauenstadt. 227

Concerning Womanhood (a lecture, 1873) 346

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND
THE SEXUAL RELATIONS.

AN ADDRESS TO AN UNKNOWN LADY
READER.

Notwithstanding all reactionary precautions,
there is a spirit of liberty breathing through the
world that lifts the veil from all lies and the roofs
from all dungeons in order to show mankind how
much truth it has failed to grasp, and how much
justice it has crushed. It is a sad task to accom-
pany this spirit on its flight and to note the count-
less aberrations of mankind ; but it is an impera-
tive duty to report what has been observed, and
to participate in the reformation of this degenerate
world.

Not only from the dungeons of famous martyred
men, also from the chambers of nameless mar-
tyred women time has removed the covering roof.
More than one-half of your sex consists of mar-
tyrs, aye, the history of your sex is one continu-

2 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

ous story of martyrs. And while the oppressed
of the stronger sex can read their sufferings in
the fugitive history of states and nations, the
sufferings of women find a place only in the long
history of mankind.

This is beginning to be recognized, and among
women themselves champions have at last arisen
who demand that the age of slavery and suffering
shall give place to an age of liberty and rights.
Especially in America, the new Amazons who seek
to humanize men, as those of history sought to slay
them, form a very respectable phalanx.

And here, too, it is where a suitable battle-field
is open to them, and where it is also possible to
unite this battle-field with the arena of men.
Especially in America, where so many questions
are already solved which in Europe still call for
the exertion of all foi«ces, it is the part of men to
occupy themselves with the important question
of woman's emancipation; here more than else-
where men of truly democratic spirit ought to
make it their task to bring the discussion on this
interesting and much-derided theme to a conclu-
sion. It is a glaring anomaly to rejoice over the
emancipation of the slaves and to treat the eman-
cipation of woman with ridicule.

I venture the attempt of contributing my mite
to the proposed work. In so doing I shall strive
to be as clear, as radical, as brief, as just, but also
as frank, as possible. In any case, dear reader, I

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3

am convinced that I have some new points of view-
to offer which deserve your attention.

But whoever you may be, in giving your atten-
tion to these pages may you be prevailed upon to
publicly express your opinion on a common and
important matter! But frankly, truthfully, and
without reserve, as will be done here. False
modesty is not only a weakness ; it is also a fault,
because it throws a suspicion on what it attempts
to conceal. So long as we still shrink from speak-
ing about human matters in a human manner we
have not yet developed into true men and women ;
so long as we still play the hypocrite out of sheer
" morality " we have not yet a conception of true
morality ; so long as we still seek for culture in
the perversion of human nature we have no rea-
son to boast of our culture. But in regard to
the question of rights now under consideration,
a radical straightforward examination of the rela-
tions of the two sexes to each other is an essential
requisite for its solution.

There are three rocks upon which the truthful-
ness of the world, especially of the masculine
world, is wont to come to grief and to change
into the most intolerable and contemptible hypoc-
risy; the Revolution, Religion, and Love. Thou-
sands • want the revolution and feign legality;
thousands are without religion and go to church ;
thousands seek the clandestine satisfaction of
their sexual desires, while outwardly they mani-

4 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

fest the most studied indifference towards the
feminine sex. You will not have to accuse the
author of these pages of hypocrisy. He has given
complete expression to his opinions regarding the
revolution ; he has done so regarding religion ;
and he is now doing so regarding the two sexes.
Give him your support by reciprocating his frank-
ness, help him to examine the nature and the
needs of both sexes, in order thereby to establish
the claims which your sex has to make. You will
share with me the satisfaction that he who speaks
his convictions openly and completely before all
the world, and in spite of all the world, not only
acts more nobly, but also more successfully, than
all the reserve of prudence and all the hypocrisy
of cowardice are able to act.

The object to be gained here is not only to
purify humanity and the sense of justice from the
dross of a false morality and vulgar prejudice ; nor
is our task limited to the rescue of love and mar-
riage, which are in danger of perishing entirely in
this venal and pious world ; it is at the same time
also necessary to open up to your sex a perspec-
tive view of the position which the era of liberty,
towards which our development is tending, will
assign to it in society. It will be seen that the
right, the happiness, and the lot of woman is still
more dependent on the attainment of complete
liberty than that of man, who at least finds a
partial compensation for liberty in the struggle

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 5

for it, and that the relation of the two sexes
to each other can reach its true form only at
the summit of political development from which
we are still far enough removed, even in North
America.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE LEGAL
POSITION OF WOMEN.

As a rule history considers women only in so
far as they occasionally exert an apparent influ-
ence upon the history of men. The feminine half
of humanity is usually overlooked like a super-
fluous appendage. The women are weak, they
are silent, they patiently suffer, they do not rebel,
and that is sufficient to expose them to disregard,
to make them historically irresponsible. It would
be of great interest to write a history from a
radical point of view of the position which women
have occupied among the different nations and in
different ages in a social, political, and literary
respect. I would undertake to do this work if I
were sufficiently well read, and if the necessary
material were not wanting to me as well as the
leisure to make exhaustive use of the latter. I
shall therefore content myself with giving from
scant notes and recollections a brief survey, in
order at least to uphold the leading idea that the
position of women, dependent upon the general
state of civilization and liberty of a people, can
become an entirely just and honorable one only in
that distant future in which the subordination of

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 7

the right of brutal strength to the right of humane
thought will have become a reality.

In the historical retrospect, in which we cannot
always proceed chronologically, but merely ac-
cording to the stages of civilization of various
nations, we begin with the savage. It will be im-
material for the purpose whether we take exam-
ples of the Africa of to-day, or whether we trace
the oldest nations of history back to their savage
state. Savages are very much alike everywhere,
and that all nations have at one time been in the
savage state even those do not doubt who believe
that man has been placed ready made into the
world by a "God," the sum of all wisdom and
civilization. To the savage physical strength is
synonymous with right, and since the man has by
nature more physical strength and aggressive
passion than woman, the submission of the latter
to the former is self evident. (Among animals
nature seems to have equalized this relation some-
what, as the females of some species are larger
than the males.) The savage associates the
woman with himself because his sexual needs re-
quire her, and he controls her because he is the
stronger. This control is carried to such an
extent that the body of the woman is actually
treated as a piece of furniture, and in some places
is even guarded against foreign touch by some
barbaric tailoring. With most savages the woman,
besides being a concubine, is at the same time the

8 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

slave and beast of burden of the man. Polygamy
is likewise in accordance with this state of bar-
barity ; polyandry,* on the other hand, is found
rarely, — rather as a consequence of the presump-
tion of the stronger, adultery is almost everywhere
treated as a crime only on the part of women, while
masculine adultery does not exist at all. But in
spite of polygamy a selection is to be observed
even among savages, a distinction of and tem-
porary union with a single person. Rousseau, it
is true, disputes this by maintaining that among
savages every woman had the same value ; it ca-n
be shown, however, by facts as well as by a priori
demonstration that even the rudest savage has an
eye and discrimination for superiority and quali-
ties suitable to him in this or that woman, and
feels the need of uniting himself more closely with
the one he prefers. The analogy of animals also
points that way, as there is among many animals
an entirely exclusive conjugal relation at least
during the breeding period. Why special stress
is laid on these facts will become clear in the dis-
cussion of marriage.

The savage state is followed by the semi-civil-
ized period, in which man settles down and forms
a family life, and in accordance with it the woman

* It is said to have existed for a time among the ancient
Medes, and at the present day is to be found only on the coast
of Ma'abar and at the Himalayas, where it is kept up chiefly
on account of the difficulty of supporting children.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 9

plays the part of a member of the family, but of
course without any independence whatever. On
the contrary, in spite of her position in the family,
she is deprived of all liberty, confined in a harem,
and jealously watched. She exchanges open
slavery for secret slavery ; she remains now as
before the tool of the man, only according to
more definite rules and laws of external etiquette.
In the harem the preference of individuals, already
apparent among savages, becomes more strongly
marked, although here also it does not lead to a
real monogamic union. This state of things is,
however, specifically oriental. But the degrada-
tion of women in the orient was so manifold that
their social position cannot be designated by one
word. With the Babylonians the marriageable
maidens were taken to the market, examined by
the men like any other ware, and bid for. It was
also customary in the temple of Mylitta that
every woman must extend her favors to strangers
for money, which went into the pockets of the
priests. Zoroaster abolished polygamy among
the Persians after the institution of the harem
had reached its highest development. It is well
known that polygamy and traffic with women
existed also among the Jews. The Mosaic price
for a pretty woman was about five dollars. If the
man wished to get rid of the woman he threw her
out of the house.

In the next stage we find the woman as inde-

10 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

pendent housewife, with more liberty of action,
and more highly respected. The Homeric de-
scriptions show this stage in its best light. The
woman is no longer under surveillance, as in the
harem, where the man visits her when it suits his
pleasure and fancy, but she has also free access to
the man. She has control of the department of
the interior, is the hostess of the house, and does
the honors in receiving guests. But in spite of
this more favored position, the rights which are
granted woman are rooted in the interests
and the will of the man, not in a true ethical
recognition. The dependence of women was, on
the contrary, still so great in this stage that the
sons had the power to remarry their mothers to
whomsoever they pleased ; men could keep concu-
bines as they liked, etc.

A further development marks the transition of
private control of woman to public or political
control of her. In this respect the Spartans took
the lead with a truly classical despotism. With
them every regard for nature, for humanity, for
morality, for liberty disappeared before the regard
for that State which Lycurgus seems to have called
to life in order to show that mankind could fur-
nish an energetic mind with the material for the
realization of every extravagance. Women served
the Spartans only for the bearing of children, of
young Spartans. If children could be brought
into the world by a mill or some other kind of

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. II

machine, the Spartans would have abolished
women, and introduced in their place State child
factories. According to the purely political or
patriotic purpose, which called for merely warlike
manhood and coarse republican insensibility, the
women received a thoroughly masculine training,
and in order to guard them against the danger of
effeminating the men and of occupying them too
much by their charms, they were trained after
their marriage for the manufacture of wool, and
treated like factory implements. Woman, as
such, did not exist in Sparta ; her femininity was
rather a fault, and this fault was corrected through
barbarity. Marriage proper was unknown to the
Spartans. The men could visit the women only
for a few minutes ; the object was merely to beget
children. Weak or old men, by virtue of their
right of control over their wives, brought them
good breeders, and if any one was especially
pleased with a woman he would ask, not her, but
her husband, for the permission to beget a " noble
child " with her — all this was done for State pur-
poses, which had crowded out every other consid-
eration, and would not allow the question of the
existence of an independent inclination on the
part of woman to be raised at all.

The Spartans furnish the classic example of that
error which sacrifices to the enthusiasm for a
political end, the end of all political endeavor,
namely humanity, bec?'\se they neglected to take

12 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

human nature into their council. As long as the
world stands women have been the victims of this
error on the one side, and of Sultanic brutality on
the other, and it is doubtful whether they have
more reason to complain of the Sultans or of the
Spartans.

The treatment of women took on a milder and
more humane form with the more civilized and
more aesthetical Athenians. But a real appre-
ciation of woman was unknown even among that
people who adored the ideal of the fair sex in the
goddess of love, who had the most humane con-
ception of love among all the nations, whose
mythology developed into the most beautiful and
most attractive romances of love, and who often
depicted in their poetry the feminine excellences
with the clearest perception. Also among the
Athenians the State was in a certain sense the
despot ; the State which received especial weight
by contrast with foreign foes, was the worldly
deity to which everything was sacrificed except
its priests, and these priests were, of course, the
men, the women were the victims. . The Athenians
also regarded the State as an end, not as means to
an end ; they made it an object of religion rather
than the mere framework of the body social.
This State, this republic, was moreover continu-
ally called into question, now by native, now by
foreign tyrants. But who was to save the State,
in whose hands was placed its safety? In the

AND THE SEX (TAT. RELATIONS. I 3

hands of those whom nature had endowed with
the requisite strength, the warlike passion. Who
were they? The men! Consequently — women
were less able, less privileged, less worthy than
men. This sort of logic develops very naturally
in practice, even if it is not expressly established,
and the " right of the stronger " is the whole
secret of it.

True enough, women who distinguished them-
selves by their intellect or virtue were highly
respected among the Athenians, and the appre-
ciation of the most excellent of men was assured
them, But the Aspasias were not numerous, even
in Athens, and such exceptions as social life
offered did not mitigate the unfavorable posi-
tion in which the law and public opinion placed
woman. Already the classification which was
made of them (as partly also of men) can give an
idea of how dependent and devoid of rights they
were. They consisted, as we know, of three classes,
the slaves, the freed women (out of which class
the courtesans generally were recruited), and the
free born Athenian ladies. It is self-evident that
the first two classes occupied a subordinate posi-
tion also with regard to the last class. But with
regard to the men even these free born ladies
were semi-slaves. The laws of Solon furnish the
best estimate of their position. They acknowledge
neither any right nor any inclination on the part
of the woman. Fathers, brothers, and guardians

14 '^HE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

could promise their daughters, sisters, and wards
to whom they pleased. The relatives of rich
heiresses had a legal right to ask them in mar-
riage, in order that the riches might remain in the
family. If a man died childless, his nearest rela-
tives were entitled to his property. Women,
daughters and sisters, who were discovered in a
dishonorable act, could be sold as slaves by their
fathers and brothers. Irregularities on the part
of men were, by the way, not considered as
adultery. Solon says: " Take a single legitimate,
free born daughter for your wife, in order to beget
children." With this he exhausted his whfcle con-
ception of marriage and conjugal morality. He
might have said: "According to our laws and
ideas, the begetting of legitimate children is
limited to the marriage relation between the
man and the free born woman ; aside from this,
however, the man can keep as many concubines
as he likes. But the woman would have to pay
for any outside love affair with her liberty or her
life."

It was also customary for a time, among the
Athenians, to lend their wives. Thus even Soc-
rates is said to have lent his Xantippe to Alki-
biades, for which, indeed, according to the reports
that are current about this lady, he may not have
had need of great self-denial.

These, with regard to women, truly barbaric
Solonic laws originated for the most part in patri-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 5

archal conceptions. According to these, among
other things, marriages were allowed inside the
family, in case they were sanctioned or ordered
by the patriarch ; and the power of the head of the
family was so great that the father could decide
over the life or death of his new-born children, or
could deprive them completely of all family rights.

It is of interest to take note here of the view the
Greek writers held of women and their position,
as well as of marriage. I will, therefore, inter-
pose a few significant passages, not indeed from
the poets, but from political and philosophical
prose writers.

Demosthenes says very briefly and with a true
Solonic spirit: "The married woman is an instru-
ment for the procreation of legitimate children
and the management of the household." The
cynical, statesmanlike disdain to which the great-
est orator gives utterance in these words throws a
very clear light on the then existing conceptions
of the rights and dignity of woman. Demos-
thenes stands on a level with Diogenes, who called
woman a necessary evil.

Thucydides is of the opinion that " those wives
deserve the highest praise of whom neither good
nor bad is spoken outside of the house " — a domes-
tic plant, so to speak, a vegetating stay-at-home,
who will serve her husband as an instrument as
well as possible, but is not to concern herself about
anything else. This sentiment of Thucydides has

1 6 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

often since been echoed, and those who did so
have entirely overlooked that they repeated in
one word a stupidity and a barbarity.

Xenophon thinks rather humanely of women,
but still they appear to him as beings whom men,
out of regard or pity, must take into their care.
He thus expressed his opinion of their inferiority
in his " Symposium ": " Zeus has left the women
whom he had loved behind him in the class of the
mortals, but the men to whom he was devoted he
exalted among the gods." Perhaps this proof
admits of a refutation by the gallantry that it was
no longer necessary to promote lovable women
among the gods.

Aristoteles has a higher opinion of woman than
Xenophon. He says among other things : "The
ruling intelligence is to be attributed to man as
the leader. All the other virtues are common to
both sexes. Woman is subordinate to man, but
still free, and the right to give good counsel (!)
cannot be denied her. She furnishes the material
which man utilizes."

11 Woman is not at all to be regarded as a means
for the furtherance of man's selfish ends."

'■ Husband and wife ought to work together for
their support. They go hand in hand, they both
accumulate property, their union rests on com-
mon benefits and pleasures."

Aristoteles demands that the husband should
stake his possessions and his life in the defence of

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 7

his wife, and should stand by her faithfully and
firmly unto death. With regard to chastity he
imposes the same obligation on the husband as on
the wife.

Most of all, Plato occupied himself with woman.
He brings forth much that is contradictory and
extravagant. The most important of that which
comes under consideration here is condensed in
the following, which occasionally gives evidence
of so coarse a conception of the sexual relations
that it is hard to understand how the poetical
Plato could have come by it.

According to him, man and woman share alike
in the highest principle, reason, but the powers
and capacities under the control of reason are
physically as well as psychically weaker in woman,
and she is therefore less able to approach perfec-
tion, which is the result of the harmony of all
forces. (The logic of this proof can perhaps be
made plain by the following example. The hawk
and the dove are both equally intelligent, but the
beak and the claws of the dove are much weaker
than those of the hawk. It follows that the dove
is less perfect as a dove than the hawk is as a
hawk.) It is clear that Plato does not apply the
human or feminine standard to the qualities of
woman, but the masculine, a senseless presump-
tion which even to-day inspires the judgment of
most men. Plato's point of view is shown even
still more plainly in the fancy (in the " Phaedrus")

1 8 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

that men who have led a dissolute life are changed
into women after death — a poor compliment to the
sex of whom Goethe says : " The eternal womanly
draws us on."

In the " Republic," moreover, Plato says :
" Women are physically somewhat weaker than
men, but they are otherwise equally adapted to
all occupations. In order that they may become
able to use all their faculties they must receive the
same education as boys, join in the common exer-
cises, not modestly cover up their bodies, etc., etc.
I demand the same end and aim for women as for
men." (It remains only for Plato to declare it to be
the end and aim of woman to become a man. Per-
haps it is he who has brought about the mistaken
view that it is the purpose of the emancipatiow of
woman to deny femininity and to imitate men.)
For the rest, women must be entirely common
property, no woman can belong to a single indi-
vidual. (Thus women are the absolute property
of the men.) Moreover, no son is allowed to
know a particular father. All must dine together
publicly and live together. The State — and that
is the non plus ultra of brutality — officially brings
about the pairing of such persons as it deems
the most fit for the procreation of children.
When generation has taken place they separate
again (a regular institution of stirpiculture). The
children are reared by the State without being
known by their mothers, so that these sometimes

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1$

nurse their own, sometimes the children of others
in the common nursery. In the " Republic " of
Plato there is no private property and no private
interest. He is the grandsire of the communists.
In another place he advocates different principles.

The above extracts show that even the most
excellent writers of the most humane people of
history have not attained to an entirely worthy
conception, to an entirely free view, and to com*
plete justice with regard to the nature and posi-
tion of woman. Even Aristotle, who, among all,
has laid down the most worthy principles, reaches,
as it were, only a constitutional point of view,
from which he concedes to woman an "advisory"
counsel to governing man and a share in the
" property," without even thinking of such a thing
as an independent right for her. She is consid-
ered everywhere only as the property or append-
age of man, nowhere as a sovereign being. They
all judge woman only from the standpoint of
men, statesmen, Greeks, not as human beings.
But woman is the genuine representative of the
purely human which must not be modified by
State relations and nationalities.

When Greek liberty had vanished, the regard
for women and the taste for " adoring " them in-
creased. But this adoration was false, and a
product of degenerate conditions. Men had no
longer their former importance, consequently
women came to be more equal to them ; men

20 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

were now no longer occupied as much with the
State, consequently they could devote themselves
more to women ; men were now deprived of their
public calling, consequently they looked for com-
pensation in the domestic world. Thus also as
playthings of the courts and favorites of despots,
women are offered rich opportunities in mon-
archies to achieve a false importance through
intrigues and in the relation of mistresses. Upon
them falls the favor of the despot, and from them
glory and favors radiate downwards. Thus the
exaltation of women naturally has for its opposite
pole the humiliation of men, and these, in such
humiliation, as naturally transform their former
contempt of women into that extravagant love-
cult and senseless gallantry which spread from
Alexandria over the Grecian world.

From the Greeks we proceed to the Romans.
These treated women in a truly Spartan manner,
only with a more glaring stamp of severity and
brutality, in accordance with their severe char-
acter. In the most flourishing time of the Roman
republic woman was little more than the slave of
man.* She was completely his property ; he ac-

* It was indeed customary at times that the bride had to say
upon entering the house of her husband : ubi tu es cajus, ego
caja sum (that is, Where you are master I am mistress); but
this custom seems to have had merely the force of a gallantry.
Its very existence, that is, the necessity for it, seems to indicate
a presumption of the very opposite of that which these words
would lead us to believe.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 21

quired her through actual purchase or prescrip-
tion. Whatever she had or earned belonged to
him. He could sit in family court over her, and
even punish her with death.

Cato, the elder, expresses his respect for the
fair sex in these words : " If every head of a
family would strive to keep his wife in thorough
subjection according to the example of his ances-
tors, we should have less trouble publicly with the
entire sex."

Among the Romans the adulteress could be
killed on the spot by her husband ; on the part
of the man adultery was no crime. Later, how-
ever, this was changed. Under Augustus the
adultery of the man was punished, as well as that
of the woman. It suited the empire in a certain
sense to take the side of woman. It may also
have been expected that severity toward the
degenerate men might prove a means of check-
ing the impending immorality.

Upon the era of the republic followed the era
of the emperors and of immorality, perhaps the
greatest that ever existed. Men now sought
compensation for their lost liberties and for their
interrupted political life in all manner of debauch-
eries, in which the emperors took the lead from
sheer ennui. For debaucheries, however, women
are necessary, and what is necessary is tolerated.
The importance to which women attain in eras of
immorality can be as little satisfaction to them as

22 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

that which they are accustomed to have as play-
things of the courts. In the age of the Roman
emperors, when men were enervated, the impor-
tance of woman naturally had to rise. A number
of excellent ladies played important roles at courts
and ruled the nations through debauched despots.
But this contained no indemnification for the dis-
ability of the sex, and that once there has been a
Julie, a Messalina, an Agrippina, a Poppaea, a
Faustina, etc., can accrue as little to the satis-
faction of the feminine sex as the fact that later
times have produced a Catherine, a Pompadour,
a DuBarry, a Lola, etc.

The reaction against the extravagancies of im-
morality and sensual debauchery under the Roman
emperors was caused by Christianity, by the reli-
gion of the man who was not begotten by any
man, was born of a virgin, and is said never to
have associated with any woman. A religion
which referred mankind from the living world to
the dead hereafter, which destroyed the value of
earthly things, i.e., of reality, and caused human-
ity to abandon itself to spiritualistic phantasies
and reveries, had to put spirituality in place of
sensuality, asceticism in place of voluptuousness,
and unnatural restraint in place of dissoluteness.
Opposing one extreme to another, Christianity
would make nonsense into sense, and a virtue of
the violation of nature. If the Romans were im-
moral through intemperance, the Christians were

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 2$

immoral through abstinence. As regards women
in particular, the era of hypocrisy, of the suppres-
sion and false conception of their nature, was
already announced in the story of the woman who
bore a son without the intervention of a man, and
in which the functions of the male sex are trans-
ferred to doves and ghosts. Christianity, which
the priests have made into a paragon of abnormity
and hypocrisy, is a real war-sermon against the
recognition of the feminine sex, for that which
makes woman truly woman Christianity regards
for the most part with disgust. Even though
Christ pardoned adulteresses and Magdalens, the
story of his origin, his abstinence morality, his
promises of heaven, and the consequences of
Mosaic barbarism which permeate Christianity
(it is disgusting to treat these things at large*),
have prepared a lot for woman which can only be
traced to a suppression of nature, want of sense,
and barbarity.

These monstrous teachings, which in the first
place caused men to shun woman, logically led to
her persecution and maltreatment during the rise
of barbarism in the Middle Ages. In the Council
of Macon (in the sixth century) a long dispute

* Whoever reads the Old Testament as a believing Christian,
and notes how woman was created from the rib of man, will
easily learn to look upon her not only as the supplement, but
also as the property, of man. What man would not consider
himself as having a claim upon the product of his rib?

24 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

took place (in spite of Adam's rib) whether wom-
en were human beings. This may give an idea of
the then prevailing Christian view and humane
feeling. Although the humanity of women was
thus called into doubt, it came gradually to be
recognized in secret with so much zeal, that in
spite of Christianity, the immorality of the tenth
and eleventh centuries reached a degree far ex-
ceeding that of the Roman emperors, perhaps for
the very reason that it was characterized alike by
the most disgusting hypocrisy and the most pious
vulgarity. However eagerly they were sought
for, women were, in Christian delicacy and appre-
hension, invested with something unclean and un-
holy ; the unfortunate ones were even deprived the
pleasure of touching the altar-cloth, and it was
imposed upon them as a duty to wear gloves at
communion. Because they could not dispense
with them, they avenged themselves for the sake
of Christianity by degrading them. Husbands
were permitted by law to beat their wives and
even to inflict wounds on them, provided they did
not disable or maim them thereby. The father
could chastise his daughter even after her mar-
riage. In the city of Bourbon a husband could
with impunity kill his wife if he only swore that
he was heartily sorry for it — all this in consequence
of the humane ideas which the unnatural doctrine
had caused that preached an unnatural universal
love of mankind, while it made a crime of the

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 2$

natural love of the sexes. The horrors to which
women were subjected in monasteries, priests'
brothels, and courts of inquisition we will entirely
omit.* On the other hand, we shall attach no im-
portance to the fact that at certain periods of the
Middle Ages single women acquired distinction
as artists, authors, etc. They acquired it, so to
speak, merely as a reflex of monastic life. They
were regarded as nuns, not as women.

After Christian contempt and abuse of women
had reached the extreme, it began in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries to retrace its steps to the
other extreme, to glorify them and make them
objects of idolatry. That brings us to the time
of those noble knights who as highway robbers
at one moment slew their fellow-men, and the
next moment, as sighing paladins, lay on their
knees before their lady-love. That these moon-
calves even at a later time could be regarded as

* Marriage was only a necessary evil to Christian priests, and
open intercourse of the sexes a horror; thus arose celibacy,
the mode of life of monks, etc. Some sought to attain to the
loftiest height of the Christian spirit by actually unmanning
themselves ; other priests, on the other hand, indulged their
passions to such an extent that they openly claimed the jus
prima nociis, and enforced it with truly Christian zeal. Mar-
riages which were consecrated in this manner were thought to
be especially blessed and continually hovered about by the
holy ghost. After some reflection this seems obvious, and it
would be indeed astonishing if the holy ghost had only once
experienced an inclination to descend to a people who honored
him so gratefully.

26 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

models of noble manhood by the ladies, is due
to those senseless romanticists who have sought
for the spirit of poesy in opposition to reason.
Otherwise it would have been obvious to every
child that a man made up of vulgarity from
top to toe, whose only study consisted in riding
and killing, was not capable of any truly noble
attachment to woman, even if, through the
fashionable exaggeration of a coxcombical gal-
lantry, he should have reached such a stage of
eccentricity as to allow himself to be despatched
out of the world for the sake of his lady-love.
How delicate the sentiments of these heroes
were in practice is shown by the fact that when
they had to absent themselves from home for
the purpose of slaying, they would place a
solidly wrought lock on the adored body of their
" noble lady " in order to facilitate her leading a
chaste life.

What the knights were as lovers, the minstrels
in many respects were as poets of love. The ob-
ject in view rarely was to give poetic expression
of real sentiments which could bear the test of
reason, but as a rule only the versified exagger-
ation of an artificial emotion, in order to satisfy
the prevailing fashion. Thus as gallantry and
killing were the stereotyped modes of amuse-
ment, so the poetical praise of these arts was also
treated as an entertaining handicraft. Women
could not find a true recognition and appreciation

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 2J

in an age when men sought their highest honor in
throwing each other from the horse, or in other
ways breaking each other's necks.

At a later period the position of woman in
France especially claims our attention. There,
according to the national character, chivalry took
on a more spiritual expression and a more grace-
ful form, and from the chivalrous gallantry which
inspired the Duke de la Rochefoucault with the
verses (on Madame de Longueville):

Pour marker son coeur,
Pour plaire a ses beaux yeux
J'ai faft la guerre aux rois,
Je l'aurais faite aux dieux —

love for women passed through various phases
of fastidiousness and frivolity till it reached that
bright relationship in which the " beautiful" and
" strong " minds of the Ninons and their lovers
at the time found their greatest happiness. But
also this relationship, upon which the reflection of
court-life so often cast its splendor, and which
can furnish no standard for the average position
of women, rarely was an entirely true and satis-
factory one, and was moreover confined only to
certain circles. Through it a sphere was opened
only for social life in which women had to seek
compensation for the deprivations of political life,
while complete political and social liberty must
form, as it were, the atmosphere in which the
flower of love unfolds itself.

28 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

In the French revolution no definite position
could be developed for women. They indeed
played a great part in it, just as the French
nation possesses the most excellent women, but
even in France the theoretical and historical prep-
arations, which could become the foundation for
a new position of the weaker sex, were wanting ;
moreover the revolutionary struggle very soon
changed into the history of Napoleonic "hero-
ism " in which the women of course were forced
into the background before soldiers and weap-
ons. The soldier has no other position for women
than that of whores or daughters of the regiment.

After the Napoleonic period, women as well as
men, as we know, spent their days in a condition
of vacillation, unconsciousness, prostitution, and
philistinism. The position of women can still be
designated by three words : they are tolerated,
used, and protected so far and so long as men see
fit, and must always remain about as far behind
them in their demands and their progress as their
physical strength remains behind that of the men.
Although, after passing through Antiquity and
the Middle Ages, time has developed more hu-
mane customs and forms, women, in relation to
men or in comparison with men, are still without
rights in almost every respect ; and in a thousand
cases where a man may and can emancipate him-
self, emancipation for woman remains a crime and
an impossibility. The history of women up to

AND THE SEXUAL RELA TIONS. 29

this time can therefore in reality only be a history
of their disqualification, and it need not astonish
us that men have refrained from writing it. The
greater need of freedom which women themselves
are manifesting indicates a step in progress. In
no age have there been so many women who have
demanded the emancipation of their sex as in
ours, and that is the first requisite to the attain-
ment of emancipation. First of all it is necessary
to make women generally conscious of the need
of emancipation, and to spread clear views not
only in regard to existing injustice, but also in re-
gard to the justice that is to be acquired.

The position of women is to-day, as always,
closely connected with the entire network of the
political, social, economic, and religious condi-
tions. It is therefore necessary to examine the
various aims and conditions of the emancipation
of women, which the following treatise proposes
to do by means of a brief review of prevailing
opinions and circumstances. Above all things
the general aim and province of the emancipation
with regard to the nature and lot of woman must
be considered in a few words.

30 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN.

The emancipation of woman lias been greatly
ridiculed, and partly with good reason. It is
generally understood in a way that involves a
misconception of woman's lot, a repudiation of the
feminine nature, and an ambition to enter the
province of the masculine. And this conception
(we have found it as early as Plato, as shown in
the foregoing chapter) has frequently been pro-
voked or encouraged by women themselves, inas-
much as they sought to manifest their emancipa-
tion in the imitation of masculine externalities
and in unfeminine display. But the emancipation
that is to be considered here has nothing to do
with female smokers and with sportswomen, nor
with huntresses and amazons, nor with female
scholars and bluestockings, nor with female diplo-
matists and queens. I think it is no offence to
women if we consider them as in their proper
place only in the manifestations of pure humanity,
true culture, and reason. We might otherwise
easily come to consider masculine women as the
ideal. But there is nothing more repulsive in this
world than a masculine woman, even if she should
glorify her masculinity with the splendor of a
crown. The celebrated Elizabeth of England was

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3 1

a real monster of a woman, and it is astonishing
that this "virgin" hypocrite found even a single
lover.

In a'word, the chief error in the direction of
the emancipation of woman has hitherto con-
sisted in the attempt to educate woman into a
man, and even into a man of the present state of
development, that is, on occasion even into a sol-
dier, instead of vindicating her humanity and her
right to citizenship in accordance with her nature
as against man, and allowing her nature free
scope of development and of activity. Because
hitherto man alone could assert himself, the belief
has arisen that the self assertion of woman must
begin on masculine domain. But with this sort
of emancipation the feminine sex is benefited
least of all. Let us but imagine the opposite
case, namely, that the oppressed man is to be
emancipated by a feminine education and by being
assigned a feminine sphere of action. Without a
true conception of and strict adherence to the
feminine nature, every attempt at emancipation
must necessarily lead to error and absurdity. We
hear many a woman express the wish that she
were a man. Not one of them would ever strike
upon such unnatural wishes of despair, if she had
the opportunity and liberty of being entirely a
woman.

If the woman oversteps the limits of her nature
and destiny, she does not find an elevated stand-

32 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN*

point in her thought upon which she could place
herself. A man, if he attempts to soar beyond
his sphere, at least finds in his imagination the
aggrandizement and glorification which endow
him with a superhuman character : he is called a
"giant," a " demon," a " god." But the woman,
if she breaks through her circle, does not find a
higher stage than that which the aspiring man
has left behind, and she never attains to anything
more than being the imitator of — man. The
man, if he overleaps, loses at most his name, the
woman also her sex. The woman can become a
" god " or " goddess " only when she aspires to be
only a woman. Growth by means of masculine
qualities makes a monster of woman. We men
have nothing to surrender to you women by
which you could improve, beautify, and ennoble
yourselves ; everything good, beautiful, and noble
you possess in your truly humane hearts, your
fine feeling, and your susceptible minds. Inter-
change our qualities we can and must, ^change
them, never !

When we speak of the emancipation of woman,
the point cannot therefore be to obscure the sex-
ual limits. These limits should and must, rather,
be strictly retained, but defined in such a manner
that the man cannot infringe on the domain of
woman arbitrarily. The woman is not to be his
prisoner, his slave, and his tool, and he not her
guardian, her master, and her exploiter.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 33

Kitl.erto woman has only been looked upon as
a j-applement and appendage to man. The human
heing per se, the independent personality, the sover-
eign individual has never been recognized in woman.
It seems that the Bushmen on the Cape of Good
Hope are the only ones who have considered
woman equal to man, for they have only one ex-
pression for both. The woman is to belong to
the man ; the question, why is not the man like-
wise to belong to the woman, occurs to no one.
She is brought up for the man, and must live for
f.he man ; she receives her name from the man ;
?he is " taken" by the man, supported by the man,
put under obligation to the man, made the ward of
the man, punished by the man, used by the man,
and forsaken by the man.

The man is considered as a human being, the
woman as only the appendix to this human being ;
but the woman is more a human being than the
present man, and human rights know no sex. As
a certain French orator said that law is an atheist,
it can be said of right that it is a neuter. But
hitherto right has always been of the male sex.
Men have made the rights, men have made the
morals, men have made the duties, men have
made the laws, and they have taken good care
that woman should be excluded as much as possi-
ble from everything.

But, it will be said, you have declared that the
limits of womanhood must be adhered to, and yet

34 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

you wish from the start to introduce woman into
the sphere of men ? This is only apparently done.
Woman is to participate in public and political
life only as far as is consistent with her nature ;
but if public and political life has hitherto been so
coarse and violent that only masculine nature and
strength could perform the chief work in it, it
neither follows for the past that the 'smaller part
the more delicate nature of woman could necessa-
rily have played in public life ought to have fur-
nished a standard for her human rights, nor does
it follow for the future that the work of public
and political life will always remain so coarse and
violent as it has been until now, and that therefore
the participation of woman in the same must al-
ways meet with the same difficulties.

The chief work of history, that coarse prelim-
inary work which has so far called for the great-
est strength, and the purely male qualities, but
which at the same time, to the disgrace of reason
be it said, gave these qualities their most glorious
significance, has hitherto been wholesale murder,
war. This work could of course not be performed
by the women ; but neither could the successes,
the fame, and the merit of it fall to their lot.
The men carried on this murderous profession
alone, had to carry it on alone according to their
nature, and whatever the women did in the mean-
time, according to their nature, was not credited
to them as worthy of the same distinction as mur-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 35

der was to the men. The women were therefore
neglected and disqualified because they did not —
murder. Let us imagine history without war, or
the weaker sex capable of engaging in war, and
the entire position of woman is changed in an in-
stant. Among warlike nations the woman was
least valued, and the abolition of war is the liber-
ation of woman.

At bottom it is therefore chiefly the preponder-
ance of physical strength and of the warlike pas-
sion which gives man the right to lay exclusive
claim to public and political life. Not alone in war,
but also in other branches of public and political
toork these same qualities are more or less required,
so that whithersoever we look, physical strength
and the warlike passion, which is wanting in
woman, play an important part. But is there
here any equitable warrant for considering women
less qualified as human beings and as citizens?
Does right depend on the size of the gall-blad-
der, on the strength of the limbs, on the thickness
of the bones, on the hardness of the muscles, or
the coarseness of the fists ? And could not the
woman be granted the right to "counsel" even
where she was incapable of " acting " ? Was it there-
fore necessary to deprive her of all rights where
she was immediately concerned and entirely com-
petent? Because the woman cannot lead an
army in the field, may she therefore not have any
voice in her own affairs ? Because a woman can-

36 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

not be a policeman, shall therefore a husband be
allowed to have her brought back into his house
by policemen when she has escaped from him, he
having become unbearable ? Because a woman
cannot become a sheriff, may a sheriff therefore
tear away from her the children whom she has
borne, and return them to the hated father who
will maltreat them ? Because a woman perhaps
cannot be a minister of finance, must the man
therefore be her financial guardian ? Because a
woman is less fitted for a scholar and philosopher,
shall education therefore be forbidden ground to
her? Because a woman, in a word, cannot be a
many must she therefore be less a human being
and a citizen than man? I admit that besides
the physical strength and the warlike passion there
are still other qualities of mind and character
which in a hundred situations capacitate the man
for the work of history where the woman is un-
able to act. But this can affect the rights of
woman all the less since her sphere, in a purely
human respect, is infinitely richer in service to
society than that of the men. At all events, they
must have the same right to develop and to exer-
cise their faculties in every direction, according to
their own desires.

Democrats maintain that the dignity and the
right of man consist in his self-determination,
and that he is to obey only those laws in the
making of which he himself has participated. But

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. tf

do the laws of the State only concern men ? Why
should the women obey laws which were made
without their aid ? Are there " human dignity" and
" self-determination " for men and not for women ?
Millions of women suffer under the oppression of
shameful marriage laws, and women are to be ex-
cluded from the deliberation of such laws? Is a
law which men dictate to women less an act of
violence than the law a despot dictates to men?
Whether the men deprive the woman of her rights
in a democratic assembly, or whether a despot does
the same to the man in his cabinet, amounts to
one and the same thing from the standpoint of
right ; and when a so-called government, having,
through all possible means, kept the people in a
state of ignorance, declares them to be not ripe
for liberty, this declaration is just as justifiable as
when the men keep the women in a state of help-
lessness and on that account judge them incapable
of participation in political life. So long, there-
fore, as the women have not equal political and
civil rights with the men, in order to assert them-
selves so far as their ability and their interest
prompt them, there is still a great deal wanting
in the logic of democrats. The opinions of a man
about women can quite properly be considered as
the measure of his qualification for liberty and hu-
manity. Whoever is not just towards women
preaches vulgarity and adopts despotism. Daily
experience also teaches that those most distin*

38 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

guish themselves by intellectual and moral vulgar-
ity who treat the emancipation of women with
scorn or condemnation.

First, therefore, comes the political emancipa-
tion of woman, i.e., her installation into her poli-
tical rights, so that she may have the liberty and
the opportunity to guard her own interests in the
State without the tutelage of the men.

Besides this emancipation, however, there is still
the conventional, the moral, the economic, the re-
ligious, etc., to be aspired to, the object of which
must always be only to establish the liberty and the
right of women within the limits prescribed by the
feminine nature, and to protect them against the
invasions and the commands of men, or to abol-
ish woman's dependence on the will of the men,
and finally also to place woman in a position to
freely act out her true nature by means of every
aid.

These different points will be discussed in detail
in the following pages. It is to be observed that
political emancipation is the chief point at issue as
against men, even in the freest, while, for instance,
religious emancipation, economic emancipation, are
questions which remain to be solved even for the
majority of the male sex, almost everywhere, and
are therefore more of a common concern. In re-
spect to women, however, every single question-
takes on a special shape, wherefore it may be
worth while to consider each one singly.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 39

It has been intimated before that the liberty and
influence of women must grow in the same degree
in which the brutal strength of men declines in
value. The nearer, therefore, the time approaches
wihen decisions through force are replaced by de-
cisions based on right, when wars are abolished as
barbarities, when the strength of the hands is di-
rected only against nature, and even in that strug-
gle has in a great measure become superfluous
through the skill of machinery, etc., the more will
the man approach the humane plane upon which
the woman, so to speak, stands waiting until the
savage has become appeased, and has developed
the capacity of acknowledging a being as free and
endowed with rights, who is wanting the strength
to enforce its liberty and its rights. Woman rep-
resents, as it were, from the start the humane
principle, and man in a certain sense becomes
a human being only in so far as he approaches
woman. A great part of that which hitherto has
passed as " manly " is nothing more than barba-
rity. Brutal strength, which has been a mere
means in the pioneer work of history, has come to
be considered as a pnnciple and as a permanent
object. Thus what has been looked upon as the
highest will hereafter be declared to be the low-
est, and women w'll have to learn that many a
" hero ' whom they have adored as the ideal of
manliness, at a later time will appear as a murderer
or a rowdy.

40 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

From these suggestions, concerning the natural
way in which even history in part leads woman
on towards emancipation, it does, however, by no
means follow that woman is to look towards the
future in a mere attitude of expectancy. It is, on
the contrary, necessary to strive in all directions
that women, through participation in the struggles
of the times, should come to the aid of emanci-
pating history, and it is moreover essential to stir
up their sense of justice and their moral sense by
contactwith even the most disgusting phases of life.
They will thus acquire a complete survey of their
position and their claims. From this point of view
the following chapters are especially to be judged.

and the sexual relations. 41

THE PASSIVE PROSTITUTION OF
WOMEN.

Woman has, in advance of man, the bitter sat^
isfaction that there is a far greater chasm between
the different positions which she occupies in po-
etry and in life than between all the positions which
can be imagined for a male being. Worshipped
as an ideal in poetry, degraded below the animal
in life, woman may contemplate how much resti-
tution must be made to her in order to fill out the
chasm between her degradation and her apotheosis.
Indeed, between the most exalted man of history or
the drama, and the lowest slave of the bagnio or the
plantation, there is not so great a contrast by far
as between a Laura or Heloise and a prostitute of
the street or the brothel.

Woman has a double task of liberation. First
she bears with man the common yoke of the pre-
vailing oppression ; but if this yoke is cast off,
there still remains for her the special yoke which
the male sex has placed on her neck. In the man
the human being alone can be oppressed or liber-
ated, in the woman the sex as well.

The despot makes a slave of the man by op-
pression, but even this slave makes a sub-slave of
the woman by purchase. Even for the slave the

42 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

possibility of saving the better self is still con-
ceivable. But a woman in a state of prostitution
is both a slave and a human monstrosity at the
same time. The woman is born for love, and
drowns her heart in a bog of vice; the woman is
born for motherhood, and to be a mother becomes
a horror to her ; the woman is born to be a wife,
and of the happiness of a wife she has never any
conception. Thus is the woman in a state of
prostitution. Surely, to sell one's "love " without
choice and without love is the lowest stage of
human abjectness. If all women could feel the
degradation which is the lot of millions of their
sex in the state of prostitution, the whole sex
would rise in rebellion and begin a sex war, as
there have hitherto been national and religious
wars.

The way in which woman has reached this
degradation also indicates the way to free herself
from it. First came force, which compelled the
woman to give herself even to the man she most
despised. As a slave, and as an ornament to the
harem, she was in the beginning mere booty.
The preponderance of physical strength, force,
was the immediate cause that made woman a
tool, a thing without rights. This force was con-
verted, also with respect to the men, into political
power, the power of princes, and as such became
at the same time an object of veneration. The
men honored it as subjects, the women as tools of

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 43

lust. The honor which a woman supposes to be
done her when a despot chooses her for his mis-
tress is nothing more than a continuation of the
subserviency with which formerly the slave would
surrender herself to the murderer.

First made dependent on man through force,
the woman fell into twofold dependence as grow-
ing civilization made the maintenance of existence
more difficult. Woman existed not only for the
man, but also tJirongh man, who by virtue of his
physical strength and his energetic mind found
the way to procure the means of existence and of
luxury. And when civilization reached a height
where the inequality in the economic conditions
was so far developed that even a great part of the
men could procure none or insufficient means of
existence and of luxury, that part of the feminine
sex which was dependent on them became com-
pletely helpless, completely dependent. The help-
less woman, thrown upon herself by the helpless
man, but through education and circumstances
alike incapacitated to help herself, gave up the
only thing she possessed : she sold her body. She
sold it first from hunger, then to get means for
luxury and amusement. And this lot, originally
prepared by force and then decided upon by
necessity, has now become an actual profession
for millions. Prostitution has become a true
branch of industry, which has its employers and
contractors, as well as **s science and its articles

44 THE RIGHTS OF W 'OMEN

of trade. It is at the same time a hereditary cor*
ruption which is transmitted from the mother to
the children, and pursues entire classes from one
generation to the other, inasmuch as the want of
means for existence goes hand in hand with the
want of means for education.

Out of regard for the weaker nerves of women
(since women have weaker nerves than men), I
shall refrain from picturing in detail the fate to
which so many thousands, especially in great
cities, among them a great part in the most tender
age of virginity, are consigned. Whatever the
imagination can conceive as low and disgusting,
that is suffered, is cultivated by a great part of
the feminine sex from necessity, and for money.
Every hesitation which the feelings or the sensual
impressions might oppose in a single case is
Overcome by necessity and by money; and we may
not be far from the truth in imagining the most
beautiful and lovable girl in the world transferred
to the chambers of a brothel, where she trem-
blingly begins the practice of her profession in the
arms of a decrepit old man, whose aspect causes
all the five senses at once to revolt, but whom
money enables to stimulate his deadened vitality
by means of a youthful beauty for — a double
premium.

But now, you women who shudder at the read-
ing of such things, do you believe that prostitu-
tion is to be found only in those haunt? \yh$re a

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 45

tax is levied on every act of lust ? Look about
you in your social ranks and you will find that the
circle of prostitution encloses thousands of fami-
lies who make the sign of the cross at the mention
of the word brothel. When a girl marries from
necessity, or is made to marry from speculation,
is not that as much prostitution as when she sells
herself from necessity or is sold from speculation ?
To be sure, by marriage she sells herself only to a
single person, but that does not change the im-
morality of her relationship. Those women who
can still say a year after their marriage that their
husbands are really the men of their hearts are
indeed rare, at least among certain classes ; and
this confession is nothing more than a confession
of prostitution. Most marriages are the product
of money or class considerations, or exigencies to
avoid in the eleventh hour the entire failure of
the sexual design. But where marriage as a rule
is a mere charitable institution, it at once be-
comes by law also an institution of compulsion,
which perpetuates prostitution and makes regret
useless.

No further exposition is necessary to show that
the sources of prostitution, into which the greater
part of the feminine sex has fallen, are political
disqualification and economic dependence, i.e., the
twin tyranny which throws the greatest part of
humanity under the feet of the ruling, revelling
minority. The abolition of prostitution is pos-

46 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN ,

sible, therefore, only after the attainment of com-
plete liberty and after the just regulation of the
social conditions, of which we shall speak farther
on. But pious vulgarity and the moral police
are of a different opinion. They think that they
stifle prostitution at its source if they drive the
unhappy inmates of houses of ill-fame out of town
with police force or throw them into prison. It
is dreadful that history necessitates more victims
of ignorance than enlightenment, when at last
attained, is able to make happy beings. How
many millions will have perished in misery and
degradation before the knowledge has at last been
reached that neither the police nor church dis-
cipline are able to banish an evil which is the
necessary result of legal and economic conditions!
And what is easier than this knowledge if we are
willing to abandon the obstinacy of our egotism
with the slothfulness of our thinking?

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. A7

THE ACTIVE PROSTITUTION OF MEN.

LET us begin with the education of men. By
education I do not here mean mere domestic and
school education, but also the sum of all other
influences of life which determine the intellectual
and moral development of man to the time of
complete independence.

Generally even in the beginning of the period
when sexual uneasiness begins to show itself in
the boy, he is exposed in schools, institutes, and
elsewhere to the temptations of secret vice, which
is transmitted from youth to youth like a con-
tagious corruption, and which in thousands de-
stroys the first germs of virility. A countless
number of boys is addicted to these vices for
years. That they do not in the beginning of
nascent puberty proceed to sexual intercourse
with women, which would, by the way, be in
every respect less injurious, is generally due to
youthful timidity, which dares not reveal its
desire, or from want of experience for finding
opportunities. Only too often this timidity and
this want are overcome by chance or by seduction,
which is rarely lacking in great cities where pros-
titution is flourishing, and thus numbers of boys
immediately after the transition period of youth,

48 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

in accordance with the previous secret practice,
accustom themselves to the association with pros-
titute women. At the age when European youths
are put into the soldier's uniform or are wont to
enter the university, this association frequently
becomes an object of boasting, and to calm the
sexual desires in a pool of filth and, in connection
with it, to undermine health by intemperance or
disgusting diseases, is generally developed into a
fine art in soldier and student life.

Thus prepared, the young man approaches the
time when he can seriously think of making the
acquaintance of a girl who as his wife is to satisfy
his heart and his sexual needs, Most men of the
educated classes enter the marriage-bed with the
consciousness of leaving 'behind them a whole
army of prostitutes or seduced women in whose
arms they cooled their passions and spent the
vigor of their youth. But with this past the mar-
ried man does not at the same time leave behind
him its influence on his inclinations. The habit
of having a feminine being at his disposal for
every rising appetite, and the desire for change
inordinately indulged for years, generally make
themselves felt again as soon as the honeymoon
is over. The satisfaction which an uncorrupted
man could find in the arms of his wife for many
years is shortened all the more for the man of the
common sort, the more he has learned to look
upon woman as a mere instrument for the satis-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 49

faction of his changeable sexual appetite. For
the simple reason, moreover, that women are to
be had for the asking, most men do not know
how to appreciate them. Thousands of men have
before marriage lost the capacity of entering into
a sincere or moral relation, and give their wives
nothing but their name.

A new epoch now begins for the married
man, the epoch of conjugal deception. What he
had formerly done almost publicly he now does
secretly, and often at an incredible expense of hy-
pocrisy and cunning. Very few women in the
least suspect the dissipations of their husbands,
and I know not whether it is for their good
that they suspect nothing. In Paris, to be sure,
women generally know how they stand with their
husbands, and they know also how to provide
against being pitied.

If all men were to write Rousseauian Confes-
sions concerning their secret sexual doings, the
greater part of the educated women would be
driven to despair or turn away from the male sex
in disgust. Not a few of those married men who
formerly associated with courtesans because they
had no wives now address themselves to their
wives only when they have no courtesans.

Now, although most men are in a certain sense
" not worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes "
of the commonest woman, much less to " unfasten
her girdle," yet they make the most extravagant

50 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

demands on the feminine sex. Even the greatest
debauchee, who has spent his vigor in the arms
of a hundred courtesans, will cry out fraud and
treachery if he does not receive his newly married
bride as an untouched virgin. Even the most
dissolute husband will look on his wife as de-
serving of death if his daily infidelity is only once
reciprocated. And while he demands that his
wife should remain faithful because her nature
requires it, he will nevertheless involve himself in
the contradiction of always suspecting this nature
of a tendency to unfaithfulness because he trans-
fers his own experiences and weaknesses to the
woman. Thus he not only deceives his wife, he
also even punishes her for deceiving her. But,
himself always jealous without cause, he will be
indignant at the most justifiable jealousy on the
part of his wife. A husband who is annoyed by
the jealousy of his wife deserves it — and what
husband is not annoyed by it ? No husband can
bring his concessions into any proportion with his
demands, and nowhere does this show itself more
plainly than in jealousy. While he asks of his
wife to take precautions against even the appear-
ance of misdemeanors of which she has never
thought, he on his part claims freedom from re-
proach for all offences of the past and the future.
We are frequently severe towards others only
because we have not yet had an opportunity to
commit their offences. We are wont to become

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 51

all the more magnanimous the more cause we
have to depend on the magnanimity of others.
Of this truth not an iota is corroborated where
the views of men with respect to women are con-
cerned. The greater the injustice a husband does
to his wife, the less is lie willing to submit to from
her; the oftener he becomes unfaithful to her, the
stricter he is in demanding faithfulness from her.
We see that despotism nowhere denies its own
nature : the more a despot deceives and abuses
his people, the more submissiveness and faithful-
ness he demands of them.

Who can be astonished at the many unhappy
marriages, if he knows how unworthy most men
are of their wives ! Their virtues they rarely can
appreciate, and their vices they generally call out
by their own. Thousands of women suffer from
the results of a mode of life of which they, having
remained pure in their thought, have no concep-
tion whatever ; and many an unsuspecting wife
nurses her husband with tenderest care in sick-
nesses which are nothing more than the conse-
quences of his amours with other women. And
when at last, after long years of delusion and en-
durance, the scales drop from the eyes of the
wife, and revenge or despair drives her into a
hostile position towards her lord and master,
she is an inhuman criminal, and the hue and cry
against the fickleness of women and the falsity of
their nature is endless.

52 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

On an average, men, married as well as unmar-
ried, are so constituted that they will not easily
let slip an opportunity of secretly entering into
sexual relations with any woman who can excite
their senses. And it generally requires very little
to excite their senses. Those that are insatiable
are in certain respects as easily to be satisfied
as they are insatiable. This sexual inclination of
men, be it in consequence of their education or by
nature, is so constant and general that most of
them view every woman they meet only with the
reflection whether she would be likely to enter
into relations with them or not. While the sight
of a man inspires them with questions after his
business, his views, his intellect, etc., that of a
woman causes them only, or directly, to speculate
on her sexual willingness. There you see a states-
man, a clergyman, or an official — all people who
in the presence of others distinguish themselves
by a serious and severe demeanor which would
lead us to suspect almost anything else than an
illicit sentiment towards women ; personages who
inspire respect, living laws, embodied sermons,
walking documents. The serious statesman, or
clergyman, or official meets a pretty lady or a
pretty servant-girl on a promenade where the
eyes of the world or of his acquaintances are not
upon him. In passing he will look intently and
lustfully into her eyes, and if she only half recip-
rocates his look, or only answers with a humane

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. &J

smile, an object on the way, or a bird in the trees,
or the beauty of the surroundings, in short any-
thing, will suddenly attract his attention and give
him in the eyes of a casual passer-by an excuse
for looking round after her. And if she looks
round also, he will have forgotten his handker-
chief or something else which will necessitate his
following her in order to convince himself that he
may, in a tcte-a-tete, exchange the serious states-
man, clergyman, or official for an unmasked mem-
ber of the male sex. Every look of a woman,
caused perhaps only by curiosity or thoughtless-
ness or good-nature, exposes her at once with
common men to the danger of an appearance of
common coquetry, or the suspicion of sensual
desire. Every pretty or even agreeable-looking
woman who travels alone, or crosses the street
alone in the evening, will find occasion to ward off
importunities. The reputation of many a woman
is endangered merely by the fact that she does
not regulate her behavior in accordance with an
entirely low conception of men, that she does not
think she is throwing herself away by being natu-
ral, that she has not accustomed herself to see a
crime in candor. Thus are most men restlessly
pursued by the instinct and fancies of sensuality !
Any man will, under safe conditions, put himself
at the disposal of any pretty woman, if she desires
nothing more than sensual pleasure. There are
be few physically healthy men who can give the
lie to this sentence.

54 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

The habit of regarding the end and aim of
woman only from the most vulgar side — not to re-
spect in her the noble human being, but to see in
her only the instrument of sensual desire — is car-
ried so far among men that they will allow it to
force into the background considerations among
themselves which they otherwise pretend to rank
very high ; for instance the considerations of
friendship. There are few men who are so faith-
ful in their friendship that they would scruple to
put the fidelity of the pretty wife of their friend
to the test. Adultery through so-called friends of
the family is the most common of all. Love and
horse-trading are two articles in which, among a
great many men, deceit appears to be legitimate
and seems to be taken into the bargain in " friend-
ship."

From all these hidden parts of our social re-
lations the paint must be washed off. Women
must become indignant ; and if I had not sufficient
confidence in them to think the above will suffice,
I could sketch a far more glaring picture, without
laying myself open to the charge of exaggeration.

But when the feeling of women has once been
driven to indignation with respect to the position
which they occupy, it is to be hoped that they
will only the more urgently look for a way to at-
tain a worthier position, and to follow that way,
when it is found, with persistence.

AN.O THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. >5

THE EXCUSES OF MEN.

In the previous chapter I have dwelt on the
sins against women which our sex commits
through prostitution. In order to be just towards
both sides I shall also point out the circumstances
which for the present may still serve to excuse
men, although not to justify them.

The sexual instinct is as natural and as legiti-
mate as the instinct for eating and drinking.
Whatever nature demands cannot and should not
be denied her ; it is only necessary to find the ethi-
cal rules which will secure the satisfaction of the
natural needs without involving degeneration.

Whatever is unnatural is also immoral. But it
is unnatural, consequently immoral, that circum-
stances will not allow a man after having reached
puberty to follow his natural instincts and to as-
sociate himself with a woman. If it were possible
to the youth to marry young, he would, at the
hand of his beloved, pass by all the moral cess-
pools through which the unmarried are driven by
the passion of their sexual instinct. He would
not have to go through those schools of corrup-
tion in which he learns to fit himself for every-
thing which later makes him unfit for any true
conjugal relation. In the arms of his beloved he

$6 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

would preserve the health which he poisons in the
arms of the harlot. He would respect women,
because he would not have had the opportunity
of making their acquaintance in the most con-
temptible of all states, and his untainted mind
would not change into that unscrupulousness
which, as Jean Paul says, does not hesitate to
pluck to pieces the noblest woman like a bee,
only for the sake of getting hold of the honey-
sack.

With all our civilization we are put to shame
even by the savages. The savages know of no
fastidiousness of the sexual instinct and of no
brothels, because their nature need do no vio-
lence to itself and can satisfy its needs in a natu-
ral manner. They show us at the same time that
health, as well as morals, is less endangered when
nature is allowed free play than when it is driven
into by-ways through obstacles.

We are, indeed, likewise savages, but in quite a
different sense. Proof of this is especially fur-
nished by our youth. But that our students, and
young men in general, usually pass through the
school of corruption and drag the filth of the
road which they have traversed before marriage
along with them throughout life, is not their fault,
so much as the fault of prejudices and of our
political and social conditions. Nature demands,
as has been said, the satisfaction of the sexual in-
stinct when the age of puberty has been reached.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. $7

Our priests, moral teachers, and schoolmasters,
great and small, maintain, however, that nature
is a vicious, disqualified person whose demands
must be rejected until they, the priests, etc., shall
grant her a hearing, and mark her with the stamp
of official approbation. That through this rejec-
tion ten times the evil is brought about which
these wise gentlemen pretend to avoid, they them-
selves know very well ; but if there is no more
censorship the censors will lose their bread and
butter.

Our political and social conditions conform to
the prejudices sustained by our religious and
moral falsifiers. Partly through police limita-
tions, partly through the degeneration of our
economic conditions, most men are prevented
from marrying until the uneasiest period of their
sexual life is passed. Yes, thousands, especially
among our idling military, are not able to sup-
port a wife until they are almost old men, and
after they have for half a lifetime been masters
in the school of debauchery and seduction ; and
as concerns the thousands of priests whom celibacy
compels to revenge oppressed nature with hy-
pocrisy and all manner of secret means, I do not
know whether the disgust at their loathsome lives
or pity for their inhuman lot should furnish
the standard by which we shauld judge them.

Attention must be repeatedly called to the
fact that, besides celibacy, student and military life

58 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

in Europe are the high-schools of prostitution.
After the young man for ten years has stood
under the lash of pedantic and servile school-
masters, he feels himself free for the first time at
the university. But it is not the freedom which
permits him to develop his mental powers in all
directions and to accustom himself to participate
in public life ; no, he has only the freedom to
spend the money of his parents without being
watched, and to find in inns and brothels an out-
let for his longing to exercise his rising powers.
The systematic favoring of these doings seems
even to be a part of the plan of the governmental
system of instruction, and the wish of high states-
manship is fulfilled if the young man leaves the
university enervated and dulled ; he requires
nothing more than ability to pass his exami-
nations and to execute the commands of the
powers that be. That the powers that be do not
consider whether the youth who is used to de-
bauchery is still capable of making a wife happy
need not astonish the female sex as long as they
cannot comprehend the connection between their
interests and political development.

The women moreover will admit that the stand-
ing armies will not be abolished out of gallantry.
For do not the standing armies furnish the chief
representatives of gallantry ? The powers that be
are liberal enough to allow the maltreated soldier
and the bored officer to seek compensation for the

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS, 59

hardships of their profession among the degraded
feminine sex, and the degraded feminine sex is
sufficiently grateful to recognize the blessing of
having fops instead of men, dancing partners in-
stead of friends, whore-hunters instead of hus-
bands, educated for them by raving about the
resplendent soldiery. In Switzerland and North
America women must be very unhappy, because
men must dispense with the chief school of train-
ing for married life, namely, the standing armies !
But they are compensated here by the moneyed
men, who can buy everything, and by the friends
of the slave-holders, who see to it that the doctrine
of the despoliation of the weak does not suffer.

But marriage also, as it now exists, is a school
for the dissemination of conjugal infelicity for
men no less than for women. More of this later.
It appears on all sides that most men also are the
victims of existing conditions, that is, of the pres-
ent want of freedom and of economic injustice,
whereupon the women become the victims of the
victims.

A special point which comparatively admits of
an excuse for men in the discussion of sexual
rights and duties is, finally, "adultery." The
condition for equal claims is equal needs. Now
if it can be shown that the woman has the same
sexual needs as the man, then adultery on her
part is of no greater significance than on the part
of man. But whether we find the reason for it in

60 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

the difference of education or in the difference of
nature, it can be considered an established fact
that the man is much more liable to sexual temp-
tations than the woman ; or that the mere sensual
need is much less in woman than in the man. A
further difference follows from the present conju-
gal conditions. The man must as a rule take upon
himself the care of the family, and the members
of the family, the children, depend on the head of
the family for the means of existence. By " adul-
tery," therefore, the wife runs the risk not only of
unjustly increasing the cares of her husband, but
also of lessening the rights of his children,— consid-
erations which the man generally need not over-
come in " adultery." Moreover, an extraordinary
digression on the part of the man, according to
the prevailing and in part justifiable opinions,
does not, when it becomes publicly known, reflect
any disgrace upon the wife — she is rather sympa-
thized with as the suffering, the injured party ;
but a digressing wife exposes her husband to
scorn and contempt.

All these differences and excuses, however, ac-
cording to which the husband sins less and the
wife more by " adultery," are to be considered as
admissible only from the standpoint of our pres-
ent conditions. It will later appear that from a
correct point of view both sexes must be meas-
ured by the same standard of right. Least of
all do I by excusing men intend to accuse women.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 6 1

I recognize as much the blamelessness of most
women who take a false step as the hypocrisy of
most men who try to enlarge upon the misde-
meanors of women. I even ask the men who
would secure the inviolability of female fidelity
by referring their wives to the consequences for
the family, whether they would grant them the
same liberty which they claim for themselves if
they knew them to be sterile? The negative an-
swer must here again disclose that Jesuitical ego-
tism which, by using " the right of the stronger,"
tries to fetter the weaker with forced considera-
tions, in order to secure greater scope for itself,
and which tries to magnify the faults of others in
order to lessen its own. Should it nevertheless
appear desirous to punish the infidelity of women,
I would propose capital punishment on condition
that the infidelity of the men be punished by Ab6-
lardization.

62 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

LOVE AND JEALOUSY.

A LADY-FRIEND has requested of me an answer
to the following questions :

1. " Is jealousy an inborn or an inbred passion ?"

2. "Can a human being love several persons at
once, and if he believes himself able to do this,
can this capacity be called love ? "

Logic demands that I answer the second ques-
tion first, for jealousy must be looked at as a
concomitant of love, not love as a concomitant of
jealousy.

What is love ? In simple words : a passionate
attachment to a person of the other sex, in whom
a man (or woman) delights in the highest degree,
and for whom he feels the highest degree of ap-
preciation, confidence, and good-will. Through
the highest degree of Appreciation, etc., we place
the person on an ideal standpoint. The concep-
tion of the ideal, however, excludes every second
ideal. By the side of an ideal we can as little
have another ideal of the same kind as the be-
liever can have another God besides the well-
known Universal One.

If we conceive of love as a passionate enthusi-
asm and devotion to a thereby idealized person,
it is self-evident that its object can never be more

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 63

than one single individual at the same time.
" Thou entirely fillest my soul,"* sings the poet,
and a full soul has as little room for other contents
as a full bottle of champagne.

But now it happens very frequently in this
queer world which denies to most people the Op-
portunity of entering into suitable relations, or
the liberty of dissolving unsuitable connections,
that an object of love which " fills the soul en-
tirely" cannot be found. In such a case one
person can of course be able to embrace several
objects of attachment at once, not only with the
arms, but also with the soul, and it may be possi-
ble that a man, if he has a very large soul, must
have recourse to a dozen or more women in order
to fill it ; yes, he may even feel sincere good-will to-
wards each one of them, and may value each one
especially for her individual qualities, just as we
value the qualities of various flowers. But this
can as little be an entirely satisfactory relation for
each one of the twelve loved ones as for the man
himself, if he is capable of a real, passionate, i.e., a
true, love, which cannot be otherwise than exclu-
sive. He will, should he even have the choice
among a thousand women, still feel a void, and
gladly exchange the thousand for a single one
whom he can love as his ideal with complete de-
votion.

*" Du fullest meine Seele ganz."

6^ THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

Foi ,</inmon men, or men corrupted by our
present education, it is a mere pretext for their
inclinations towards the harem if they put up a
doctrine of the " plurality of love ;" uncorrupted
men can at most look upon the doctrine as a
make-shift for the misfortune of not having an op-
portunity in this perverse world for a free choice
according to natural affinity. In a world as it
ought to be the exclusiveness of love will be all
the more a law because no free woman will want to
share a beloved man with another, and vice versa.

Thus we have reached the subject of jealousy.
I would not designate jealousy either as an " in-
born " nor as an "inbred" passion. It is an
accidental passion, for which the faculty indeed
is inborn. In its nobler form and in its nobler
motives it arises from love and can, according to
circumstances and the character of the person
from whom it emanates, differ in its nature and
in its mode of expression. The noblest jealousy
is a sort of ambition or pride of the loving
person who feels it as an insult that another
one should assume it as possible to supplant his
love, or it is the highest degree of devotion which
sees a desecration of its object in the foreign inva-
sion, as it were, of his own altar. A jealousy of
this sort, which would fain keep away everything
unworthy from the beloved person, is far superior
to that lower grade which arises from the anxiety
of losing the beloved object through the approach

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 65

d( another, perhaps worthier, person. This sort of
jealousy arises either from weakness, which from a
sense of its own want of lovable qualities is not
convinced of being sure of its cause, or from dis-
trust, which perhaps, by applying its own standard
inversely, thinks the beloved person capable of in-
fidelity. Sometimes all these motives may act to-
gether.

The lowest species of jealousy is a sort of ava-
rice or envy which, without being capable of love,
at least wishes to possess the object of its jeal-
ousy alone by the one party assuming a sort of
property right over the other. This jealousy,
which might be called the Sultanic, is generally to
be found with old withered " husbands " whom
the devil has prompted to marry young women
and who forthwith dream night and day of cuck-
old's horns. These Argus-eyed keepers are no
longer capable of any feeling that could be called
love, t'hey are rather as a rule heartless house-
tyrants ; at the same time they cannot, therefore,
make their wife happy. But they grudge her
every happy relationship, because their egotism
will not allow them to admit their own incapacity
by granting her a compensation, or because they
wish to possess alone the very thing they do not
deserve, in order to abuse it. They revenge their
own want of amiability by deposing from office,
so to speak, the (real or supposed) amiability of
their wife. I have known a man who, loathed by

66 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

his wife like carrion, paid no other attention to her
than to watch her with restless anxiety and to
pursue her with querulous jealousy. She died
suddenly by an accident. Did the husband fall
into despair on account of her loss? God forbid !
The weight of a mountain was taken from him,
and he called out, relieved : "Now she cannot at
least belong to any one else ! " So he himself did
not lose anything in her ; still he could not bear
the thought that she should be possessed by an-
other. That proves that jealousy does not come
from love alone.

The general conclusion will be that jealousy is
more the result of wrong conditions which cause
uncongenial unions and which through moral cor-
ruption artificially create distrust, than a necessary
accompaniment of love. Let us imagine a com-
munity consisting of ten, a hundred, a thousand
couples, all of them united by true love. Is jeal-
ousy possible among these two thousand lovers ?
I do not think so, because every single individual
is sure of his or her beloved object through recipro-
cated love. Now let us imagine this community
expanded into an entire nation, educated according
to reason, in which both sexes have every possible
opportunity for making acquaintances and enter-
ing into suitable unions : jealousy will be banished
by the simple assurance of love.

The lady who asked the questions traced jeal-
ousy to self-esteem. At the same time she calls

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 6?

attention to the fact that even animals are jeal-
ous. Do the animals then possess self-esteem?
If I understood the questioner rightly, she meant
to say that whoever esteemed himself could not
bear to be neglected by the beloved person in fa-
vor of a third. But it seems to me that in such a
case self-esteem would not dictate jealousy, but
rather withdrawal from a relation in which the in-
terest taken in a third person plainly shows us that
we are no longer wanted.

Another lady-friend writes me that jealousy al-
ways made her indignant ; either two persons were
guaranteed to each other by love, and then there
was no need of watching each other with Argus-
eyes, or love did not exist, and then there ought
to be a separation ; should her husband torment
her with jealousy, she would look at it as a want of
confidence, as an insult, as a disparagement of her-
self.

I for my part can understand jealousy, but not,
as it were, expound it. It is a passion with which
precisely those are most afflicted who are the least
worthy of love. An innocent maiden who enters
marriage will not dream of getting jealous ; but
all her innocence cannot secure her against the
jealousy of her husband if he has been a libertine.
Those are wont to be the most jealous who have
the consciousness that they themselves are most de-
serving of jealousy. Most men in consequence of
their present education and corruption have so

6S THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

poor an opinion not only of the male but even of
the female sex that they believe every woman at
every moment capable of what they themselves
have looked for among all and have found among
the most unfortunate, the prostitutes.

When jealousy is justifiable, it generally is so
among women. A woman whose early confidence
has been shaken by special signs, and who is now
tormented by constant anxiety, without attaining
to any certainty about the infidelity of the man she
loves, is in a position deserving deepest sympathy
and no reproach. But she also is suffering from
the perversity of conditions which make hypo-
crites of her husband and his accomplices.

The most objectionable thing about jealousy
is that it attempts to fetter the person against
whom it is directed, that it would deprive him of
freedom of action, of the right of free control over
himself. This despotism of jealousy is connected
with marriage, as it has been hitherto, and with
the legal inequality of the sexes. If the sexual
union of two sovereign individuals is actually
made into a relation of serfdom, it is but natural
that especially the stronger party will presume to
punish the emancipation of the other as a crime.
Hence the brutality of vulgar husbands, who, after
having in every possible and intolerable manner
forfeited their wife's love, believe themselves jus-
tified in killing her when her precious lord has
become revolting to her and another one pleases

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 69

her better. Such cases are especially adapted to
enlighten us as to the nature and the consequences
of common jealousy. But whoever has reached
those lofty heights of liberty and humanity where
he will grant every individual the right of sover-
eignty over himself cannot wish to forcibly hold
any one in a relation that does not conform to
his wishes ; and even if it should come hard to
him to see a beloved person, or one become in-
dispensable by habit, make use of her right of
sovereignty in favor of a third person, he would
still silence his jealousy in consequence of his ap-
preciation of the rights of others. It can moreover
be considered as having the force of a mathemat-
ical certainty that the party who voluntarily turns
away from the other is so little suited to the other
that the latter can anywhere find a substitute.

yo THESKIGHTS OF WOMEN

MORALITY.

PlETY has nothing else to oppose to immo-
rality as it has been sketched in the preceding
chapter than unnatural restraints and hypocrisy.
Reason has no part in this senseless undertaking ;
she recognizes the claims of nature and its needs
openly and frankly, but tries to regulate its mani-
festations by reasonable and truly moral condi-
tions.

It is the task of mankind to follow nature under
the guidance of reason. To depart from nature
and to return to nature along the path or in the
form of civilization is the evolutionary process of
humanity and the humane spirit. Mere nature is
coarseness or dependence ; to reproduce, as it
were, nature through reason, with consciousness —
that is civilization and liberty.

Let us begin with liberty itself. The savage is
free : but his natural freedom is subjugated in or-
der to return at a later period as cultivated liberty
come to consciousness of itself. Just so with
morals. The natural relation of the sexes is lost
in immorality and hypocrisy, in order to return as
free love in moral consciousness and form. Nat-
ural liberty in the process of civilization passes
through the school of slavery to true freedom,

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 71

and natural morality through the school of im-
morality to true morality.

Civilization and liberty make man a moral be-
ing. To recognize the nitural laws by means of
reason, and to execute them freely for the pur-
pose of, or within the limits of, civilization — that
is moral destiny, moral endeavor, moral life. Man
is by means of reason lord of his nature, not for
the sake of suppressing it, but that he may, as it
were, renew it as his handiwork in ennobled form.

Let us apply these principles of liberty and mo-
rality to natural needs. The animal is by nature
limited in its desires; instinct directs it and binds
it within definite tracks of needs, to step out of
which it has neither the power nor the temptation.
It does not eat in order to eat, or to enjoy itself
by eating, but only to appease its hunger, and
when it has eaten its fill it is also satisfied ; it
mates from a physical need in a definite measure
and at definite times, and outside of these times
the sexual instinct is of itself quiescent. Neither
in appeasing its hunger nor in satisfying its sex-
ual instinct can it impel itself beyond the measure
fixed by nature, or, as it were, compose variations
to the theme of nature. In a word, it is not free,
but merely a slave of nature. Man, however, is
free. To him no need is merely physically pre-
scribed or measured out ; he has rather the liberty
than the instinct to overstep his mere need, to
make the indulgence of it an "enjoyment" and

7 2 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

to overdo the " enjoyment." Did he not have
the liberty and the capacity to overstep the ne-
cessity of nature, neither would he have the lib-
erty and the capacity to refrain from transgress-
ing. That he refrains from reasonable motives,
that he regulates his impulse in accordance with
reasonable aims, that he through his reason shows
his liberty the measure of its use, that he con-
sciously and voluntarily fulfils the aim of nature
as the animal does unconsciously and involunta-
rily— that is his pride, that is morality.

To deny nature or to thwart the aims of na-
ture, which in a manner furnish reason with the
material for morality, can never be moral ; it is
rather just as immoral as on the other side a
transgression of the natural limits and objects.
An old maid (who purposely renounces her sexual
nature) is therefore just as immoral as a courte-
san, and a celibate just as immoral as a libertine.

The false ideas of morality with respect to sex-
ual affairs show themselves in what we Commonly
call the sense of shame.

What is the sense of shame? Generally speak-
ing, it is the diffidence about exposing something,or
the pain at having exposed something which may
meet with the disapproval of others. Without
this respect for others there would be no sense of
shame. Theexistence or the degree of shame,
therefore, directly depends on the conception of
the one feeling ashamed, and this conception de-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. ?3

pends on the real or supposed opinion of others
towards whom this sense of shame shows itself.
But the correctness or falseness of this opinion
determines whether there is any occasion for shame
or not.

If we think of mankind in a state of nature, we
can hardly suppose that such a thing as sexual
shame existed between man and woman. But if
we follow up the progress of development the
growth of shame can easily be explained from ex-
ternals. The periodic indisposition of woma.
gradually began to impress the man disagreeably,
the woman concealed it — she was ashamed. Preg-
nancy with its consequences disfigured feminine
beauty: the woman draped herself — she was
ashamed. In the course of propagation deform-
ities and cripples arose: the deformed woman
improved her shape with artificial means — she
was ashamed. Children born outside of marriage,
who were not supported by any pater familias,
and whom the mother could not support, became
the burden of others ; pregnancy outside of mar-
riage was therefore condemned : the woman made
a secret of it — she was ashamed. The excesses of
certain shameless periods brought about reactions
which, with the immoderate practice, likewise con-
demned the moderate practice ; therefore all sex-
ual manifestations had to be avoided : people were
ashamed. And since religion has even pressed the
stamp of holiness on every suppression of nature.

74 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

intimidated nature has become entirely shame-
faced, and all the world is ashamed. But with
regard to the very things on account of which it
ought to be most ashamed it has become totally
shameless.

There is therefore no absolute sense of shame,
and the present sense of shame in sexual matters
is not a spontaneous emotion rooted in nature and
continuous with it, but, as above stated, depend-
ent on the judgment of others and a product of
circumstances.*

If we measure the sense of shame by the stand-
ard of reason, it is justifiable only when it con-
forms to true morality, and is therefore the ex-
pression of the moral consciousjtess, and in this way
we come to understand that the preachers of
shame are sometimes the true preachers of im-
morality, of that immorality which would further
morality by the suppression of nature and truth.
It is surely not at all necessary to go about naked
in order to show that one is free from false shame,
nor is it necessary to love each other on the pub-
lic thoroughfare in order to prove that one recog-
nizes the claims of nature ; but only a fool or a
hypocrite will want to sacrifice the inner law to
external considerations, and incorruptible nature
to ridiculous prejudices.

* Compare the festival of Priapus with Christian hypocrisy,
*nd then ask wherein the essence of shame consists.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 7$

Let us meet the hypocrites with straightforward
language.

Is it immoral that the breast of the youth and
the maiden is filled with the longing of love?
No! Why then do you, priests, demand that
they should be ashamed of it, when they have not
asked your permission? You are the immoral
ones.

Is it immoral that a woman should bear a child
to her beloved ? No ! Why do you cast her out,
then ? You are the immoral ones, the barbarians.
You will demand that the trees shall be ashamed
to blossom and to bear fruit.

The human being who is ashamed of his nature
is not worthy to be a human being. What
reasonable ground can you preachers of morality
find for shame which you, under the conditions
which you have decreed, connect with sexual love
and the act which causes the existence of man ?
You might with the same right subject eating
and drinking to your conditions and expose them
to condemnation. If you are ashamed of the sen-
timent and the act which caused your existence,
you ought also to be ashamed of your existence
itself, for which you sometimes have sufficient
reason.

There is no greater and more senseless bar-
barity than that " moral " passion for condemning
which makes the pregnancy of woman a disgrace
if nature has not been granted permission by

?6 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

priest or justice of the peace to increase the race.
The pregnant woman should under all conditions
be " sacred," should stand under the protection
and receive the sympathy of the entire com-
munity which she is about to increase with an at
all events innocent member. Instead of that, it is
made out a crime that she has found opportunity,
without the aid of the justice of the peace or
the priest, to present the community with a new
member, and the hatred and persecution of igno-
rance is incited against the unfortunate one, as if
the intention actually were to make a suicide or an
infanticide of her. Recently a poor woman hanged
herself in Switzerland because she believed her-
self pregnant and her neighbors shared this be-
lief and made her the target of their respectable
vituperations and "moral" persecutions. When
the suicide was examined, her pregnancy proved
to have been only imagined ! She died as a vic-
tim of nature-disdaining vulgarity, and her mur-
derers were the pious, moralizing clergy. The
corpses of unfortunate women which you take
from the water, the remains of murdered chil-
dren which you find in sewers, the bodies of
despairing mothers whom you drag to the gallows
— these are the witnesses of your pious humanity
that builds prisons instead of lying-in hospitals,
and that would have hell make foundling-houses
superfluous. In Paris foundlings are taken care
of as " enfant $ de la patrie /" in New York, for

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. TJ

instance, the " enfant s de la patrie" are deposited
in the gutters of the street. The rich seduce the
girls, the priests curse the seduced girls, and the
seduced girls murder the sharers of their poverty
and the proofs of their imaginary shame. This is
in three words the morality of our present hypo-
critical society in these matters.

When you have wedded your daughters to rich
roue's, you welcome their children with joy ; if
your family is increased by a poor lover, who is
not able to "marry," then you heap reproaches on
the mother. The reason for the disgrace which
you create does not lie therefore in the act to
which you try to attach it, but in the single miser-
able circumstance that you must support the
children of your daughters. But if this is the
reason of your anger, then why not have the
courage to call it by its right name, and do not com-
mit the hypocrisy of expressing a pecuniary con-
sideration in the form of a condemnation of human
nature in its most beautiful impulse. You will
then reach the conclusion that it is not love that
is to blame, but the unnatural conditions which
hinder thousands, yes, millions, from living out
their natural instincts in a moral relation.

How must a H£loi'se,who, although surrounded
by the piety of the Middle Ages, would rather be
the lover than the legal wife of Abelard — how must
she appear to you, coarse fellows, who judge love
only from the standpoint of priests, and mother

78 THE RIGHTS OE WOMEN

hood from that of the shopkeeper ! She was a
great woman, one of the greatest women of his-
tory ; and you, according to your ideas, you must
classify her with the " immoral," because you are
not human beings, but priests.

If you want to cultivate shame, then base it
upon the strictest ideas of true morality ; but do
not look for this morality in the domain of your
conventional stupidity, your inhuman unnatural-
ness, and your shameful hypocrisy.

It is not immoral if a man and a woman, even
"unmarried" give themselves up to true love ; but
it is immoral if an old roue" marries a young girl
whom he knowingly cannot make happy, merely
for her physical charms.

It is not immoral if a man and a woman, even
" unmarried," give themselves up to true love ; but
it is immoral if the man merely uses the woman
for the satisfaction of his lust, without giving
dignity to the relation by real affection or taking
his share of the responsibility in the fate of the
loving one.

It is not immoral if a woman unites herself with
the man whom she loves against the wish of an
other ; but it is immoral if she becomes the wife o
a man whom she does not love, because anothei
wishes it.*

* How far "morality" can go astray in such cases where
personal liberty and free inclination submit to a "higher will *
is shown among other things in the " New Helolse " by Rou.-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 79

It is not immoral to get tired of a legal husband
upon closer acquaintance and to conceive a new
love for another man ; but it is immoral to con-
tinue, or to be obliged to continue, the old rela-
tion notwithstanding this new love.

It is not immoral to consider "chastity" in
itself just as much of a stupidity as starvation in
itself ; but it is immoral to carry " unchastity " to
the point of excess.

It is not immoral to persuade a woman to yield
herself, but it is immoral to offer her nothing as
the prize of her devotion but a feigned love.

In short, it is immoral to disregard the equal
rights of the other sex ; to abuse it for selfish
ends ; to falsify or to confuse the ends of nature ;
to degrade the sexual relation simply to a means-
for frivolously satisfying the senses or for low
speculations ; to disfigure the beauty of sexual love
by priestly nonsense; to pollute true sentiment by
coarse hypocrisy. Be ashamed of these immorali-
ties and you will no longer need atiy other shame !

There is, indeed, another kind of shame, which
ought, however, not to bear this name, since no
moral flavor attaches to it. It is that delicate shy-
ness which the virgin feels when she is to step be-

seau. Her chief virtue consisted in the disgusting and unpoetic
immorality of marrying a man entirely indifferent to her from
filial " duty," and of generating children with him under the
very eyes of her lover, whom she sacrifices to " duty." Shame
on this " moral " prostitution! ^ „

80 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

yond the boundary of virginity, as well as that
feminine reserve which strives to hide or to guard
her charms. This " shame " is either a natural con-
sequence of an emotional affection upon entering a
new life, or it is the expression of an unconscious
policy in love that is chary with its charms in
order not to depreciate or to profane them. Or it
may also be the unconscious expression of a feel-
ing which tells a woman that nature has not given
her the initiative of love. Finally, it may be the
expression of modesty which fears that she can-
not come up to the high expectations which the
enthusiastic man has of the charms of his beloved.
This u shame," which has nothing to do with the
consciousness or the fear of seeing something im-
proper disclosed, is an ornament to every woman,
and its absence is a proof of dulness and coarse-
ness.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS, 8 1

MARRIAGE.

Is rnarriage a relation which is or can be im-
posed by the State, by religion, by the police, by
the clergy, by relatives, or by any other power ?

Everybody will answer : It is the union of a
man and a woman resulting from spontaneous af-
fection. Therefore only each particular couple
that enters into such a union carries the motive
and the aim of the union within itself, and no
power in the world has the right to control this
motive or to stipulate what the aim shall be.
Only liberty in entering into and liberty in dis-
solving marriage can secure its character, deter-
mine its moral nature, and guarantee the attain-
ment of its end.

The chief end of marriage can be expressed in
three words : Propagation, Love, Friendship.

We have seen in the chapter on Morality in
what respect man differs from the animal in the
gratification of his natural needs. This difference
refers not only to the gratification of the sexual
need, but also to its consequences : propagation.
The animal propagates unconsciously, and sepa-
rates itself from its young just as unconsciously
as soon as they are able to provide their own

82 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

food. And even this unconscious care emanates
chiefly only from the mother, while the male
generally concerns himself neither for the mother
nor the young after copulation. The well-known
passionate love of animals for their young is at
an end from the time when the latter no longer
need aid, and old and young no longer know each
other.

The egotism and coarse conception of men
would fain have transferred this mode of propa-
gation also to the human race. That would
mean in other words: we want to be animals in
this respect, not human beings. While the ani-
mal sees in the female only an instrument for
procreation, the woman is to the man only the
complement of his being, his second ego, in and
with whom he begins to live his complete life ;
while in the animal a merely temporary affection
secures the indispensable aid for the rearing of the
young, children are to men a desirable continua-
tion of their own personality through whom they
establish their continuity beyond death with the
infinite stream of humanity. And through this
ethical continuity and the ethical consequences of
sexual intermingling there arises between man
and woman, between father and mother, between
parents and children, that relation which we desig-
nate by the word family.

Thu? with regard to propagation, family life at
once makes an essential distinction between man

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 83

ctud the animal. To want to destroy the family
is either a great error or a great vulgarity. It is
founded in nature, and when viewed in the light
of its ethical import it lays the foundation of the
most beautiful, the truest, and the surest human
happiness. The animal has no family because it
has no reason ; reason cannot desire to destroy
the family, because it would thereby only re-estab-
lish crude nature, that is, destroy morality and,
with morality, itself.

But the more the importance of the family is
appreciated by society and by the individual, the
higher and nobler the conception of it is, the
more must its fundamental condition be recog-
nized as that liberty which alone admits of com-
plete harmony, of true attachment, of sincere
union between man and woman. Nothing must
be allowed to influence the choice except spon-
taneous affection ; nothing must stand in the way
of a separation where this affection, and with it
the desire of a union, is wanting. The family is
inconceivable without real marriage, marriage is
inconceivable without love, and love can no
longer be distinguished from prostitution when
the free bond of the union is vitiated by compul-
sion. If propagation, to return to this point, is
to have an ethical significance and ethical conse-
quences, it must not proceed on the plane of
bestial association, but just as little in false or
forced relationships Every child that springs

84 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

from a union which would have ceased had not
external considerations or binding fetters held it
together, transmits the curse of the misfortune
and of the immorality to the next generation.

As a second end of marriage, which we must
at the same time call its origin, I designate love.
I shall spare myself the trouble of combating
those philosophers who would deny the existence
of love. At the same time I do not content my-
self with conceiving of love only in its romantic
form, and I do not care to construct a corner-
stone of the moral order of things from an intox-
ication of the senses or of the imagination. I
shall let the happiness which accompanies this in-
toxication stand in all its beauty wherever it is
present ; but we must place its substance on a basis
of reason, and make a consciousness of the intox-
ication. This is accomplished by tracing love to
man's perfect consciousness of his sovereignty in
the world, of his worth and his liberty, and then,
moreover, to the true recognition of the advan-
tages of external and internal beauty which satisfy
not only a sensual but, at the same time, an ethical
and aesthetical need in the lovers. Lovers must
come to be to each other that Avhich men have
hitherto placed above the clouds by the words
"god" and "goddess;" yes, they must become
even more to each other, namely, the realized ideal
of their moral conceptions and of their sense of
beauty. If they learn to seek and to appreciate

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 85

each other in this sense, love will become a last-
ing enthusiasm, and the words of Schiller, which
unfortunately apply to most of our present rela-
tionships, will have become untrue :

With that sweetest holiday

Must the May of life depart ;

With the cestus loosed — away

Flies illusion from the heart.*
♦

On the contrary, the illusion will become a beau-
tiful truth. Every real love of noble, intelligent
people will only be confirmed by sexual union.
The so-called '• nuptial bed " is the grave of false,
but the ark of covenant of true, love.

The want of love always consists either in moral
degeneration or in a wrong choice. Let men be
educated for love, and leave to them the liberty
to annul a wrong choice by separation, and true
marriage will crowd out a thousand relationships
which now are nothing but institutions for the
perpetuation of misery and prostitution.

Love is called "blind." To what purpose?
Supposing it could be demonstrated that the pas-
sionate attachment of two people was an illusion
which augmented and beautified their respective
qualities, the happiness which they would mutu-
ally prepare for each other would not therefore

* Ach ! des Lebens schonste Feier
Endigt auch den Lebensmai ;
Mit dem Gurtel, mit dem Schleier
Reisst der schone Wahn entzwei.

86 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

be destroyed. But by their conception of each
other they at all events show their ability to
form a certain ideal ; and if in the course of their
acquaintance it becomes apparent that they have
not reached this ideal, their experience may serve
as a guide which will enable them to find it all
the surer in another relationship.

As for the rest, many an argument might be
brought forward against the blindness of love. I
should be much inclined to credit it with clear-
sightedness. The loving interest sharpens the
vision for the detection and appreciation of quali-
ties which the indifferent person would overlook
or fail to appreciate. Thus above all those are
blind who charge love with blindness, and it is
only necessary to view men from the standpoint
of love in order to secure to them the recognition
and appreciation of their qualities.

But the question will be raised : Will love, after
all these concessions are made to it, be sufficient
to fill out an entire life ? Can it, even if it out-
lasts the honeymoon and the time which might
suffice to test the possibility of an illusion, — can it
satisfy the heart so long that its value will not be
lost in the need for change which would finally
lead to an anarchy of the affections?

This question brings us to the third word with
which I designated the end and substance of mar-
riage— to friendship.

Of course I hold that love in marriage changes

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. $7

from a state of passionate attachment into a con-
dition of quiet friendship ; but at the same time,
I maintain that true friendship exists only in mar-
riage.

The question whether between persons of the
same sex real friendship is possible has never, so
far as I know, been met with a doubt. And yet
I am very much inclined to answer it with a down-
right no.

All sympathies and antipathies of men are
founded in egoism in the good sense. Self-inter-
est is the natural guide in all steps, and there is
no danger in acknowledging this when a correct,
general principle is added to this guide as its test,
that is, when the pursuit of self-interest is placed
under moral control.

The duration and value of a union between two
people depends entirely on whether these persons
are fitted to conform to their respective egoisms,
that is, to mutually satisfy their needs, be these
needs intellectual, emotional, or physical. But
now it is clear, and experience confirms it every
day, that two persons of the same sex, even if in
individual qualities they attract or agree with each
other, can yet never in the long-run have in all
things the same interests, but will sooner or later
in some case or other show themselves as compet-
itors. Individual examples to the contrary occur
only where exaggeration and exaltation sacrifice
the personal interests of the different persons to

88 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

an abstraction of friendship, or where circum-
stances keep both persons at a certain distance
from each other, so that the competition of the
respective interests finds no point of conflict. If a
conflict and an estrangement are to be avoided in
a constant living together, one person must so far
give up his independence that the preponderance
of the other changes into domineering guidance.
But if this is the case, the true conception of the
friendship which is to exist between persons of
the same sex is lost.

Among men it is now ambition, now partisan-
ship, now the friction q( character, now a differ-
ence in principles, etc.; among women it is gener-
ally competition in love, jealousy, vanity, etc.,
which causes'the rupture of friendships. (Exam-
ples of friendship among women are hardly ever
to be found except with old maids who have re-
signed all human impulses, especially sexual com-
petition.) But these points of collision disappear
entirely by the side of the all-conclusive fact that
persons of the same sex do not at all possess, and
cannot possess, the qualities which enable them to
satisfy each other entirely, to complement each
other entirely, and, I might say, to let the cogs of
their egoism work exactly into each other. The
man can never fill the place of a woman to the man,
the woman can never fill that of a man to the woman,
but the man can fill the place of a woman to the
woman, and the woman the place of a man to the

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 8$

man. The inadequacy of friendship among per-
sons of the same sex the Greeks have shown most
strikingly in their attempt to complete, as it were,
the friendships into which the abnormal taste of
the times had led the men by the unnatural intro-
duction of the feminine element of "love." Ac-
customed to look upon women as inferior beings,
but not able to withdraw themselves entirely from
the acknowledgment of the feminine element, they
transferred it, as it seems, partly to youths in or-
der to sanction its acknowledgment through the
male sex. And while thereby unconsciously de-
grading woman, they avenged her at the same
time in themselves, by their endeavor to complete,
to idealize themselves by the feminine element.

The two sexes are designed to complement each
other, to perfect the human being in each. This
completion is the bond of true friendship ; and if,
on the one hand, the writer is not entirely wrong
who says, " One man and one woman are togeth-
er equal to two angels, two women are together
equal to two devils ; " Rousseau, on the other hand,
hits the truth exactly when he says, " A man's best
friend is his wife." I admit that the psychological
interest and common ideal aims can bring about
a relationship between men which deserves the
name of friendship ; but, according to our views,
perfect friendship demands complete devotion,
complete confidence, and mutual indispensable-
ness, which exists as little among men as among

90 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

women, and is only conditioned by a difference of
sex.

Also with regard to the external development
of character the difference of the two sexes is very
well adapted to establish a relation of friendship.
While the man as the representative of strength
impresses the woman, the' clinging nature of
woman seems made for the purpose of subordi-
nating herself to the male predominance without
losing her personality or lapsing into servile depen-
dence. On the other hand, man will make conces-
sions to the weak woman which he would never
make to a rival in strength. Only man and woman
can unite a proper subordination with a just coor-
dination in a natural way.

But woman is not only clinging, she is also faith-
ful, sincere, and sacrificing. The woman grows
into the relation with her friend with her whole
soul ; and where the uncouth egoism or the polem-
ical nature of the man would allow a break to ap-
pear, the love of the woman knows at once how to
mend it. The woman is the uniting element in
the formation, and the conciliatory element in the
preservation, of the relationship. The woman is
not only a perfect friend, she even does not cease
to be one unless the man makes the friendship
altogether impossible. If I must bethink myself
whether I have ever had perfect friends among
men, I am on the other hand quite certain that I
have found perfect friends among women.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 9 1

Since we are here speaking of marriage, it is
self-evident that friendship can be understood
only as one of the forms or modifications of love.
It is love without the passion of love ; it is love
without sensuality ; it is benevolence, confidence,
and attachment ushered in and confirmed by sex-
ual devotion and union. It combines, therefore, I
might say, at the same time the greatest absence
of egoism with the satisfaction of egoism, and is
thus perfectly adapted to establish a relationship
for the whole life. It is not to be inferred from
this, however, that a true marriage necessarily can
only exist in a union for life.

Having established the three chief aims and re-
quirements of marriage, we have still to refute one
point that refers to a peculiar right which men
claim to possess over women — a right which, if
it did exist, would make every marriage impos-
sible. I mean the pretended right of sensual ex-
travagance.

We have seen the degeneracy of the male sex
with regard to love. Woman has remained the
vestal who has preserved the fire of love in its
purity, while man has smothered it in the smoke
of sensual passion. While man in general is
always sensually disposed, even without feeling
the least higher interest for the woman who serves
him, the passion of woman is generally awakened
only by love ; and giving herself up without at-
tachment is entirely foreign to the true and noble

92 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

woman. With her, the passion does not attach
merely to the sex as with man, but at the same
time to the person. Excellent women have with-
out reserve told me their thoughts on this point.
They admit the possibility that in an unguarded
moment even a stranger, by an impressive beauty
and manliness, could place the woman in a state
of sensual excitement, but that she would still be
far from yielding to this excitement even in such
a case, and that in any case the relation could not
be at an end for the woman and her wish fulfilled
by mere physical yielding. This was not a mere
matter of education, but had its foundation in the
nature of woman.

Woman is sensual when she loves, while man,
as a rule, loves only when he is sensual. The
question now is simply this : Is there an essential
difference of nature or not? Is there a peculiar
need for sensuality in man aside from love, and,
therefore, a peculiar right for him, or not ? Or can
it be demanded of him that he should, like woman,
restrain his sensuality within the limits of love f
There are points to be considered here upon which
a great deal depends, but on which no settled
views seem as yet to have been developed, mainly
for the reason that either hypocrisy or egotism
would not lay them open for. discussion. I, how-
ever, have made up my mind to discuss all human
Questions in a human manner. Only vulgarity

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 93

and a bad conscience can fear being led too far in
such a discussion.

The general opinion amounts to this, that the
man has greater sensual needs, especially a greater
need for change, therefore also a greater right to
satisfy it than the woman. I have even heard
intellectual men who were not by education es-
pecially disposed towards sensuality, and who in
every way distinguished themselves by moral
aspirations, express themselves to the effect that
in the society of the future man could not be re-
stricted to a single woman, but would have to be
granted the liberty of living with a certain num-
ber of women — who, however, need not live to-
gether— in a simultaneous marriage relation.

So the man is to be a sort of human rooster, as
it were, who keeps a court of human hens.

If women were hens, it is not at all to be doubt-
ed that the roosters would assemble in sufficient
numbers about them. But the first difficulty with
which we meet here is the opposition of the zvomen.
If we inquire among all women, not a single one
will be found who would be willing to share a be-
loved man with another woman, except she had
been deprived of her reason by a silly fanaticism,
as is the case with the Mormons. The Count of
Gleichen would in our time have to narrow down
his broad nuptial couch to one half its dimensions.
Only very superior and imposing manly personali-
ties, as for instance Goethe, have succeeded in

94 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

making several women at the same time partially
happy, or in silencing in them the opposition of
rivalry, which by no means is equivalent to assent.
Woman is guided by the proper feeling that a real
marriage relation can exist only between two per-
sons. And if the woman, in accordance with this
feeling, resents the proposal to share her lover with
other women, she only makes use of her right ; and
in formulating this right she will ask men this
question : Which one of you would be willing to be
required to share his beloved with other men ?

Whatever a man or a woman possesses of love,
confidence, and devotion can be entirely bestowed
upon one person. It is impossible to simultane-
ously love two men or two women truly. A man
can have twenty mistresses at the same time, but
not two wives. But woman has a right to be a
wife, she has a right to demand that everything
should be given her which she herself offers, and
it is to misunderstand her right, no less than the na-
ture of marriage, when one expects a woman to
be content to lie in wait, as it were, with her love,
till her lover has made the round among colleagues,
and her turn for a visit has come.

Woman does not ask for several men, but one
she wishes to possess wholly. Only degenerate
women, inured to immorality by education and
surroundings, or prompted by an abnormal physi-
cal constitution, can entertain relations with sev-
eral men at the same time, or even follow the foot-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 95

steps of a Messalina, of whom Juvenal says that
she was wont to return home from the haunts of
lust "worn out but not satisfied." If, on the
ground of their sensual capacity, men would estab-
lish a right to have "conjugal relations" with sev-
eral women at the same time, they have an oppor-
tunity to become convinced by Parisian Messalinas
that women could insist on the right to have fifty
husbands, where a man would ask but for five
wives.

But, on the other hand, they could be convinced
by the example of noble women who have given
themselves up to love in full freedom without re-
gard for the judgment of the world, that it is not
a need of the feminine sex to have several men at
their disposal at the same time. Ninon, George
Sand, and others have not been content with one
love relation, but they have never loved two men
at the same time ; *.*., they have never stood in
conjugal relations with two men at once. They
kept every relationship pure until it had outlived
itself, and then entered into a new one, i.e., into
a new marriage. And they would surely have
confined themselves to a single man, -had they
found one who had possessed the qualities that
could have interested such extraordinary women
and made them happy for life.

We can, therefore, consider it as an established
fact that the woman, just as she does not crave
several husbands at the same time, will also not

g6 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

tolerate a rival in the marriage relation. Could
it, therefore, be doubtful whether a man must re-
strict himself to one wife at a time, woman would
be the one to decide. It would be contrary to
reason to assume that the nature of man required
several women at the same time, while it was the
nature of woman, on the other hand, to treat the
removal of this need as a vital question. Where
there have been or still are nations among whom
the husband, beside his legal wife, kept concubines
(for instance among savages, the ancients, and
Mussulmen), there we find this abuse founded
upon the disqualification and degradation of
woman, who will submit to it only so long as she
has not attained to a consciousness of herself.
Such a degradation has the same origin as that of
the women of India, who are obliged to throw
themselves into the flames in honor of their dead
husbands. I come to the conclusion, therefore,
that the claims of men to variety are founded en-
tirely upon past conditions and past education,
and that woman will have to recall them within
the proper limits. The man who, on the plane of
our civilization, desires several wives at the same
time comes, therefore,

i) into opposition with the will of each one of
them, and can attain his end only through deceit
and concealment ;

2) he violates justice ;

3) he offends the dignity of woman ; and,

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 97

4) he destroys marriage, and with it the moral
element in the relation of the sexes.

How, then, secure marriage and morality? How
remove the objection of male desire, which under
present conditions is always striving to overstep
the boundaries of morality?

The attainment of this end cannot be hoped for,
after all that has hitherto been considered, with-
out fulfilling the following requirements:

1) Guarding youth from secret vices by careful
education, adequate occupation, and close atten-
tion, so that the lustful instinct may not be cul-
tivated abnormally early, and undermine the ca-
pacity for sexual love.

2) Early marriage of youths and maidens, in
order that the want of opportunity to satisfy the
awakened sexual needs may not drive them into
wrong ways. It is here to be observed that the
premature development of sexual desire is nothing
but the consequence of our bad education hith-
ertOj and that the young man has no sexual needs
to satisfy previous to his marriage. Thus he is,
on entering marriage, not yet addicted to licen-
tiousness, his first sexual gratification coincides
with his first love, and thus he is led back to the
plane of morality on which that portion of the
feminine sex which has not fallen a prey to pros-
titution has remained. The gratification of the
sexual instinct is thus wholly placed within the

98 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

marrtagt relation. But in order that it become
possible to uphold this moral barrier, we must

3) not restrict the liberty of marriage by tedious
formalities and impeding conditions. The agree-
ment of the lovers and a notice concerning their
union must suffice for the forming of marriage.
The priest does not make marriage, the law does
not make marriage, the parents do not make
marriage, the magistrate does not make marriage,
but love and the agreement of the lovers make it.
Let marriage, therefore, be made dependent on
nothing save the conditions for its existence.

4) The liberty which prevails in the contracting
of marriage must also prevail in the dissolution of
marriage. Whether the object of marriage has
been attained can only be decided by the judg-
ment of those who have contracted it. If they do
not feel satisfied, to attempt to preserve it by
force means to destroy it by force. By this force
the very thing would again be introduced which
is chiefly to be prevented, namely, dissipation
outside of marriage. The married do not exist for
the sake of marriage, but marriage exists for the
sake of the married. The bond must, therefore,
be severed when it has become a fetter. What
is the object of marriage ? As we have seen : pro-
pagation, love, friendship. And to this you want
to force us by making separation more difficult ?
Strange lunacy !

5) State education of the children. When pa-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 99

rents are fettered to the marriage relation longer
than perhaps during the first years, by the care
for the support and education of the children,
there arises, especially in disordered economic
conditions, either the danger that they will fulfil
their paternal duties at the price of marriage by
remaining together contrary to their inclinations,
or that, in case of a separation, the burden of sup-
porting the children will fall on one party only,
or, finally, that this support will turn out to the
disadvantage of the children. If the parents have
sufficient means to dispense with the assistance of
the State, they will of course, even without it, be
secured against the danger of sacrificing their love
or their liberty to their cares ; but most of them
are without means, and the State certainly loses
nothing if by bearing the cost of education it buys
of them the opportunity to rear moral and happy
citizens instead of immoral and unhappy ones. So
long, however, as the State has not reached the
point where, as a last resort, it secures an educa-
tion to all children, it is self-evident that with the
liberty to dissolve marriage ad libitum must re-
main the common obligation of the parents to
take upon themselves the education and support
of their children.

The objections and doubts which will be raised
against these requirements are easily to be fore-
seen, especially since, in judging of the prerequi-
sites of a future development of social condi

IOO THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

tions, the opponent is but too ready to take exist-
ing conditions as a foundation for his supposi-
tions. In the first place, a " moral " solicitude
will be -expressed that the liberty of forming or
dissolving a marriage relation at pleasure will in-
volve people in the danger of using marriage
merely as a means for variety in the satisfaction
of their desires. Unions will be made to-day
and unmade to-morrow, etc. Granted that such
a supposition could come true, we need only ask
ourselves the question whether the moral condi-
tion of society could thus become worse than it
now is. As if the present society could run any
sort of risk thereby ! Could men be brought to a
higher and more disgusting degree of moral cor-
ruption than the present secret prostitution has
reached, even if freedom of lust should be public-
ly proclaimed? Certainly not But let us take
another point of view Let us picture to ourselves
a society consisting throughout of cultured, nor-
mally constituted people who have been educated
for liberty, and who feel themselves secure in their
chief interests, and let us ask ourselves whether in
such a society a man would value less the joys of
a sincere relation with a beloved woman, and the
happiness of seeing the continuance of his exist-
ence secured, as it were, in his children, than the
Turkish satisfaction of sleeping with a different
concubine every night. And let us, moreover,
keep in mind that the women of the future are not

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. IOI

the women of the present, and let us ask ourselves
whether they, when they have become economic-
ally independent of men, will still consent to, and
find their happiness in, being merely the changing
concubines of modern Turks. Those married peo-
ple who are entirely suited to each other and are
happy together will certainly not separate for the
mere reason that they have full liberty to do so,
and those who are not happy together can by an
unrestricted change certainly not harm society as
much as they now do. Let us even consider the
possibility that a man might unite himself with a
different woman every year, and consider whether
it would be more immoral for him to have had a
dozen wives or several hundred mistresses during
his lifetime.

A further question by the doubters, who draw
their conclusion only from present conditions,
will be whether the liberty of changing the mar-
riage relation, and the support of the children
by the State, would not have to result in the de-
struction of the family.

The family is formed by the mutual attachment
of the married couple, and by their love for their
children. This attachment and this love are a
natural need, and satisfy an interest than which
there is none higher and greater. It is, therefore,
an entirely false supposition that parents who
really love each other could find it to their inter-

102. THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

est to dissolve the family ; but for those who do
not love each other the family has lost all value
and all moral import. It is, therefore, a service to
moral society to make dissolution possible to such
families. Moreover, the need of parents to have
their children constantly about them generally
exists only during the early years of the latter.
Finally, the admission of the children into public
institutions does not at all imply their separation
from the parents ; the intercourse between them
must rather always be left free to as large an ex-
tent as the purpose of the institution will permit.

It is self-evident that there ought not to exist
any compulsion for the parents to give their chil-
dren over to public institutions at a certain age;
the State is only to offer the possibility and tr e op-
portunity for it. But if that is done in the right
manner, it will appear that no compulsion is nec-
essary.

No reasonable person will imagine that he can
reach his ideal, whatever it may be. In all efforts
at reform, the correct principle must be discov-
ered and established as an ideal aim. The near-
est possible approach is then a matter of circum-
stances and of practical possibilities. It is not
to be expected, therefore, that the realization of
the above requirements will eliminate all immoral
elements from society. Neither can there be the
least idea of creating a new state of things in a

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. IO$

day, or of suddenly destroying the after-effects of
former conditions. It is sufficient if the estab-
lished principles are recognized as correct, gain
adherents, and, as far as it is possible, serve the
enlightened minds of both sexes even now as a
guide for their actions.

104 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

ADULTERY.

Adherents of the official and theological mo-
rality will feel in duty bound to grow indignant
over the claim that in reality there is no such
thing as adultery. They will believe that the
moral world, whose chief aim hitherto seems to
have been to create as many crimes as possible, in
order to be able to condemn as much as possible,
must go to ruin if it is deprived of one of its most
piquant Crimes. And nevertheless the world will
finally have to submit to this loss, and even come
to realize that in principle a more severe moral
conception is required for the destruction of a
piquant crime than for the retention of the same.

If there is to be a breach of marriage, the
breach must necessarily extend through that which
constitutes marriage, which is its essence, its con-
dition, its sum and substance. Marriage is not a
business contract, it is a union of hearts: and love
is the condition of this union. A breach of mar-
riage must, therefore, be a breach of love ; but love
does not break itself ; its breaking is, therefore,
equivalent to a want of love ; and since marriage
without love is no longer marriage, so-called adul-
tery can be nothing more than an actual proof
that marriage no longer exists.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 105

There can no more be a breach of marriage by
adultery than there can be a breach of night, a
breach of day, etc. When day dawns it is no
longer night ; and when night comes it is no longer
day. If one of the parties feels an inclination to
commit what is called adultery, then the marriage
is already broken, even without the completed act.
At that very moment marriage ceases to exist,
because love has ceased to exist ; because the love
that is required for marriage either never existed
or has been replaced by another.

Pious moralists will say that this is equivalent
to giving free rein to adultery under the pretext
of the dying out of the old and the awakening
of a new love. But then these pious people do
not know what love is. Love is no arbitrary
thing. He who loves will and can as little aban-
don his love for any purpose as he who does not
love can enforce a love for any purpose.

This is the very " moral " perversion of our
moral ideas that has until now made it possible to
bring in vogue and to maintain a style of marriage
without the one requisite of marriage, love. True
morality demands that a marriage which has ceased
to be a marriage intrinsically, and which is, there-
fore, nothing more than a relation of compulsion,
hypocrisy, and prostitution, should also cease to
be one extrinsically. The hypocrisy of the pious
moralists, however, still clings with all its might
to the external relation, even after the purpose,

106 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

the essence, and the contents have been lost and
the inner bond has been rent in twain, and if one
party withdraws from this compulsion in order to
avenge outraged liberty outside of marriage, and
to bring. to light the fruits of enforced hypocrisy,
this proof of a no longer existing marriage is
called adultery.

Adultery is said to be a breach of faith. But
what is faith ? It is nothing more than active love.
But if love is to be active, it must above all things
exist. So long as I love I cannot become " un-
faithful ;" and as soon as I become unfaithful I no
longer love. To assume fidelity as distinct from
love is indeed a contradiction in the premises.
Fidelity is love persisting in action and through
action. It is, therefore, at bottom not at all a
duty, but a frame of mind, or the necessary out
come of this frame of mind. Fidelity without
this frame of mind, i.e., merely physical or me-
chanical abstinence, cannot have the least moral
value with regard to the essence and aim of mar-
riage.

But it is again the men and the pious people who
have made the discovery that there is also fidelity
without love, without faithful sentiments, i.e., self-
denial which, for the sake of a foreign imaginary
aim, must sacrifice its feelings to a false relation-
ship. As we have seen above, man as the stronger
had accustomed him self to use and abuse, by wil-
ful change and in every manner, the degraded

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 107

weaker sex, in whom his coarse heart could not yet
find a lasting charm. Still his feeling must grad-
ually have brought him to reflect whether woman
had not really a right, and all the more a right, to
follow his example the oftener he set her that ex-
ample. Woman, however, made no use of this
right, because she continued ever to love him in
spite of his arbitrariness, and this undeserved fidel-
ity appeared to him so astonishing and difficult that
he saw in it an exceptional virtue. And since he
was an egotist and a despot, he came to claim this
fidelity which in the beginning had excited his
astonishment ; he came to demand fidelity of the
woman even whe 1 she no longer loved him, and
made a crime of unfaithfulness. We have also
seen that among all savage peoples there is such
a thing as adultery on the part of woman, but not
on the part of man. And even among civilized
nations the law makes an essential distinction.
Thus adultery on the part of woman is universally
a ground for divorce, but adultery on the part of
man generally only in such cases where the hus-
band has kept a eoncubine in the common dwell-
ing.

When a woman becomes unfaithful her love has
also ceased. No man will contest that. His own
love, however, he wishes to be considered as inde-
pendent of his fidelity, for he is as much a sophist
as a despot. Goethe CNQaforts one of his beloved
with the words :

108 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

Heart-felt love (!) unites us forever, and faithful (!)yearnings;
But desire (!) still craves the pleasures of change. (!)*

Indeed, " faithful love " by the side of " chang-
ing desires "! Interesting phenomenon ! In other
words that would be : The respectability of our
existing relationship, and some of your amiable
qualities, move me from time to time to come
back to you from my excursions into other fields;
if I again tire of you I renew my excursions,
i,e.y I take for myself full liberty to junket about
wherever I can find anything. You can be assured,
my dearest, that upon my excursions I never talk
the least about " love " to any other woman ; no,
indeed not. I speak to her only of "desire." You
will be convinced, my child, that my junketing
can be charged only to " desire," which you
must by no means ever mistake for "love."
My " love " belongs to you alone, my " desire "
also to others, which others are satisfied with the
mere "desire" without "love," which you of
course will not be able to understand, but which
is nevertheless a lie. You can see from this, my
child, how beautifully we men can reconcile " fidel-
ity " with " change " by separating love from fidel-
ity, and either make the beloved one believe that
her competitors are mere mistresses or convince
her that she herself is one likewise ! We, however,

* Herzliche Liebe verbindet uns stets und treues Verlangen,
Nur den Wechsel behielt still die Begierde sich vor.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. IO9

protest against the same liberty and science on
your part in the name of all the principles of
morality !

Goethe, to be sure, did not express this last sen-
tence in words; but neither this liberal friend of
women nor any other one would have declared
himself contented if his beloved had surprised him
with the news :

Heart-felt love unites us forever and faithful yearnings;
But desire still craves the pleasures of change.

Let us meet in advance an objection which will
be raised against the theory of adultery as here
set forth. On the basis of the old conceptions
it will be said that this theory would logically
protect and argue away every violation of duty.
But the very end to be sought is the release of
the essence and conditions of marriage from the
bonds of duty in which it has been chained, and to
place it unfettered upon the ground upon which it
thrives — upon the ground of spontaneous attach-
ment. The present moralists acknowledge mar-
riages in which the sense of duty takes the place
of attachment or makes it unnecessary ; a sense
of duty, namely, which is stimulated or dictated
by external considerations. But true liberty and
morality cannot acknowledge such marriages,
for they are thoroughly immoral. A duty can
never exist at the expense of ethical conceptions

HO THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

and ethical aims. But what is the aim of mar-
riage ? As we have seen : propagation, love,
friendship. And who will and can impose that as
a duty if our own free inclination does not prompt
us to it ? There are, indeed, duties in marriage, but
they do not belong here, because in a true mar-
riage they are recognized and practised spontane-
ously. With regard to adultery, they could at
most consist in the avoidance of a possible danger
into which at last every relationship may drift. To
rashly expose the affections to every danger, or to
wilfully put them to the test, would be to degrade
them beforehand. Who would throw the crystal
upon the pavement simply to see whether it would
break ?

If marriage is released from its present bonds
and humanity redeemed from the vice of hypo-
crisy, then will adultery gradually be lost sight of,
both as a conception and as a deed. Whoever is ca-
pable of or feels the desire to commit adultery will
simply dissolve the marriage ; whoever has occa-
sion to commit adultery has simply found another
person with whom he enters into a new marriage.
Thus adultery will become a change of marriage,
especially when the possibility of finding a person
who will serve as a mere tool for an adulterous
act can no longer be assumed after women have
become independent of men and no longer know
what it is to give themselves up to prostitu-
tion. For in order to assume the present condi-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. Ill

tion of adultery we must presuppose the present
condition of prostitution.

I can foresee that husbands will be frightened
at this theory. But I will give them a word of
advice. If you wish to keep your wives from
adultery, see to it that they can love you ; do not
charge it to them as a crime if they love you
no longer, and do not force them into hypocrisy
if they love some one else. Try to bind them
only in so far that they are to tell you openly
when another has gained their heart, and then
part from them in friendship as is becoming to
humane men, in order to let them enter, unhin-
dered, a new relationship which promises them
greater happiness. If they can be sure of this hu-
mane treatment and this liberty, then you can
also generally be sure that they will not deceive
you. But the man who wishes to hold the woman-
in the bonds of marriage, although she no longer
loves him, is both a fool and a barbarian, and
deserves that badge with which women are wont
to distinguish tyrannical husbands.

How much has adultery already been moralized
over by priests and disputed over by jurists ! And
what barbarities has it not called forth ! Among
almost all savages man has the right to kill the
adulterous woman without further preliminaries.
Among the ancient Egyptians the woman's nose
was cut off, because a woman " who incited to
forbidden joys had to be deprived of the most

112 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

beautiful ornament of a beautiful face." Her
seducer was punished with lashes, yet she was the
" charmer." Among the Hindoos the woman
was publicly torn to pieces by dogs, and the
seducer was fastened upon a red-hot iron bed-
stead and roasted alive. Among the Jews the
adulteress was stoned, but the adulterer was pun-
ished only when he had committed the act with a
married woman and had thus (by a violation of
" property") offended another man. According to
the laws of Solon, the Athenian could sell the
adulterous woman as a slave. The Romans per-
mitted the husband to kill both the wife surprised
in the act of adultery and, with her, the adulterer.
Mohammed granted the husband the right to in-
carcerate the sinful woman in an especial apart-
ment of his house " until either death released her
or God gave her a means of escape." Among the
old Teutons the woman, with hair cut off, and dis-
robed, was cast out of the house by her husband
and whipped through the town.

What a list of brutalities and barbarities ! And
what for ? For an imaginary crime against imag-
inary masters who called themselves husbands and
were nothing but despots and barbarians.

AND J HE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 113

DIVORCE.

The laws of a people on divorce are a sure
measure of the reasonableness and humanity of its
conceptions of marriage.

No nation known to me has reasonable divorce
laws. Through the French revolution reason pre-
vailed on this point for a time, in that it made
divorce depend on the will of the married couple ;
but it soon again succumbed to the old prejudices
and narrow-mindedness.

The free, common-sense conception of marriage,
and with it also of divorce, is everywhere still sup-
pressed by the theological conception of the rela-
tionship between man and woman. So-called re-
ligion and the ghostly " God " are the first enemies
of marital happiness. According to the theolog-
ical conception, taking its departure from super-
human consecration and superhuman will, marriage
is in itself a hallowed relationship, and this abstract
relation in itself, not the real happiness and inter-
est of those who constitute it, is the chief object.
Marriage, the formal relationship with the ''divine"
stamp, is to be upheld even if the married persons
perish in it ; marriage is to continue for life, even
after all the requirements which constitute its es-
sence have long ago disappeared. Marriage is to

114 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

make the married persons, not the married per-
sons marriage. Married people exist for the sake
of marriage, not marriage for the sake of mar-
ried people. Though, after becoming acquainted
and familiar with each other to a degree not per-
missible or possible before marriage, they should
tire of each other ; though they should hate and
loathe each other; though they should become as
disgusting to each other as horrible pictures —
they have once been married, they are called
husband and wife, they have become a com-
mon social firm, they have a " claim " upon each
other, they have once for all become I and you,
and must never again become I and I. To be sure,
nobody, not even the most bigoted theologian,
says that marriage is destined to be an institution
of unhappiness, and the marital chamber a chamber
of torture ; but if it has come to be so, it must re-
main so, because otherwise — marriage might be-
come what it ought to be, namely, a relationship
based on spontaneous affection, which is formed
without help, and, even without force, is not dis-
solved, just because it finds in this affection, in the
satisfaction of the mutual heart interests, the only
true, the only legitimate, and the only lasting
bond of union.

It is due to the theological, inhuman, misan-
thropical, barbaric conception of marriage that
the laws inflict punishment upon those married
persons who no longer respect a relationship

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 1 5

that has become impossible. The " punishment "
visited upon the married couple in their inability
to longer love each other is not sufficient ; for this
very punishment they must be punished. They
have entered into a relationship " for life," it is
said. They may have done so, but they did it
only in the belief that they would be happy with
each other as long as possible, perhaps until
death ; but after they have come to recognize
that they were mistaken ; when, under circum-
stances which could not have been estimated or
controlled before, they have come to know each
other from a new point of view, which excludes all
happiness and, therefore, the entire object of
marriage, they must, even when they separate
peacefully and with mutual understanding in order
to seek for happiness elsewhere, be seized by a
theological marriage-police and be chastised for
sinning against the holy marriage relation. This
is the logic of the theological conception.

The duration " for life " is the consequence of
a real marriage, a happy choice ; but to make it
into an obligatory requirement even for an unfor-
tunate choice is to condemn two people to life-
long misery for a momentary weakness, or an inno-
cent chance, or a one-sided guilt, by means of the
most senseless tyranny, simply in order to have
them retain the name of a married couple. Sex-
ual contact or a priestly " blessing " is to deprive
two people completely of their liberty, is to make

Il6 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

of them a mutual galley to which the one has
chained the other as his slave, is to be considered
as an act zvhich can never be corrected. This is
certainly logical ; for the infallible stupidity of the-
ology surely cannot be corrected.

Just as it is a truth which must never be lost
sight of that progress of society in one direction
can never be thought of by itself alone, so it is
also impossible to bring about a true married and
family life without a general revolution of social
ideas and conditions. This does not, however,
preclude those, who can in themselves make up
for or do without this general revolution from
demanding freedom from legal bonds, or from
anticipating it ; nor does it preclude the law from
even now being shaped with a view to the antici-
pated conditions of the future. I believe that
even on the basis of our present conditions no
danger would accrue to society if the law should
decree the following :

i) A marriage shall be dissolved when both par-
ties demand a dissolution, and

a) declare that their economical relations are
completely settled, which declaration shall absolve
them from all future obligations ;

b) documentarily testify that they have agreed
about the support and education of their children,
which agreement shall be mutually maintained
with legal assistance. Legal assistance shall be
rendered gratis.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 117

2) A marriage shall be dissolved when one party
against the will of the other, has three times, at
intervals of one month, demanded a dissolution.
In such cases the economical affairs shall be set-
tled legally, if it cannot be done by voluntary
agreement. The children shall be awarded to the
parents according to their sex, if not otherwise
voluntarily agreed. The obligation for the support
of the children shall, as a general thing, be placed
upon both parties in proportion to the property,
if the matter cannot be settled by a free under-
standing.

By such regulations the character of a compul-
sory institution might be taken from marriage,
and yet every consideration which would have to
be taken of present social conditions be allowed
for. And the levity which would be inclined
to make of marriage a relation of unscrupulous
frivolity would be met more effectively by the
prospect of the obligations agreed upon than by
present laws.

More senseless divorce laws than those of North
America cannot easily be found, — doubly sense-
less for the reason that the forming of marriage is
made so easy as to depend on a mere word. A
mere promise of marriage, given perhaps in a mo-
ment of rashness, of intoxication, etc., can compel
marriage ; but the dissolution of the marriage is
generally possible only when, after long, expensive,
and scandalous lawsuits, the one party has sue-

Il8 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

ceeded in proving against the other the charge of
— adultery. The hope for divorce, therefore, de-
pends solely on scandal.

A New York court, in a suit of this kind,
has just given a decision by which a marriage was
dissolved on account of the proven adultery of
the (seventeen-year-old) wife. The husband was
left free to marry again, " just as if the divorced
wife were dead ;" but the wife was debarred from a
new marriage " until the divorced man had really
died."

A more senseless, more immoral, more unnatu-
ral, and more unjust decision I have never heard
of ; but it is only an application of existing laws.

I will not stop to speak of the indirect induce-
ment that such a decision could become to the
condemned party to remove the arbitrary hin-
drance to marriage by criminal means.

Neither will I dwell on the fact that the di-
vorced woman has been condemned by the court
either to an unnatural and not-to-be-expected re-
nunciation, or to permanent prostitution and
shame.

Nor will I discuss the question whether a court
can deny one who has not been found guilty of a
criminal offence his or her natural or civil rights.

I will not even stop to consider the logic which
by the divorce destroys every bond, every connec-
tion between the divorced parties, and yet restores
this connection by making the woman through

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. II9

ner condemnation permanently dependent on the
man.

Neither will I investigate how a court comes to
treat a suit for divorce like a suit for punishment.

Likewise I will refrain from inquiring whether
the young seventeen-year-old wife was in every
way responsible in regard to morality — whether
she was not through education or circumstances
or the fault of another led to take a wrong step.

Nor will I ask whether, before the passing of a
sentence which grants a life-long oppressive satis-
faction to the offended husband, it ought not to
have been investigated and considered in how far
he had through hasty action on his part brought
about a union which very soon proved unsuitable
for both parties.

All these points I shall dispose of by merely in-
timating them in order to come to the chief point,
which is contained in the question : What sort of
a conception did the judges, or rather the law-
givers, have of marriage when they combined an
additional punishment with the dissolution of a
relationship that has been disastrous to both par-
ties? The " marriage " in question was an evil, a
torture, a misfortune to both parties, no matter
through whose fault. The thing to be done was,
therefore, to put an end to this unhappiness, to
dissolve a relationship which had already ceased
to be a marriage. To punish one party because
the marriage to him was no longer a marriage, is

120 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

to decree marital felicity and to make marital in-
felicity a transgression of this decree. It is plain
that the judges and law-givers proceeded only
from the theological and priestly conception de-
scribed above, which makes a spook of marriage,
and as such sanctifies it without regard to the peo-
ple for whom the relationship exists. Though the
marriage bond may have united two beings who are
to each other as water to fire, they must get along
with each other — thus the priest and the law-giver
decree ; and when the consequences of the im-
possibility to agree come to light, when the water
hisses over the edge and the fire sends its sparks
beyond the limits, then the judge rushes in be-
tween them with his club and punishes the water
for being with the fire, and the fire for being with
the water. The punishment, which consists in
the disappointment of the married couple, in their
grief, their discord, their unhappiness, and their
material disadvantages, does not seem to the
priest a sufficient revenge for an unfortunate
choice ; no, he must create still another punish-
ment, and see to it that the misfortune is pro-
longed as much as possible and is not forgotten
for a lifetime.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 121

IS MARRIAGE A CONTRACT?

Even among those who hold most liberal views
with regard to divorce, but few can free themselves
from the old conception that marriage is a con-
tract. A liberal American paper expresses this
idea in the following words :

" Marriage is a civil contract. It is not indisso-
luble, for the law has provided for divorce. They
decide only in extreme cases, which as a rule de-
cide themselves. The marriage contract, like all
other contracts, ought to be dissoluble with the
consent of the contracting parties. We go even
farther : it ought to be dissoluble on the mere ap-
plication of one of the two parties, for as soon as
it becomes oppressive for one it becomes ruinous
to both, and ought to cease at once."

If marriage were, as this paper says, a relation
of contract, that which constitutes the essence
of marriage would have to be created with it by
the contract, which nobody would maintain ; but
if it is only a. personal relationship, it requires, like
other personal relationships, for instance friend-
ship, neither an " application " for a divorce, nor
any other formal separation, not even an agree-
ment between the married parties, but both par-
ties are actually free at any moment to discon-
tinue the relationship.

122 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

This last is, indeed, the only correct principle
as far as the two married persons are concerned.
For marriage is nothing more nor less than a free
union of two persons who love each other and
who, just because they love each other, find in
this union the satisfaction of their emotional and
sexual needs. Without love, without harmony,
without mutual indispensability, no marriage is
possible ; with these, it needs not the protection
of the law, which is an offence, a humiliation to
it. A contract binds the contracting parties to
mutual obligations which conform to its aim and
are within the reach of possibility ; but no person
can put himself under an obligation to love, for
that is a matter of taste, the gratification of which
does not depend on the will of the person who
has thus bound himself. A man whom a woman
loves passionately to-day can have become an ob-
ject of disgust to her a year hence. Shall she
continue to love him acccording to contract, or
shall she sacrifice herself to the contract ? The
conception of a contract in marriage presupposes
the possibility of forcing a person to fulfil the
condition on which the life of marriage depends,
which is love. For no marriage is made by a
merely forced living together, by forced economic
communism without love ; otherwise the mere im-
prisonment together of two persons of different
sex would be a marriage.

Married people who no longer love each other, no

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 23

longer have anything personally to do with each
other, any more than other people who have no
personal relation to each other. It is as though
they had never known each other ; yes, as though
they had always hated each other. What reason-
able ground, therefore, can there still be to keep
them together, and what reasonable object can
there be in such bondage ?

To sanctify marriage, or to attempt to fetter it
by means of a contract, is to thoroughly miscon-
ceive its nature, and to attempt in a roundabout
way to force the very opposite of its aim. If
marriage were a contract, the marriage relation,
as already observed, would have to be the result
of the contract ; but the exact opposite is the
case : the marriage relation already exists through
love, before that which is called the contract is
created by the marriage ceremony, etc.

If married persons wish to enter a contract,
with regard to their economic relations for in-
stance, let them do so as persons ; as a married
couple they cannot do it. Two lovers, for in-
stance, who wish to live together, that is, to be
married, bind themselves by contract to divide
equally their common property in case of an
eventual separation. Such a contract has nothing
in the least to do with the real marriage; on the
contrary, it appertains to a time when the mar-
riage has ceased, and regulates in that case the
external affairs of the once-married couple. But

124 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

as long as the marriage continues, it has as little
efficacy as there is need for it ; for marriage is love
in action, and that presupposes complete harmony
in all dispositions, and complete community of all
interests.

That marriage has hitherto been considered as
a relation of contract indicates nothing but a
want of confidence in marriage, The conscious-
ness that under present perverse conditions true
marriages are a rarity dictated the equally per-
verse precautionary measure of putting marriage
into a strait-jacket, so that where love is want,
ing, its apparent result, the union, can at least be
insisted upon.

To form a marriage by contract appears to me
about as if two people bound themselves before a
notary and witnesses to be happy or to try to be.
We marry out of interest, out of inner need, as
one feels an interest or a necessity to eat, drink,
walk, or read books, etc.; and now comes this
topsy-turvy world and expects us to bind our-
selves by contract to eat when we are hungry, to
drink when we are thirsty, to take down our
Goethe when we want to read something beauti-
ful, to kiss when we feel an amorous inclination,
etc. Recently an intellectual woman wrote to
me : " Of all incomprehensible things, I know
none more incomprehensible than marrying."
But this woman is " eccentric," and has as little re-
spect for the statute-book as for the Bible. She

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 25

will not go to heaven for this reason, and she
has not yet found heaven on earth either — on ac-
count of this marrying.

But now we come to another point. It lies in
the simple question : Would the idea of " marry-
ing," and of " marriage contract," ever have come
up if women could look out for their own sub-
sistence, if they were economically independent
of men? Would the idea of "marrying" and of
"marriage contract" ever have come up if no
children resulted from marriage, or if the children
reared and educated themselves ?

I believe that after some reflection those ques-
tions will be universally answered in the negative.
It is the necessity incumbent on us in present con-
ditions to save women and children from helpless-
ness, from ruin, and not the nature of marriage,
that brought society, which did not wish to be
burdened with the care of women and children,
to change marriage into an obligatory relationship
controlled by law. And it is also this economic
consideration on the part of society which in-
vented the illegitimate procreation of children,
and has made the birth of a human being whose
germ has not been blessed by a priest or an offi-
cial a disgrace. Because a Heloise may chance
to be poor and her child may possibly need the
support of society, this society stamps the mother
a harlot, and clothes its niggardliness in the hypo-
critical robe of moral indignation at so much de-

126

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

pravity. If Heloise wishes to escape her fate, she
must change her love for Abelard into an article
of contract, and get the attestation of a priest that
she is no vagabond. Abelard, forthwith under*
police control, is now forced to care for " wife and'
child," and alarmed society can once more sleep*
quietly beside its strong-box.

This legal interference with the natural, purely
personal relationship of marriage is a very simple
consequence of the pernicious state of society,
which suppresses its women and casts out their
children, instead of making the former independ-
ent and educating the latter at the general ex-
pense.

I can very easily conceive of a state of society
— indeed, I cannot conceive of a better future
without a state of society in which the increase
of humanity through the birth of a healthy child,
sprung from free marriage, is considered not only
as no misfortune and no disgrace, but as a piece
of good fortune and an honor ; in which a free
sexual union controlled by no law and no police
will have crowded out all hypocrisy and all pros-
titution ; in which conduct is regulated by a sense
of beauty cultivated from childhood and by the
bond of true love, but not by an unnatural moral-
ity and forced relations ; in which the institutions
of the State are in duty bound to receive every
mother with her child if she stands alone or if she,
in union with a man, has not sufficient means for

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 127

support and education ; in which the State insti-
tutions, in the well-apprehended interest of society
itself, as model institutions of education and cul-
ture, are accessible to all alike, free of charge, etc.
Only in such a state of society true marriages,
which now are accidental exceptions, will be the
rule, and " divorce," which now causes so much
trouble in the world, will be an unknown thing.
In the absence of the hitherto prevailing consider-
ations of the "consequences," especially of the
economic embarrassments, complete liberty to look
for and find the true object of their affections will
make women incapable of still allowing themselves
to be dehumanized as prostitutes, either in rela-
tions of " contract " or in maisons de joie, and men,
in the companionship of free women, will look
back with disgust to the times when, by the aid
of money or force, they trod the dignity of half
the human race under their feet in order to un-
feelingly satisfy mere sensual lust in the arms of
an unfeeling being.

128 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

" HANGING A WOMAN."

(From " Der Pionier," July 29, 1855.)

In Troy, N. Y., a Mrs. Robinson, who has
poisoned her husband, has been sentenced to be
hanged on the third of August. Now the gov-
ernor is besieged from all sides with petitions for
pardon, because the feelings revolt at the thought
of having a woman hanged. What delicacy of
feeling in a country where hanging partly takes
the place of national holidays ! Would not the
hanging and dangling of a female prisoner, es-
pecially if she were pretty, afford a most piquant
excitement for the savage taste of the criminal
mob?

What real motive dictates this petition to the
governor? Is it American gallantry? Hardly,
for this is usually practised where something is to
be gained thereby, were it only the approval of
fashion. Is it the disgrace for the feminine sex
which is to witness one of its highly honored
members ending on the gallows? Possibly;
although at other times we are not so zealous in
warding off disgrace from the sex. But the chief
motive is presumably a natural aversion towards
hanging, which has come into consciousness and
reached such a degree of intensity that it at last

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 29

had to vent itself in petitions for pardon when
the spectacle of a feminine delinquent presented
itself. And since at the same time the conscious-
ness arose that this aversion had not made itself
felt on occasions of the hanging of men, its mani-
festation is now brought forward under the pre-
text that it is inhuman or unmanly to hang a
woman. If a woman had not sufficed to disgust
our republican gentlemen with hanging, a beauti-
ful maiden, or perhaps a child, would have been
required to at last universally awaken the con-
sciousness that capital punishment, especially
hanging, is a barbarity, nay, even a bestiality.
That this .recognition could be held in abeyance
until a woman became the means of bringing it to
light ; that the gallows adorned with a male corpse
could hitherto be considered as a show, or at least
as an interesting spectacle, and was advanced to
the dignity of a tragedy only at the thought of a
hanged female, proves only how vulgar and un-
republican our popular consciousness still is ; for
capital punishment, especially hanging, is as great
an anomaly in a republic as, for instance, torture
for the M religion of love." Perhaps Mrs. Robin-
son will have the honor of involuntarily having
given the impulse towards the abolition of capital
punishment in the chief State of the Union. To
be sure, it is no flattering testimony for our
worthy law-givers that it required the instruction of
a poison-mixer to teach them to become humane !

I30 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

But apart from this point, and assuming that
capital punishment were generally justifiable and
ought to be upheld, there is still another ground
for protest against the hanging of Mrs. Robinson.
This ground lies in the criminal irresponsibility of
women as against men. I do not want to make
the statement that everything is permissible for a
woman to do against a man, but I do want to
maintain what holds true for women as well as
for slaves, that the criminal can be held responsi-
ble only to such a degree as he is free. Therefore,
whoever wants bondage must be contented to
take crime into the bargain ; whoever wants the
right to punish crime must first concede liberty.

Strictly considered, no member of a political
community is responsible before the criminal
court, for the moral standard of every individual
is only a product of the general standard, so that
the responsibility really always falls back upon the
community. This reason alone already suffices
to stamp everything that we call punishment and
the right to punish as nonsense and barbarity.

But if this doubt is thrown in general upon the
responsibility of the individual, how much more
must this be the case where the ruling portion
takes away the responsibility from a class or a
sex by disenfranchisement, by limitation, or by
neglect ! Whoever rules is responsible, for who-
ever rules is free. But women are ruled, and who-
ever is ruled is not only not free, but is always

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 13I

the suffering party, and is therefore always thrown
back upon the revolution. Woman and the revo-
lution are the most natural confederates. Prob-
ably that is the reason why the revolution is
always represented as a woman. But ruling man
would make woman as well as the slave respon-
sible, although he will not grant them the condi-
tions which make responsibility possible, and thus
he punishes in them really himself, i.e., his own
wrongdoing. In how far the actions of the suffer-
ing party are a necessary reaction against oppres-
sion, justifiable acts of defence against inflicted
injustice, natural attempts at compensation for
rights withheld, a forcibly sought outlet for a
nature perverted by force, unavoidable outbreaks
of inclinations falsely directed by binding circum-
stances,— all this our present courts of justice
shrink from investigating, because such an investi-
gation would overthrow our entire barbaric justice,
together with its barbaric foundation. But what
the administration of justice neglects to do, the
critic, the publicist must at least strive to make
good.

Unbiassed justice must always be predisposed
to take the side of the weaker party, because in a
conflict of rights the presumption must generally
be that the weaker party has suffered a wrong or
has been incited to do a wrong. Women are al-
most always in that case. For all the wrong that
is done by women the men as a rule ought to bear

132 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

the blame, be it directly on account of their treat-
ment or indirectly through their education of, and
the position they impose upon, women. I am not
acquainted with Mrs. Robinson's history, and do
not remember the proceedings concerning the cir-
cumstances and motive of her deed. But so
much I do know, that a woman is not by nature
designed for a criminal, and that her heart must
be wounded or hardened by very peculiar induce-
ments or influences if she can resolve to com-
mit a murder. When Mrs. Baker in St. Louis
shot the libertine Hoffmann, all the world was
indignant at this deed, and the murderess was
looked upon as a monster. I at once declared
the condemnation of the murderess by public
opinion as premature, because only very excep-
tional (then still unknown) grievances could bring
a woman to do such a deed. Later it was brought
out that this Hoffmann, who had stood in intimate
relations with her, had not only exposed her on
this account to others, but had also abused her
confidence by transmitting to her a loathsome dis-
ease

When the men have become so depraved that
they must stop to think to which species of beast
they belong, it is always the woman who still
represents the human species and who still up-
holds human feelings. When the father has be-
come a beast, the mother saves him again by the
birth of a human being.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS, 1 33

I do not want to use the moral expression that
the woman is " better " than the man, but she
certainly is more humanely organized, and in the
retirement to which she is condemned she is less
exposed to the hardening and demoralizing influ-
ences of the vulgar atmosphere in which the male
sex at present still disports itself. A crime com-
mitted by a woman will, therefore, generally have
more cogent and deeper motives than the same
crime committed by a man. How often we hear
in this country of men who have murdered their
wives ; and how rare is the opposite case ! But
who is there to maintain that men have to suffer
more at the hands of the women than the women
at the hands of the men ? This juxtaposition
alone proves the weaker disposition of the fem-
inine nature towards criminal deeds ; consequently
the necessity of applying a different standard in
the judging or condemning of a Mrs. Robinson
than of a Mr. Whiskeyson or of any wife-murderer
by whatsoever name he may be called. A husband
may perhaps slay his wife for some pat rejoinder ;
the wife poisons her husband only after her feel-
ings, her love, her pride, tortured perhaps through
all grades of despair, has killed all womanliness
within her, and has left nothing of it except the
feeling of revenge.

If I had to present a petition to Governor Clark,
I should above all things, as my motive for so
doing, accompany it by an elucidation of the na-

134 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

ture and social position of woman. But I should
then also not fail to discuss the relation that
obtains between present marriage laws and the
crimes of married people. I am convinced that
the marriage laws commit more crimes than pas-
sion. That a dependent woman, in the power of
a hated man, should sacrifice her life with all its
desires, hopes, and needs to a senseless law is a
requirement which must indeed be called an in-
direct incitement to murder. If Mrs. Robinson
should be hanged, it is probably for the law-givers
and the priests that she would die.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 135

RELIGION.

What has been said above of marriage and
divorce will be a plain hint to thinking women as
to the importance of liberation from the bonds
of religious belief. But this point is too impor-
tant, and the questions attaching to it are too
interesting, for me not to devote a separate
chapter to it.

It is undeniable that woman is inferior to man
ih the vigor and logic of her thought as well as
of her will. It is, therefore, quite apart from the
greater lack of opportunity for intellectual devel-
opment, generally much harder for her than for
man to form for herself an intelligent view of a
liberal philosophy which has done away with the
teachings of religious belief. On the other hand,
woman is emotionally receptive and has an active
imagination, and is, therefore, more accessible to
the seductive or imposing words of the pious than
man. Moreover, her position and her sufferings
supply ample need for comfort, which, as is well
known, only faith, " the church," is able to give.

Thus it can be explained that it must be more
difficult to cure women than men from the relig-
ious malady. Weak woman is still everywhere
the prey of the priests where men have already

136 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

shaken off the yoke, and assuredly those black-
coated gentlemen would entirely emigrate from
many a country if suddenly there were no more
women.

But the more difficult it may be for woman to
withdraw herself from the influence of the priests
and from those teachings which afford the priests
their bread and butter, the more necessary this
emancipation has become for her. It would lead
me too far in this place if I should attempt to
revolutionize the religious world of the women by
purely rational conceptions of the supernatural
and superhuman things by which, in the name of
religion, their mind is biassed and intimidated.
This has been done on another occasion. (See
" Six Letters to a Pious Man.") It must and will
become clear to the women that they above all
are interested in the recognition of pure human-
ity, of which they par excellence are the most
beautiful representatives, but that there can be
no thought of this recognition as long as the
human being and its happiness is sacrificed to the
fictitious objects of a nebulous religious world
and despotic authorities. Moreover, the religions,
made by men, are all designed to relegate woman
to a subordinate position, who, in order to find her
lot endurable, must attribute it to a "God."
This " God " is nothing more than an invisible
overseer of women for the benefit of the men,
who hold them as slaves. For a joke, the women

- AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 37

ought to give him the companionship of a god-
dess, whose duty it should be to control him.
She might be called Mrs. God.

Let no woman fear to lose her " moral hold "
after throwing off the bondage of religion. I have
known women who have freed themselves from
everything that is known as belief through their
own reason, and again others who have been
brought up without anything of what is generally
called religion. They are more moral, more
humane, more wholesome, fresher, and more lov-
able than all those who have allowed their souls
to be adulterated by the morbid views of a re-
ligious teaching which is inimical to nature. In
the woman the true and the right is already pres-
ent, crystallized as it were ; she only needs to pro-
tect herself from harmful influences, she needs
only the courage to follow her natural inclinations,
and she can be sure that she will not miss her
destination and will not go astray on the road of
her purely human mission. What often becomes
clear to the man only after long reflection, some-
times flashes up in the woman at once. The vigor
and logic of thought are in her replaced by more
direct and more correct operations of the feelings
and a sort of mental sight. But where a female
nature has once attained the strength to translate
the language of the feelings into the language of
thought, she is capable of surprising the most
daring philosopher. I call attention to George

13$ THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

Sand, whose ideas on the emancipation of woman
and whose psychological expositions of the most
beautiful sides of ennobled humanity shame and
astonish us men.

There is nothing more pitiable than the fact
that the greater part of the sex that preeminently
represents beauty and joy pines away in the bond-
age of disagreeable and joyless powers. As spring
beside winter, so does this dark, odious, dehuman-
ized priesthood stand beside the joyous, poetic,
humane Grecian world, whose goddess was beauty
and whose religion was joy. A second Greece
will one day arise, an ennobled Greece, which will
expiate the sins of the old by a complete recogni-
tion of the feminine sex. A second, revised edition
of Greece designates the stage towards the attain-
ment of which the entire aspirations of our present
development must be directed.

It requires a great deal to take from man in
general the religious need (I am not at all speak-
ing of the aesthetic need) to embody his thoughts,
desires, hopes, and ideals in pictures, or to wor-
ship them in symbols. It is, therefore, possible
that the age of complete mental liberty will be
bridged over by a period of philosophic-artistic
romanticism ; by a sort of new mythology which
will represent the results of our historical develop-
ment and of the moral ideals in works of art, and
make them the objects of a new cult. If the ob-
jects of this cult only are the right ones, then it

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 39

will beautify life without impeding development.
It will especially afford opportunities to draw art
into the foreground and lead it towards its des-
tination, which is: the enriching, beautifying, and
ennobling of public life. Architecture as well as
sculpture, painting as well as music, eloquence as
well as poetry, will in the future actually be
placed, and that, forsooth, in the sense of the high-
est end of art, in the service of the collectivity,
the State, the people ; the craving of men for ele-
vation above the every-day affairs of life will be
satisfied through art, and the churches will be
changed into temples of art or into theatres. Is
it not wonderful that our church-goers, where the
want of reason and humanity does not stagger
them, are not repulsed at least by the want of
poetry and taste? In the simple garden of the
Tuileries at Paris, with its statues and promenades,
more religion is to be found than in Notre Dame
and all the other churches of the metropolis.
But what is the garden of the Tuileries in com-
parison to public resorts which have been pur-
posely created from the desire and the idea to
satisfy the ennobled sense of the people for the
forms of beauty and the embodiment of thought?
An entirely new world is here opened up to
man, and to the statesman who has an eye for
more than the things of mere vulgar use. On the
other hand, he will be filled with anger and dis-
gust if he must daily be a witness of the way in

140 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

which the rich means of society are squandered
on nonsensical, absurd, and vulgar institutions,
while they could so easily be employed for cre-
ations which even by their mere external form
would elevate the sense of the people, would
ennoble its taste, and give its ideas ethical tone.
The mere visit to a beautifully located, tastefully
arranged promenade has a more ennobling in-
fluence upon the coarsest of men than a visit to the
most beautiful church; lingering in a beautifully
equipped temple of art does more for the moral
nature than all temples of "God;" the construc-
tion of a single Greek theatre would be more im-
portant for civilization than a thousand institutions
of " edification."

Space does not permit me to develop my ideas
on this rich theme more minutely. I will only
call attention to the fact that the state of civiliza-
tion, or the capacity for civilization, of a people
or a single individual can surely be estimated best
according to the degree of their susceptibility to
the ideas of the democratic world of bemity, an ex-
pression by which I mean to comprise everything
pertaining to this subject. France, Italy, and
Germany are foremost in this respect. In pro-
portion to its means, England is the most back-
ward ; and if London did not at least have its
Westminster Abbey and its excellent parks, ex-
cellent, to be sure, more on account of their size
than their arrangement, it would be completely

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. I41

submerged in shopocracy and priest rule. As far
as America is concerned, we cannot make any
demands without considering the newness of the
life here; but even in spite of this consideration,
one can easily feel discouraged and repelled by
the preponderance of the spirit of ignorance and
materialism throughout public life. And yet
American development is perhaps not too far
removed from the need of the noble man. The
influx of European intellect and the headlong
speed of the materialistic scramble will perhaps
soon create an opposite tendency which will
thrive all the better the fewer the impediments
the State institutions will put in its way.

Let us, therefore, also hope for a Greek future
in America. But as regards the women now, let
them, in view of the coming beautiful age of an
ennobled Greece, manifest their taste meanwhile
in a passive way by learning to do without the
confessional and prayers, without nunneries and
calvaries. At the same time, let them improve
whatever other opportunities present themselves
daily, to the end of removing the priesthood and
excluding its influence. I will mention only one
thing. The Catholic " Church " regards only
those marriages as valid that have received her
" blessing ;" she does not recognize divorce, and
does not permit the remarriage of divorced per-
sons. It is reasonable that a power bent at all
hazards on subjugating the spirit should attempt

142 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

to make the satisfaction of human needs depend-
ent on its permission or conditions, in order to
become in this way the mistress of the entire man,
and to remind him every moment of his depend-
ence. The Catholic " Church " has, therefore, also
introduced a great number of fast-days, etc., in
order to rule over man even in the matter of eat-
ing and drinking. And how should she have for-
gotten to rule over him in the matter of sexual
love ! But she exercises the most exquisite
cruelty of authority by the prohibition which
makes it impossible for divorced people to marry
again. This prohibition means in other words :
" The more unhappy people feel, the more they
need our consolation ; the more unhappy mar-
riages are, the more occasion have we to intrude
into family life, and especially to take advantage
of the helpless women. We are the physicians
who make the cure of diseases a crime in order to
secure the longest possible control of the patients.
We must, therefore, seek to prevent the dissolu.
tion of marriages ; to that end we refuse to recog.
nize divorce ; and in order to erect another barrier
against the temptation to secure one nevertheless
against our will in a merely legal way, we make it
an impossibility or a crime to marry again for
those who are narrow enough to regard no mar-
riage as valid without the blessing of the priest."
It is in the power of women wherever civil mar-
riage obtains to upset the humane calculation of

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 143

the priests. Let them content themselves with
civil marriage, and after a possible divorce — do
the same thing. No sensible woman ought any-
longer to consent to the self-degradation of permit-
ting the desecrating hand of a priest to " bless "
her love. Shame ! These pestilent propagators of
ignorance and disgust ! Every bride must cast a
doubt on her taste and her loveliness, if she can
consent to let a priest bless, i.e., desecrate, her af-
fection.

I call the attention of women to still another
point. I maintain that piety, faith, in brief the
occupation with the other world, that is, with a
world and with beings that have no existence, is
just as pernicious to men's love towards women
as the veneration of a ruler makes impossible all
true relations among citizens. Whatever a man
sends out to an imaginary being beyond the
clouds in the shape of feeling, fancy, enthusi-
asm, " love," he withdraws from the real beings
here who exist before his eyes, who associate with
him, and to whom he ought to give his whole
heart and mind. But if man will take what he
has hitherto wasted on the skies back to the earth,
into life, into mankind, then first he will become
man in reality and learn to make of his fellow-men
what they can and ought to be. Woman becomes
his " God," and love his " heaven," and mankind his
u immortality." Do not smile, ladies, but regard
it as in sober earnest when I say to you : only

144 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

the unbeliever is capable cf truly loving a woman,
and piety exists forever only at the expense of
true humanity.

But to return to our Greek ideal. Ancient
Greek life was simple, natural ; the Greek life of
the future, as the outgrowth of the entire preced-
ing history, will for this reason also prove infi-
nitely more varied, more conscious, and nobler.
Womankind also must, therefore, be thought of
quite differently from what we see in the figures
of Greek women, which are indeed noble and classi-
cally simple, but for this very reason also some-
what monotonous and inflexible. Hitherto we
have sought for ideals, in the representations of
the plastic arts, especially among the ancient
Greeks. I am of the opinion that this has been
unjust towards a later development, and has too
much disregarded the laws of this development.
Who doubts that historical life is progressive in-
stead of retrogressive in all directions ? And
why, even if classic Greece in its specific combi-
nation could not repeat itself as a whole, should
not individual elements be found in the entire
rich field of history which, if a later age should
again construct of them a whole, must produce a
richer and nobler life than that of the Greeks has
been ? (We do not even mention here the polit-
ical anomalies and inhumanities of the Greeks.)
It can hardly be contested that we are more ad-
vanced than the Greeks, not only in the sciences,

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 45

but also in art. But we are not only in advance
of them in the wealth of our world of conceptions,
of knowledge, of. ideas, of means, but also in more
beautiful human ideals. It is that which is gen-
erally overlooked in adhering to our stereotyped
school education and imitation. Not only in
intellectual and spiritual but also in a physical
respect our age can show more beautiful human
beings than the Greek. The intermingling of the
nations, from which the Greeks were still very
much excluded, and which, besides, could only
take place very gradually, is a means for the per-
fection not only of the intellectual but also of the
physical man.

I have had opportunity to make manifold ob-
servations among both sexes of the most diverse
nations. The most beautiful women — in order
to speak of these — I have found in America
and England, at least in so far as concerns color
and contour of face. Rut what is generally
wanting to those finely cast although sometimes
somewhat stereotyped features is the soul. They
are, in spite of their purity, too sharp, without
softness, intellectual penetration, plasticity, and
poetry. They look at us, as it were, like cold
crystallizations of beauty, in which there is no ac-
tive ferment of passion, or of feeling, or of imag-
ination ; in short, no deep soul-life. This beautiful
dough of human development is generally desti-
tute of the real yeast of feeling and soul. That

146 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

is not only due to the state of culture but, at the
same time, to the national mixture. As far as
form is concerned, the English women, even
when a small French foot might entitle one to
the best conclusions, are frequently deformed by
a most conspicuous breadth of waist. The mix-
ture in America, however much it still betrays
the English type, has already produced much
more perfect forms than in England. The Eng-
lish length of limb, which is so apparent in both
men and women, also has already partly been lost.
In London a lady told me : " The Englishwomen
must be admired, on the balcony, the French on
the street." She was not enough of a physiolo-
gist to make clear the truth of her assertion by
describing the forms. The American women
seem to have acquired some French attributes ;
perhaps they are only wanting some German ones
in order to complete the transition of the femi-
nine world into a new Greek era.

Ideals of beauty cannot very well be native to
those nations which bear too much of a national
stamp in their external appearance. The ideal
body as well as the ideal mind must be cosmopol-
itan, and they are to be found in Germany and
France.

I believe that according to character as well as
physique the French and the Germans, i.e., French
men and German women, or German men and
French women, are above all destined to estab-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. \tf

lish by intermingling the new generation of a
nobler race on European soil. French spirit and
German character, German intellect and French
vivacity ; French fire and German strength, Ger-
man feeling and French grace ; French sense and
German sentiment, German thoughts and French
impulses ; — those are the elements whose union
would necessarily constitute the ideal of true hu-
manity, and would correspond with each other as
the blue-eyed and the brown-eyed races corre-
spond physically.

The intermingling of the nations is so important
a condition of development that without it we
may expect actual stagnation. In those peoples
which are most completely shut off from the in-
tercourse of the nations civilization is stagnant
like a swamp, and only the lower spheres of de-
velopment are active. One need only call to
mind China, Spain, partly also insular England,
especially Ireland. Italy as well as Greece for a
long time seemed to be doomed to a similar fate.
Perhaps the Austrian admixture was destined to
revivify the noble Italian blood to such an ex-
tent that it was able to pour itself in new fer-
mentation into the stream of human development,
and thus subjugation had also in this respect to
become a means of progress. It seems, more-
over, that the mixture-ferments, which start the
development of a people, as for instance in Italy
and Greece, outlive themselves after a certain time,

I48 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

or lose their vital force, and that then a resus-
citation must first take place before develop-
ment can thrive anew. I shall not enlarge upon
these suggestions. They lead to one of the most
interesting speculations concerning the develop-
ment of many-sided humanity.

I recommend it in passing to the earnest con-
sideration of our artists who cannot yet break
loose from the old-fogyism of the schools, which
leads them again and again to make their studies,
instead of among living men, only among dead
statues, — instead of in the moving present, only
in immobile antiquity. Two thousand years after
Christ they will find quite different human ideals
than two hundred years before the crucifixion.

But the women, I hope, will not resent it if I
also direct their attention to the meeting and in-
termingling of the nations, which is the quietly
effective means for the universal ennobling of hu-
manity, but which can take place only in a con-
dition of complete liberty where every obstacle
of mutual prejudice, mutual embarrassment, and
mutual egotism will be torn down. The graces of
the arts and the genii of humanity can only take
up their abode where a free spirit in free intercourse
has domesticated the best and the most beautiful
which human development has produced in the
course of the centuries.

But the philistines will ask why this chapter
bears the heading " Religion."

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. I49

THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF
WOMAN.

If we are to speak of freedom, and especially of
free marriage, we must above all things establish
the independence of the individual, and especially
the mutual independence of husband and wife.

The great question of the times, to secure an
existence to every one and thus to protect him,
on the one side, from material want and, on the
other side, to liberate him from conditions in which
material dependence makes him a mere tool of
others — this great question concerns no one more
closely than the women. Let it but be borne in
mind what has been said above of prostitution.
Perhaps seven-eighths of the feminine sex are de-
pendent, or degraded, or enslaved, or prostituted
because — they cannot emancipate themselves eco-
nomically from the men.

If the solution of the problem of existence, so
far as it concerns the male sex, is already difficult
enough, in the interests of the women it is still
more difficult to solve. The practical course of
events brings it about that the men, since they are
the makers of history, want their turn to come
first and make it come first ; moreover, the men

ISO THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

are equipped for the work of life, while the women
have hitherto had to attach their existence chiefly
to that of the men, and are in general not brought
up in a way to be able at once to stand on their
own feet. Most women, therefore, are stih in
want of one more requisite than the men, namely,
the education for work.

But let us make it clear to ourselves that one
step in progress always presupposes another. If
we, therefore, have to recognize the inability of
most women under the present circumstances to
gain for themselves an independent existence, it
does not follow from this that the same conditions
will hold for the future. Let us make this clear
by laying down several points.

i) The State of the future secures to women as
well as to men, free of charge, an all-sided oppor-
tunity for the development of their native abilities.

2) Education in the future will be considerably
facilitated and more equalized between the two
sexes, since the sciences become ever more simpli-
fied, popularized, and their results made more ac-
cessible to every one, while at present their secrets
are still hidden behind the learned barricades of
the scholars' caste. In the future many a lay per-
son will know more than many a professor knows
now, for the chaff of unnecessary knowledge will
be winnowed away, and true knowledge will reduce
everything to the pure kernel. If we consider
hereby that women have the same or greater abil-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 151

ity than men for the learning and executing of a
thousand things, but have hitherto only been kept
from them by education, we must imagine their
circle of activity in the future to be much greater
than it has so far been.

3) In a more humane development of the State
ever more positions will be opened up in which
only the woman will find a place, while in the
present state of public affairs men are employed
almost exclusively. Let us only think of the future
schools of all sorts, the institutions of art, of
amusement, the workhouses, hospitals, the institu-
tions for the reception of the " enfants de la
patrie " (as they very beautifully call the found-
lings in Paris), the institutions for the reformation
of prostitutes, etc., and we shall find a thousand
opportunities not only for the maintenance but for
the noble occupation of women of which no one
has so far thought.

4) The State will continually gain more means
to secure beforehand the satisfaction of the prin-
cipal needs of its citizens through public institu-
tions, and thus to facilitate or to simplify the
individual's care for his existence, and therefore
will be able to furnish not only the entire public
education free of cost, but also the public amuse-
ments and perhaps even the dwellings (at least for
those without means). State help will be extend-
ed all the more to women, especially the more the
principle comes to be recognized that the disabled

152 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

must be maintained by the collectivity, and that
those without work must be furnished with ade-
quate occupation by the State.

These are some of the suppositions from which
we must reason in order to judge the future eco-
nomic position of women ; and if one considers that
the woman requires much less for her maintenance
than the man, a great part of the difficulty of self-
support will be equalized by her fewer wants.

But let this difficulty, to enable the woman to
establish an independent existence, be ever so
great, it suffices that, as a human being and as a
member of the body social, she has the same right
to such an existence as the man. The ways and
means to solve this problem o*f existence the State
of the future will no doubt find when it has created
those liberties and those truly democratic institu-
tions which permit all legitimate interests to assert
themselves, and allow of the unhindered disposition
of public means. But when that problem is once
solved, woman will gain quite a different esteem
and position. She will no longer be forced to sell
her body as a tool for lust ; she will no longer be
under the necessity of accepting the next best op-
portunity to get married, but will be able to make
her choice according to her true inclination ; there
will be greater opportunity for this than hitherto,
for now the impossibility to maintain a family
excludes many a man from marriage who could
otherwise make a woman happy (the standing

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS, I $3

armies alone, which are to be abolished in the
future, condemn thousands to a single life and to
prostitution who would in a rational State become
useful members of society and good husbands);
she will be able to maintain her independence in
marriage, and will not submit to unworthy treat-
ment from fear of being without the means of sub-
sistence after a dissolution of the relationship; she
will, in one word, be able as a human being to
secure her liberty, as a citizen her right, as a wife
her dignity, and as a woman her happiness.

But the economic independence of woman, as
well as her ethical appreciation, can only be at-
tained after the bad conditions of the present are
completely changed, and the edifice of the true
state has been erected on the ruins of these bad
conditions. Therefore the women must join the
great public conspiracy, which, where reform is
sufficient, will strive to better the condition of
humanity by reform and, where revolution is
necessary, by revolution. And since a just regula-
tion of the economic conditions is thinkable only
through a true democracy in which the majority
of the suffering can take their interests into their
own hands, woman's interests from the start
assign her a place in the truly democratic party ;
and since the true democracy will hardly be estab-
lished anywhere without revolutionary attacks on
power and money, woman is from the start as-
signed to the revolutionary party.

154 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

LIBERTY AND THE REVOLUTION THE
ALLIES OF WOMEN.

In the same degree that the true liberty of men
is great and well developed the position of women
naturally becomes freer and more favorable.
Now even if her legal position is as yet nowhere
equal to that of the male sex, because complete
liberty has as yet nowhere become a reality, it
still is important to recognize by illustrations the
differences in the shaping of the destinies of
women as the results of the greater or lesser
liberties of a people.

Let us for this purpose contrast North Ameri-
ca with monarchical countries. In the greater
part of Europe the legal enactments which deter-
mine the legal position of women are sometimes
the outcome of manifest barbarity. The Code
Napoleon, for instance, surrenders women entirely
to the lusts of men by prohibiting the establish-
ment of the paternity of an illegitimate child.*
But the man has full power over the woman, as he
can compel her with the help of the police to remain
in his house, while the opposite is not the case.

* Code Napoleon, art. 340: La recherche de la paternite
est interdite. — Translator.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 155

The man is the master and guardian over the
wife and her children. The Prussian government,
forced by the fruits of its military system, stands
by illegimate children in so far as to permit suits
for alimony, etc.; but to make up for this it grants
the husband the right by means of " mild chas-
tisement " to remind his wife of the fact that she
is at bottom nothing but his slave.

In North America we have at least overcome
such ideas of right ; and even if the rights of
woman are neither completely recognized nor
guarded here, the consciousness of the wrong that
is being done them, and the endeavor to do them
justice, find expression in social life as well as in
law.

The attention which the Americans show to the
women in social intercourse is known the world
over. But far be it from me to take it for any-
thing else than a sort of conventional sin-offering
for rights withheld. It is for the most part mere gal-
lantry. But there are no more dangerous "virtues "
than piety and gallantry. Behind the first, ras-
cality is wont to hide itself ; behind the latter,
coarseness. Gallantry is nothing more than a
cheap substitute for true appreciation, the justice
of which is felt more than admitted ; it is a decep-
tive humility with which one deceives himself and
others concerning the arrogance that is hidden
behind it. But since it springs just as much from
a vague perception as from conscious arrogance, it

/56 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

is at once a proof of the necessity or the inclina-
tion to grant to women what belongs to them.

The consciousness of the wrong due towards
women is moreover expressed in American legisla-
tion. It is indeed much that the men have con-
ceded to women the right to put them out of con-
ceit with their own want of principle by allowing
the women to claim a mere promise of marriage
as a binding contract. But, on the other hand, this
legal precaution shows that the least conception of
the true essence of marriage is wanting, for a re-
lationship which is brought about only through
the intervention of the police is no marriage from
the start, but an institution of force which can
only breed disaster. And such regulations gener-
ally accrue only to the benefit of unworthy women
who either disclaim all feeling of self-respect and
honor to such a degree that they will allow a man
to be bound to them by force who is not drawn
to them by any inclination, or who are low enough
to actually speculate on promises of marriage in
order to get themselves provided for. Whether,
moreover, the right to establish a promise of mar-
riage by a mere oath is not most dangerous in
a moral respect is a question which experience is
not slow to answer.*

* The following interesting case of perjury is said to have hap-
pened in Philadelphia several years ago. A handsome young
man is summoned before the judge to give an explanation of
himself concerning a promise of marriage. He does not remem-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. I $7

" Liberty and equality" must not only be realized
with regard to classes, but also with regard to the
sexes. From this we are still far removed, even
in America. Especially the marriage and divorce
laws, as we have seen above, are still sufficiently
barbaric here. The above-mentioned symptoms,
however, coupled with isolated regulations, which
partly emancipate the women from the economic
control of the men, as well as isolated attempts
to increase this emancipation through legislation,
plainly show how great a start the liberty of
American women has already secured, as com-

ber ever having made such a promise. But the judge sets
aside all doubts by the assurance on oath of a beautiful lady
with whom the young man after various denials is finally con-
fronted. He had never seen the lady. But she insists that he,
on the occasion of a secret rendezvous, has promised to marry
her, and claims him for a husband. The astonished candi-
date for marriage assures her that her beauty and amiability
gave the best proof to the contrary, for force was not needed to
make him the husband of a woman who was fitted to meet all his
requirements, and for this reason she would certainly believe him
if he insisted that he had never seen her before. The lady,
however, adheres to her oath, and the marriage is concluded at
once. On the way home the young wife confesses to her hus-
band that his appearance had long ago excited her love, but as
she found no opportunity to make his acquaintance, she at
last struck upon the desperate expedient of seeking it by means
of perjury. Now after having attained her end she gave him
back his full liberty and would, in case he should want a di-
vorce, agree to it at once. The divorce, however, was not
sought.

158 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

pared with that of European women, in a legal
respect.

But their chief advantage consists in the liberty
to agitate, and in that freedom from prejudice
which allows them to themselves take an active
part in the work of emancipation, as the woman,
conventions have shown.

But with this liberty they have not yet accom-
plished enough. True liberty does not appear like
an oasis in the desert of barbarity surrounding it.
Liberty, wherever it appears, stands in the closest
connection, in constant interchange, with all other
branches of development and with all mundane
conditions. There is no narrower prejudice than
that which considers American development in-
dependent of European development, which is its
mother. That does not- only concern politicians,
but also women. I do not speak of the fact that
American women can gain an infinitely greater
store of conceptions from the literature of Ger-
many and France, from the profound discussions
of the social and humane questions in Europe,
than from the limited literature of materialistic
America. But I should especially like to make it
clear to them that it is indirectly for their greatest
interest to see the ideas which have been awakened
through German and French literature translated
to action and life by the victory of the European
revolution. The victory of the European revolu-
tion Over barbarity and darkness will also have an

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 1 59

immense influence upon North America. If the
air has been cleared by a thunder-shower over
there, many a cloud will likewise disappear in the
West from the heaven of humanity. The world
has not yet been turned around, and now as be-
fore the sun will rise in the East, even if the rev-
olution of our earthly sphere begins from the
West.

As I have shown in a former article, wholesale
murder, the warrior's trade, constitutes the chief
advantage upon which the male sex, consciously
or unconsciously, founds its chief prerogative as
against the feminine sex. What now will be the
chief result of the victory of the European revolu-
tion? The interest which American women have
in this victory can be made clear in a short series
of conclusions.

What directly establishes the predominance of
men and their inhuman tyranny over women ? As
We have seen, war, wholesale murder.

Who causes the wars with all their conse-
quences of bestiality, and in whose favor are they
waged ? In favor of monarchs !

What enables monarchs to wage these wars, and
what continually dulls the judgment in regard to
the outrage of the " glorious " trade of murder ?
The standing armies!

How can monarchs, wars, and standing armies
be abolished in Europe? By establishing repub-
lics !

l6o THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

What will be the universal consequence of
Europe republicanized ? Peaceful union of the
nations and mutual disarmament !

What follows from all this ? The great interest
which American women have in the establishment
of the European republic !

Thus the republicanization of Europe is an af-
fair whose result must have revolutionizing influ-
ence on the conditions and the development of
the whole world, especially of America. Will
America have to remain prepared for war when
the main portion of the world is republicanized,
the nations are fraternized, and their destiny
taken out of the hands of the barbarous god of
war and placed in the hands of a peaceful congress
of nations ? Will playing soldiers, which for the
men of this republic seems to have become the
only poetry of national life, still have any reason
for being? When this military diversion for the
national mind shall have ceased, will not nobler
conceptions and needs force themselves to the
surface ? Is not militarism the prop of everything
unfree, and the foil for every vulgarity ? But vul-
garity is the greatest evil of North America.
This vulgarity also makes all true national life
and national festivity impossible, whereby women
lose every opportunity of making their influence
felt in public social intercourse, and of making
themselves appreciated.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS, l6t

These suggestions will suffice for far-seeing
women to justify me in positively declaring
that the European revolution is the most power-
ful ally of the women of America as well as of
Europe.

1 62 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

CONCLUSION.

WOMEN in geiieral still make themselves the
slaves of fashion ; their heart is set on gewgaws,
and they grow enthusiastic over a thousand trifles.
To please women in general one must be a man
without intellect or heart. Women in general —
but why talk of all these things? I pass them by
all the more readily because they stand in relation
with most of the chief evils examined above.
This examination, the critical and reformatory
survey of the existing chief evils, their causes,
their relation, and the means of abolishing them,
was the only thing of importance.

The fair readers must have become convinced
by this survey that their oppression, their depend-
ence, their degradation is founded on

the rule of force,

the rule of money, and

the rule of priests.

It must, therefore, have become clear to them
that they cannot depend on an improvement of
their lot before

the liberty and the right of all men have been
attained,

the existence of all men has been secured,
and

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 163

the essence and dignity of all men have been
recognized in purely human conceptions.

Everything that they can be and can wish for
depends on these three points: their liberty, their
rights, their dignity, their social position, their
marital happiness, their love, their education, their
everything.

Therefore these three points also suffice as a
guide to women for the direction which their
antipathies and sympathies, their hate and their
love must take. Let all despotism with its sup-
porters, all aristocracy of wealth with its rep-
resentatives, all religious humbug with its priests,
be recommended to the hatred and the abhorrence
of the women ; let liberty with its champions,
socialism with its apostles, reason with its teachers,
appeal to the love and sympathy of all women
of right thought and noble feeling, whose striving,
whose interests, whose happiness, whose future
do indeed lie only in the path of these revolu-
tionary motors.

Let them but smile upon you, entice you, flatter
you, those brilliant despots, those perfumed slave-
holders, those gay soldiers, those suave diplo-
matists, those proud money-lords, those fawning
priests — turn your backs on them, cast them from
you with contempt, and swear to them the hatred
of destruction, for they are the creators of your
slavery, the fathers of your shame, the teachers
of your degradation. Only free men are your

164 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

friends, and only with the era of complete liberty
and justice does the morning of your true being
dawn for you.

Powerless and degraded as you have hitherto
been, you can attain to power and distinction
from the moment that you combine with the cor-
rect appreciation of your ends the sincere will to
serve them. Your tender hands are a thousand-
fold able to interfere in the course of events and
the actions of men, if you will only put them in
the service of your hatred and your love, and if
you will hate what is bad and love what is right.
You can encourage and deter ; you can reward
and you can punish ; you can twine wreaths
and crowns of thorns. If a virgin, cast off your
suitor if he does not prove himself a servant
of liberty. If a wife, desert your husband if
he deserts the cause of liberty. If a mother,
rear your children on the milk of liberty, and
early enflame in their hearts the hatred for
tyranny, that the dagger of Harmodious and
Aristogeiton may become the plaything of their
youth.

Look about you in Europe! It lies down-
trodden beneath the feet of those in whose eyes
your entire sex is nothing but a herd of servants
and whores, under the feet of those who have had
you flogged beneath the gallows on which they
had hanged your husbands and sons. What will

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 165

your future be if in the impending struggles these
men again remain the victors?

Look about you in America ! It was approach-
ing a time which was to put the stamp of .slavery
on this entire republic in the name of " democracy."
And what would your future have been if this
slaveholder democracy had not been overthrown ?
The poison of corruption would have corroded
all moral conceptions, and the passion of vul-
garity have severed all moral ties ; expoliation
would have completed the right of the stronger,
and degradation would have completed the law of
the weaker ; power would have been taught to
rule everything, and money to buy everything;
the recognition of the rights of man would
have become a stupidity, and the assertion of
humanity treason ; the standard of the slave-
holder would have measured every interest, and
the interest that would have been felt for you
would have been nothing more than that felt for
the women in Europe.

Well, slavery has been abolished, but its chief
supports, vulgarity, wealth, the priesthood, have
come into the inheritance, and they will endeavor
to keep you in a state of semi-slavery until you
help to make them harmless by championing
science, justice, and enlightenment.

Must you still be told what you are to love and
what you are to hate, in America as well as in
Europe ?

1 66 7^HE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

The reaction everywhere reveals three points :
force, money rule, priesthood. The points of the
opposition are : liberty, justice, reason. The
points of the reaction are always the proper tar-
gets for the hatred, the points of the opposition
always the proper objects for the sympathy, of
women. For they, as the weaker party, are al-
ways the ones whom the victory of the reaction,
continuing to operate, affects most disastrously,
and, as the most disqualified party, they are always
the ones who receive the greatest aid for their
interests in the most radical opposition.

In Europe it is the banner of the revolution, in
America the banner of radical democracy, which
leads the hosts on towards the time when the
free woman can proudly rejoice by the side of
the freeman. On the grave of the tyrants blooms
your liberty, from the ruins of aristocracy arise
your rights. Therefore follow the banner of the
revolution in Europe, and the banner of radical
democracy in America!

It is not for us alone ; no, it is for you yourselves,
ye women, if you heed the call of the time which
says to you :

Women must enter the ranks of the revolution
for the object is the revolution of humanity.

POSTSCRIPT.

In a footnote to my preface, the translator of
the foregoing treatise has clearly defined her views
regarding the means to be employed in the at-
tainment of the common aim, and which she con-
siders as radically divergent from those of the au-
thor, without, however, in my opinion, at the same
time stating the position of her opponent just as
clearly. For this reason, as well as in the interest
of a better understanding of the matter under dis-
cussion, I take occasion to set forth clearly, by
means of a succinct resume, Heinzen's views with
regard to the important factors in the develop-
ment of mankind touched upon by the point
at issue. It seems to me it will be seen that
there are more points of contact in regard to
the subject treated therein between the esteemed
translator and the author of this treatise, and that
at bottom she does not entertain such fundament-
ally divergent views from his as she feels bound
to assume. Heinzen defines the conception of the
" State " succinctly as follows :

u ' Democracy.' I supply this term with quota-
tion-marks to indicate that I merely borrow it.
For at bottom it does not mean what in the radi-

167

l68 POSTSCRIPT.

cal sense it ought to mean. Democracy (popular
rule) is by no means an expression for a rational
or appropriate conception. Where there is au-
thority, there must also be servants. But a free
people know neither the one nor the other. Over
whom are the people to rule ? Even their office-
holders and agents they can only entrust and com-
mission with their affairs. The term democracy
came into use simply to denote an opposition to
an authority over the people. The people are not
to be ruled by others, from which it does not fol-
low, however, that now the people themselves are
to establish an authority, but that all authority
must disappear. And with the conception of au-
thority the conception of government will vanish.
All that remains and all that is necessary is a com-
mon administration according to general vote, a
supervision of the common interests conducted
by the requisite personnel under general control.
Control is not authority.

" Of an individual freely attending to his affairs
or promoting his interests we say neither that he
governs nor that he is governed. Just as little
can we say so of a society of individuals who form
a voluntary association for a common purpose and
call this association a State. And if 'for the prac-
tical attainment of their purpose they entrust or
commission certain persons with certain functions,
the exercise of these functions will as little consti-
tute an authority or a government as the control of

POSTSCRIPT. 169

a joint-stock company or any other joint enterprise
by a board of experts and trustees. The conception
of authority ought, therefore, to be entirely exclud-
ed from radical political thought, and with it the
term denoting it. The term republic comes much
nearer to expressing the nature of a free State
than the term democracy. The most proper term
perhaps would be, the commonwealth (Gemeinwe-
sen). The popular conception of the State is still
tainted by the dominating influence of the exam-
ples of the past, the historical models, and therefore
most men cannot conceive of even the freest State
without a dualism of the people and a special
power which is called authority and government.
Only by a thorough analysis of the conceptions
authority and government do we reach a correct
understanding of what is meant to be expressed
by the term ' democracy,' but what it does not
express.

" It is surely not necessary to parry the objec-
tion that this definition of the State will lead to
what in its bad or good sense is called Anarchy.
Anarchy in its bad sense is barbarism, and in its
good sense an impossibility. State and Anarchy
are contradictions, for a State is as little conceiv-
able zvitlwut as Anarchy with organization.

" But organization in the free State is nothing
more than order and arrangement of business. I
should therefore define it thus : The State is, on a
common ground, an association of free and, before

I/O POSTSCRIPT.

the law, equal individuals for the object of facili-
tating and securing the realization of the life pur-
poses of each individual through the proper au-
thorized agents by means of their jointly created
and supervised institutions, laws, and resources.

" Such a definition of the State — and it is the
only correct one — at once directs each to the
claims that he has to make, but, at the same time,
to the task that he has to perform. It makes of
him as it were a State business partner, but it also
makes the degree of the satisfaction of his claims
dependent on his direct and indirect participation
in the administration of the business.

" North America is regarded as a ' democratic '
State, and the people in general have learned to
put faith in this term. The true significance of
this term must become plain to them if, in the con-
templation of existing conditions and their power
of influencing them, they will take the above defini-
tion for a standard. It will appear that we have
indeed an authority here, but an authority over the
people — a relation that is not improved, but only
made worse, by the fact that the people themselves
elect their ruler and are thus under the illusion that
they govern. Whoever has made this clear to him-
self, and surveys the chasm existing between the
truly free State, as it has been defined above, and
the State we actually have here, he alone will be
able to correctly estimate the consequences of
the repeated endeavors to still farther extend

POSTSCRIPT. 171

this authority, and appreciate the necessity of
meeting them by the timely spread of radical con-
ceptions of the State.

" It having already been sufficiently discussed in
the pamphlet * What is True Democracy ?', I re-
frain in this place from any further exposition of
the fundamentally anti-democratic representative
system, according to which the people surrender
themselves powerlessly into the hands of executive
as well as legislative representatives who are both
irresponsible and, during their term of office, in-
accessible. The essential requirement of a free
people, on which all others depend, is universal
suffrage, and this primary right is partly wanting
entirely, and partly threatened where it exists.

"All reasons which are brought forward to justi-
fy departures from universal suffrage are only sham
reasons. Not only the considerations of human
rights, but even the considerations of expediency,
admit of absolutely no exception. Logically con-
ceived and carried out, exclusion from suffrage
would have to mean exclusion from the State as
well. A person without suffrage is an alien, while
citizen and voter must be identical. Where the
principle of equal rights is once departed from,
there no longer any limit is to be drawn fordisen-
franchisement. If capacity is to decide, where
then is incapacity to end ? And who is to judge
of capacity ? But if even property is to be taken
as a standard, is not the possessor thus by a two-

172 POSTSCRIPT.

fold preponderance made completely the master
of the dependent poor ? There is no more mons-
trous arrogance than to grant to property over
and above the advantages it already confers also
the privilege of authority, a privilege to which, if
it were ever justifiable, only the deepest insight
and the most disinterested concern for the gen-
eral welfare could grant a claim.

" The dangers which are predicted by the oppo-
nents of equal rights are only imaginary, and in the
course of time will disappear of themselves. The
power of incapacity decreases with increased op-
portunity to test itself ; and where, as a result of
former neglect, it causes the State temporary em-
barrassments, the latter has to overcome them by a
proper expiation of its own guilt. The State is as
little exempt as the individual from the necessity
of either atoning for former mistakes by righting
them, or of multiplying them to work its own ruin.
The negro slaves had placed this country before
such an alternative, and it decided itself for the
saving expedient in the eleventh hour. After
justice had been done to the negroes, at least as
far as form is concerned, the women knocked at
the doors of the Capitol. We too, they say, are
human beings and are called citizens ; we too are
a part of the people, and not its worst part ; we
too want to have a part in the associated business
which is called State. You speak of democracy
and exclude one half of society from it, in order

POSTSCRIPT. 173

that you as privileged class and usurpers of the
State may rule over them. Even if you had abol-
ished all other forms of authority, that of sex,
the most senseless of all, you still allow to stand.
Do you fear, perchance, that by granting us equal
rights you will reap the fruits of the education
which you have given us ? Very well ; it is in your
power to give us a different one. Or do you fear
that we would destroy the ruinous fruits of your
own education ? Very well ; then allow them to
increase until they have ruined you. No other
outlet will lead to your as well as to our welfare
than justice, and the sooner you will practise it
the better it will be both for you and for us. If
you do not wish to take upon yourself the risk of
the transition, then take upon yourself the risk of
destruction.

" Upon due consideration all the evils and dan-
gers which are ascribed to the realization of the
equal rights of man in the State are only tem-
porary and fancied. In any case this realization is
a categorical imperative of evolution, which can
be silenced only by an honest recognition, and
the inauguration and preservation of universal
suffrage is its first guarantee. There are thou-
sands who possess this right and do not exercise
it. Whatever the reason for this neglect may be,
let him who has never voted hasten to the polls
at least when the issue is to preserve the suffrage
for those who already possess it, or to secure it
for those who still want it." K. S.

PREFACE TO PART II.

At last I am in the position to fulfill my promise
stated at the conclusion of my preface to the first
edition of "The Rights of Women," namely: "to
continue the publication in English translation of
the immortal treasures of Heinzen's thoughts and
thus make them accessible to the American read-
ing public." Seven years have elapsed since, and I
feel in duty bound to say that adverse circumstances
of a peculiar nature, which I do not care to enlarge
upon here, were responsible for the long delay in
publishing the enlarged volume, the manuscript
whereof had been ready for the press a long time
ago. However, I desire to say this much: Said
delay was not due to an insufficient or a tardy sale
of the book, which, on the contrary, sold so well
that the 2,500 copies of the first edition were dis-
posed of within a imonth after publication, and a
second edition had to be printed. I cherish the
hope that the present work will fare as well,
for its excellent contents certainly merit it, the

176 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

same being fully of the high standard of its
predecessor, mirroring the brilliant genius of
the author on every page. Its tendency concerns
mainly the emancipation of women as to the political
and social aspect of the question, while the first
part almost exclusively treats upon the sexual rela-
tions.

It is hardly necessary to state for the information
of the reader that the "Convention of German
women in Frauenstadt" is a fiction, but it may not
be amiss to remark that the report of the same ap-
peared for the first time in 1869 in the form of an
editorial correspondence in "Der Pionier," a weekly
paper edited and published by Heinzen in Boston
for more than a quarter of a century until 1879,
when a serious illness of Heinzen, caused by an
apoplectic stroke, imperiously demanded the cessa-
tion of his literary work, and in consequence there-
of the discontinuance of the publication *of "Der
Pionier." This fearless weekly during its existence
gladdened the hearts and fired the courage of its
readers by the presentation in its columns of the
most thorough-going investigations and elucida-
tions in every department of useful knowledge — lit-
erary, political, economical and ethical treatises
being the topics of every issue. Its appearance was an

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. *77

ever occurring holiday to the educated, cultured and
progressive minds of honest truth-seekers, from the
first number to the last; it is safe to say that at no
time and among no nation there ever was published
a paper that breathed a like independent, bold and
humane spirit. Heinzen was among the first in-
trepid champions of the emancipation of woman,
incessantly vindicating the rights of the fair sex to
liberate the better half of mankind from the despot-
ism of the "lord and master," and the drudgery of
a degrading thraldom.

Regarding his controversy with Arnold Ruge,
the renowned German philosopher, who lived at
that time in exile at Brighton, England, about the
emancipation and rights of women, which appeared
also in "Der Pionier" in the year 1855, it may be
necessary to explain that the same was carried on
by him under the nom de plume of Luise Meyen.
It created not a small sensation in the German liter-
ary world; the wonderful logic, boldness and poet-
ical beauty that characterize the utterances of
the intrepid Luise were without comparison, and
considering the fact that they were uttered by a
woman on a subject at that time yet so foreign even
to the advanced mind, the readers were puzzled as
to the genuineness of the authoress' name. A large

178 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

number of curious inquiries rained upon the editor
in reference to the real existence and whereabouts
of Luise Meyen. Similar occurrences repeated
themselves in regard to Julie vom Berg and other
pseudonyms which Heinzen, for the sake of anima-
tion and diversion, occasionally assumed.

The detested cause of the emancipation of woman
was espoused by Heinzen at a time when it required
more than ordinary moral courage to do so, but in
spite of the scorn and ostracism of his fellow-citi-
zens there was with him only one divinity, Reason ;
only one worship, the cultivation of Truth ; only one
Right, the right to life and liberty; only one Duty,
the duty of assisting mankind to happiness.

I desire yet to state that "Der Pionier" had a
world-wide reputation and circulation, wherever the
German tongue reigned; in Europe and America it
had its readers among the most advanced and cul-
tured minds, and when the report of the fictitious
convention first appeared therein in such a master-
ful style and imitation it created an unusual sensa-
tion here and abroad.

The collected works of Heinzen as far as pub-
lished constitute eleven volumes, the translation of
which into English and their publication in that
language is a task gradually to be accomplished.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 179

The time advances and heretofore unpopular radical
ideas lose their horror and become more and more
the property of the masses.

In conclusion I take the liberty of announcing to
the reader that the next volume I expect to publish
will contain a series of Heinzen's immortal philo-
sophical, political and ethical essays, treatises and
lectures, namely, "Six Letters to a Pious Man;"
"Man's Relation to Nature," "Happiness and Un-
happiness ;" "Has the World a Purpose?" "The Ger-
mans and the Americans;" "Truth;" "Mankind the
Criminal;" "The Future;" "What Is Humanity?"
"The True Character of Humboldt" (an oration);
"What Is Real Democracy?" "Communism and So-
cialism;" "Bad Virtues and Good Vices."

KARL SCHMEMANN.
Detroit, Mich., October, 1898.

PART II.

LUISE MEYEN ON MEN AND WOMEN.

(From "Der Pionier" of July 15, 1855.)

THE RIGHTS AND CONDITION OF
WOMEN.

OPEN LETTER TO DR. A. RUGE, LONDON.

In No. 25 of "Der Pionier" I have read a corre-
spondence in which you express yourself in such a
peculiar manner, on the legitimate sphere of my
sex, that I take the liberty to ask you for further
elucidation of your views on this point. I beg you
to pardon my audacity as due to the special interest
that every liberal minded member of the feminine
sex takes in hearing thoughtful men express them-
selves exhaustively and frankly, on a question that
is still conceived of in such different ways. While
one man would have every difference in the rights
of the male and female sex abolished, and have all
treated as human beings, on a footing of perfect
equality, others, who likewise lay claim to a correct
judgment, leave the human being out of considera-
tion entirely, and consider only sex, and would en-
dow each with different rights, according to its
weakness, or the mission ascribed to it. You must
not be surprised, after your remarks in "Der Pio-

1 82 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

nier," if I count you among the latter — that is,
among those men who, ascribing certain occupa-
tions and duties to women, would mete out rights
to them according to man's estimate of these duties.
Yes, permit me to say, you treat women as beings of
such inferiority that you deal out our rights to us
with the soup ladle, as it were. For the chief ob-
jection, which you seem inclined to oppose to equal
rights, is contained in the remark that the domestic
affairs, especially the kitchen, would have to suffer
if women were to take part in public life. Do you
really wish to be taken seriously? Granted that the
household could not be so promptly attended to as
it is now; granted that men's gallantry would not
also improve with their improved sense of justice
toward us, so that they would not be willing to pre-
pare their own coffee occasionally, while we at-
tended a meeting, I ask only this: Do you place
the kitchen above human rights? I do not be-
grudge men anything that they desire, but I must
openly declare, if they want their kitchen run at
the expense of our human rights they are welcome
to a thorough fast, now and then, that they may
learn to take care of themselves. Rather than teach
men that the weaker sex has fewer rights than they,
because it must cook for them, they ought them-
selves to be taught to cook, instead of Greek and
Latin.

That the kitchen will have to suffer when men
spend half of each day in the saloon, and half of

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 183

their income for drink, tobacco, etc., and that this
is a real calamity for the household, and the family,
no one seems to take into account, in considering
the theory of human rights; but if women were
granted the liberty to devote a few hours weekly or
monthly to attending meetings and deliberations on
their human rights, this would, according to your
opinion, be as great a misfortune for the household
and the family as "if the husband should fall on the
battlefield." How little men's ideas of rights have
yet been developed or purified is proved by nothing
so much as by the fact that they would sooner deny
the rights of women than find any fault with their
abuse of their own rights.

I must confess that remarks which apply the
standard of kitchen interests to the human rights
of women struck me as rather strange in the mouth
of a man whom I class among our acutest thinkers
and most humane politicians. According to your
theory, we women would have some prospects of
attaining our rights if there were no cooking to be
done. You thus make us wish that humanity might
return to a state of nature in which the men would'
not even be the masters of the house, because there
would be no houses, and would be glad to. eat their
food raw.

As a man of principle you must admit that, in as-
certaining rights, the difficulties that existing con-
ditions of disqualification place in the way of their
practical realization can not be taken into account.

1 84 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

In practice, this point will receive due attention of
its own accord ; in theory we have only to establish
the principle, pure and simple, and I am sorry to
say, we are still occupied with the mere theory. The
question then is simply this: are we women human
beings, as well as the men, and have we, accordingly,
the same human rights, or no? Do we exist for our
own sake, or do we exist only as the slaves of men?
Are we therefore entitled to participate in the mak-
ing of the laws, which we are to obey in human so-
ciety, or must we allow men to dictate these laws to
us? Have we a right to assert our wishes and inter-
ests in the social institutions, or must we, without
choice, be content with the institutions which men
alone have created? Is our intelligence, our opposi-
tion, our voice, to direct our fate, or are we, in blind
submission, to recognize and acknowledge men as
our providence and our gods?

Only after these questions, whose consequences
will then present themselves as a matter of course,
have been answered, a consideration of the practical
difficulties, which never yet have killed a correct
principle, will be in order.

You are in favor of the emancipation of the negro
slaves, and will not deny them a hair's breadth of
the rights which you claim for yourself. But is there
any question which presents greater practical diffi-
culties than this? You can change a monarchy into
a republic over night, but it will take a whole life-
time to change negro slaves into beings who will

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 185

know how to use their human rights, and, moreover,
the "households" of their present "owners" would
receive quite a different shock by the emancipation
of the slave than would that of a republican or so-
cialist, if his wife were to take part in a deliberation,
on, let us say, the reformation of the marriage laws.
Yet these difficulties are nothing to you, in tne dis-
cussion of the question, whether negroes are human
beings and have human rights.

But while you are liberal and just toward the ne-
groes, do you want to place women below the ne-
gro? The interests of the slave-owner are none of
your concern, in the emancipation of the negro ; but
will you let the privilege of the frying-pan concern
you in the emancipation of women?

Do not think that I am cruelly indifferent to the
dreadful suffering that men would be subjected to if
their emancipated wives would occasionally allow
the roast to scorch, or if the coffee should be served
five minutes later than usual, or if a missing button
could not be instantly replaced. No, indeed, I appre-
ciate this auffering thoroughly, and I sympathize
beforehand with all men who may meet with such a
fate. But I take comfort in the thought that devel-
opment is never onesided, that inventions for the
common good will go hand in hand with the prog-
ress in human rights, and that when once we shall
have progressed as far as "the emancipation of
woman," we shall also have learned the art of secur-
ing ithe roast against scorching, of always keeping

1 86 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

the coffee in readiness, and of fastening buttons,
without the aid of a needle. It is only necessary for
us women to fully realize wherein the obstacle
against our emancipation really consists, and when
men have called our attention to the fact, that we
must look for it in the defective cooking appliances,
etc., we shall certainly give all our thought and en-
ergy to perfecting them.

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. ^7

OPEN LETTER TO DR. ARNOLD RUGE,

LONDON.

(From "Der Pionier" of Oct. 7, 1855)

Your answer to my provocation, as you call it,
has, in spite of all your protestations to the contrary,
only strengthened my suspicion that in your heart
you have a poor opinion of women, and do not con-
cede them equal rights with men. Or, indeed, if I
am to spare you this suspicion, I can do it only by
taking recourse to a supposition which is equally
far from being flattering, namely, that you have not
yet comprehended, or are not able to comprehend,
what a woman's purpose really is, when she desires
to become a free human being.

First, I wish to set you at ease with regard to my
personal position, as it seems to be of importance to
you in the treatment of the question at issue, whether
I am Mrs. or a Miss. I am neither, and do not want
to be either of the two, 'but I place some value upon
being a "woman," to ithe use of which term in the
essay of Mr. Heinzen you do object. I have not
looked for, or addressed, either the husband or the
bachelor in you, but the man, or the male human
being; why do you not content yourself with the
woman, or the female human being? The subject
of our controversy is human rights, but neither
Mrs.' nor Misses' rights.

1 88 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

But least of all are we concerned with the rights
of "beauty." You address me as "fair lady" and
"beautiful Luise." How do you know that I am
beautiful, and what has beauty to do with our
question? Do you share the belief of the officers of
the guards who have such a high opinion of women
that they expect their stock compliments to be ef-
fective in every case, whether they are appropriate
or not? I have long since outgrown the folly of
considering beauty as of chief importance, or of
feeling flattered on being admired; but if I had not
yet outgrown it, beauty would lose greatly in my
estimation, by seeing it degraded to serve as a stock
compliment to a philosopher who has never seen
me. As little as it is to the credit of friendship to
have everybody address the next one as "dear
friend," so little is it to the advantage of beauty, to
call an unknown person beautiful, at random, who
may possibly be very homely. What would you
say if I were to address you as "pretty sir" or "beau-
tiful Arnold?" I do not know whether you deserve
such an appellation. But even if I knew you to be
an Apollo, I would not call you so, in an open letter,
in order not to wrong your beauty by an appearance
of mere flattery; and if I were in doubt about it, I
would all the more refrain from speaking, in order
not to offend you with what might possibly be irony.
But why, I ask, do you not observe the same atti-
tude toward me? Because you ■ — you yourself have
asked not to be spared — with the contemptuous air

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 189

of an officer of the guards, regard women as inferior
beings, or toys, whom you think to amuse with the
most trivial flatteries, or with compliments which
sound doubly shallow, coming from such as you;
or whom you think to silence with a bit of irony. It
is an apparently trivial matter to which I am here
giving so much space, but you will have to admit
that there is more in it than most men think, and, I
add, most women, too. That the majority of my
sex take these shallow compliments, which at bot-
tom are nothing but insults, as signs of respect, has
often made me indignant, and I could only excuse
them on the ground that their education by men
has left their minds so empty that they cannot attain
to any consciousness of their position and dignity.

I shall now take up the important points. The
emancipation of woman seems to me to be an ex-
pression not well chosen, and easily misunderstood.
What is necessary is not to emancipate the woman,
but rather the human being in the woman. If we
speak of the emancipation of woman, men at once
assume that woman is to be introduced into an un-
womanly sphere; but the emancipation of the
human being in woman signifies that she is to come
into possession of the common human rights, of
which she is still for the most part dispossessed,
and which nobody can deny her upon any tenable
grounds. Self-determination, the preservation of
our human rights, without let or hindrance in every
direction, the possibility of educating ourselves for

i go THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

everything for which we have any inclination or
calling, the pursuit of our happiness according to
our own judgment and our own will, that is what
the female human being must be able to claim for
herself, as well as the male, but that is what is still
everywhere, directly or indirectly, denied her, and
withheld from her.

I would not have thought it possible that even
you would have resource to the untenable objec-
tions which I have hundreds of times been obliged
to refute in conversation, but which are almost sure
to be brought up again, as often as the rights of
the female being are discussed with a male being.
You, too, persuade yourself, or try to persuade your
readers, that we women demanded — how abso-
lutely crazy — with this emancipation of ours, the
liberty to shoulder a musket, to be pressed into a
regiment of soldiers, to go to sea as sailors, in short,
to do just those very. things which are quite as con-
trary to our wishes as to our nature. What would
you say, if I should keep my canary bird caged lest
he fall upon and devour my doves and hens? Men
treat us just as idiotically as I would in such a case
treat my canary bird. Of a canary bird you expect
that in a state of liberty he would follow his nature,
and use his faculties, but of a woman you expect
that in a state of liberty she would change her na-
ture, and force herself to do things for which she
has as little ability as inclination. How you come
to such assumptions is absolutely incomprehens-r

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 191

ible to me. Do we fear, perhaps, that emancipated
men would seize our knitting, or sit down by the
embroidery frame? Or do you, too, want to frighten
us with that bugbear of public duty, and deny us
the use of our rights, because we are not able to
undertake everything that the present condition of
society imposes on its members, as a duty? Should
we be slaves, because we are not able, for instance,
to become instruments for the preservation of slav-
ery— that is, soldiers — like the men? But even men,
among themselves, do not measure their rights, ac-
cording to their respective abilities, to fulfill public
duties. The weak, the cripples, are absolved from
military service, without, therefore, being deprived
of the least of their human and civil rights; but
women are to be disfranchised, because they have
not the nature or the limbs of a grenadier. Whence
this contradiction?

I think you may just as well lay aside your anxiety
that we would crowd upon the battlefields and ships,
if the right were granted us to do that which our
ability and inclination leads us to do, as you might
have spared us the lesson that we — women — are
not men. You may take offense or not, but I must
tell you frankly that at first, of course only at first,
I laughed aloud when I learned from your answer
that it was the destiny of women to become mothers.
In order to learn that, Mr. Ruge, no one need study
philosophy; nor need a philosopher fear that we
might unlearn this destiny, or be tempted to be-

192 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

come fathers. You will, indeed, have to admit that
we have never extended such compliments to the
masculine intellect as you have <to the feminine. It
has never occurred to a woman to teach man that
it is their destiny to become fathers. I am almost
tempted to interpret your words as the most bitter
irony. That men have denied us the right to be-
come mothers, that complaint, Mr. Ruge, we surely
never had any occasion to make.*

If they had always been as solicitous about every-
thing else as they have been about maternity, we

♦Just after I had read your admonitions upon our
destiny to become mothers, I accidentally came across a
statistical notice, from which I gathered the following.
The number of the known criminal assaults against women,
for the year 1854, in this "free country," is no less than
three thousand five hundred. In forty-eight of these cases
the violated woman was likewise murdered, or died in
consequence of the injuries she had received. One hun-
dred and eighty-nine women committed suicide, and of
these one hundred and twenty-seven did so in consequence
of seduction or rape.

.Whoever is acquainted with local conditions will not
accuse me of exaggeration if I double these known cases,
by way of adding those that have not become known.

We would thus have before us, for a single year, at least
ten thousand men who, as criminals, professed the doc-
trine of the destiny of women to become mothers.

Do not think that I intend this statistical information as
a complement to yours. But you can surely not blame me
if I call upon the friends of humanity, who lecture women
on motherhood, to first help make them free, fully qualified
human beings, in humane conditions.

If women had the right to humanize these conditions,
surely the time would soon be past when men could be-
come beasts with impunity.

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 193

women would never have had any cause of com-
plaint. No, they do not hinder us from becoming
mothers, any more than from becoming cooks, and
it is always either the hearth or the cradle, to which
they refer us when we speak of our human rights.
Has a woman ever objected on the ground of pa-
ternity, when a man claimed his human rights? No
more than it ever occurred to a woman to deny a
man the right of suffrage because he was by pro-
fession a tailor, a baker, etc. But how is it with
the rights of those women who have never been
mothers, or who have met with the fate of Niobe?
According to your logic, they have no destiny as
human beings, and whoever has no destiny, why
should he have rights?

But I want to examine your information concern-
ing maternity from another point of view. Just be-
cause she is a mother, woman has double claims
upon the exercise of rights which man assumes for
himself alone. Just because of maternity she must
demand that she shall not, on account of social con-
ditions, which she cannot change without being
fully qualified as a human being and a citizen, be
driven perhaps from want, into the arms of a man,
through whom she would never have become a
mother, could she have acted independently; just
because she is a mother, she must demand such an
education as will fit her to become the educator of
her child; just because she is a mother, she has the
deepest interest in exerting an influence upon those

194 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

state institutions in which the fate of her child is
hereafter decided; just because she is a mother, she
must be able to exert an influence in the passing of
laws, through which she, to her own and her chil-
drens' ruin, may be held in hateful bondage; just
because she is a mother, she must demand the possi-
bility of occupying an independent position, in
order to be still a mother, after the father has ceased
to be a father; just because she is a mother, she must
strive to assist in changing conditions, which are
daily cursed by infanticides; just because she is a
mother, she must have a right to her child, which
the man can now take from her by force, if his com-
pany has become unbearable to her; just because
she is a mother, she must wish to have a right to
influence conditions, which compel her to be a help-
less spectator, when her children are led out to be
slaughtered, to be sacrificed to the whim of a despot,
or the savage taste of the rabble.

Thus you see that instead of avoiding public life,
on account of our maternity, we have, just on
account of our maternity, the very deepest interest
in gaining an influence upon public life.

But I am surprised at my own fervor when I had
made up my mind to answer you in the calmest
manner. Perhaps it has annoyed me to hear you
express opinions that I had expected of you, least
of all, and this is the only way I can return your
compliments.

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 195

MEN.

(From "Der Pionier" of Oct. 14 and 15, 1855.)
Mr. Editor — On a former occasion you had asked
me to speak without reserve in the columns of "Der
Pionier/' I comply with this request all the more
willingly because it was needless in my case. I have
always been in the habit of speaking my mind freely,
which, as I have often been told, is not considered
"wise;" but I could never see why it should be less
wise, not to suppress my convictions, not to give up
my right, and not to sacrifice my freedom, than tOj
make my regard for the weakness, the folly, and the
errors of others the law of my actions. Least of all
can I think of this to-day, when I have made up my
mind to discuss a subject which, according to my
opinion, cannot be treated inconsiderately enough.
Shakspeare says "Frailty, thy name is woman."
No one would contradict me less than Shakspeare
himself, if I should say, "Deception, thy name is
man!" I shall not take the trouble to prove what
mountains of lies men have left behind them, when-
ever they have entered the realm of history; it is
sufficient for my purpose to show, first of all, that
their whole relationship to us women has ever been
one of lies. Just as every tyrant lies, must lie, so
men also have always lied, because they were our

igt> THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

tyrants. Whether they coddled us with compli-
ments, or pretended to hate us, whether they granted
us privileges or disqualified us, whether they carried
us on their hands, or trod us under their feet, they
never were true, never could be true, because they
always proceeded from the great fundamental lie,
that we did not possess the same human rights as
they, that we are subordinate beings, that we must
be their tools. Complete recognition of our equality
of rights — that is the first, the indispensable condi-
tion, for the possibility that men cease to be liars
toward women.

It is not possible for any one to commit them-
selves more naively than men do, concerning their
untruthful attitude toward women, when their argu-
ments, which they oppose to our so-called emanci-
pation, are attacked. I have always found that the
chief objections behind which the more intelligent
and refined among the men — of the rest I do not
wish to speak at all — always entrench themselves,
simply amount to this : that men in general are not
sufficiently humanized to make it possible for free
women to exist among them.

Well, that is at least the beginning of truth. It is
a most interesting confession, even if it is a poor
proof. What answer would you, <as free men, give a
slaveholder, who confessed to you that his brutality
and egotism did not allow him to grant his slaves
the right to freedom? Would you accept this as a
proof against the right of the slave?

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 197

But you place yourself entirely on the ground of
the slaveholder. You only go a step further, and, in
denying us our rights, tender us compliments at
your own expense. You hold these compliments so
cheap that you are even willing, to throw a part of
your reason, and your honor, into the bargain, if
we will only accept them. We are such delicate
plants that we cannot flourish in the wild climate of
masculine brutality, without a protecting hedge and
cover — that is the sense of the compliments in
which you clothe your last proofs against our equal-
ity of rights.

Men would very soon come to recognize our
human rights, even without compliments, if we had
the power to enforce them. Backed by an army of
sharpshooters, and every woman will be recognized
by men, not only as their equal in rights, but also
honored like a czarina, and worshiped like a god-
dess. Fortunate for us all that we women have no
sharpshooters at our command! If, indeed, en-
forced rights cannot be enjoyed in peace, security
and happiness, till after their opponents have been
put out of harm's way, we women would have to
wage an endless war for our rights, a war, in the
real sense of the word, "to the last man." Ought
we to exterminate the men, in order to become free?
Fear not, oh noble heroes! You alone require force
to become free; all that we need is the renunciation
of force. It is our pride, as well as our consolation,
that humanity alone, and not iron, can free us from

198 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

tyranny, and you from your lies. The triumph of
weakness over strength, through the sentiments of
humanity, that is the surest and noblest triumph
that we can think of, and can wish for, and this
triumph is exclusively feminine.

It is a lie, therefore, when men deny our equality
of rights, and it is a daughter of this lie, when they,
instead of acknowledging their own unfitness for a
state of humane equality, try to make it appear as
though we were not yet adapted to equality. As
soon as men begin to be truly humane beings, they
will cease to oppose the equality of women ; only so
long as they remain brutal egotists will they protest
against humanity without the bones of a grenadier,
i. e., the women, sharing their dominion.

But if that were all we could await the future more
calmly, for it would indeed be a difficult task for us
to attempt, as a humanizing element, to mitigate the
rule of men in the domain of politics, at a time when
they still regard it as the greatest honor to slay
each other by the hundred thousand, without know-
ing why ; when millions of them still stand prepared
like gladiators, to fall upon each other at the com-
mand of some emperor, to tear each other to pieces,
and fertilize the earth with streams of blood. Why?
They have not even the incentive that excuses the
gladiator. They slay from habit, or from servility;
they allow themselves to be slain for a stiver or a
gracious look. What glory to be a man !

In other words, there is nothing tempting, even

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. i$9

to an amazon, to share ^he power of such rulers.
Then keep your politics for yourselves until one-
half of you has butchered and buried the other half!
Perhaps the gladiatorial spirit of man will then
change into humanity from exhaustion, and to us
women will then accrue the task of guarding it
against relapses.

But there is still another stage of action, upon
which we are now daily playing our part, and that
is social life. Here, too, we find, as on the throne
of legislation, the men as liars, and even as the big-
gest liars of all.

What is honor? What is character? What is
conscience? What is morality?

Should any one ask me these questions, I would
first inquire whether they meant them for the male
sex alone, or also for the relations of the latter to
the female sex. For just as men deny women all
rights, to begin with, they also are devoid of honor,
of character, of conscience, of morality, in their re-
lations to women, and when they speak of it they
lie. In all these things they use quite different
weights and measures for the women than for them-
selves, and whatever they condemn and abhor
among themselves, they consider permissible and
honorable when it is directed toward the weaker
sex. (Let it be borne in mind that, throughout this
entire article, I am speaking of the great, great ma-
jority without condemning the small, the very small,
minority along with them.)

200 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

Every day we read in books, and papers, the most
beautiful effusions of masculine indignation, if some
unworthy individual so degrades himself as to natter
some man of money or of power, or a party or even
the populace, or sacrifices his principles to attain
this or that egotistic aim. But those same moral-
izers, who condemn such degradation, are capable,
at any moment, to deluge any woman who happens
to attract their attention by rosy cheeks, or spark-
ling eyes, or a luxuriant figure, with flatteries and
assurances, every letter of which is a hypocrisy, and
every phrase of which contains a humiliation. And
Why ? Often this mendacity is due to a mere habit,
but for the most part it is meant to deceive, and to
further low ends. Men who, in a circle of men,
overflow with honor and character, degrade them-
selves to play the contemptible part of the hypocrit-
ical flatterer, before every pretty woman. For the
sake of a glance, they become actors; for a kiss,
they become rhetoricians ; for a favor, they become
valets de chambre. And as soon as they have
gained their end, they at once rise from the position
of valet de chambre to that of tyrant. But for all
that, they are always "men!" But I say they are
liars. Either that is a lie, which they call honor,
and character, before men, or its opposite, which
they manifest before women, deserves the name. I
at least cannot conceive how a man, who really
possesses honor and character, can put it on and off
as he pleases, like a badge, to signify whether he is
associating with men or women.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 201

Nothing is more common, and at the same time
more disgusting, than the role of hero in love-com-
edies, the only role that the average man, and espe-
cially our military gentlemen, can play with some
talent. That this sort of play-acting has not fallen
into greater disrepute among men themselves only
shows how general a species of lying has become
among them, which degrades not only man, not only
woman, but the most beautiful relationship by which
the sexes can be united. What a frightful state of
things in which the first thought that comes to a
woman, when she hears a man talk of love, must be:
Is he true or is he a liar?

The same question is forced upon me, whenever
I hear of or see that kind of "chivalry," which the
French call galanterie. Is it a virtue? To me it
seems to be either hypocrisy or an abusurdity. A
gallant man reminds me either of a lieutenant or a
Don Quixote. I can understand how, woman being
the weaker, and more fragile being, a man should
wish to be helpful and obliging to her, whenever she
needs help; but I do not see why this helpfulness
and deference need be anything else, but a manifes-
tation of general culture and humanity, unless, in-
deed, some personal relationship exists between the
respective individuals. No more than 'he can be
called gallant, who helps or obliges a child, an in-
valid, etc., ought he to be gallant who treats a weak
woman with humane considerateness.

Still less, than honor and character, can the con-

201 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

science, and morality of men — if I am to separate
the latter qualities from the former — stand the test of
truth before a feminine tribunal. Every man will
agree with you unconditionally that it is knavery to
rob another of money, honor, liberty and happiness.
But this morality is &t once lifted off its feet, as soon
as the treachery is directed towards a woman, and
concerns a sexual relationship. True, you do have a
few laws, which, for instance, make it a penal
offense to seduce or compromise a girl ; but few of
you have principles that would condemn such an
offense. And what is your punishment for it? Mar-
riage! That the victim of your depravity receives
the name of the miscreant, that the unfortunate one
is chained to the originator of her misfortune, by or-
der of the police — that is the highest compensation
your justice can discover.

Men are accustomed to play with the happiness of
women, as boys do with the life of an insect. Does
not every day experience teach us that their con-
science ceases to exist when their animal desires are
aroused; that they do not in the least hesitate to
sacrifice the happiness of a woman's life to the sen-
sual enjoyment of a minute; that no means of cun-
ning or even of violence is too vile for the attain-
ment of ends which never, and under no circum-
stances whatever, can compensate for the one hun-
dredth part of the self-degradation, which their at-
tainment implies? To deceive a man, you consider
a disgrace • but is it not a triumph for you to deceive

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 203

a woman? To lighten a man's purse by a breach of
trust is to you a crime; but to poison a heart by a
breach of trust is to you a pastime. How many are
there among you who would shrink from writing a
list of their Don Juan triumphs, with the bloody
tears of unhappy women? Have you not been ac-
customed, I might almost say trained from early
youth, to press women into the service of your low
aims, by every means you like, regardless of con-
sequences, and even to boast of their misfortune?
Do you not regard a girl, whom you have started on
the road to shame, or driven to suicide from de-
spair, as the hunter regards the game he has
wounded or slain? But afterward you are all ready
to sing:

"Honor to woman ! To her it is given
To garden the earth with the roses of heaven I"
It is like hearing a hunter sing: "Honor to game,
for it tastes good, when we have killed it."

What a revolution will yet have to take place, in
the conceptions of men; what a dhange education
will have to work in their lives, before they can
attain to a knowledge and recognition of the most
rudimentary principles of honor, and morality, as
concerns their relationship to weak woman, chained
with a thousand fetters of dependency to man-made
conditions ! If you do not yet wish, or are not yet
able, to grant woman equal rights in public life, you
can at least accustom yourself, in social life, not to
degrade her by a morality, which, among yourselves,

204 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

would amount to an actual declaration of war. So
long as a dishonorable and unscrupulous act, di-
rected against us, has not the same value to you as
when it is directed against yourselves, you show that
you do not consider us as responsible human beings,
that you are our tyrants in life, as you are in
politics, and that all your assurances to the con-
trary are simply lies.

I have begun to discuss a subject which is better
adapted for a book than for a newspaper article. In
order not to stray too far I will turn aside from my
course, and merely add a few concluding remarks
about the position which men, entirely apart from
their relations to us, now occupy in life and in poli-
tics.

Men! What is a man? What exuberance of
beauty and greatness is contained in the meaning of
this word ! It lies in the nature of things, that each
of the two sexes should exercise severe criticism
over itself, while they are mutually inclined to view
each other with favorable eyes, and to discover each
other's good qualities. There surely is no woman
of any intelligence who would not be willing to find
in every man an ideal, and, it seems to me, that the
reverse must be just as true. But how bitter the
disappointment whenever this willingness casts
about for objects of appreciation, among the present
masculine world! Can it really have been thus, in
all times? It would be terrible to be forced to admit
this and to build our expectations of the future upon

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 205

it. Threefold happy is the woman who, in these
times of general enervation and vulgarity, has
found a man whom she can truly respect and love!
Let no one accuse me of not making due allowance
for the exceptions; I know them and know how to
appreciate them doubly. But what, I ask, is one to
think of that ruling mass and its prominent person-
ages, among whom genuine men are regarded as
proscribed and leprous beings? Has it any other
aim than money-making, animal pleasures, and po-
litical degradation? What has become of that large
emigration which once filled our fatherland with
the battle-cry against tyrants? Are those men who
forgot liberty as soon as it was vanquished? Are
those men who, on the other side of the sea, swore
eternal hatred against tyranny, and in this country
are so lost to shame that they unite with the owners
of human beings for the purpose of undermining
the republic? I know the weaknesses of my sex,
and admit them, although it is not itself responsible
for the most of them ; but so much I can maintain —
no woman whose heart has once been stirred with
enthusiasm for liberty is capable of forgetting it over
night, or of becoming reconciled with its opposite,
for any low considerations. We are true to ideas as
we are to persons. But, you men can forget and
betray everything for which you once seemed to
glow, not singly, not by tens and dozens, not only
a hundred fold; thousands and thousands of you
turn your backs upon liberty, cast your ballot for

ao6 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

slavery, and — are not ashamed! Truly, you men are
not merely liars, you are also slaves ! Are you not
base by nature?

In London lives a man who once excited univer-
sal sympathy, and Whose romantic fate, I must con-
fess, also fascinated me for a time, and created a
sort of enthusiasm in me. It is Gottfried Kinkel.
He swore that he would wage endless war against
the enemies of our fatherland, and traveled through
this country to supply himself with the sinews of
war. What has become of him? He has disap-
peared and is forgotten. His hatred of tyrants has
quickly calmed down, his enthusiasm for war has
subsided, behind -the counters of a bank, where he
deposited the money, collected for the revolution,
"on interest," much to the satisfaction of the des-
pots! Was there ever a man who claimed the con-
fidence of his country people more obtrusively, and
has ever any one betrayed it more basely than this
Kinkel? No man could have acted thus who had
the least conception of honor, and who had the least
regard for the respect of respectable people. And
yet, did not Mr. Kinkel become the ideal man, for
this entire emigration? Did it not praise everything
that he did, and approve everything that he omitted
to do? Is it not always approving? Does it not
always take part in his infamy? Where, then, I ask,
are the men ?

And is it not a terrible thought that this emigra-
tion represents the flower of the German people?

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 207

If the flower is like that, what is to become of the
tree?

There have been times when, as one author ex-
presses it, the men had to feel ashamed of themselves
before the women. Even such times seem to be past
for us. Men who are no longer ashamed of each
other will feel no shame before women. Then let us
feel ashamed for them. To feel ashamed for you,
whom we ought to love, that is the severest punish-
ment that we can conceive of for you; but it is no
less severe for us.

It makes me sad, unto apathy, when I see how
vainly, how hopelessly every nobler aspiration
strives, to merely keep alive the humane qualities,
— to say nothing at all of progressive development, —
which our German emigration has brought over
with it. If these qualities had been lost over there,
we could at least console ourselves with the thought
that they had been crowded out by the tyranny of
power; but here one is tempted to lay the blame
upon human, or German nature, when one sees how
all this liberty, and all the means for a higher de-
velopment, are only used to trample upon liberty
and development, and to help vulgarity and base-
ness to triumph. You have never written anything
that expressed my own sentiments so completely
as the article on "The Art of Despairing." You
have given words to what I have so often thought,
but never ventured to say. If it were not for the
necessity of expressing yourself freely, and the con-

208 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

sciousness of sympathy with the few who agree with
you, that induces you to continue your activity
among this rabble, I could not understand your per-
severance, and would call it "casting pearls before
swine." Sounds which could cause the innermost
fibres of sensitive hearts to vibrate, here die away
unheard, like the cry of a bird in the primeval forest;
the clearest and most impressive truths only serve
to win adherants for the advocates of their opposites.
I see every noble zeal rebound in vain from this in-
sensibility and dullness, to say nothing of the scorn
and persecution, with which the vulgarity and re-
sentment of the rabble are wont to reward it. It
has been an entirely unexpected phenomenon to me
that in liberty the higher natures work in vain, and
only the meaner natures are successful, and I can-
not account for it yet. To see how intellect and
sentiment is entirely thrown away upon this popu-
lation, which, nevertheless, contains some cultured
elements, is to me so hopeless that I almost despair,
not merely of the majorities, but even of the minori-
ties. It makes me think of the Catholic processions,
which I used to see in Germany, and at which the
only use that flowers could be put to was to strew
them on the way, to be trampled upon by the vulgar
feet of a stupid crowd. I cannot at all imagine how
the people here can make their lives endurable if
they reject everything that can make them beauti-
ful. I ask myself what has become of their intellect,
what has become of their heart, can they no longer

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 209

think and feel? For if they still thought and felt,
they would also feel the necessity of embodying
their thoughts and feelings in, and of manifesting
them through, corresponding aspirations. I cannot
help thinking how much these thousands could ac-
complish if they wanted to; and that they do not
want to, although everything, just everything has
been done to urge them on, is not that a proof of
their complete demoralization and baseness?

Perhaps the colors of my picture are too somber,
perhaps other eyes will see it from a more cheerful
point of view, which I do not know. But that, on
the whole, I do not see things too darkly, you, at
least, cannot deny.*

♦However, our friend forgets to make any allow-
ance for the effect which the social and political conditions
had upon the emigrants, and especially forgets to consider
that a great many of the highest minded, and most cul-
tured of them were, moreover, obliged to struggle with
miserable circumstances, which made it hard for them, or
discouraged them, from taking part in affairs of general
interest. But she is perfectly right in condemning the
great mass of the older emigration, whose pecuniary con-
ditions are much better, but who have actually sworn off,
and hate every participation in intellectual life and liberal
aspirations, while every low and illiberal tendency seems
to meet with their approval; moreover, that part of the
younger generation, which is likewise quite numerous,
who are not suffering from pecuniary disabilities, but who,
guided by a shallow conceit, observe a negative or passive
attitude toward everything that does not especially curry
their favor. The upshot of it all is, of course, that the
entire German emigration does not weigh anything what-

210 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

I should only like to know whether there are
people here who are really happy. Is not the spirit
that is sensitive to happiness at the same time so
sensitive to unhappiness that its environment here
turns everything into bitterness? Who, indeed, can
be happy in walking over this battlefield of insensi-
bility where hearts are broken like glass, and human
happiness trampled upon like vermin! How many
a soul perishes in this country, friendless and un-
known, how many a one carries its woe in silence
to the grave, because it has once for all resigned it-
self not to find here any sympathy or appreciation!
Every ship that plows the waters, every railway
carriage, every log cabin in the forest, every garret
in the cities, but especially every hospital, every in-
sane asylum, and every graveyard, harbors a world
of pain, without sympathy, and it seems to me as if
the only means by which humanity here could bear
the consciousness of individual and general misfor-
tune is by becoming callous to it. You might as
well write an article on the art of becoming callous
as on the art of despairing.

I cannot learn this art ; on the contrary, my sensi-
bility increases in the same degree as I see the in-

ever in the scale of progress, and everybody looks down
upon them with contempt.

We do not at all blame a thoughtful and feeling woman
that she cannot endure this climate in an isolated position;
to us it is endurable only on account of the freedom of
speech, which at least can scatter the seed for the future-
Editor "Pionier,"

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 211

sensibility of theirs increase. To tear oneself en-
tirely from every relationship with the rest of the
world, to ignore it entirely, to seclude oneself com-
pletely, is in no way possible. The relationship will
at once be re-established, through the atmosphere,
if it has been broken off in some other way.

This atmosphere seems to be strangely oppres-
sive to me. The consciousness of being surrounded
by a world so unintellectual and soulless, so com-
pletely insensible and unimpressionable to truly hu-
mane aspirations, presses upon me and disquiets
me, as if I were a prisoner in the midst of liberty. I
shall try to liberate myself by returning into bond-
When I shall come to New York, for the purpose
of taking leave, I shall hand all my papers over to
you. I have not yet arranged them all, and still find
much that must be consigned to the flames, because
it is too insignificant, or immature. You can then
do with the package whatever you please. I give
you completely free play. At any rate you will not
have to complain of a lack of frankness, truthfulness
and recklessness. I make only one condition, to
begin with : you are not to make my name known
before — well, before you hear of my death. I do
not mean to say that I hope to die soon, but that is
not within our power. Should you, however, suc-
ceed in organizing your colony of the despairing, I
promise to become a member, and shall induce
those to whom I shall have to devote myself over
there to come, too. **********

212 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

I am looking forward with much joy to once more
experiencing a European spring. What is called
spring here, is like a leap of Nature from the cold
shivers into fever heat. In these transitions Nature
is unnatural ; and it is neither conducive to health,
nor is it aesthetic. American nature, like American
humanity, is much more inhuman than the Euro-
pean, even where culture has come to its aid ; and we,
with our European depth of feeling, remain or-
phaned, because we nowhere meet with any re-
sponse. In order to infuse our own life into a local
landscape, we must either first transform it, or be-
come bound to it by the most painful recollections.
But even then one must not live near too many
people. In Germany, or Switzerland, I felt at home
in every pretty spot, even when I had been there but
a few days. Here, even the flowers, that I myself
have planted, remain strangers to me. Last year I
had a couple of crickets about my fireplace. They
were the only thing that could really create an illu-
sion for me ; but I do not understand how thev came
here.

This American world is made for homesickness.
But what a condition to be in, always to be home-
sick and never to have a home !

I believe that all those whom you count among
the despairing are the homesick, homeless wander-
ers. There is a sort of intellectual or ideal gypsy-
dom, and we all belong to it. But we are worse off
than the gypsies, for they at least hold together, and

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 213

because they are not granted a portion of this world,
they idemnity themselves by stealing it. There are
no more helpless people than honest gypsies. And
how can intellectual gypsies be otherwise than
honest, even if they wanted to? For our opponents
have nothing that we could steal from them. Their
vulgarity, their intellectual barrenness, their empti-
ness of heart, their want of ideas, are nothing that
they need to guard from our pilfering passion, by
the aid of the police. But, alas, they rule the world.
I know of no phrase more meaningless than the
consolation that "the whole world is our country."
A nice country in which every square foot of ground
that is no longer wilderness is occupied and de-
formed by our opponents! Therefore our com-
panions in misery, or the wild animals, can be our
only society.

Our country can be conquered only by the revo-
lution. But I do not wish to say more on this sub-
ject, for I, too, am a German.

a 14 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

WOMEN.
(From "Der Pionier" of Feb. 3, 1856.)

Since I have, some time ago, spoken my mind
freely concerning the male sex, I seem to have
taken upon myself the obligation to criticise the
faults of my own sex with the same frankness. It is
not from a lack of good intention that I have failed
to do so sooner.

Mr. Ruge's last attack has given me a new im-
petus, and, I must confess, the necessary energy to
speak. But he is to blame if, instead of the prose-
cutor of my sex, I again appear as its defendant.

I was surprised, indeed, to see how a thinking
man like Mr. Ruge can judge so superficially and
vulgarly of woman. And I cannot understand how
he can praise Goethe and even call him the "freest
German." In what did Goethe's freedom consist?
As regards religion, it is not even established that
he was an "atheist," and as regards politics, his po-
sition as minister to a prince testifies against him.
What then remains? First of all his individual inde-
pendence from the prejudices of the age, and his
aesthetic sense of freedom, which asserted itself in
the realm of the ideal. But who constituted his so-
ciety in this realm? The women! His men, in-
cluding Faust, command little respect and admira-
tion. Tell me, Mr. Ruge, what would Goethe be

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 215

without the women? Without those despised and
unphilosophical creatures, whom you will not ac-
knowledge as human beings until twenty-five years
after the proclamation of the republic, the "freest
German," the greatest German poet, would hardly
have had any intellectual existence, and would prob-
ably have been forgotten long ago. Listen to what
he says of us : "Women are the only receptacle which
remains to us moderns, to fill with an ideal content.
With the men nothing can be done. Homer has
anticipated everything in Achilles and Odysseus,
the bravest and the wisest." In another place he
says: "That he perceived the ideal in a feminine
form, or the form of a woman." "What a man was
he did not know at all ; for it was impossible for him
to describe a man otherwise than biographically.
There must always be something historical to build
on."

What testimony ! It is hardly possible that Goethe
to-day would be opposed to the emancipation of
woman, for he would no more wish to exclude
"ideality" from his state than from his writings.
Mr. Ruge reproaches naturalists with destroying
"ideality;" Goethe, the "freest German," declares
that women are the only receptacle of ideality, in the
society of to-day, and yet the eulogizer of Goethe,
and of ideality, would confine women to the kitchen
and the nursery that they may do no harm in a so-
ciety in which "great men like Hecker, Kinkel,"
etc., are the most illustrious successors to "Achilles
and Odysseus !" Poor men !

216 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

Mr. Ruge would not lapse into such inconsist-
encies if instead of his dry, scholastic, Hegelian
standard of judging woman, he were aided by that
living, spiritual relationship, through which Goethe
first became Goethe, and through which he attained
that wonderful appreciation of the feminine nature.
I would call this capacity — which is generally quite
complimentary to us, termed the "feminine ele-
ment," although a perfect man cannot be conceived
of without it, any more than a perfect woman — the
aesthetic soul. Whoever does not possess this aes-
thetic soul, upon which the direct appreciation of all
higher natures depends, or whoever has killed it
within himself, by the gymnastics of abstract
thought, he will in vain attempt to fill this idealism,
about which Mr. Ruge is so anxious, with living
contents. And if Mr. Ruge limits it to the mascu-
line world, it becomes more than ever a forced ab-
straction, or an empty illusion. Strike us women
from your account, and then try to construct your
idealism! Even without Goethe, I should know,
and have the courage to say, that the masculine
world of to-day is, with few exceptions, nothing but
a world of philistines ; and even if I did not say it —
very well, Mr. Ruge himself has indirectly told me
so. I quote his words :

"Women are essentially attracted by position,*

*If this were the case, those men should complain of it
least of all who deny women the means of attaining to a
position themselves.

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 217

rank, superiority. When they fall in love they look
much more to superiority in the position of the man
than men look to the rank of her parents. If it is
not an office or a title, it surely is a superiority of en-
dowment or fame — in short, some kind of aristo-
cratic quality, that determines the love of the girl.
Love is aristocratic; it is superiority that is loved.
Beauty is an aristocracy ; few people in their appear*
ance correspond to the conception of beauty," etc.

What a confession against men and for women
these lines contain!

In other words, this confession in favor of the
women reads thus : Gifted with quick emotions and
a lively imagination, you cannot content yourselves
with the merely apathetic consciousness of the ex-
istence of these or the other things or persons — no,
by means of your more direct and more vital sus-
ceptibility to your environment, you quickly place
yourself into a personal relationship to it, whether
this relationship be one of sympathy or of antipathy.
Your nature is especially attuned for sympathy,
wherefore your proper element is love. But for all
this, you generally have the good taste not to love
what is most inferior. If you have your choice, you
will love the general and not the corporal, the inde-
pendently rich man, and not the dependent beggar,
the handsome and not the ugly suitor, the noble
and not the low, the cultured and not the vulgar,
the famous and not the obscure, the poet and not the
shop-keeper; yes, even the genius and not the philis-

218 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

tine ! In short, you women always love "superiori-
ties" and not defects, i. e., what is lovable and not
what is unlovely! In a garden you would even pick
the roses and not the nettles!

Such are the reproaches which Mr. Ruge heaps
upon us women, in contrast to the men! But the
praise which he thereby, indirectly, gives to men
must, logically, consist of the opposite of these re-
proaches. I shall, however, limit it to the confes-
sion, which is contained in Mr. Ruge's demand, that
we women ought also to make ourselves worthy of
such praise, that is, that we, too, should love the
opposite of "superiorities," that we ought not to be
"aristocratic" in our love! We ought, then, to love
the ugly men, and not the handsome, the insignifi-
cant and not the excellent, the philistines and not
the men of genius !

No, Mr. Ruge, forever no ! By all that is beauti-
ful and noble upon earth, by all the happiness and
all the suffering of the feminine soul, by all the ideals
and desires of the heart, by all that is sweet and all
that is painful, which finds lodgment in the human
breast, by the joy of spring and the sadness of au-
tumn, by the odor of flowers and the murmuring of
the cypress, by all the bliss of life and all the bitter-
ness of death, we do not want to love ugliness, in-
sufficiency, vulgarity, philistinism, but, with all the
fervor, all the devotion of our being, we want to love
beauty, nobility of soul, truth, proud manhood- and,
above all, genius! Not that false brilliancy which

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 219

seeks greatness in senseless arbitrariness, in disso-
lute transgressions of rational rules, and is therefore
incompatible with truth, the foremost requirement
of genius; not that sham wisdom, whose essence is
weakness instead of strength, but that true genius
which, regardless of the motives of a mean world,
of the calculators and hucksters, of the authorities
and scribes, breaks the fetters with which narrow-
mindedness and the anxiety of philistine pygmies
have bound human nature, and creates for us a
paradise of freedom, in which the great and noble
thoughts of human happiness and human beauty
take on life and form.

We could even love a dead genius, but not a living
philistine.

In this wise, Mr. Ruge, are we women aristocrats,
and the only misfortune is that not all of us are.
Perhaps the men would then try harder to become
aristocrats also, and would drop the conceit that
we must love them, on every plebeian condition,
just because they are the stronger and we their de-
pendents, and because they usually pay for the
hearth, upon which we have the honor of cooking
for them.

We women are not adapted to become philoso-
phers. Imagination and feeling — in short, all the
more living activities of the soul — fortunately do not
admit of that strong calm which is capable of evolv-
ing systems of thought in the privacy of the study,
that astonish the world just so long as it does not

220 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

comprehend them. Instead of this, every truth,
at which philosophers arrive only by the round-
about and troublesome way of constructing a "sys-
tem," is directly, and without difficulty, accessible
to our intelligence. But our stupid and unnatural
education generally makes us as diffident as it makes
us intellectually dependent, so that we mistrust our
own judgment before that of learned men. That is
a weakness which men know very well how to utilize
in behalf of our continued dispossession and sup-
pression; it is quite natural, therefore, that they re-
bel when we discard this weakness, when we no
longer allow ourselves to be imposed upon by their
pretended mysteries, and that the philosophers must
be the first to rebel is the most natural of all. We
must, however, not allow ourselves to be led astray
thereby; we must even dare to compete with the
philosophers. I venture, therefore, to turn Mr.
Ruge's reproach that we are aristocratic into the
greatest praise; I venture to assert — without be-
lieving, however, that I have discovered a new
truth — that, by our natural "aristocratic" tendency,
we unconsciously establish the correct human rule,
which men have brought into discredit by their per-
verse theories, and which demands that all men
should become aristocratic. By what sort of philos-
ophy does Mr. Ruge want to prove to me that, in-
stead of elevating humanity to the height of the
superiorities, which we women love, all must rather
be degraded to the opposite, for the sake of being

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 221

"democratic?" I vote for a democracy of superiori-
ty, in which the majority of mankind, especially the
men, are as noble, as beautiful, as cultured, as inde-
pendent, as gifted, as lovable, as happy as possible.
Surely the minority will never have to complain of
such a democracy.

I vote! But Mr. Ruge does not want to let me
vote, me and some five hundred million other female
beings. He even demands that we should first vote
on the question whether we want to vote, and does
not ask himself whether it might be adduced, as an
argument against the enfranchisement of the slaves,
that they had not voted on their human rights. He
at least distinguishes us from the slaves in that he
fixes a term for our liberation. "In the twenty-fifth
year of the republic" we may begin to look upon
ourselves as human beings, for by that time we shall
have been educated into human beings by those of
whom we have not yet sufficient evidence that they
themselves are already human beings!

I do not discuss my human right, I assert it. It
exists and does not cease to exist. Therefore I will
not allow any one to fix a term when it is to begin;
according to my interpretation, this term would only
fix the time when the robbers of my rights would
cease to be robbers. In the twenty-fifth year of the
republic we shall emancipate the women merely
means, in the twenty-fifth year of the republic we
shall cease to be despots toward the women. If I
had to consider only the male sex I would be modest

222 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

enough to accept this term as tolerably short for
the humanization of men.

That women, before they had attained to an intel-
lectual regeneration, through twenty-five years of
training in the republic, would use their right of
suffrage against the republic, is an assertion, but no
prQof ; it is a pretext, but no reason. But if we should
really vote for the priests, as Mr. Ruge maintains,
because we were educated by the priests, whose fault
would it be? Only the fault of those who have
brought the priests into the world, who tolerate the
priests, and who intrust the priests with our educa-
tion that they may make submissive sufferers of us.
But have men, who allow priests to rule, a right to
set themselves up as guardians of the female sex, on
account of the priests? Can these still priest-ridden
men have anything to fear from the female sex?
What harm can still come-to them? First abolish
the priests, since you have made them, then you are
safe from the danger of having us vote for them. It
is but a proof of your tyrannical disposition, and at
the same time of your weakness, that you want to
suppress our rights, on account of conditions for
which you, as the lords of history, are alone respons-
ible.

"I have indeed admitted that we must concede all
the rights of men and citizens to these diplomats
and aristocrats, these fair and interesting creatures,"
etc. (namely to women).

Thus Mr. Ruge admits the correctness of the prin-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 223

eiple (apparently to his great sorrow), but he flies
from its realization. And how illogical the conclu-
sions with which he tries to cover his retreat! That
the suffrage, exercised by women, will lead to dis-
aster has, as I have observed once before, not yet
been put to the test. On the contrary, women al-
ways, and in sufficient numbers, considering their
education, have taken the part of liberty in every
struggle, although it held out no promise to them.
But men have undergone the test of suffrage, and
have come out of it as discreditably as possible.
They have, as Mr. Ruge tells us (by their vote in
France) set us back fifty years. To what conclusion
ought this to lead him? That the first thing neces-
sary would be to fix a term for the education of
men, in order to instruct them in voting. His con-
clusion, however, is "now we cannot abolish univer-
sal suffrage any more." Why? Why, because we
are men and not women. Man must demand also
the application of the correct principle, but women
must bury the principle to avoid the application.
For men Mr. Ruge wants to apply the old rule:
whoever would learn to swim must not be afraid of
the water. But his chivalry wishes to spare us
women this discomfort. We learn to swim in the
kitchen, or by merely looking on. That is indeed
quite complimentary to our intelligence, but not ex-
actly "practical."

That universal suffrage has set us back fifty years,
seems to me to be entirely the fault of those who be-

224 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

gan the revolution with universal suffrage without
first providing for the removal of the reactionary
candidates, and the enlightenment of the ignorant
voters. Nevertheless, after the harm has once been
done, it will certainly all come out right in the end.
It is no misfortune for a child to stumble, if thereby
it learns to walk ; neither is walking ever forbidden
to a child for that reason.

But we women must not learn to walk until we are
grown up, and I can not, for the life of me, see the
advantage of this tender regard. To postpone the
beginning, when it is a matter of necessity, can
never lead to reasonable results. No man can main-
tain that the emancipation of woman, the placing
her on a footing of complete legal equality with
man, can be evaded in practice, since it is impregna-
ble in principle. Why, then, this procrastination?
The moral of the Sibylline books would hold good
here, too. Men have not learned how to exercise
their rights in a day ; women will learn it no sooner
than they did. But they must make a beginning
sometime, and it is a sad thing to see how this be-
ginning, which has so many obstacles to overcome,
anyway, is attacked, a priori, with the most trivial
weapons of scorn and animosity, by those who have
nothing to say against the principle. In order to
postpone the term for the emancipation of woman
so long as possible, this coarse and aggressive state
of society certainly does not need the aid of men,
who have devoted their lives to the conquest of bru-
tality and aggression!

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 225

Strange human beings! Here I stand in the pres-
ence of sun, moon and stars, in the presence of the
whole universe, as a free being ; no star, no "god,"
obstructs my way; the whole universe silently ac-
knowledges my freedom. Only these beings, which
call themselves men, and even free men, have the
audacity to deny my freedom, and even to fix a term
for my humanization in case I reform. Poor things!
You only convince me that I know better what is
right and what is wrong, what I can do and what I
may do, than you. Me you certainly need not lib-
erate ; I have for myself all the liberty that I need
and desire. But I know that you yourselves have it
not, and that you will never have it without free
women. Just as the woman without a man, and the
man without the woman fulfills only one-half of his
and her existence, just as the contentment and the
harmony of human existence, can only come from a
union of the two beings, so also, in public life, this
union is the indispensable condition of a truly hu-
mane and harmonious order of things. Is public life
anything else than the sum of all individual lives?
Must not every individual life be interested in the
public life, and must not every individual union be
involved in the union of the whole? To postpone
such a state of society would only be to prolong the
inhumanity and disharmony of our present social
life. Family and state must correspond to each
other, and those who constitute the family must also
constitute the state, otherwise both can come to

2a6 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

nothing more than they have come to hitherto. You
may call yourselves philosophers or revolutionists,
scholars or statesmen, and you may as such even
allow your conceit to surpass your blindness by con-
tinuing to despise woman, because she has not the
power to dictate her consciousness to you as your
law — you will thereby not annul the law of nature,
which equipped us, as human beings, with human
rights, as well as with human powers. You may
exhaust your wisdom and your strength, you may
use up your ink with writing, or shed your blood,
you may undertake reforms or revolutions — all your
achievements must remain fragmentary, all your
creations must be imperfect, so long as you would
make laws and institutions for all mankind, but ego-
tistically exclude one-half of mankind, and truly not
the worst half!

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 227

THE CONVENTION OF GERMAN WOMEN
IN FRAUENSTADT.

(Editorial Correspondence.)

Why so careworn, my friend, and why do you
look out of the car window with downcast eyes?
You are thinking of the past.

"You have guessed right. I am a great friend of
traveling by rail, for it allows one's person to catch
up with one's thoughts as quickly as possible, but
here in America my thoughts generally go back-
ward, while the locomotive drags my person for-
ward. If I undertake even the smallest journey
here I am in memory continually traveling in Eu-
rope, and I then feel more than ever what we are
missing here. A country in which travel affords no
pleasure, life, too, can have no true pleasures to
offer. When I am traveling I feel more than ever
that I am an exile, and it is more than ever made
clear to me that life here is a torture when I am
intent on recreation."

In some respects I must agree with you in your
condemnation of American life, but you are wrong,
and it is your own loss if you find nothing to com-
pensate you for its deprivations. To me liberty
alone is a sufficient compensation for everything
that Europe could offer me.

228 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

"That may do for a man ; I find no compensation
except in memory."

I must put that down as a weakness. Whoever
has sufficient resources within himself is able to
make himself independent of his surroundings. And
so long as one can still find like-minded people one
can be recompensed in a quiet way for everything
that one misses in the doings of the world at large.

"I admit that to some degree, but where does one
meet here the like-minded people? Those who seek
happiness in amassing wealth, or in dissipation, or
in a narrow club life, find plenty of like-minded com-
panions ; but how many people have you met so far
who make higher demands on life and whose intel-
lectual and emotional gifts are of an order to make
mutual enjoyment possible? I have known people
who in Europe were most excellent companions,
and most desirable for social intercourse; here I
find them after a few years so changed, so strange,
so empty, so blunted, so devoid of aspirations, so
common-place that I am glad to have them keep
away from me. But the few whom I could recog-
nize as like-minded live isolated and scattered
throughout this large expanse of country, harbor-
ing the same lonely thoughts that I and others do,
but suffer likewise from the same fate that prevents
us from meeting and associating with each other.
When I consider that in this vast country there are
perhaps half a dozen people to whom I could feel
drawn with my whole soul, and that even these few

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 229

I shall perhaps never have the opportunity of meet-
ing, or of associating with, then I feel quite hopeless.
Men and women, only men and women with lofty
minds and noble hearts, and a pleasant, cozy corner
in which to enjoy their companionship — more I do
not want."

With all my heart I agree with you, but I am more
modest than you. I do not need half a dozen in
order to be a man among men. But it is perhaps
just as hard to find three as six. I, too, have found
it easier to find men in Europe without the lantern
of Diogenes. There there was more mutual under-
standing, a greater need of companionship, of com-
mon aspirations, a circumstance that can be readily
explained by the common past, in part also by the
greater want of liberty, while here each one of us
is seeking for a new path, and the greater freedom
of life directs the attention more to the external.
But in Europe I have noticed a greater disposition
among women to seek and cherish the society of
free people than here. It is remarkable that among
the five million Germans in this country one meets
with so few women who by their intellect, their
character, and their aspirations rise above the level
of philistinism. But in spite of this I cannot yet
bring myself to despair of German women as I do
of the majority of German men.

"If we women are nothing and accomplish noth-
ing it is certainly the men who are to blame for it,
for it is a pity how thoroughly dependent on them

230 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

we still are. And therefore you will yet make the
experience that it is a vain undertaking to attempt
to influence the German women and through them
the German men. Because most German men are
philistines, saloon-loungers, money-makers and born
subjects, therefore most German women are mere
nothings, neglected, prosaic, apathetic beings, with-
out intellectual vitality and higher interests; and
since this is the prevailing condition, the few excep-
tions are discouraged from coming to the front. I
as a woman am looking for superior men and find
none; you as a man are looking for superior women
and find none. So we can mutually console each
other, but we shall both have to come to the con-
clusion that it is principally this country and the life
here that is to blame. Please to bear in mind, more-
over, this one circumstance, which seems to me to
be of especial importance. In Europe nature and
culture unite in making travel a joy and a need.
Traveling in beautiful surroundings and in the at-
mosphere of civilization stimulates sociability, opens
the hearts, and affords opportunity for making ac-
quaintances by bringing like-minded people to-
gether in the proper mood. But what has this coun-
try to offer? Suppose you and I and half a dozen
other friends were to undertake a pleasure trip here,
for the sake of flapping our wings with greater liber-
ty for a while — whither should we turn? Where is the
Italy in whose beauty we could revel; where is the
Geneva Lake upon which we could float; where is

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 231

the Rigi upon which we could rest; where the Rhine
upon whose shores our fancy could disport itself;
where the Heidelberger Schloss in whose surround-
ings we could dream; where, at last, is even the inn
where we could comfortably and joyously sit behind
the sparkling goblet, while our madcap spirits went
chasing each other? Nature as well as society here
offers us nothing but comfortless, repelling vul-
garity; there is nothing engagingly human in men,
and nothing classic in Nature and its embellish-
ments. Perhaps in a hundred years travel can also
be made enjoyable in America; now one can only be
transported like an article of freight. When will
our exile be at an end?"

To this question you will least of all get an answer
here where you ought to expect it most. I do not
know a dozen of those boastful apostles of liberty of
'48 who are still seriously interested in the revolution,
and who would make a sacrifice for the sake of
shortening their exile. A proof how superficial their
zeal for liberty was on the other side of the water.
But even if we can do nothing for European liberty
here, there is still enough to be done for American
liberty, and this will indirectly benefit the other.
What especially fills me with hope of progress in
this country is the interest which is taken in the
question of women's rights, and I am curious to see
how our German women will now stand the test.
Do you believe that the convention of the German
women in Frauenstadt will be well attended?

232 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

"You must have noticed already that I entertain
but small hopes. I am going because I do not want
to be charged with having neglected a duty. I ad-
mire the courage and energy of your friend, Julie
vom Berg, who has called the convention, but I
fear that it will be a failure, which is worse than if
the attempt had not been made."

There is nothing worse than discouragement at
the start. But the whistle of the locomotive warns
me that we must separate. I have, therefore, a favor
to ask of you. Will you undertake to report the
convention to "Der Pionier?"

"What ? Are you not going to attend the con-
vention— you?"

I am sorry to say that my duty calls for the diffi-
cult sacrifice of staying away. It calls me to an-
other convention — to the great convention of edi-
tors at Cincinnati. ^

"That, of course, is a sufficient, but also your only
excuse. Well, I will comply with your request and
report faithfully to 'Der Pionier.' Good-by, Herr
Laengst."

AMD THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 233

THE CONVENTION OF GERMAN WOMEN
IN FRAUENSTADT.

(Correspondence to "Der Pionier," Frauenstadt.)

The numerous attendance and the lively interest
for our cause which I found here, compel me to
apologize for the want of faith with which I had an-
ticipated this gathering of German women. I al-
most began to feel reconciled to America.

Promptly at the time appointed the convention
assembled. The large hall was almost rilled and
the attendance so numerous that it astonished all
present. Besides those who had announced them-
selves a great many more have come, partly from
the far west. Some of the women are accompanied
by their husbands, some by their brothers, and be-
sides these men, several representatives of the strong
sex have come alone. Some of them are suspected
to be "reporters" and "editors," but they have not
yet made themselves known.

The first hour was spent in welcoming each other
and becoming acquainted. Then the meeting was
called to order by the venerable Katherine Schmalz
of Philadelphia. A most simple and abbreviated
mode of organization was adopted. Mrs. Schmalz
proposed Julie vom Berg as president, who, how-
ever, declined the honor and in her turn proposed

234 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

Ida Johanna Braun of Boston Highlands. The lat-
ter was unanimously elected. She opened the con-
vention with the following words : —

Ladies — Never before did I even dream of the
honor that has just been conferred upon me, be-
cause I never before even dreamt of the possibility
of seeing so much interest displayed in public affairs,
and especially in the questions for the consideration
of which'we have here come together, by the Ger-
man women of this country, of whom, hitherto,
nothing has ever been seen, except perhaps in beer-
gardens, and nothing ever heard, except in the gibes
of men. This interest is all the more a pleasant sur-
prise to me because it seems to 'have matured in si-
lence and required only a stimulus to come to light.
But I am convinced that nobody will be more sur-
prised than the mass of our countrymen, for in no
country, hitherto, have women been so removed
from public life as in Germany, and in no country
has the male sex been so unanimously intent, with
gibes and vulgarity, on driving her back into her so-
called "sphere," as in our old fatherland. Even on
this side of the water we have long enough suffered
from the effects of former conditions. But here,
where so many limitations, by which we had been
hemmed in on the other side, have been removed,
we have, it seems, gradually learned to find our
bearings and to act according to our own impulses.
I hope that our coming together here will prove this
and will spread the conviction, through the fruits of

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 235

its activity, that our interference with social devel-
opment was neither useless nor unjustifiable. We
may frankly admit that the American women have
set us an example, and have in many respects put us
to shame. If that is a reproach to us, it lies entirely
with us to clear ourselves of it by setting an example,
in our turn, to American women, which they need
quite as much as we did theirs. I am alluding to
struggles impending in the near future, which will
at the same time give our German men an oppor-
tunity for freeing themselves from prejudice and of
becoming reconciled to our aspirations. I do not
consider it doubtful that American women will,
within a short time, succeed in gaining the right of
suffrage. They will gain it for us, too, and therefore
it would be doubly disgraceful for us to bear no part
whatever in the achievement, and to accept a right
from their hands without some desert of our own.
This is a point of honor with us. We cannot permit
it to be said of us that, like slaves, we have received
a right as a present. Those, only, who help to fight
for it deserve it truly. And while we take part in the
struggle we at the same time appeal to the honor of
German men who cannot wish to expose themselves
to the disgrace of withholding from their women a
right that others grant them. These men will at the
same time come to a recognition of the fact that not
only their honor, but their interest as well, bid them
to promote our intellectual activity and our partici-
pation in public affairs as much as possible. I seem

236 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

to foresee that the granting of the right of suffrage
to the women of America will, in the beginning at
least, strengthen that political party which will strive
to limit social freedom by means of a moral police,
and to increase the power of the clergy by religious
compulsion. What this party did not hitherto suc-
ceed in doing it may perhaps do with the help of
the American women, who, on the average, still are
more dependent on the representatives of religion
than American men; it will certainly succeed if the
increase of votes received by the accession to its
ranks of those women will not be counterbalanced.
And who can and must counterbalance this increase
in votes? None other than the German women!
(General applause.) We might have the best of op-
portunities to let the German men become very un-
comfortably aware of what they did, when they lim-
ited our "sphere" to the kitchen and nursery. Should
we but decline to make use of a right which they had
wished to withhold from us, we could expose our
German brothers defenselessly to the tyranny of
temperance fanatics. But no. Let us not revenge
ourselves because men were blind enough to dis-
qualify us at their own expense. Let us least of all
revenge ourselves by foregoing our own rights. I
see the time coming when those of our "Masters"
who in the most rudely insulting manner referred
us to the "sphere" dictated by themselves will beg
us to leave that "sphere" and accompany them to the
polls, in order that they may continue 'to drink their

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 237

beer in peace and not be confined to that same
"sphere," which they always described to us as so
beautiful, but which they were wont to honor with
their presence only when they were hungry or
sleepy. Should we leave them in the lurch? Let us
rather come to their assistance, not in a magnani-
mous spirit, however, but in order to do our share
in securing liberty and justice. And that we may
be prepared for this work it is necessary to make
our appearance upon the field of battle, and to begin
to drill in good season.

But while we are thus assisting the German men
to combat temperance tyranny and religious fanati-
cism, we have, at the same time, the best of oppor-
tunities to set an example of intellectual freedom to
American women, and to thus show our gratitude
for the example they gave us in their struggle for
political freedom.

But even that is not the whole of our mission.
Our public activity and its consequences will not
be limited to this country; it will serve as an in-
centive to our country-women on the other side of
the ocean, and I hope that we shall succeed in suc-
cessfully co-operating with them and especially in
convincing them that without political freedom, and
without a republic, the female sex cannot hope for
an improvement of their lot.

Before closing permit me to say a few words con-
cerning the attitude we must take in this struggle
for reform in order to gain our end. Are we to iso-

238 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

late ourselves or not? And if not, with whom ought
we to combine? That is the question. If there is
any portion of the population of a state that deserves
to be designated as a class it is the women. A class
in a political sense is caused by legal privilege or
disfranchisement. The negroes were a class so long
as they had not the right of suffrage. The wealthy
form a class when the right of suffrage and govern-
ment depends on the possession of money. But the
entire female half of humanity bears the most pro-
nounced class-character. It has always been dis-
tinguished in all countries, even by the disfranchised
class of the male portion, as the class without rights.
That she could in no way be dispensed with has
been her only protection ; and the only guarantee of
her rights has rested with the chivalry of men. We
daily read, nowadays, of the class-distinctions which
are called out and fostered by the "laborers" in Eu-
rope as well as in America/the object being to de-
velop the most intense "class-consciousness," which
must finally lead to "class-wars." Now, we women
need not have recourse to artificial means in order
to call out a "class-consciousness" among us. The
state as well as nature stamp us as the largest and
most disfranchised class in the world. If we were
to adopt the tactics of the laborers, we would regard
only our special interests, concern ourselves only
with that which is wanting to and oppressing us as
women, we would isolate ourselves as women and
as the woman-class take our stand against the entire

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 239

man-class. The mere suggestion of such an idea is
sufficient to make all the folly and narrow-minded-
ness of it clear to everybody. Just because it
was narrow-mindedness and exclusion that have
driven us into a position of disqualification,
we, in our turn, must occupy higher ground,
upon which narrow-mindedness and exclusion
disappear. It is the standpoint of a com-
mon humanity, of common human rights. Upon
this standpoint we learn to unite with all individuals
and with all classes, who in the conception of com-
mon rights also recognize and strive for our rights ;
we further learn to look upon every right for which
others struggle as our own cause, even if it does
not direotly accrue to our advantage ; and in com-
batting every wrong that is perpetrated on others we
ward off a blow directed to the common rights in
Which we also share. If the negro rattles his chains,
we must help him break them; if the laborer fights
with his exploiter, we must take his part ; when na-
tions rise against their oppressors, we must take
part in the uprising; and when intellectual liberty
scores a victory in a field where the art of mystifica-
tion and dogmatic barbarity have heretofore held
sway, we must hail it as a benefactor of mankind.
In short, whenever the question is one of human
rights, and of the diffusion of humanity, liberty and
truth, there we must 'take part and help, not only for
the sake of satisfying our own natures, and of put-
ting to shame those who declare us incompetent to

240 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

fill the requirements of a higher human calling, but
also for the sake of our own interests. For it. is de-
termined by the law of social development that the
lot of woman deteriorates on a progressive scale, as
right and general enlightenment retrograde, that
she, as the weaker party, must hold her claims to
justice in abeyance until justice has become general
in the masculine sphere, and that its true apprecia-
tion and its noblest effect can appear only after evo-
lution has swept away every vestige of vulgarity,
violence and narrowness. Therefore women com-
prehend their true interests only when their sym-
pathy for right and truth is general, and when they
extend their support to every radical cause. The
realization of radicalism is the future, the resurrec-
tion, the "millennium of women."

This address of the president was received with
general and most enthusiastic applause.

After this the organization of the meeting was
completed by the election of the following officers
and committees:

Vice President — Julie Morgenroth.

Secretaries — Johanna Fluegel, Caroline Poltz.

Treasurer — Anna Alsen.

Committee on Resolutions — Julie vom Berg,
Marg. Fluegel, Marie Zehringer.

Committee on Miscellaneous Business — Cath.
Heisterbach, Mrs. Felsenthal, Elise Luebke.

Hereupon the motion was made to adjourn the
meeting until 3 p. m. But before the vote could be

AND THE SEXUAL EELATIONS. 241

taken a committee of the German radicals of
Frauenstadt appeared upon the scene to invite the
entire delegation of ladies to take a drive and to view
the city and vicinity. A long train of carriages was
waiting on the street. The invitation was accepted
and the meeting adjourned until the next morning.
The weather was mild and suggestive of spring, and
all felt themselves most agreeably entertained and
refreshed by the drive. Upon their return the com-
pany again halted at the hall of the meeting and were
not a little surprised to find it transformed into a
great dining hall, with tables spread with a steaming
repast. It was a simple meal, but substantial and
savory, and over the excellent wine many a toast was
offered full of the spirit of the hour. The German
radicals were treated with special distinctions and
felt themselves sufficiently rewarded for their pains
by the graceful thanks that were tendered them.
After dinner coffee was served and a few hours were
spent in agreeable conversation, whereupon the
company dispersed in excellent mood to meet again
the next morning.

On this occasion I made the experience that so-
ciability could be found even in America.

SECOND DAY.

After the minutes of the previous session had been
read and approved, the Reverend Mr. Goetzling was
introduced to the meeting.

REV. GOETZLING — It is as much of an honor
as a deeply felt happiness to me to be able to attend

242 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

this noble assembly. It is not in vain that the poet,
our highly honored Kloppstock, says :
"Honor to woman! To her it is given!
To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!"

SEVERAL VOICES— Does Kloppstock say
that?

REV. GOETZLING— Ah, so you, too, love the
adorable poet? The singer of the "Messiah'' has
always been my favorite and he appreciated woman
very highly. But as the expression "to garden the
earth with the roses of Heaven" indicates, we are
always to look aloft with one eye while the other is
directed toward the earth. Only when the father in
Heaven lends his assistance, can the worldly work,
succeed. Even the unchristian Goethe says: "The
blessing comes from on high." (Murmurs and
laughter.) And, 'therefore, my sisters, allow me to
remind you of the beautiful example set you by your
American sisters, who convene their assemblies with
an invocation from the word of God and open them
with a prayer to Him. It is the deep interest that I
take in your enterprise and the Christian sympathy
I feel for you personally, that moves me to offer
myself to you as mediator with Him to whom we
owe everything. Let us, therefore, my beloved sis-
ters, open our meeting with an ardent prayer.

PRESIDENT— It is self-evident that outside of
the members proper of this convention no one has a
right to participate in its deliberations. Neverthe-
less everybody, not a member, even every opponent,

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 243

has free access to this convention, and may express
his opinion, on condition that he will not interfere
with the business of the meeting. The Rev. Mr.
Goetzling is personally welcome, like any other in-
dividual, but his position does not entitle him to
assume a function at his own pleasure. No motion
has been made to open our session with prayer. But
to show every possible liberality, and to formally
establish the pleasure of the meeting, I shall put it to
a vote whether we are to accept the reverend gentle-
man's offer or not.

CATHERINE SCHMALZ— Before the vote is
taken I should like to make a few remarks. The
reverend gentleman addressed us as sisters. No
doubt he means sisters in Christ. But I for my per-
son stand in no relation to him whatever, neither in
nor out of Christ. Other members of the assembly,
whom I know, are as little inclined to call him
brother as I am. We certainly all wish him well,
but I can desire nothing better for him than that he
may go and pray no more and no more molest
others. (Applause.) I have not prayed since I be-
gan to think for myself, and none of my seven chil-
dren has ever learned how. But, on the other hand,
I have taught them to do what is right, and have
given them this rule to guide them through life, "do
right and fear no one," be it God or man. Of the
doctrines of Christianity I have retained only this
one: "Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you," but have added to it, "Whatever you

244 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

desire for yourself, grant it also to others, and help
them to the best of your ability to procure it, espe-
cially the common rights of man. These are the
principles according to which my children have been
brought up, and four of them have become righteous,
active and generally respected men, while the other
three are lovable, good and happy women. But I
myself look back upon the sixty-five years of my
life as upon a cheerful, blooming, fertile landscape,
which I myself have planted. How, on the other
hand, have those of my acquaintances fared who
have been brought up on praying and church-go-
ing? I do not know of a single one who has not
either developed into a hypocrite or gone to the bad,
and not one of them was happy. Three of them have
married ministers, and of these three one died in an
insane asylum, the other committed suicide by hang-
ing herself, and the third could save herself from
her pious surroundings only by eloping with the
sexton to Australia. I should rather be here in
America than in Australia. Let us remain here and
gratefully decline the reverend gentleman's pious
offer.

(Cries of "Question! Question!")

The offer of the clergyman is unanimously de-
clined, whereupon he leaves the hall.

The President now requested the Committee on
Resolutions to report, and Julie vom Berg, chair-
man of the committee, at last had an opportunity
to read the following resolutions :

AND THE SEXUAL EELATIONS. 245

1. The degradation and subordination of woman
had its origin in the most barbaric primeval ages, in
man's superior physical strength and wildness of
temperament, and received permanent sanction
from the monstrous creations of his ignorance and
delusion, which placed a "God" upon the throne of
the world without a goddess, and created man in the
"image" of this "God," and woman merely from a
"rib" of this man. The belief in God and its impli-
cations excludes the equality of woman from the
start. The religious woman is the upholder of her
own debasement, and only the pure, sovereign
human mind is the savior of her dignity and of her
rights.

2. The profound prejudice which has accus-
tomed men to look upon the difference of the sexes
as an inequality must be traced back to the origin
of mankind. The manner in which the first men as
well as the first animals originated is a mystery ; but
this manner, as well as the matter from which they
originated, must have been the same for both sexes,
and this equality must by their union logically have
been preserved to the present day. Animals know
of no inequality of the sexes and unite on a basis of
equal rights for a common life-purpose. Man alone,
who has the power to depart from nature, in order to
return to it as a thinking being, could become so
barbarous as to sophisticate the companionship by
an arbitrary subordination of the weaker sex, thus
establishing a union upon a difference of rights.

246 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

3. The conception of man as a genus excludes
every inequality of rights as an inherent contradic-
tion and irrationality. Equality of kind implies
equality of rights. By subordinating woman man
raves against himself. If vulgarity and habit have
led him to make this monstrous mistake of branding
his mother and his wife as slaves by disqualifying
them, while he would have his children and himself
free, of degrading the woman below himself while
desiring to love her as an equal, then the time has
indeed come when he must be brought to realize
this contradiction, by the abolition of which, alone,
will he himself, as well as woman, be able to occupy
their true position in life.

4. Equal rights will suffer no deductions and no
exceptions. They can be thought of only as a com-
plete, absolute, individual sovereignty, secured from
all sides, in the state as well as in the family, in social
as well as business intercourse. To exclude woman
from suffrage is simply tyranny; to subordinate her
in the family is barbarism; to limit her in social
intercourse is arbitrariness; to measure the fruits
of her labor with an unequal standard is fraud.

5. In the family, as well as in the state, this col-
lection of families, interests, sentiments and aspira-
tions can be brought into a state of humane har-
mony only by a co-operation of both sexes on a
basis of equality. The one-sided preponderance of
one sex to the exclusion of the other from public
activity is not accompanied merely by the disastrous

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 247

consequences which inevitably follow every sup-
pression of rights, but must needs maintain a de-
fective, discontented state of society, by depriving it
of the co-operation of its noblest perfecting and
humanizing forces. All reforms will remain frag-
mentary and botch-work so long as not all the mem-
bers of society can participate in them as equals.

6. The foundation of a humane co-operation of
both the sexes in the state is their personal union in
marriage for the purpose of forming a family. But
in order that marriage may accomplish its aim of a
harmonious relationship, it must be the result of a
free need and a free choice, and not be treated as a
duty and a coercion. It is a glaring inconsistency to
expect free individuals to unite to form a state in
order that this same state may, through the institu-
tion of marriage, rob them of their individual liberty.

It is the inherent and exclusive right of every in-
dividual to determine his own actions. This right
cannot 'be forfeited by a voluntary union with an-
other individual. Marriage is a free relationship be-
tween sovereign and equal individuals, entered into
for the sake of mutual happiness, and its dissolution,
as well as its contraction, cannot be determined by
any other will than that of the united parties, even
although the conception of a true marriage presup-
poses a union for life.

Corresponding to this conception of marriage,
and the equality of the two individuals concerned in
it, all the property of the united couple, that which

248 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

was brought into the union, and that which is accu-
mulated by both in common, must, as the basis of
their united existence, be administrated in common,
and must, in case of a separation, be divided in equal
parts.

7. So long as perfect equality in all departments
of life has not been established, and an equal op-
portunity for education in their chosen calling, in
any field, has not been secured to both sexes alike,
a proportionately larger share of the property of the
parents should by inheritance fall to the female chil-
dren, for the purpose of securing their existence.

Thus far the resolutions. Julie vom Berg recom-
mended their adoption with the following remarks :

I need not call special attention to the fact that
the resolutions are somewhat irregular in form, and
also ignore many a point upon which much empha-
sis is generally placed, on similar occasions. These
points have received such frequent consideration
that we have intentionally avoided their repetition.
While we were careful to duly acknowledge general
principles, our chief concern was to emphasize those
sides of the question which usually, especially in
American conventions, are ignored or receive a false
interpretation. While, for instance, American
women make the mistake of attempting the confir-
mation of their rights by religious authorities, our
special object is to show that religion itself — this
eternal enemy of nature and free humanity — con-
tains the root of the tyranny, which has ever de-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 249

graded one-half of humanity to be the servant and
slave of the other half. Only nature and reason can
assign us our proper place; all religions begin and
end with our degradation, but especially the Chris-
tian religion, the most unnatural and inhuman of
all. Have Christians ever doubted the human na-
ture of male man? Have they ever classified him
as an animal? In the middle ages the question was
discussed whether woman was a human being. But
they nevertheless, since they could not do without
her, assigned 'her a high position in the divine royal
family, not, however, without first divesting her of
all womanly or human attributes, except the "seven
swords" in her breast. Perhaps this, too, is an illus-
tration to the Christian command : Taceat muJier in
ecclesia — 'let the woman be silent in the church"—
she may not speak, but she may weap. And she has
indeed wept enough, both with and without swords
in her breast, and not only in the Christian church.
I hear her weeping in the Mohammedan church,
where she is driven in troops to satisfy male lust; I
hear her weeping in the Babylonian church, where
she was at the mercy of every stranger, for money,
which the priest pocketed; I hear her weeping in
the Hindoo church, which drove her living into the
flames, that it might write a ghastly epitaph for the
dead master with the coal of the burned slave. Hun-
dreds of thousands and millions of these epitaphs
'have been 'written since the religious campaign of
Alexander, during two thousand years, and they are

250 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

still being written to-day. It is surprising that
Christianity, which also at a later day came to
greatly relish roasted living human flesh, has not
adopted this Hindoo method of beatification.

Thus the spirit of all religions established by men,
whose pious delig'ht has always been in human sacri-
fice, the sacrifice of the helpless, has understood the
rights of women ! If woman wished, by a single fact,
to prove herself the representative -of true humanity,
and by a single word to deny all complicity in the
misery of the world, she need but say: Never has a
woman, whatever else she may have done, in the
capacity of queen, for instance, never has she
founded a religion!

In drawing up our resolutions we have gone back
to nature, this fountain head of all knowledge, to
open men's eyes to the barbaric prejudice that per-
meates all his opinions, habits and laws, and through
which he has deemed himself justified in conducting
himself as the lord and owner of his fellow-beings
of the feminine sex. Not until he has become en-
tirely conscious of this prejudice, not until he has
learned to recognize in the subordination of woman
the debasement of his own race and humanity, will
he be able to grant equal rights to us honestly and
completely. Before this even the most just and hu-
mane man will concede them more or less as an act
of mercy, rather than a demand of inexorable logic,
the fulfillment of a categorical command of duty, the
expiation of an ancient wrong. But when this false

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 251

fundamental conception that a difference of sex may
involve a difference of rights, and annul the sov-
ereignty of the individual, is once destroyed, it will
become clear to everyone that all further objections
to the absolute equality of rights can be turned
against men as well as against women.

In touching upon a few other points we wished
to indicate the consequences of equal rights upon
relations which are generally passed over in silence,
but which have hitherto been regulated entirely to
the disadvantage of woman, and are rarely con-
ceived of in a radical sense. I am tempted to ask
the question whether men would ever have thought
of founding the institution they call marriage if they
had felt sure that without it women would be as
eager to do their "dirties" as they themselves have
always been to disregard theirs. The women were
to be chained while the men went free. This seems
to have been the original meaning of man-created
"marriage." Marriage as reformed by women abol-
ishes all chains as superfluous in the true, and disas-
trous in the false, union.

The motion to adopt the resolutions, in toto, was
favorably received by many, especially by Marie
Zehringer of St. Louis, wibo spoke as follows :

"It is incomprehensible to me how a woman,
who is not entirely devoid of judgment and self-
respect, can love a man and accept him as her com-
panion for life, who does not grant her every right
which he claims for himself. By the assumption of

252 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

a difference or by the denial of her rights, he either
declares her as unable or as unworthy to stand upon
an equal plane with himself; he divests her of her
human dignity or degrades her into a second-class
human being. He says to her: I >love you as a per-
son, but this person has no will of her own, only my
will; you are an angel, but this angel does not
know what she is about ; I adore you as a goddess,
but this goddess has not brains enough to judge of
the most commonplace things; you can make me
happy for life, but you cannot decide what is good
or bad, right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable ;
I am wholly yours, but I am your law-maker and
your judge; all my possessions are at your disposal,
but I must be your guardian, and must vote for you
as the slave-holder does for the slave ; you are my
mistress in theory, but my servant in practice. How
ought she to answer all these inconsistencies? Sim-
ply thus : You are either a hypocrite in your profes-
sions of love, or a fool in your arrogance ; in the first
case, I despise you, and in the second case, I laugh
at you, but in no case do I love you. Adieu !

The contradictions in which men involve them-
selves, in their struggle against 'the equality of the
sexes, are as obvious as they are innumerable. They
think they are paying us the very highest compli-
ment when, in assigning us our "sphere" in their
well-known arbitrary manner, they entrust us with
the high task of educating their children. We are to
be educators without having had an education our-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 253

selves. We are to do our share in making the chil-
dren worthy members of society, competent citizens,
without having learned ourselves what society
needs, and What constitutes a good citizen. We are
to teach them the rights of man when we have none
ourselves. We are slaves and are expected to rear
free men; we are brought up as dolls, and are en-
trusted with the task of training men. In short, we
are charged with incapacity for and deprived of the
opportunity of learning and practicing the very
thing which it is to be our highest task to teach.

But although women in general have no oppor-
tunity to fit themselves for public life, they neverthe-
less show, in all questions that do not require a
special training, that they stand on the right side. I
need only to call to mind the slave question.
Slavery, so long admired by the majority of men,
would certainly have been abolished several decades
earlier had women had a voice in the matter. That
women of the South, spoiled by education, and de-
humanized by habit, have taken the side of slavery
need not astonish us ; but how many women in the
North sided with this 'barbaric institution, of the
preservation of which the men made a vital ques-
tion? And especially among the German women,
where do you find that revolting fanaticism for
slavery, that stupid 'hatred of the negro, by which
the majority of the German men have distinguished
and are stil'l distinguishing themselves as "Demo-
crats?" I have never yet found a German woman

254 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

who hated a negro woman on account of her color.
To the disgrace of our nationality be it said that
there are hundreds of thousands of German male
"Democrats," but to the honor of our sex be it like-
wise said, very few female "Democrats."

The test has never yet been made how much
woman in general can accomplish, but rather the
test to what degree her capacities can be curbed.
And yet the sons of the mothers who have been put
to this test have not all turned out idiots and bar-
barians ! Ought not that to arouse a desire in men
to see what can be made of women, if they are not
only placed on a footing of equality with men, but
also receive equal liberty and opportunity to de-
velop their capacities and unfold their activities?
We always point with satisfaction to the fact that
great men usually had excellent mothers. The
qualities of the mothers are therefore to be consid-
ered an index to the qualities of the sons, and the
influence of a mother does not seldom decide the
trend of a whole life. And yet there seems to be a
determination to limit the number of superior
women as much as possible, by hindering the de-
velopment of their faculties. Do not the men thus
defraud themselves most surely, while they think
they are working for their own best interests? When
the mothers are enslaved and degraded, the sons can
not be born as champions of liberty and men of
genius. Let us turn our eyes to the Orient. Is it
not, and will it not always be, an intellectual desert,

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 255

a monotonous merely vegetating spiritual waste, a
hopeless stagnation? And why? Because woman
is everywhere degraded to an unconscious slave and
incapacitated for producing other beings than after
the prevailing type. When do we ever hear of one
remarkable intellect, one superior character among
the hundreds of sons of which a Sultan or lord of a
harem can boast? And yet their mothers are the
most charming, the choicest specimens of their sex;
and yet their fathers have all the means at their dis-
posal to give their sons every opportunity for the
development of their faculties. Even if these fathers
were all men of genius, the sons would neverthe-
less be born stupid and degraded because all higher
nature, all intellectual life has been killed in the
mothers by the customary degradation and slavery.
But we need not go to the Orient, to the so-called
heathen, we have instructive examples in our midst,
which can at the same time bear witness to the
blessings of Christianity, Within this great republic
Christianity has bred an offspring which, so far as
the female sex is concerned, might serve as a model
to the Turkc. The Mormons consider it their mis-
sion to populate heaven, and for this purpose they
provide for the greatest possible increase of their
progeny. W7lhat will be the nature of this heavenly
population? We can surmise it from the condition
of their mothers. I have before me a report by a
pious Christian, who has just returned from a tour
around the world, who has visited the most dif-

256 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

ferent nations, who has everywhere studied woman
in her degradation, and who has made some very
true observations on the pernicious influences of
religion, so far as his own religion was not con-
cerned. From him we hear how in Salt Lake City
"the resisting woman is made a prostitute in the
name of God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." She
is taught that in Utah, the same as in the Bible, the
man is her "Lord and Master;" she is shown from
examples in the Bible (Abraham, Jacob, David,
Solomon) that her "lord and master" must have as
many women at his disposal as he likes; it is im-
pressed upon her that the "salvation" of her soul
depends on her compliance, commanded by God, so
that the most beautiful maiden will not dare to re-
fuse the most disgusting old fellow, for this would
<be a sin against God, whereby she forfeits her
eternal blessedness. And how about the unfortun-
ate victims of this holy prostitution? "There is,"
says the reporter, "no religious doctrine too sense-
less for men to believe. Is it possible for ignorance,
for fanaticism, for superstition to change sensual
vulgarity into virtue, in the name of religion? Do
you ask whether these women of Salt Lake City
believe in polygamy? I answer, Yes. They believe
that Brigiham Young is the servant of God, that his
revelations come from God. They are serious and
sincere in their belief. Do you ask whether they
like polygamy? I answer, No. They accept it as
a religious sacrifice. It is the will of God. They

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 257

•honor Him by obeying, they secure their own salva-
tion, and at the same time eternal blessedness for un-
born souls, who are waiting for an earthly dwelling.
I venture to assert that in all Utah there is not a
single happy -woman united to a man who has more
than one wife. Polygamy is contrary to nature.
You can read nature's protest in the sad, careworn
face of every woman whom you meet."

Such are Christian conditions, religious condi-
tions resulting from a belief in the Bible. Christians,
that is, those who consider themselves true Chris-
tians, curse them, but 'with what right? Who has
given. these believers in the Bible a monopoly on
their interpretation? Is not every vice, every most
hideous act, every crime, that claims to have relig-
ion, the Bible, God on its side, justified? And since
the weakest are always the first target and the first
victims of every vice, every hideous act, every crime,
it is but natural that woman should be the first to
experience most thoroughly the benefactions of re-
ligion. But Mormonism, this masterpiece of sys-
tematized hypocrisy for the satisfaction of animal
lust at the expense of degraded womanhood, teaches
still more plainly than its mother, "legitimate" Chris-
tianity, how religion can even serve as a means for
making crimes, committed in its name, appear like
the greatest boon to those against whom they are
perpetrated; so that in the name of "God," the
patron of every imaginable barbarity, and horror,
they aillow themselves to be not only defrauded of

258 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

their lives, but to regard this as their highest des-
tiny!

It would be easier for me to understand a woman
who considered suicide as her destiny, than one who,
claiming human rights for herself, could still feel
some enthusiasm for religion.

The resolutions also met with some opposition.
Johanna Fuchs of Buffalo took exception to the
sixth resolution, so far as it demanded communism
of property between married people. She feared
"that such an arrangement would lead to the greatest
abuse, and was more likely to create false marriages
than to preserve the true ones. Would not every
girl of means run the risk of having her property
squandered by the man who knew how to gain
her affections, and who really cared only for her
money? What protection has she if she is no longer
to possess and administrate her property in her own
name? And would not, on the other hand, many a
shrewd woman try to insinuate herself into the affec-
tions of a rich man, then wilfully provoke a ground
for divorce, in order to walk off with one-half of
his property? It seems to me that if property is to
be held in common, divorce should not depend
merely on the will of the united couple; but if di-
vorce is to be free the property ought to belong to
the one who brought it into the union. Such as
the world is, I cannot expect any good to come from
the arrangement as recommended."

JULIE VOM BERG— The objections that have

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 259

been raised seem to be justified if we consider merely
the present conditions of society. But we must re-
member above all things that our point of departure
is an assumption of better conditions, which we our-
selves will help to create. Just as the exercise of
suffrage, which we demand, and the equality of the
sexes for which we strive, can only be expected in
a future which is more susceptible to such reforms
than the present, so in the conception of a reformed
institution of marriage, we must count upon future
conditions in which the obstructive elements of the
present are at least partially removed. When we
imagine the marriage relation of the future, as we
desire it, we also assume, for example, that the
women of the future have received a more adequate
education, that they will be better able to secure
their own existence, that their economic dependence
on men ceases in part, and that they are to that ex-
tent less tempted to marry from necessity and specu-
lation instead of from love. On the other hand, we
must expect that in the same proportion as women
gain in independence and influence, men will change
their habits, and ennoble their sentiments, whose
present vulgarity and baseness find their chief nour-
ishment in the existing helplessness and degradation
of woman. We must here, above all things, remem-
ber that this is a question of principle, which can-
not be modified, or condemned to silence, out of
consideration of existing conditions. What do equal
rights demand? And what does a true conception

260 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

of marriage demand? These alone are the questions
we must answer. There is not an uncorrupted
woman in the world, who, in considering all her
wishes, with regard to marriage, would ask anything
else than to be united to a man to whom she may be
devoted in love for her whole life. Now may each
one ask herself how she can harmonize the thought
of such unity of feeling, of devotion and of exist-
ence, with the precautions of securing the dollar,
inherited, or obtained by some other favorable cir-
cumstance, against the beloved man, in whom she
trusts as in herself, and with whom she would share
everything that is her own! How does the calcu-
lating spirit of the merchant or the lawyer, that
keeps strict account over his dollars and her dollars,
agree with the relationship of two lovers, who lead
a common life, and see themselves rejuvenated in
their children? Frightful discord! Disgusting con-
tradiction! What! am I to entrust and devote my
person, my whole life and being to a man, but guard
my purse against him by law and the police? Do
I not thereby declare my purse more valuable than
my person? And is the man to see in this anxiety
about the dollar a proof of his wife's confidence in
him? Is it not as though she were saying to him:
I love you infinitely, but I take you for a thief and
a sharper who wishes to rob me of my money? How
a man can debase himself to "marry" such a woman,
who at the outset meets him with the most sordid
distrust by locking up her money from him, I can

ANh THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 261

comprehend as little as that such a woman can really
expect her love to be considered genuine. For it is
a condition of true love that each side finds his or
her happiness in turning over to the other every
desirable thing over which he or she has any power.
A financial barrier must necessarily also create or
indicate a moral barrier, a barrier between the feel-
ings, and it does not seem to me that any marriage
can be a happy one in which a separation of the
property indicates a life apart, or, in making the one
dependent on the other, subordinates one to the
other. If a millionaire offers you his hand without
at the same time offering his millions, then reject
him or demand of him that he throw his millions out
of the window for your sake. He who does not
want to marry without securing his property from
his chosen life-companion will act more wisely and
more worthily if he continues to hve without a com-
panion.

There is a custom which prevails in America, more
than elsewhere, according to which a woman upon
marrying secures her property, if she has any, for
her own person. In giving her one hand to the
man, she points with the other to her strong-box
upon which is written : Hands off! Very romantic,
and most promising of future happiness! But the
husband finds this as unobjectionable as the wife,
because both of them have no conception of true
love and marriage. Take, says she or he, my hand,
take my liberty, take my person, take my heart —

262 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

as much as there is of it — but, dearest creature,
leave me my money! And thus they enter into the
business of "loving" each other. Think of Abelard
and Heloise with a lawyer or notary between them
guarding their separate accounts. To be sure,
Abelard and Heloise did not live in America. In
this country of calculators and money-makers,
where the number of dollars constitutes the "worth"
of a person, one can sacrifice the person and keep
the worth, if one keeps the money. I do not venture
a conjecture as to how many true marriages there
are here; but they are surely not to be found where
man and wife keep separate accounts.

If, however, in objection to the proposed resolu-
tion, and in consideration of present conditions, the
anxiety is expressed that the female sex will be
placed at a disadvantage should the resolution be
put into practice, I am of an entirely different opin-
ion. If we consider that the majority of women are
still economically dependent upon men and will re-
main so for some time to come, and that, as a rule,
the men provide the means of existence, it follows
that an arrangement which in marriage makes the
property of both common, and in case of divorce
divides it into equal parts, must in general result to
the advantage of woman. The resolution, therefore,
offers a security to the weaker party. This security
may go 'even further, for since the husbands, having
complete control of everything, are generally the
ones who furnish the occasion for a divorce, the

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIOKS. 263

temptation and opportunity for it will consequently
be lessened if women have a word to say with regard
to the disposal and administration of the property.

For all these reasons I repeat the motion to adopt
the resolutions in toto.

At these words a respectable-looking man arose,
gave his name as Backfuss from New York, and
asked for the floor. He had polished manners, but
his physiognomy was most commonplace. On close
observation one could see that his right eye was an
immovable glass ball.

"If men are permitted," said Mr. Backfuss, "to
join in the discussion, I will take the liberty to call
your attention to one important point, which has
not yet found expression in this meeting. I am
of the opinion that it is an insurmountable obstacle
to the emancipation of woman. You demand, ladies,
complete equality of rights with men in the state and
society. You claim that a difference of sex can be
no objection. Well, I will concede everything if you
are able to disprove a saying which has been con-
sidered true as long as the world stands, and will
have to hold for all time if human society is not to
collapse. Do you know what this saying is? I
will tell you. It is: Equal rights call for equal
duties! If you lay claim upon everything which
men possess, you must also accomplish everything
that we men accomplish. What do we men accom-
plish? Our most important and highest achievement
is that we risk our lives for our country, that we take

264 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

up weapons and go out upon the field of battle, that
we shed our blood, and in the thunder of cannons
defend our country, and our institutions, and you
also, honored ladies, against the common enemy.
Now I ask: Do you do that, too? Can you do it?
No, forever no. Our highest duty you cannot fulfill,
consequently you cannot lay claim to our highest
right. I say that without wishing to offend you, for
you have so many other rights, and such a beautiful
vocation in your sphere "

(Voices from all sides: "Nothing about the
sphere ! We alone know about that." Mr. Backfuss
sits down.)

JULIE VOM BERG— I know a great many men
Who do not go to war, although they are able to go.
And I know many others who cannot go on account
of some infirmity or other hindrance. But I do not
know a single one who has forfeited his rights, be-
cause he did not allow himself to be made into an
instrument of murder on the drill ground, or has not
taken part in a mass-murder, in the thunder of can-
nons. Upon what do those, who are exempted,
found their privileges as against us? On the other
hand, I know thousands of women, who during the
war have saved the lives of thousands of men, or
relieved their suffering with tender care, providing
all those things which their condition needed, but
would never have found without the sympathy of
women. In this manner women also have fulfilled
duties during the war, which are surely equal to

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 265

those df the men, especially if we also take. account
of the suffering and the sacrifices to which they
were exposed through the loss of their husbands and
sons. Thus the distinction men win for themselves
as murderers is transmuted into a distinction for
women as sufferers. Would it not be humane logic
to deduce from this distinction of women a right to
assist in doing away with this murdering for which
men claim so much credit, by the participation of
women in public life? Do these barbarians really
consider it their destiny to shed as much blood in
the future as they have shed in the past? Is this,
then, and will it always be their "sphere?" Is it to
remain man's highest estate to achieve that for
which beasts of the desert, the tiger and the hyena
could serve as models? This martial infatuation and
bluster, continued even to the present day, proves
more than anything else to what extent the animal
and savage nature still prevails in man, and how
much barbaric admixture, all his culture notwith-
standing, he must still eliminate from his mode of
thought, before he is truly humane. His right —
the strength of bones; his fame — bloodshed — thus
it was in primordial times, when he devoured his
slain opponent,, and thus it is even to-day, when he
buries him "decently." In Europe, the cradle of
universal culture, that man stands highest even to-
day, who has the greatest number of victims on his
list of murdered ; and in America, the model repub-
lic elects a man to the Presidency, who could sail

266 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

into the White House on a ship of war, if all the
blood which he has shed, and shed for the most
part unnecessarily, could be collected in Washing-
ton. Had he saved his country, as they call it, by a
great thought, or any other peaceful deed of the
intellect, he would probably be neglected or for-
gotten; but because he reeks with blood, because
blood marks his path, and blood surges about his
seat, it is that which gives him the true color to
suit the taste of this barbaric masculine world, and
to secure for him precedence above all other un-
bloody greatness.

If murder and bloodshed are thus still to mark
the path of man's aspirations and glory, would we
women not be justified in considering ourselves as
the only true human beings? And yet our claims
to human rights are to 'be measured according to our
ability to participate in the deeds of inhuman beings ?
Would the gentleman, who has just enlightened us
concerning the duties of citizens, consider our claims
to the rights of citizens as better grounded, if we
possessed the proper qualifications for the amazons
of the dictator Lopez, or the king of Dahomey? If
we women were as intent upon handling murderous
weapons, and shedding blood, as men are, and could,
therefore, perform their vaunted "duties" as their
equals, it seems to me the "lords of creation" would
long for nothing more ardently than to see us once
more transformed into unarmed and unbloody be-
ings. They would most willingly con-cede to us

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 267

every right, yea, every privilege, and even force it
upon us, to escape the danger of having the relation-
ship reversed and of having masculine right dealt
out to them by the feminine sword."

AGNES KOEHLER— I beg pardon, but has the
gentleman who reminded us of the military duty,
been in the war himself?

BACKFUSS — Certainly, I have been through
the entire campaign of the army of the Potomac.

A. KOEHLER— Were you also in the battle?

BACKFUSS— Not just in it. But I filled my
position.

A. KOEHLER— What position did you hold?
Were you a soldier or an officer?

BACKFUSS— Neither of the two. The loss of
the right eye by a stone disabled me for service.

A. KOEHLER — Ah, no warrior, no thunderer of
cannons then ! And yet you retained your political
rights? And yet you enlighten us as to our in-
capacity for equal rights because we are unfitted
for war? But what position did you hold in the
army? Perhaps my brother knows you, who was
there also.

BACKFUSS— Well, I was a sutler.

(General merriment.)

MARGARETHE NIEVENHEIM— The sister
of my washerwoman, whose husband was a corporal
in the army of the Potomac, accompanied him fear-
lessly and faithfully, and went through the entire
campaign, likewise in the capacity of — sutler. I

268 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

hope you will at least accept this woman as a col-
league, with equal rights, especially since she never
sold adulterated drinks, and was very moderate in
her prices.

(Mr. Backfuss rises.)

A. KOEHLER — Beg pardon, but are you not
now an "editor?"

BACKFUSS — I have an engagement with a
paper in New York.

(Leaves the hall.)

A. KOEHLER— Then he will change from a
sutler into a muddler. •

After Mr. Backfuss had withdrawn, another op-
ponent succeeded him, a gentleman with the face of
a fox, whose diplomatic self-complacent air be-
trayed the consciousness of his ability to greatly
embarrass the ladies. He was a politician and editor
from the West, who considered himself a great
statesman, and his name was Schuerze.

MR. SCHUERZE — Ladies, I have followed your
discussions with great interest, but do not presume
to be able to give an opinion on the questions which
are brought up here. The right of women is for
you the chief, yes, the exclusive question, and you
undertake to solve it at once. It seems to me that
another question ought to be solved first, upon
which the entire significance of this one depends.
The question of woman's rights, as many another
question, belongs to the realm of theory. Theoret-
ical questions in themselves have no meaning in

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIOJSTS. 269

politics. They have meaning and significance only
when they represent a power in practical life which
is strong enough to uphold and execute them. Poli-
tics reckons with powers and num'bers. Assuming
that your resolutions had found favor before all the
world, as theoretical principles, but not a person
besides yourselves could be found to give them sup-
port in practical politics, or to attempt to make them
law, would they then be anything more than mere
phrases? They would have to be considered as non-
existent. It is clear, then, that the standard which
the practical statesman must apply to a question
is that of the power and support at its disposal. If
it has no party it can receive no attention. The
interest in it grows with its party. But where is the
party to back your demands? I see a number of
ladies assembled here, who individually, or as a
debating society, can call out the greatest interest.
But measured by the party standard which politics
must apply, this society will be of no importance,
even if its theories were entirely correct. How many
voters are ready to adopt these theories and support
them at the polls? This is the main question. But
even this is preceded 'by another: How many
women are there back of your theories and demands?
Suppose, now, that you stood all alone. Will any
practical statesman wish and be able to work for
woman's rights, if the majority of women them-
selves do not demand them, and thus declare them-
selves against them? Could we let the majority of

270 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

women, especially of German women, vote on this
so-called emancipation, I am convinced, regardless
of its theoretical correctness or incorrectness, that
the majority -would vote against it, or not at all.
"What sort of a case have you now? The majority of
men against it, and the majority of women not for
it. If the contrary were the case, the theoretical side
of the question would present few difficulties; but
under present circumstances a discussion of the
subject has neither a definite aim, nor any chance of
success whatever.

JULIE VOM BERG— If the speaker has con-
vinced me of anything it is of the fact that he is in-
deed a "practical statesman." The principle, by him
called theory, has in itself no significance for him;
power alone has significance. Where this exists,
there the principle, whose part it takes, has value.
The principle is merely the accident of power, and
might just as well not exist at all. A practical states-
man has no principle whatever, to begin with, and
does not decide upon any, in order not to compro-
mise himself; he waits cautiously until one that
promises well for his position has sufficient adherents,
that is a party strong enough to insure victory. Then
the practical statesman takes its side, conducts him-
self as its enthusiastic champion, and reaps all the
advantages of the victory, which his cunning and
daring manages to appropriate for himself, without
having incurred the least risk in the struggle. He
merely waits until a question of progress has become

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 271

mature, and strong, through the exertion of others,
then he attaches himself to it and becomes its spokes-
man, thus securing not only his reputation as a
liberal man, who belongs to the advance guard
everywhere, where the struggle is for liberty and
development, but also as a far-sighted politician,
whose championship is always coupled with success.
Whoever is sly enough in his operations to keep
away from a struggle so long as a superior enemy
makes the outcome doubtful, but who later, when
the downfall of this enemy can be foreseen, takes
his place in the ranks of the aggressors with eclat,
he certainly adopts the most practical way to share
in the glory of the victory, without having assisted
in the struggle. Remember the spectacle that pre-
sented itself in the development of the slave ques-
tion. The abolition of slavery was in the beginning
agitated only by "impractical" albolitionists, who
were forever "harping" on their "theory," were
hated by all true "patriots," and despised or ridi-
culed by all "practical statesmen." ' In spite of these
animosities the abolitionists did not relinquish their
efforts, and when they alone could not gain a hear-
ing, the natural course of events brought the slave-
holder, cuddled and reared by the practical states-
man, to their aid, and opened the ears of these prac-
tical statesmen very practically; that is, unmisak-
ably. What happened? During the exciting stress
of this reaction, the enemies of slavery increased a
millionfold, and grew to a party whose victory had

272 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

become as 'much of a certainty as of a necessity.
What did the "practical statesmen" do now? Did
they continue to ridicule the abolitionists? They,
who from cowardice and want of principle, had
but a short time ago attempted to withdraw the slave
question from all contention, as an inviolable sanc-
tuary; they, who. had boasted of "not being aboli-
tionists, not even in silence," now suddenly became,
of necessity, the leaders of the combat; they took
possession of abolitionism, as though they alone had
worked for it from childhood up, and now boast of
themselves as champions of liberty, in order to reap
the reward of their achievements.

I am not afraid of being a false prophet, if I pre-
dict that the question of woman's rights will run the
same course that the question of negro rights took.
Our victory is to us as certain as the victory of the
enemies of slavery has been to the abolitionists. But
when shall it be consummated? Can we assign the
day in the calender? Can we determine the time
according to month, week, and day? Think of the
dreadful possibility of having to fight five, ten, twenty
years longer for the recognition and accomplishment
of our rights! A man of principle, a friend o<f jus-
tice, a warrior of liberty, and advocate of truth, a
promoter of humanity, who takes his cause seriously
for the sake of the cause, does not reckon by days,
months and years. He has patience, and persever-
ance, and finds his reward in striving for a noble
end, and hoping for its final attainment. But is it

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 273

not unreasonable, yes, cruel, to torture a so-called
politician, or practical statesman, on the rack of such
waiting? Remember that he has no principle; how
can he be expected to strike and wait for it? Re-
member that he must live by success, how then can
he be expected to join a party whose success seems
still so doubtful, even in a remote distance? Remem-
ber that the poor wretch cries for an "office," that he
wants to become Governor, Ambassador, Senator,
how can he be expected to entrust his destiny to the
future of a society that has as yet no "office" at its
disposal, except perhaps the position of President
or Secretary of a woman's convention? No, let us
not be crue'l, above all things! But I know of no
greater cruelty than to expect a "practical states-
man" to risk his "office" in a ruling party, and his
reputation, £s a successful man, by identifying him-
self with a principle that has still to win a party and
to create a power. Let us be fair, let us judge
mildly, and show forbearance. We, too, shall some-
time have the practical statesman on our side,
namely, at a time when we shall no longer need their
help. At that time not only all meeting halls, but
also the halls of the capitol will resound with
"woman's rights," and among those who will con-
gratulate us, on our victory and who, of course, will
have the highest honor of it, the "practical states-
men," will be the most chivalrous and debonair.
Will we be grateful? Will we be generous? Will we
distribute the "offices" only among the "theorizers?"

274 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

I for my part vote for extreme liberality, and even
Mr. Schuerze will not 'be forgotten, if he will answer
me one question definitely and unequivocally. It is
not the following question: If all men were "prac-
tical statesmen" who became interested in a right
only after it had become a power sure of victory,
could an unrecognized right then ever come up for
discussion, and would progress ever be possible?
Neither is it the following: Are not the radical
friends of reform, who are the first to agitate for
universal rights and better institutions, trusting
that whatever is correct in principle must and will
find its way into practice, more practical and far-
sighted statesmen than the calculating business and
state "politicians" of the moment, who take advan-
tage of progress only when it is already in full swing,
in spite of them? Nor the following: Were the
majority of the slaves, a few years ago, in favor of
the abolition of slavery? Was this abolition un-
timely or unjust, because not the slaves themselves
but the free people demanded it? And is not op-
pression everywhere detrimental to those that exe-
cute it as well as to those who suffer from it? Is not
the recognition and security of rights a beneficence
and a duty even where no one expressly claims
them? I will excuse the practical statesman from
answering all these, and other questions — I only
wish to address one personal question to him.

SCHUERZE— And that is ?

JULIE VOM BERG— Are you in principle, or as

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 275

you say, theory, for granting absolute equality of
rights to the female sex? Yes or no.

SCHUERZE— I hold that the entire female sex
has absolutely equal rights.

JULIE VOM BERG— I see. You mean to say
that one woman has as many, that is as few, rights
as the other. I shall now vote that Mr. Schuerze is
not to have any "office."

Mr. Schuerze departs amid general merriment.

Not discouraged by this failure, another opponent
appears. It is a man with very little forehead, but
much beard, and a powerful voice. He gives his
name as Gerstaeker. Several questions from the
meeting: "Are you the traveler and writer, Ger-
staeker?"

GERSTAEKER — I am his namesake and like-
wise a traveler, but I travel for a wine-house. But
that makes no difference. I only wanted to say
something that my namesake has said. He said it
in the "Gartenlaube," with which you are probably
acquainted; it is the most distinguished and bright-
est paper in our German fatherland. My name-
sake is of the opinion that the emancipation of
woman is against her own interests. For, he says,
so long as she is not emancipated, that is, not on a
footing of equality with man, he will protect her;
she is for him the weaker sex, over whom he must
watch, and for whom he must show tender consid-
eration. But when she is made 'his equal, he will
treat her as his equal, and will abandon all indul-

276 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

gence, compassion and consideration that we owe to
the weaker part. My namesake proves this by a
striking example. He relates how a young lady
entered an American street car, but found all seats
occupied. A gentleman jumped up to offer her his
place, but at the same time asked her the question
whether she was in favor of woman's emancipation.
When she answered in the affirmative, he resumed
his seat, saying: "If you want to be the equal of
man I may also treat you as a man." You see, that
is what you would have to expect, if your resolutions
were to become law.

JULIE VOM BERG— The prospects that the
namesake of Mr. Gerstaeker lays before us are at
least better than those of the young lady in the
street car. We may at least expect to have a seat
vacated for us by chivalrous gentlemen, so long as
our resolutions have not become law; that is, so
long as our equality has not become a fact, while
the unfortunate young lady was condemned to
stand, because she only desired the equality, only
expected it "theoretically" as the "practical states-
man" puts it. But I think we had better stick to our
rights, even at the risk of going without all mascu-
line chivalry at this early date. Later on, when we
take part in the law-making, we Shall see to it that
the street car companies no longer will let anybody
stand, but will furnish a seat for his or her money
to every passenger. In this as well as in other cases
we shall inaugurate the reforms which the prac-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 277

tical statesman as well as the chivalrous gentlemen
have forgotten or neglected. For the present let
us examine the chivalry and the tender considera-
tions, the secret of which Mr. Gerstaeker has so
naively disclosed to us. He makes the observance
of these considerations toward the weaker sex de-
pendent on its disqualification. He offers us chiv-
alry as a reward for the renunciation of our rights.
As slaves we may hope to sit down in the street car;
as free individuals we must stand. So long as I
cannot vote my legs are too weak to carry me; as
soon as I have the suffrage they suddenly grow
strong. To subordinate one's rights to the rights
of men is a service that must be rewarded with
chivalrous attentions; to be his equal in rights is
an offense that must be punished by rudeness. You
see, this is the correct interpretation of Gerstaekerian
chivalry. He also might have expressed himself
thus : So long as you women are satisfied to be our
disqualified servants, we are the chivalrous be-
stowers of compliments; but as soon as you demand
and receive rights, we become brutal churls. Mr.
Gerstaeker, I mean the namesake of the wine mer-
chant, has had much intercourse with savage men,
and beasts, as I see from the accounts of his travels.
He also has been a frequent guest at "courts" which
has the same effect. Can it be that he has learned
his chivalry there? I would quietly leave him to his
society if I were not compelled to also see in him a
representative of a great number of men, who have

278 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

not lived among savages and courtiers, but in civil-
ized circles. May it be made known to these gentle-
men that we thoroughly detest and abominate their
entire chivalry, of which they seem so proud. It is
nothing but a mask for brutality and vulgarity. If
it were a disinterested virtue and an outcome of
their humanity, how could they have the barbaric
arrogance to demand as its price, a renunciation of
human rights? And how could they then, make the
difference which we daily see them make, accord-
ing to circumstances, and external appearances?
Look, how chivalrous these knight-errants are when
they see a pretty face, and how indifferent, when a
plain unfortunate woman appeals to their pity! At
the sight of an affected society belle, they start from
their seats; but the sick negress may stand till she
drops. Do but become humane, and no one will
demand or miss your chivalry any more. Then also
a better lot will be in store for that numerous class
of unfortunates, whom your anxious chivalry has
consigned to misery and shame, although they have
no rights. And here is the true test of your chiv-
alry: Those unfortunates do not offend your mas-
culine superiority by the demand of equal rights —
where then is your tender consideration for the
weaker sex? Here the question is not merely one
of a seat in the street car; here it is a matter of
rescuing thousands from degradation and despair.
Where are you now, chivalrous gentlemen, upon
whose protection and shelter, considerateness and

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 279

aid the disfranchised can lay claim? Would those
unfortunates be what they are without your chivalry?
And could you have made them what they are, if
they were not disfranchised? If, after the schooling
you have given them, they are still able t<y arouse
themselves- to a consciousness of moral worth, they
will call out to you : To hell with your chivalry, but
give us our human rights, that we can protect our-
selves against the dangers of want, and need no
longer be the helpless victims of your lust!

By the reply of Julie vom Berg the wine drum-
mer, Gerstaeker, was thrown into a great state of
excitement. He arose, but for some time could not
find words for his indignation. At last he called out
in a stentorian voice:

"I hope that the speaker's insinuations were not
meant to be personal. But I shall report the affair
at once to my illustrious namesake that he may
write it up for the "Gartenlaube."

Then he rushed from the hall, upsetting two chairs
in his haste. Upon one of them sat the doctor,
spiritualist and editor, Bluethe of New York, in a
state of deep reflection, to which philosophy applies
the term "trance." Aroused by the violent shock
and fall, he sprang bravely to his feet and at once
assumed the attitude of a speaker.

DR. BLUETHE— The movement for the polit-
ical equality of woman is steadily gaining ground,
even among the German women of North America.

A VOICE — More ground, it is to be hoped, than
it has so far gained among German men.

280 THE EIGHTS OF WOMEN

DR. BLUETHE— But "in itself."

TWO VOICES— What in itself?

DR. BLUETHE — I mean the movement, no, the
thought, I was going to say — well, what did I
want?

THREE VOICES — You wanted something in
itself.

DR. BLUETHE— Ah, yes, in itself. I was
going to say, namely, that "the aspiring minds of
the German adopted population" could inaugurate
"the most profound and systematic opposition" to
the principles of the movement.

AGNES KOEHLER— The aspiring minds?
Aspiring to what? To get an "office?" And these
"aspiring minds," to whom profound thinking as
well as principles are a horror, are to inaugurate a
profound opposition to the principles? Hitherto
only men of thought and principle have fought on
our side of the movement; they have helped to start
it. I remind you, among other things, of a pamph-
let, from the pen of the late Karl Heinzen, whose
early death we lament, printed as early as 1849 in
New York: "Concerning the Rights and Position
of Women." In this work you will find the woman
question treated comprehensively and in connection
with the entire evolution and revolution of society,
so that the author can justly exclaim at the end:
"Women must enter the ranks of the revolution,
for the object is the revolution of humanity."

DR. BLUETHE— This work is 'beneath all criti-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 281

cism, as are also his comedies in which he disparages
the German editors.

A. KOEHLER— Have you read it?

Dr. BLUETHE— No, I have not, but it stands
condemned in itself.

A. KOEHLER— You seem to be "in itself" both
a logical thinker and a just critic.

DR. BLUETHE — I have thought so myself, and
I am glad to have it acknowledged by others. There-
fore let me continue. The American Woman's Suf-
frage agitation arouses the well-founded apprehen-
sion that it may lead to a resuscitation of the asphyx-
iated nativist party, to a new installment of know-
nothingism, which had seemed to be entirely van-
quished.

The chief speakers show a bitter and hostile atti-
tude toward the adopted element, especially that of
the German tongue, perhaps because they suspect or
know that from this side their agitation will receive
the least support, but to some extent even the most
profound and systematic opposition from principle.

MRS. STIEGLER— But would they not be justi-
fied in that? If these "German tongues" can do
nothing but gulp down beer, saturate themselves
with tobacco smoke and bleat after the party bell-
wether; if they are so coarse that they have not a
word of sympathy for the rights of the weaker half
of humanity; if they can only hoot and hiss with the
rabble and even pass off such vulgarities as "most
profound opposition," then I not only do not take

282 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

it ill of the American women that they feel bitter
toward such a valuable "element," but I could my-
self become nativistic, and at least cast my vote in
favor of depriving such "thinkers" of the right of
suffrage, that the power of withholding it any
longer from women may be taken from them.

DR. BLUETHE— "In itself,"— "in a wider
sense," — "most profound."— (He slowly sinks back
upon his chair, closes his eyes and is again in a
"trance.")

A. KOEHLER— If he did not have so much of a
beard I would take him for a woman in disguise,
who has come here to ridicule the men. He seems
to be a "medium." Does nobody here understand
spiritualism? We ought to ask him some questions.

KAROLINE WACHENBERG— I know him.
I have often seen him in New York. He is an ex-
cellent "editor" and sees spirits besides, although no
one can see his. I will examine him. In a "trance"
he imagines himself another person, and perhaps
we will hear some truth. For an "editor" speaks
the truth only when he does not know what he is
talking about.

How does a man think?

DR. BLUETHE— With the stomach.

K. WACHENBERG— In itself or for itself?

DR. BLUETHE— In itself and for itself.

K. WACHENBERG— Who causes the stomach
to think?

DR. BLUETHE— Whoever fills it.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 283

K. WACHENBERG— Who fills yours?

DR. BLUETHE— The proprietor of the type.

K. WACHENBERG— And who fills his stom-
ach?

DR. BLUETHE— The "party" and the public.

K. WACHENBERG— Consequently you must
think just as the party and the public wants you to.
But if you should now think and speak otherwise?

DR. BLUETHE — That is impossible, for my
stomach knows what to expect "if he should be-
come guilty of this little mistake."

K. WACHENBERG— "In a wider sense?"

DR. BLUETHE— In the widest sense.

K. WACHENBERG— And what do you call
this, politics or philosophy of the stomach?

DR. BLUETHE— "Most profound and system-
atic opposition from principle," or the. "German
thought of the aspiring minds of the German adopt-
ed population."

K. WACHENBERG— But did you not formerly
say that "reforms, the correctness of whose prin-
ciples could not be contested, must not be left to
time to be inaugurated from so-called considera-
tions of expediency?"

DR. BLUETHE— That was true in itself, and so
far as one's bread-giver agreed with it, but not for
things antagonistic to the considerations of expe-
diency of the stomach.

K. WACHENBERG— So if at any time you say
anything that is true it must be regarded as a mere
phrase?

284 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

DR. BLUETHE — Everything is a mere phrase
in the world. One cannot live by truth-telling, and
even lying is badly paid if it does not sometimes look
like truth. The world is so filled with lies that even
a genuine lie can no longer be sold, unless it is
adulterated to a certain degree with truth.

K. WACHENBERG— Are you not as fully con-
vinced of the equal rights of women which you com-
bat in your paper, as of the equal rights of negroes,
which you advocate?

DR. BLUETHE— Completely. But the latter
are demanded by my party, my public, and my
bread-giver, the former not, and my stomach

A VOICE — I begin to feel nausea.

SEVERAL VOICES— The whole "German
tongue" is beginning to be nauseating.

MRS. KALITSCH— So deeply fallen are these
lords of creation, and yet they will not accept us as
saviors!

THE WHOLE MEETING— Take the wretch
away! We cannot endure his presence.

(The usher arouses him with the call: "The
comedies of Heinzen!" whereupon Dr. Bluethe
darts up, horror struck, and rushes out.)

JULIE VOM BERG— What fruits can we ex-
pect from such "blossoms!"* And such ninnies, such
imbeciles, sudi caricatures of manhood mount the
high horse, conduct themselves as an intellectual

*The English for Bluethe is blossom.

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 285

aristocracy, try to clothe their pygmy stature with
a nimbus of dark possibilities, and deep mysteries,
by significantly pointing to the "aims of aspiring
minds" of whom they are the leaders! Really,
when I see that such celebrities as these, such abso-
lute nothings, in intellect and character, are the
spokesmen of our opponents, I feel ashamed for my
own sex because it is still so far from attaining its
rights. Those among them who consider them-
selves great "statesmen" cannot adduce any more
weighty reason against our equality than this; that
but few of us as yet demand it. Why, if few of us
demand, and make use of it, so much less danger is
there for the "statesmen." Thus they confess that
from fear of these few they condemn one-half of
humanity, their mothers and wives inclusive, to be
without rights. A brilliant testimony to their wit as
well as their courage. Ah, gentlemen, it is time
that you protect yourselves against these imputa-
tions and humiliations, to which your spokesmen
expose you, or you will en masse get a reputation
for brainlessness and cowardice!

Dr. Bluethe had scarcely been dismissed when
another opponent emerged from the background.
It could not be ascertained who he was or how he
called himself, although it seemed to everybody that
they had already seen him, or some one who resem-
bled him. All that was known was that he hailed
from New York. He was a man of about forty
years of age, but bald-headed and with a shriveled

286 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

face that, in spite of its dull eyes, had a brazen, inso-
lent expression. If he was not an editor, he might at
least have been one. In order to give him a name,
and a cosmopolitan one at that, I will call him Mr.
Morality.

MR. MORALITY— One of your resolutions de-
mands the free, unrestrained contraction and disso-
lution of marriage. Is that not merely another way
of saying "free love?" I am astonished to see Ger-
man women make a demand whicn even among
American women has called out disgust. What
would it lead to, if it were left to the option of every
woman to run away from her husband, as soon as
he had crossed her whims, and offended her sensi-
bilities in any way, or as soon as another one pleased
her better ? What would become of feminine dignity
and virtue if our women could rush into the arms
of another man every day? Indeed, what would
become of marriage, and love, that divine theme of
our songs, if all were chasing after sensual pleas-
ures in perpetual change? Think of the moral an-
archy that would be the inevitable consequence of
your new institution. I must confess that I am hor-
rified, and can hardly believe it possible that the
moral sense of our German women can be put to
shame by men.

JULIE VOM BERG— The gentleman's objec-
tions, which so pathetically appeal to our conscience,
and are so anxiously concerned about our dignity,
are most welcome They give me an opporunity to

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 287

speak openly on this subject, which even in this
country is still treated with. the most unbecoming
prudery, and the most senseless reserve I do not
know the gentleman whom I am to answer. He
need not take my remarks personally — they are
aimed at the masculine world in general.

I begin with the declaration that I advocate "free
love" completely and decidedly. But the expression
is incorrect and ought to be "freedom in love." In-
deed, can any other kind of love exist except free
love? Can love be commanded or forced? Some-
thing of this sort seems hitherto to have been in the
minds of our rihilosophers of love, who have learned
their philosophy in Constantinople or Utah appar-
ently, and who can let a slave pass as their beloved.
Among all the daughters of the goddess Liberty
there is none, who, according to her nature, must
possess the properties of her mother in a higher
degree than Love. Love and free love are therefore
synonymous. It ought not to be necessary to talk
of free love, any more than of wet water, or hot
fii e. I might, however, conceive of love as not free
in the sense that the feeling, the necessity, the pas-
sion that unites two beings, binds them completely,
destroys their free will, turns them irresistibly away
from everything else. But just because true love
has this effect, exerts this power, creates this neces-
sity, it ought no more to be hindered in its choice, by
external force, than it will require external bonds
to insure its permanence. A man and woman who

288 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

do not love each other ought not to be united, or
where they are united, they ought again to be separ-
ated; a man and woman who love each other ought
not to be kept apart, and they need no external force
to remain together. This is the simple statement of
what I understand by freedom in love, which is the
only means of securing what has now become so
rare — a true marriage and a happy family life. Let
him who does not agree with me 'have the courage
to postulate the opposite and declare, that those who
do not love each other ought to be united, and to be
kept together by force, those who love each other
ought to be separated and to be kept apart by force
— both in the interest of humanity and human hap-
piness !

Although no man in sound mind dares to make
such a demand, it seems, in practice, to be the guid-
ing principle almost everywhere. If all the consid-
erations, whose slaves men are nowadays, would
suddenly drop for only a period of twenty-four
hours, not ten of the so-called marriages would
exist next day. For married people and their
progeny the consequences of the existing relation-
ships of force and prostitution are truly appalling.
But this same society, especially the male portion of
it, never wearies of pronouncing their anathemas on
freedom in love. "Free love" is a word of terror,
but free prostitution has become a social institution,
which is approved inside and outside of marriage by
a legal license. And shall I tell you why men con-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 289

demn freedom in love? Because it would be the
death of freedom in prostitution! Our male teach-
ers, who can discourse so wisely on our nature, no-
where show their incapacity to judge of our nature
more than in their anxiety that freedom will lead us
Whither it has led them. Give woman freedom, and
she will love according to her own tastes and emo-
tional needs, give man freedom — -he already has it
— without giving it to woman, and he will prostitute
himself according to his habit. Prostitution does
not proceed from woman any more than slavery
does from the slave; as the latter must be charged to
the oppressor, so the former must be charged to
man. "Free love" for woman signifies the end of
prostitution, just as free self-determination for the
slave signified the end of slavery.

What more I have to say on the subject I will say
in the words of one who is gone, who died and was
forgotten too soon, and whose memory I consider
it an honor to revive. Years ago one of the first
woman conventions took place in Rutland, in the
State of Vermont. On this occasion — there were
also a great many spiritualists present — much ab-
surd and foolish stuff was brought up for discussion,
but at the same time several women speakers created
general consternation by their talent and boldness.
A hitherto unknown woman attracted the greatest
attention. The chief organ of the prostitution party,
the "New York Herald," describes her personality
thus: "She is a pale, delicate looking woman, with

«9° THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

a sweet, calm smile continually playing about her
pretty little mouth. Nobody would suspect that such
a woman could utter sentiments like those which de-
filed her mouth at Rutland." The woman's name
was Julia Branch from New York. And what were
the criminal sentiments by which Julia Branch so
greatly incensed the moral judges of the male per-
suasion? Listen: "No man has a right to dictate
to me where and whom I must love." This was the
subject of her address. Shocking! A little woman
with a pretty mouth dares to assert that no one in
the world except herself can determine her love.
"Free love !" Down with it !

Later a similar convention took place in Utica,
in the State of New York at which Julia Branch
once more appeared. This time the chief subject
of her address was "Prostitution and Infanticide."
Referring to the verdict of condemnation, which
had been pronounced on her former speech, she
said, among other things, the following: "I do not
fear any public opinion, or public condemnation, for
I must denounce everybody, be it man or woman,
as a coward, who in his heart holds a belief or prin-
ciple, which he dares not advocate openly before
all the world. Such men do not know the true mean-
ing of the word freedom, and still have to learn the
true meaning of the word slavery. True enough, it
is not an easy matter to defy public opinion. I am
not astonished to see strong hearts grown 'weary
and weak in doing good.' It is happiness after

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 291

which all the world aspires; but the way to happiness
has been planted with the cross of duty, and has
been made so narrow, and steep, that but few ven-
ture upon it unless driven by the fear of hopeless
condemnation, or allured by the promise of a spark-
ling crown — in every case a poor recommendation
for their own or the general conception of happiness.
The ambition to become great in public opinion or
to gain the applause or approval of the masses, is
a childish sentiment. The most faithful and noblest
reformers of to-day as well as of all former genera-
tions are those who have lost their 'reputation' by
advocating unpopular principles. Indeed, neither
man nor woman can do thorough reform work in
the present state of society so long as they have not
lost their 'reputation.' "

Has ever man or woman spoken nobler or prouder
words than this "delicate" woman, with the "small
mouth" and the "sweet smile?"

She then proceeds to describe the condition of so-
ciety and especially of the institution of marriage,
which, above all, she holds responsible for the two
evils upon which she is about to speak — prostitu-
tion and infanticide. "I hope," she says, "that the
meeting will listen to me calmly while I speak of the
first evil. It is without doubt a disagreeable subject
for an audience to listen to. Many of you, perhaps
all, have grown up amid the limitations of false shame
and false delicacy, and if a woman dares only to hint
at such a subject publicly, or betrays any knowl-

292 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

edge of it, it suffices to cast a suspicion upon her
own morality. But whatever may be thought of
me, I openly confess that I take an interest in every-
thing human, not excepting the woman who has
abandoned the path of virtue, and who is considered
a worthy representative of that place of eternal tor-
ture, to which our Christian friends mercilessly
condemn her."

Is it not inspiring to hear, in the midst of this bab-
bling and howling hypocrisy, which oppresses the
minds of this pious world of scoundrels like a night-
mare, such noble contempt of the stupid monster,
called public opinion, expressed by a "delicate"
woman ?

Of this dreadful pest, prostitution, which poisons,
both physically and morally, millions of the coming
as well as of the present generations of men, Mrs.
Branch contents herself with unfolding a picture by
means of statistical tables, which she has received
from physicians, especially from Dr. Saenger, of
Blackwell's Island. Dr. Saenger explored the city
of New York under police escort and found four
hundred notorious brothels with eight thousand fe-
male inhabitants. The number of the frequenters
of these houses, which consume some eight million
dollars, he estimates at sixty thousand a day. Of
the private prostitution, which exceeds the public
(New York is said to contain forty thousand prosti-
tutes) Dr. Saenger could give no estimate; but in
England they count one prostitute to every fourteen

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 293

women (in France the proportion is said to be much
worse) and on the average the unfortunates there
lead this sort of life only for four years, whereupon
they "marry" and become "respectable wives and
mothers.,, For this increase the "married state"
shows itself sufficiently grateful.

Mrs. Branch emphasizes the fact that five-sixths of
the frequenters of houses of prostitution are mar-
ried men ! And how necessary present society con-
siders prostitution to be, is shown by the answer
with which the Mayor of New Bedford met the re-
quest that the houses of prostitution should be abol-
ished: "If these houses are abolished, our wives and
daughters will no longer be safe anywhere — on every
street they will be in danger of being insulted."
(That reminds one of the worthy Mr. Stringfellow,
who argued that slavery was necessary, because the
female slaves were a moral lightning-rod, so to
speak, for the Caucasian women.)

Insulted on the street! "But," Mrs. Branch asks,
"by whom would they be insulted? Not by any man
outside of the world, but by somebody in the world,
somebody here and there and everywhere — sixty
thousand of these men are in the streets of New
York daily, they meet you everywhere, their warm
breath fills the air, and the purest and most modest
girls are constantly brought into contact with them!
Who are they? Who but husbands, fathers, broth-
ers? Whose husband, father, brother? Is it yours?
Is it mine? The blood rushes into my cheeks as

294 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

well as into yours, at the thought that they could be
our friends."

And yet, she ought to have added, each one of the
sixty thousand considers himself qualified to play
the part of superior moral teacher, and to condemn
Mrs. Julia Branch, because she said that she alone
was to decide where, when and whom she was to
love. The fact that this liberty is not recognized and
practiced everywhere, she considers to be the chief
cause of prostitution. "The cause lies in our pres-
ent institution of marriage, which forces a man and
woman to remain together until death separates
them, without love, without intellectual, moral and
physical harmony." The objection, that without
the present marriage bonds our sexual relations
would sink into a state of anarchy, she meets with
the true observation that worse conditions than the
present are impossible, and that perfect liberty at
its worst would create a better generation of men
and women. The hypocrisy which declares that
bonds are necessary to restrain those who cannot
restrain themselves, and as an example mentions
"Mr. So-and-so, who neglects his wife," etc., she
silences with the question, "How old is the youngest
child of Mr. So-and-so?" Answer: "Two or three
months." "Does it not make one heart-sick to see
such degraded conditions and the wretched subter-
fuges behind which they are to be concealed?"

The second subject upon which Mrs. Branch
spoke was infanticide. She proved by statistical

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 295

statements that this crime, which has here come to
be an every-day measure of expediency and correc-
tion, has increased in a frightful degree. In the year
1805 the proportion in New York of still-born chil-
dren to the entire population was one to sixteen
hundred and twelve; in 1820, one to six hundred
and fifty-four; in 1840, one to five hundred and six-
teen; in 1850, one to three hundred and eighty-six.
Dr. Wyne calculated that for the year 1805 there
was one abortion in forty-nine births, for 1810 one in
thirty-three, for 181 5 one in thirty-two, for 1830 one
in twenty, for 1840 one in sixteen, for 1845 one m
thirteen, for 1850 one in twelve. The same physi-
cian told Mrs. Branch that the crime of infanticide
had increased since 1805 four hundred and fifteen
per cent. If this ratio continues, hardly a child will
be born alive in New York, at the end of the cen-
tury. And such a population listens to condemna-
tion of "free love" as if it still had any right to con-
demn anything whatever except itself! How many
of the mothers of those thousands of murdered chil-
dren could say of themselves that they alone were to
decide where, when and whom they should love?
None of the pharisees, who condemn women like
Julia Branch as immoral, have ever asked them-
selves this weighty question.

"What," asks Mrs. Branch, "is the cause of this
frightful increase of this most unnatural of crimes?
I can find it only in our present institution of mar-
riage. Not the slightest scruple exists, either in or

296 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

out of wedlock, to destroy the life of a child — out
of wedlock on account of the fear of losing 'respect-
ability' since society condemns the mother as im-
moral; in wedlock because the cares of maternity are
binding, annoying and difficult. We can have no
idea to what extent this system of murder is prac-
ticed, and yet if we consider the numbers of children
which fill our prisons, we must almost call it a boon.
Mothers, think of it! Every son whom you place
into this world, whom you have not conceived in
purest love, has all the qualities which fill our prisons
and poor-houses, inherent within him; every daugh-
ter of this kind is born with the tendencies which
lead to houses of prostitution. Therefore it is your
responsibility as well as your right to say, where
and when and how you want to become mothers.
Therefore it is also a necessity for you to acquire a
knowledge of every art and science which now are
the monopoly of men, that you may learn how to
bring better children into this world. I reject in all
things the stupid saying that ignorance is a blessing.
Woman is to know everything that man is capable
of knowing, and is to have full liberty to acquire the
knowledge. You must break every chain that hin-
ders your development, be it church or state, man
or woman, wife or child, who forges it."

In closing she refers to the fact that the existence
of the present institution of marriage does not hin-
der propagation outside of marriage, and that, for
example, in the year 1852, fifty-five thousand "ille-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 297

gitimate" children were born in England and Wales.
Therefore nature ought to be restored to her right,
and the difference between legitimate and illegiti-
mate births ought to be abolished that at least one
ground for infanticide may be done away with. She
then closes with the resolution :

"Since the crime of infanticide has increased and
still increases, from year to year, under the present
false form of marriage, therefore all children, under
whatever conditions they may be born, should be
declared legitimate."

Thus far Julia Branch. Oh, that I could recall her
to life, this pale, little woman, with the pretty mouth,
and the sweet smile! By the death of this woman
who so boldly advocated the rights of the free
woman, and who knew how to put men to shame by
holding a mirror up to their arrogance and vulgarity,
our cause has received an incalculable loss. In
honor to her memory, and in proof of our apprecia-
tion for this noble woman, who departed from life in
quiet unpretentiousness, I request the entire meet-
ing, men and women, to rise from their seats.

The entire meeting arose, and all eyes went in
quest of Mr. Morality of New York, who had brought
Julie vom Berg to the platform. But in vain. He
had availed himself of the rapt attention, with which
everybody listened to the speaker, to steal away
unnoticed.

As no one else desired to be heard, the order of
business was resumed.

298 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

Just as the President was on the point of putting
the resolutions to a vote the following letter from
Waldeck, Virginia, was read to the convention by
the Secretary:
Dear Countrywomen:

I am a born American, although no true Cau-
casian. My mother was a native of Africa, and only
my father, whose slave she was, belonged to the
Caucasian race. Now if I address you as country-
women I do it because my husband is a German, or
because I look upon you as Americans, or because
we all belong together as cosmopolitans. I hope
you place as little importance upon the merely ex-
ternal differences in men as I do. But if I am to
make a difference for once, and choose a place for
myself, I want to be a German. I shall tell you
why.

My poor mother was dead, and I grew up with the
white daughters of my father, who were younger
than I, partly as a sister, partly as a nurse. Then
the war broke out. My father went as colonel. (He
fell later at Richmond.) When he was gone his
wife thought it advisable to have her slaves taken
further south for security. She could never endure
me and therefore wanted to send me away first, to an
acquaintance in South Carolina, who had formerly
offered $3,000 for me. I knew what that meant,
and determined to fly to the North. I was then only
eighteen years old, but strong and courageous, and
so I started on my way at night with an old slave, a

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 299

relative of my mother's. I had a revolver, and he
a bowie-knife. After a tramp of several days,
through forests and desolate places, we one evening,
weary and half-starved, approached a farm house
that lay at the foot of a hill, half-hidden by the edge
of a forest. The house was pretty, it stood in a large
garden, and the entire surroundings showed that it
was not inhabited by Southern people. We looked
in at the window, and saw four persons in the lighted
room — two old men, an old woman, and a young
man. They did not look like Americans, and we
determined to enter. As soon as we had made our-
selves known as fugitives, we were received and en-
tertained in the most friendly manner. Only one of
the old men did not regard us with a friendly eye.
On the second day we wanted to push on, but were
advised to wait, because the region towards the
north was not safe. We were quite content to com-
ply, since we were with such excellent people, and
took a hand in the work wherever we found an op-
portunity. I won the affections of the old woman,
•whom I relieved of almost all the housework, and
the young man showed me the most friendly regard.
I had never been in such pleasant company, and the
thought of continuing my journey filled me with
dismay. Suddenly came the news that rebel troops
were close by. Caesar, my old companion, who
was always on the lookout, had seen them. He did
not fear anything for himself; he could pass him-
self off as the slave of the farmer, and nobody cared

300 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

for an old man. But the son of the house was to be
pressed into the rebel army, and I would have been
recognized as a fugitive at once. There was no
time for consideration; I took my revolver and
hastened with the young man, who had his rifle over
his shoulder, into the forest, where we kept ourselves
hidden for two days. Then Caesar brought us the
news that the rebels had all departed, and were at
a safe distance. They had searched 'the house, and
the neighborhood, and had at last contented them-
selves with the assurance that the son had left for
the army, as long as two weeks ago. When I came
out of the woods with him, he presented me to his
parents as his fiancee. In order to win my love it
would not have been necessary at all for him to de-
clare his love for me, for from the first moment that
I saw him, I had said to myself: Him I should like
for a husband. As he presented me, his mother at
once approved, only his father, who had been a
"Democrat," shook his head and made a sulky face.
But Fritz said: "She has a clear head, she has a
good heart, she has the best of principles, she has a
bright sense of humor, she is an industrious worker,
and with all that she is prettier than all the girls I
can think of. I love her, and she loves me, and we
shall be happy. What more can you ask?" The
old man had to give his consent and we became
husband and wife. This we have now been for seven
years, and are still as happy as on the first day. We
have also laid by something. We now have one

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3°i

hundred and twenty acres of land, fifty acres of grain,
six of grapes and the rest in meadow land and forest
— everything like one large garden. But you ought
to see my children ! The girl is only two years old.
Oh, I tremble with fear and rage, if I think back to
the time when such a child could be torn from one's
arms and be sold. Take this child away from me?
No, nobody could have done that. I would have
torn him with my teeth ; I would rather have allowed
myself to be torn to pieces than to have the child
taken from me. But then the boy! He is five years
old. You have never seen such a boy. He is an
intermediate between an angel and a young lion.
It seems to me in the evening that it could not be-
come dark at all, so long as he keeps his great eyes
open. Otherwise he is just like his father, especially
the mouth. Even our dog sometimes sits down in
front of him, when he is playing, just to look at
him. We call him Fritz, after his father, and his
little sister Elizabeth after myself.

I had to write you all this that you might know
>how I came to be your country-woman. Several
German families have now settled in our neighbor-
hood, very good and educated people. We often
visit among each other, take German papers, espe-
cially "Der Pionier," and discuss everything they
contain. My husband and I are always the most
radical, and when we read of your convention we
felt like starting for Frauenstadt at once. But that
could not be, because my father-in-law died recently,

302 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

my good mother-in-law is ailing, and old Uncle
Jacob is away. But I must at least write to you in
order to tell you how I rejoice that there are radical
German women besides myself. I really do not com-
prehend wfiy they are not all radical. To be radical,
after all, means nothing else than to have common
sense. But it seems to be easier to rob people of
their common sense than to use it fearlessly. When
they hear strange words, which they do not under-
stand, or when learned people talk to them, they
have more confidence in the stuff which they do not
understand than in themselves. A few days ago I
read an essay, in which a most learned doctor ex-
plained what a great difference there is between the
separate parts of the male and the female body, and
how different therefore must be the avocation and
the rights of men and women. A few of my neigh-
fors took this seriously. But I asked them: "Why
do you not reason according to your own ideas, in-
stead of believing the teachings of this doctor? This
man's theory proves the very opposite of what he
wishes it to prove. Just because man and woman
are different, each can decide and judge only about
himself or herself. Is it not perfect nonsense to have
a man tell me that I am an entirely different being
than he is, and that therefore he may or must tell
me what I am capable of doing, what I am cut out
for, what I want, and what is becoming to me?
Would not that be the same as saying: Because he
is a man, therefore, he can think and will like a

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3°3

woman, more womanly than I myself? Because he
has not my nature, therefore he must teach me what
my nature ought to be? That is as despotic as it is
senseless. Just because he is different from me, for
that very reason he cannot and shall not prescribe
to me what I am to think and to want, for that very
reason he cannot represent me, for that very reason
I will and must have the right to follow my own
inclinations to guard my own interests. Would he
not be highly indignant, and pronounce me insane
should I presume to be better able to judge of his
nature than he himself, and derive a right from that
to act as his guardian?" This seemed quite plausi-
ble to my neighbors, and they declared the doctor to
be an insolent humbug.

My dear countrywomen, I find that human affairs
always grow more simple, the more humanely you
look at them, and the less you allow yourself to be im-
posed upon by learned people, who are frequently
greater blockheads than the simplest day-laborers.
These gentlemen think we women are not able to have
anopinionon affairs of the state. Well, I always read
the papers and gather from them what sort of affairs
of state those are on which we are not to have an
opinion and in which we are not to have a voice.
But I have not yet come across any question where
I could not at once decide for myself how I should
have to vote, while statesmen and scholars quarrel
over them for years. Liberty or slavery? I vote for
liberty, although I have a different physique than

304 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

either a statesman or a doctor. Prerogative of the
States or of the Union? I vote for the prerogative
of the Union, since the States belong to the Union,
but not the Union to the States. President or legis-
lature ? Away with the servant who rules his master !
Well, these are great "complex" "political" ques-
tions, and yet as simple as a question of domestic
economy. Now if you examine the minor questions
of legislation, in the affairs of the Union, the State,
the county, you wil'l be still les9 able to find one over
which you can long remain in doubt, on which sid'e
is sense or nonsense, right or wrong. But one thing
I will admit : We women shall vote differently upon
many questions than the men, just because they, for
thousands of years, have become habituated to force
and wrong, and still too frequently mistake the one
for reason and the other for right.

I have not met very many men in my life, but
sometimes I think that the majority of them must
be fools. Twice two is four, that is, acording to the
masculine arithmetic. But when a woman multi-
plies, they expect the result to be five. They think
a woman is unable to distinguish black from white,
straight from crooked, big from little, warm from
cold, and yet they expect us to be able at once to se-
lect from them the best, the noblest, the cleverest,
the greatest, the most lovable, and of course, each
one expects himself to be that one. Is that anything
but crazy? But even if they had faith in our correct
judgment on other things than their own amiability,

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3°5

they still insist that we have at least no right to ex-
ercise that judgment where it can be of use,
namely, at the polls. Is not that more than
crazy? I always have to laugh at our old Uncle
Jacob. He is no "Democrat," as his brother was,
and he also has quite a different opinion of women,
but he draws the line at suffrage. At every election
in our neighborhood, he comes to me for advice, and
then generally votes as I wish him to. But when I
ask him why it would not be just as well for me to
vote, since he always abides by my judgment, he
answers: "You women are either too stupid or too
clever for it." The former expression I should fre-
quently like to apply tc the men, but I am not so
stupid as to acquiesce in the other alternative.

I must now bid you farewell. I hope that your
convention will pass off satisfactorily, and be a suc-
cess. But if any one of you should ever come to our
beautiful country, she must make us a visit. Sin-
cerely yours, ELIZABETH STARK.

My husband also sends his best regards.

The letter was received with general applause, and
the Secretary instructed to answer it appropriately.

THIRD DAY.

After the meeting was called to order the most
excellent spirit came to prevail at once by the read-
ing of the following document, directed to the Presi-
dent:
To the Presidentsy of the German Woman's Con-

venshun in Frauenstadt, Protestantation :

3O0 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

Our editor has told us, and has also made up this
protestantation, that you want to immancerpate all
women folks and let them all become men folks, and
do all men's work, and that no man would then any
longer be sure of his work, or his business. Now,
see here, we haven't work enough anyhow and bad
pay at that, and now you even want to take that
away from us? Why don't you stick to your needles
and scissors, and pots and kettles? What do you
want in our sphere? You must stay in your nature
and not step into our feelings. We warn you that
we shall appeal to the government and that we here-
by protestantate with our whole instinct.

Signed :

A. Hammer, blacksmith.
M. Beam, carpenter.

R. Backup, coal-shoveler.
Th. Craft, sailor.

F. Trotter, teamster.
S. Lager, brewer.

K. Granit, quarry man.

G. Clay, bricklayer.
V. Steer, butcher.

B. Skin, flayer.

N. Strong, longshoreman.
JULIE VOM BERG— We need not stop to
ascertain whether this document is genuine or spuri-

Translators Note— I have here attempted to reproduce
the faulty spelling and grammar by which the author
wished to characterize the ignorance and illiteracy of the
petitioners and their "editor."

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3°7

ous. It is in any case a most striking and down-
right satire upon those shining lights of the press,
who seem to depend only on a public, such as the
undersigned, whom they can constantly alarm with
the anxiety that women could, by an equality of
rights, lose their nature, adopt masculine habits,
seek masculine employment, usurp masculine
"spheres of action," in short, transform themselves
into female men. How fortunate that these moni-
tors remind us of ourselves; otherwise we might
forget that we are women! But is it not remark-
able that those men, who are least of all qualified
to serve us as models for imitation, are most fre-
quently haunted by a fear that our enfranchisement
might induce us to cast off our feminine nature, and
to pass over into the male sex? If some malign
power should ever irresistibly tempt me to adopt a
masculine nature, models, of the sort of these Ger-
man editors, would cure me thoroughly for all time,
and would drive me back into my feminine nature
for the salvation of my humanity and respectabil-

ity."

After these remarks, which were received with
cheerful acclamations, the committee for special
motions was requested to report.

The first motion concerned the permanent asso-
ciation of radical German women. To gain this
point it was resolved to establish a central com-
mittee in New York, whidh was to take the initial
steps towards organizing the movement throughout

308 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

m

the whole land, and enter into relations with the
American woman suffrage committee, and with the
German "Association for the Dissemination of
Radical Principles."

Second Motion — "Since the rights of women are
championed among German men only by the real
radicals, who are trying to inaugurate a general
propaganda, through their 'Association for the Dis-
semination of Radical Principles/ it is the interest
as well as the duty of radical German women to sup-
port this association to the best of their ability.
Fairs ought therefore to be started, as soon as pos-
sible, in all places, where a number of such women
can come together, and the proceeds turned over
to this association."

In discussing this motion, attention was called to
the fact that German men, in general, even many
who call themselves radical, have no money to spare
for intellectual purposes, because they must spend
everything for beer and cigars — a need which na-
ture has fortunately denied to the feminine se*.
That, although our sex, on the other hand, has a
passion for fine dresses and gewgaws, this would
yield in a direct ratio to an increasingly rational
education, while radical women were free from it
even now. It would, therefore, be quite an easy
thing for women to spend a part of their pocket
money, not, indeed, for gewgaws and ribbons, but
for material for handiwork, etc., that could be util-
ized for fairs.

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3°9

Third Motion — Attempts ought to be made, and
especially ought to be recommended to the central
committee in New York, to see to it that at least two
women, and one of them a German, are appointed
as members of the board of "Commissioners of Emi-
gration."

The reason given for this motion was that accord-
ing to everything that could be learned, either
through the press or incidentally, of the existing ar-
rangements for the protection of immigrants, these
arrangements did not benefit the women in the same
degree as the men, although the former needed pro-
tection more than the latter. This want could only
be remedied through feminine watchfulness and
care. At present the chief aim of the board is to se-
cure the immigrants against pecuniary losses
through swindling; but the immigrating women and
girls, especially those who arrive without male com-
panions, were threatened with entirely different
dangers, besides the loss of money, and hundreds,
perhaps thousands, had already perished, because
there was no one to pay especial attention to their
condition and their welfare. It was also natural that
a stranger, upon her arrival, would at once confide
her plans and grievances to a woman, appointed to
guard the new-comer's interests, while she would
be reticent toward a male official. This would be
especially true with regard to the treatment on
board ship, concerning which scandalous stories get
abroad subsequently. It was most urgently neces-

3io THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

sary, therefore, that the board of commissioners of
immigration should be perfected by the appoint-
ment of capable women, whose special duty it would
be to look after those of their own sex in need of
help, and to protect them against all dangers that
lurk in the way to their destination.

Accepted.

Fourth Motion — All German women ought to
make it their especial task to send their children to
German schools, and to insist upon their speaking
German among themselves, which, of course, must
not preclude the learning of the English language.

Accepted and recommended.

Fifth Motion — The chief means for spreading en-
lightenment, truth and humane progress is the press,
especially the daily press. Women, all whose inter-
ests depend upon this progress, act against their own
interests if they do not exert themselves to the
utmost to support the radical press — the only one
which champions their rights — and to discounten-
ance the reactionary and indifferent papers. It is,
therefore, the duty of all radical women, to introduce
radical papers into their circles, and to banish all
others from them.

This motion was especially supported by Julie
vom Berg, who spoke as follows:

The feminine sex is all the more interested in re-
forming the press because it has so far been con-
trolled, almost exclusively, by men. Men write the
papers, men circulate them, and most women read
without choice or hesitation, what is placed before

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3"

them. But what does the reading matter, that is
placed before them as their intellectual food, offer
them? Disregarding religious papers, which self-
evidently are or ought to be excluded from our cir-
cles, we are offered little more than the daily reiter-
ated, stupid disgusting disputes of the party slaves,
who try to mutually outdo each other, both in their
accusations, and in their defenses, by unscrupulous
lying; or reprints of the most unprincipled and cor-
rupt fiction, by which servile litterateurs in Germany
try to keep the oppressed subjects from thinking
about their execrable conditions. The whole land
is deluged with the organs of the party slaves, and
the products of the manufacturers of "entertaining
literature." Every means, even the most mendicant,
is adopted for their circulation, and peddling agents
obtrude themselves into every house, for the special
purpose of inducing women to buy their wares. It
is not astonishing that with such reading matter,
which is intended only for subjects, even the free
spirit of the republic is led astray, minds become
effeminate or poisoned, and good taste corrupted.
We deplore the stagnation of all intellectual life,
and the want of sympathy for higher aspirations,
among the German women of this country. Is any-
thing else to be expected, when we consider the
character of their intellectual food, which consists
mainly of criminal stories, insipid tea-table novels,
local gossip, the advertisements of fortune-tellers,
or masked medical murderers, etc.? All this litera-

312 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

ture seems to be designed to confine women to the
intellectual level of the populace, and to keep every
incentive to thought and aspiration away from them.
And what sort of minds are they, who send such
reading matter forth into the world? We have made
the acquaintance of several examples. They are the
so-called "editors.'' The journalistic profession
seems to distinguish itself above all others, not only
in that it throws open its doors to all manner of in-
capacity, and unworthiness, but also in that it re-
wards incapacity, and unworthiness better than any
other profession does. No shoemaker, no tailor, no
mason, no woodchopper finds employment, and cus-
tomers, if he does not know his trade. But in the
journalistic trade — it is indeed a mere trade for
most of them — every thirsty loafer, every unsuc-
cessful clerk, who never before in his life thought of
literature, is at once a finished "editor." And if that
sort of genius has once taken his seat upon the
"editor's" chair, he becomes a "great man" in the
twinkling of an eye. What of modesty there may
still have been in him, what of possibility to learn,
what of doubt in his own competency, is suddenly
clean blown away; he is superior to everybody, re-
pels every sort of information, advocates every stu-
pidity with the consciousness of infallibility, and
drags everything into the mire that does not chime
in with his own vulgar conceptions, or his party ser-
vility. But the trait by which these representatives
of German intelligence, and German language, dis-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3*3

tinguish themselves chiefly, and most uniformly, in-
cluding even the more highly educated among them,
is the sublime brutality with which they deride and
combat the aspirations and rights of their fellow
beings of the female sex. The mere consciousness
that they belong to the sex that supplies the prize-
fighters and cut-throats makes of them competent
judges, and privileged lords over everything fem-
inine. No question furnishes a better and surer test
of a man's vulgarity than the question of woman's
rights; and since the true rabble, everywhere, is
wont to dilate upon it con amore, and with complete
liberty, fearing neither the police, nor the bones of
the weaker sex, it is a tid-bit with which this scrib-
bling rabble tempts the appetite of its readers, by
serving it with a sauce piquante of beer-saloon wit
and street-corner esprit.

Women have it in their power to take the bread
away from a large number of this scribbling rabble.
I know that many of them are driven by hunger,
rather than viciousness, to lend themselves to even
the lowest kind of newspaper work, and I do not
wish the poor wretches any harm. Still I cannot
agree, even apart from our special interests, to have
the press, this most important institution for the
education of mankind, used as a mere charitable in-
stitution for every poverty-stricken incapacity —
that ought rather to turn to some manual labor —
and degraded by every low-minded individual, who
is willing for board and lodging to commit treason

314 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

against all intellectual and humane interests of the
race. It is better that an "editor," without ability
and calling, should go hungry, than that the minds
of thousands, who would have been open to the
influence of better teaching, should be mislead and
corrupted.

All women, who are not acquainted with, or in-
different to, liberal thought, good taste, and noble
tendencies, by completely banishing from their cir-
cles all those "intelligence papers that are not papers
of intelligence," and all so-called entertaining litera-
ture that requires nothing of the publisher but bad
taste, a mean, mercenary spirit, and indiscriminate
reprinting, ought to set themselves squarely against
them, and replace them by radical journals, which
combine a genuine will to serve minkind, with the
ability to do so. What we need is to adhere strictly
to the principles of universal human rights and keep
them pure; to expose and assert truth fearlessly and
unsparingly on all sides; to keep an open and un-
prejudiced mind, for the purpose of securing intel-
lectual progress; to subject all questions and oc-
currences in public life to independent criticism; to
wage relentless war against all baseness and corrup-
tion; and if we need additional intellectual enter-
tainment, let it conform to a normal taste, possess
real intellectual worth, and be free from illiberal or
unworthy tendencies. But where do we find all this,
where can we find it, except in outspoken radical
papers, which are as independent of the rabble as of

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3*5

party service? Let no woman object that, in favor-
ing the radical press, which advocates her rights, she
might come into collision with her stronger half.
She who dreads such a collision is not fit to take
part in our struggle; but she for whom such a col-
lision would assume a serious character, is suf-
ficiently matured in her ideas to withdraw herself
entirely from every collision with her stronger half.
If we want to be free women, let us show it first of
all by being no longer afraid of the unfree men,
whom we cannot convert.

The motion was accepted with enthusiastic ap-
proval.

Sixth Motion — Women in general never cast
greater doubt upon their intellectual ability, and
never furnish their opponents with a better weapon
than by their thoughtless acquiescense in the tyr-
anny of even the most senseless fashions, and by the
unscrupulous vanity with which they spend sums
for the most trivial finery that could furnish them
the means for reforming society. It is therefore
both an urgent and a worthy task for sensible
women, not only personally to emancipate them-
selves from fashion, and to set the example of wear-
ing simple and tasteful garments, but also to en-
courage general co-operation in such reforms.

K. HEISTERBACH— The subject, to which
this motion calls our attention, is so important that
I am almost afraid to express myself upon it, since
a brief elucidation is not sufficient to place it in its

3 ib THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

proper light, and it would fill a book to treat of it
exhaustively. Woman's slavery to fashion fur-
nishes an appalling amount of matter for questions
such as these.

•Can a being who, without choice or will of her
own allows her external appearance to be pre-
scribed to her, have a sufficient independence of char-
acter to act, in serious matters, according to her
own judgment and decision? Can a being be con-
sidered as intellectually responsible who is immedi-
ately reconciled to, and eager to adopt, the most
senseless attire, as soon as others set a bad exam-
ple?

What inner worth can a being have, who is so
anxiously and continually occupied with the ex-
ternal?

Can we still believe the feminine sex to have any
of that aesthetic faculty, which we call good taste,
when we see how stubbornly it adheres to the most
unbecoming styles?

Is not the passion for fashionable and extrava-
gant dress a chief source of moral ruin? Does not
this passion supply prostitution with as many vic-
tims as want?

If one considers how infinitely much good women
might do, if instead of spending hundreds of millions
on the most trivial finery they would spend these
sums for their children, for the needy, for social re-
forms, for intellectual culture, for the fine arts; in
short, for all those purposes which are in accordance

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3*7

with the true essence of noble womanhood, one
must resort to the theory of a complete degeneracy
through habit, in order not to charge this criminal
extravagance of wealthy women to innate unscru-
pulousness and depravity, and impeach feminine
nature itself as entirely inferior and mean.

It is impossible for me to express myself upon
all these points in detail as it ought to be done. I
must content myself with mere suggestions which
will surely suffice to call your attention to the im-
portance of the question, and to show you what a
great problem the German women would solve, if
they would lead the way in a reform of woman's
dress. Should we accomplish nothing more in this
country we could regard it as a great distinction if
the people on the street, upon seeing a simply and
tastefully attired lady, would have to say "that is a
German woman," and not one of those slaves of
fashion, overloaded with bad taste, who always im-
press me as so much walking merchandise looking
for a buyer. We need not even agree on the cut
of the garments, or the combination of colors, or on
any detail whatever, if we only observe the follow-
ing principles :

1. The beautiful is always simple.

2. Gaudiness is never beautiful.

3. The garment must be fitted to the body, not
the body to the garment.

4. Excellence of quality is the best extravagance.
Let us act according to these principles, and let

3i 8 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

us make propaganda for them, both theoretically
and practically. Those who abide by them will find
that they will not only fare better, from an econ-
omic point of view, but that, in every respect, they
will make a better impression than by the most os-
tentatious display. It is a mistaken calculation
when girls think that they are more attractive to
men in a conspicuous and extravagant attire, than
in a simple and tasteful garment. Their extrava-
gance and repudiation of good taste is, therefore,
useless, even in that respect. When this is appre-
ciated, the chief reason for adhering to the slavery
of fashion falls to the ground.

MISS SCHWARTENBACH— If we do not
soon begin to act in accordance with this motion
our sex will really lay itself open to the suspicion of
having lost its common sense, or of celebrating a
perennial carnival. The present styles are indeed
such that almost every woman would be in danger
of being arrested, if public offenses against sense
and good taste were under police surveillance, the
same as offenses against public morals and safety
are. If I had the power I would put an end to these
almost scandalous fashion crazes, by not only plac-
ing them under police control, but by proceeding
against them in court in a manner whereby the en-
tire wardrobe of the fair delinquents would be sub-
jected to investigation. First of all I would call
those photopihobiac ladies before the tribunal, who
give their heads a most inhuman shape by fastening

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3*9

a flat plate upon it, reaching down to the eyes, and
then attaching behind this plate a hairbomb con-
structed of all manner of suspicious ingredients,
which, although unexplosive, is most disagree-
able to behold. But I would treat those monstrous
fools, who think they have changed themselves into
ethereal beings by the addition of the so-called
"Grecian bend" still worse. A more shameless and
more absurd coquetry with the pose of modesty
than this disfigurement has never yet been prac-
ticed. All the lunatic asylums of Christendom can-
not produce the equal of these caricatures of woman-
hood, who think they are making themselves
immensely interesting and mythologically roman-
tic, if they defy the scorn of every unsophisticated
spectator, and, with abdomen artificially drawn in, an
ostrich-like appendage in the rear, and stilts under
their shoes, trip along the street as if they were
afflicted with chronic colic, while they carry their
arms before them like kangaroos, in a constant
shielding of themselves against a fall on their nose.
Recently I overheard a gentleman remarking to an-
other, as one of these monsters of fashion passed by:
"She is caparisoned like a horse, but has the saddle
strapped on wrong side before." This is undoubt-
edly coarse, thought I, but nothing could be more
appropriate than if every word would change itself
into a tangible lash, to drive this shameless woman
— she was a pretty girl, scarcely more than seven-
teen, and her suit was worth at least two hundred

320 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

dollars — back into her dressing stable. I call her
shameless, and would like to use a still stronger ex-
pression, for I do not consider anyone who can
abuse good taste and common sense so cruelly be-
fore all the world, capable of true morality. A sense
of the beautiful and a moral sense belong together.
I consider a woman with a "Grecian bend" capable
of anything but what is reasonable and humane.
There is no expression of public opinion that a being
can dread who has stood the test of exposing herself
to the criticism of the "Grecian bend."

Among the present fashions there is a third which
might be called a heinous offense against good
taste, and the ladies who adopt it can justly be com-
pared to inverted cabbages, on account of the many-
leaved character of their attire. To wear a simple
dress would be shocking to these ladies. Indeed,
nobody can tell what is the real dress, there are
nothing but dress fragments, piled one upon the
other, each successive one shaped and draped more
idiotically than the other, and, perhaps, of a different
color, so that the ideal costume seems to be the one
made up of the most senseless accumulation and
mixture of rags and colors imaginable.

I confess I am ashamed of my sex, when I see
thousands of women parading in the streets and
places of meeting, day after day, as if their entire oc-
cupation and aim in life consisted in placing them-
selves on exhibition, loaded down with all sorts of
rags and absurd finery and in defying the criticism

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 321

of sound common sense. Something must be done
to put an end to this absurdity, this shame, this
scandal. So long as women were satisfied with the
honor of being pampered as mere elegant dolls, and
amusing playthings, the demands made upon their
reason, even with regard to their external appear-
ance, corresponded to this lot; the sillier the better.
Nobody can be used to better advantage than the
fool. But since the word goes round that women
are also human beings, and as rational human beings
can lay claim to and make use of human rights, it is
high time that they doff the uniform, so to speak,
which they wore in their former state of servitude.

I vote for the motion and suggest that both the
motion and the debate upon it be separately printed
and sent to all the votaries of fashion whose ad-
dresses we can ascertain."

Accepted.

Seventh Motion — Where the men are still sub-
jects, the liberty and rights of women are entirely
out of the question. Only in a republic is there any
possibility of demanding and attaining the rights of
women. An address ought, therefore, to be drawn
up, to the women of Germany, in which the cause of
their degradation is made clear to them and in which
they are exhorted to spur the men on toward the rev-
olutionizing and republicanizing of their fatherland,
and to bring up their children in this spirit.

In giving the reasons for this motion, attention
was called to the sad fact that in the fatherland of

322 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

idealism, the fatherland of Schiller and Goethe, wom-
an was actually more deeply degraded and less re-
spected than in any civilized country in the world.
Among the uneducated classes she was almost
everywhere looked upon as a servant, and a beast of
burden, and if it is reported that some men harness
their wives to the plow, together with the cow, the
report may here and there be founded on actual
truth; but the exclusive mission of "housewife,"
emphasized by the educated classes, was founded
on ideas not much higher than the above, while
every more extended career led into the horrible
realm of prostitution. But this realm owed its
population chiefly to monarchy and its servants,
especially to the standing armies of idlers, whose
entire object and occupation it was to oppress men
and degrade women.

Accepted, with instructions to the Secretary to
draw up an appropriate address to be circulated in
Germany.

This ended the list of motions and propositions by
the respective committees. Upon the President's
question, whether any one else had any suggestion
to offer, Miss Schwartenbach arose and proposed
the following:

Resolved, The vice of smoking implies a disgrace-
ful slavery of the man and is an inconsiderate insult
to the woman who is to keep him company. Be it,
therefore, further

Resolved, that we will not only shun all society in

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 323

which tobacco is smoked 'but will not invite men
who are subject to this slavery, and carry the odor
of it on their clothes into our society.

MISS SCHWARTENBACH— I have limited
my resolution as much as I could. If I had chosen
to express my whole heart on the subject, it would
have also contained the determination not to marry
a man who is a slave to this odoriferous tyrant that
oppresses the whole masculine world in the form of
pipes and cigars. But I refrained from making this
addition, first, because I was afraid of subjecting the
courage of many of the women present to too severe
a test, and, secondly, because I did not wish to de-
prive men of the possibility of reforming after mar-
riage. If Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Napoleon,
Frederick II., Boerne, Heine, and other gifted and
aesthetically inclined men had not redeemed the
honor of their sex by their disgust for the pipe, we
would be actually driven to make the disgraceful
statement: All men, especially all German men,
smoke, or, to use an Aristotelian phrase, man is a
smoking animal. But how are they to be broken of
this habit? They are generally so enslaved to and
so hardened by the habit of smoking that we cannot
count upon them themselves for any revolution or
effective opposition to the vice. That it injures their
health, that they waste their money in smoke, that
they offend good taste, that they declare war against
the aesthetic sense, that they deny reason, that they
make themselves the slaves of a senseless habit; all

324 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

these things have been told them hundreds of times,
without having the least effect on them. They can
hope for recovery only when we come to their res-
cue, and we cannot do that in any more effective
manner than by forcing them to do without our
society, if they will not do without tobacco. But this
passive resistance is at the same time the best way
to guard our own interests. It is not only to relieve
ourselves from the physical suffering, to which we
are exposed by the horrid stench, the fumes that
take away our breath, the smoke that makes our
eyes smart, and all the other abominations which
accompany the operation, but also from the moral
degradation of subjecting our persons, without hesi-
tation and without regard to an ordeal of self-abne-
gation against which our whole nature rebels for the
sake of a coarse male amusement. When I see a
woman sitting in the company of men, enveloped by
tobacco smoke, I feel that she is denied, insulted,
sacrificed. She gives me an impression of vulgarity
or self-degradation, and a feeling of contempt, be-
cause she endures or even enjoys without protest an
atmosphere entirely antagonistic to womanliness.

In the interest of both sexes, and, I may add, in
the interest of marital happiness, I recommend the
adoption of my resolution.

JULIE VOM BERG— I am willing to cast my
vote for any expedient that can possibly break men
of the tobacco vice. Fortunately our German men
have not yet sunk so low as to adopt the American

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 325

vice of chewing tobacco — a "pleasure" that dis-
gusts even savages. Instead of that they achieve
almost superhuman feats in the art of smoking to-
bacco. And how does that come about? Simply
through imitation. The youthful lord of creation
sees the adult lord of creation with a stump in his
mouth, and, accordingly, puts a stump into his own
mouth, that he may feel himself the equal of his
senior. If fathers would refrain from smoking, this
savage diversion would never occur to the sons. It
is only the example that leads them to do it. To
harden his nature, as early as possible to vices which
no quadruped could endure, seems to the young
biped a means of speedily becoming a man. Just
because these fumes are disgusting, and the nicotine
abominable, and the whole a most unnatural piece
of business, which tests the senses and the nerves to
the utmost, therefore, it may be, the young look
upon it as a sort of heroism, which carries them in
one stride over years of development, to the full
estate of man; and thus one generation of heroes
fumes and spits the next into existence, and people,
who have not been inured to such a barbaric atmos-
phere, and have not been entirely deprived of their
aesthetic feeling, must needs escape into solitude, to
save themselves from the persecutions of these to-
bacco heroes.

Whatever is created by mere habit, and not
through a natural necessity, can, in its turn, be
made to yield to habit. All that is necessary is to

326 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

realize that the habit in question is an evil and to
have the will to be free. Fortunately there still are
some men who hate the vice of smoking as much
as we do, and we can appeal to them, should we be
accused of egotism. Besides, men know better how
to steep their tobacco-steeped fellows in shame.
Permit me to read you an article from "Der Pio-
nier," in which an enemy of smoking attacks an
habitual smoker who claims to have discovered that
smoking is an intellectual entertainment, a sort of
substitute for thinking.

"Whoever is so thoughtless/' we read, "that
smoking can take the place of thinking for him,
simply sleeps with open eyes, and ought to be able
to sleep just as well without, as with a stump in his
mouth. Is the Turk a thinker? He will laugh at
you if you suspect him to be one, and yet he is the
hardest and most enduring smoker in the world.
Whoever imitates him in this respect must not be
surprised if he is put on an intellectual level with
the Turk. If you read a paper at home, or chat with
your family, or play a game of chess or whist, are
you not as well entertained as when you hold an
odious stick between your lips and blow odious
fumes into the air that irritate your eyes? I have
never yet found a man who could explain wherein
the enjoyment of smoking really consisted; but
neither have I ever found a smoker who was not a
downright slave to this undefinable enjoyment. The
entire enjoyment consists in a thoughtless illusion

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3*7

and habit, which has such a dehumanizing effect
that the smoker not only loses his aesthetic sense,
but actually his five senses as well; he no longer
feels how the smoke effects his eyes, no longer sees
how disgustingly the tobacco juice soils his fingers
and lips, he does not hear how idiotic this continual
puffing sounds, he does not smell the disagreeable
odor of this Indian perfume, and he does not taste
the diabolical flavor of the noxious herb. A mag-
nificent enjoyment, indeed, that one can fully ap-
preciate only after having lost both his reason and
his five senses together. And a great many of the
members of that sex which calls itself the strong sex,
purchase. this enjoyment with the ruin of their
health and their finances. If Cleopatra dissolves a
precious pearl in a glass of wine and drinks it, I can
understand the sense of this nonsense; I can also
understand why Lucullus, on special occasions,
serves a dish of peacocks' tongues, or another gas-
tronomic genius devours carps that have been fed
on human flesh. But how a man can spend half a
dollar or even a dollar for a roll of stinking herb,
which he tosses about between his unsavory lips for
five minutes, puffing and cutting up faces the while,
to throw the chewed half out of the window, I can-
not understand. And yet there are multitudes of
such monsters. They, of course, smoke a cheaper
variety, but since their front chimney is puffing all
day long, they do not escape more cheaply in the
end, than those insane aristocrats of the tobacco

328 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

mania. We may assume that smoking, on the aver-
age, costs as much as drinking, and while the one
gulps the sustenance of a family down his throat,
the other puffs it into the air as smoke. And if the
family could but in the least participate in this so-
called enjoyment! But there is no more egotistical
'entertainment' than smoking; it not only excludes
every second person from sharing in it, it actually
drives everyone who is not hardened to it to seek
safety in flight. A drinker can at least offer his
glass to his wife, but no smoker would lend his nasty
weed to his wife, even if she were so unrefined as to
share his loathsome taste."

Another article signed "J. Oelkopf," upbraids the
tobacco barbarians still more emphatically.

"However ridiculous it may seem," says Mr. Oel-
kopf, "I shall advance a new theory of development
that, for me, contains a profound truth, superficial
and paradoxical as it may appear. My theory is:
So long as men smoke tobacco they are not free and
cannot become free.

"I have just attended a meeting of German rad-
icals. I feel as if I were in a paroxysm of sea-sick-
ness. My smarting eyes water. I cannot breathe;
whenever I move I am threatened with an attack of
vomiting, my clothes are saturated to my very skin
with the odor of the disgusting weed, the use of
which we have learned from the joyless, bestial sav-
ages, and all my female friends flee from me as from
a monster. And why is all this? Because, in def-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 329

erence to my principles, I felt obliged to attend a
meeting of men, who call themselves free, and rad-
ical, but who are neither free enough in themselves
to refrain for an hour from the fuming, stinking
weed, nor liberal enough towards others to save
them from the necessity of undergoing this un-
bearable, nauseating torture in the interests of
liberty. To see those fellows sit there, as' if under
orders, tossing the tobacco stick about between their
lips, with the most important air in the world, raising
their enraptured eyes to heaven, to puff out the stink-
ing fumes, as a whale throws up water, and filling
the room with smoke so thick that one is tempted
to grasp it and form it into balls to throw at the
smokers, and knock the sticks out of their distorted
mouths! O, how often have I had the desire to seal
people's mouths with court-plaster when they were
talking nonsense! But the desire is still stronger
when they use their mouths as a crater for their
suffocating, eye-destroying pestilent fumes.

"The tobacco-smokers are themselves slaves and
tyrants to others. Is not he a slave who cannot live,
not even discuss liberty, without an indulgence,
which is not a necessity of nature, and has become
bearable only through habit? And is not he a tyrant,
who, in his indulgence, has not the least regard for
others, to whom it is utterly intolerable, but who,
from social considerations and circumstances, are
obliged to be in his company? If the mere circum-
stance of a man's enjoying, or being addicted to a

330 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

thing, gives him the right to indulge himself with-
out regard for others, then all good manners and all
decency cease, and every sin against aesthetics is
permissible.

"Enjoyments and needs agree with liberty only
when they are natural necessities and justified by
reason, i. e., when they are aesthetic and not in-
jurious. But the smoking of tobacco is :

"i. Not a natural necessity.

"2. Known to be injurious to the health of the
mind as well as of the body.

"3. Unaesthetic in the highest degree, in that it
affects in the most disagreeable manner the sense
of smell, the sense of taste, and also (through the
grimaces of the executing artist, as well as by the
visible traces on his mouth, his hands, his dress, and
the floor) the eyes of every not utterly callous per-
son.

"Whoever, therefore, cannot dispense with this
'pleasure' consciously acts contrary to his reason, is
not free in the use of it, and makes himself the slave
of a habit that is a sin against nature, against health
and against aesthetics. How can such a weakling
call himself a free man?

"But the inconsiderateness with which these puf-
fing tobacco-chimneys victimize others is their
greatest condemnation. I have been present in com-
panies of "respectable" Germans, where, with truly
boorish obtuseness, ladies, to whom tobacco smoke
was actual poison, have been expected to endure

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 33*

hours of torture without a minute's respite from the
barbaric fuming, puffing, spitting and nauseating
stench. Is it thus that liberty is to be understood
and practiced? If indecency and vulgarity towards
others is liberty, what then, pray, is tyranny? Our
'free' men talk so much of 'culture.' Is there no
incongruity between tobacco smoking and culture?
"By right of habit tobacco smoking has come to
be a legitimate means of
"Slavery among the free.
"Tyranny among liberators,
"And vulgarity among the cultured.
"How can any one who is not able to free even
himself from so unnatural, so disgusting and so in-
jurious a need, be expected to have the necessary
insight and strength to remain faithful in other
things, to reason, liberty and the beautiful.

"Therefore, I repeat, so long as men smoke to-
bacco they are not free and can not become free."

Now let me read you one more communication
from a woman who has something to say about the
effect of this Oelkopf article, an effect which we
would rejoice to observe on all men, who still have
enough reason and strength left to renounce a vice
which has nothing to justify it.

"Mr. Oelkopf has laid the colors on thick, in
order to demonstrate the nastiness and injurious-
ness of tobacco-smoking; but whoever loves truth
cannot gainsay him, and I agree with his assertion :
'So long as men smoke they are not free and cannot

332 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

become free.' But I beg permission to add a few
points which he seems to have forgotten.

"My husband is a good and most excellent man,
and an enthusiastic champion of liberty. At the
same time he is so fortunate as to possess sufficient
pecuniary means to live free from special care. He
has carefully systematized his expenditures, and
spends annually for liberal journals, the support of
free thought projects, etc, three hundred dollars.
His cigars and pipes cost him annually three hun-
dred and twenty-five dollars, exactly twenty-five
dollars more than liberty. And what does he gain
from them? For the three hundred and twenty-five
dollars, he does more harm to his health than I ven-
ture to estimate. I have realized it long ago, and his
physician likewise, who has repeatedly reproached
him with it; but what was I to do? Everybody
knows how hard it is for a wife to deny any pleas-
ure, especially if this pleasure only costs money, and
his other needs are few, to the man she loves. I
suffered physically and morally from this hobby of
his, although I never betrayed myself, in order not
to appear egotistical, and he himself never suspected
it. Only now, after reading the article of Mr. Oel-
kopf, his attention was aroused, and he asked me
whether the smoke and odor of the tobacco was dis-
agreeable to me, too? I confessed that the torture
the weed caused me was as great as my anxiety for
the injury he was doing to his health. It was just
on my birthday. 'From to-day on,' said my hus-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS 333

band, /not another cigar will touch these lips.' I
never had a more valuable birthday present given to
me, and I feel no less grateful to Mr. Oelkopf for
it than to my husband. -

" 'But what,' I asked him, 'are you going to do
with the three hundred and twenty-five dollars
now?' 'Presumably,' he answered, 'I am now going
to have a better appetite and will make greater de-
mands upon your larder. I shall also, now and
then, feel like drinking a bottle of wine. I shall
allow one hundred and twenty-five dollars for this.
The remaining two hundred dollars I place at your
disposal for the cause of liberty.'

"I cannot sufficiently express to Mr. Oelkopf
how happy this resolve made me. But, at the same
time, I could not help thinking, what great means
liberty would have at its command if all the smokers
who are its champions would turn the money, which
they have hitherto puffed into the air in the form of
tobacco smoke, into a liberty fund! What a great
change could be brought about in the world by the
general resolution to renounce tobacco in favor of
liberty! And what a great pecuniary loss this would
be to despots! Does not despotism, in Europe, as
well as in America, live to a great extent from to-
bacco? The Italians stopped smoking in order to
ruin the Austrians. Shall we not try, in America, to
ruin the slave-holders of Virginia and Cuba by ban-
ishing their tobacco? It would be a double gain for
liberty; an immense increase of the sinews of war

334 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

and at the same time an immense falling off of the
means of the enemy. Really, when one thinks of
this result, and considers how easily it might be
attained, and must live to see that nobody is inter-
ested in it, he can justly exclaim: 'So long as men
smoke tobacco they are not free and cannot become
freef

"The friends of liberty in all countries ought to
distinguish themselves by ceasing to smoke, and by
contributing their tobacco money henceforth to lib-
erty ! I would venture to begin a new era from the
day when this resolve would go into practice. Very
well, then, show that you are men, like my husband;
from the 226. of February, the birthday of Washing-
ton, no enemy of slavery and no friend of revolution
ought any longer to smoke !

"Another advantage which Mr. Oelkopf has
passed over, consists in the increased ability to think,
the restoration of the mind. My husband confessed
to me that he invariably stopped thinking when he
began to smoke, and that this was the chief enjoy-
ment which the vice afforded him. What a con-
fession, what weakness! A man whose chief pride
ought to be his ability to think, strives to escape
thought by means of a poison ! And what does he
exchange it for? I asked my husband: 'What did
you think as a man if you did not think as a smoker?
In what did the "pleasure" exist, if by depriving
you of thought, it deprived you of the means of be-
coming conscious of the "pleasure?" What occu-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 335

pied your mind while you sat there staring at the
wall, tossing the cigar about between your lips,
puffing the smoke to the ceiling, knocking off the
ashes against the edge of the table, to begin anew
and puff, and making a round hole of your mouth
for the smoke to escape in circles into the air?'

"He answered: 'So long as my nerves had not
become completely obtuse the tobacco induced a
sort of intoxication, during which I could give my-
self up to indefinite phantasies. That was especially
the case after dinner when the body was inclined to
indolence, anyway, and the energy of the mind had
relaxed. It was the natural indolence of digestion,
rendered romantic by the listlessness of artificial
stupidity. Later this effect ceased, and the dullness
came of its own accord, by the mere belief that the
tobacco would cause it. Smoking had become a
mere matter of thoughtless and purposeless habit,
and I would no longer have known that I was smok-
ing at all if I had not seen the smoke before my face.
But now the smoke became the chief thing; I im-
agined that it was entertaining, a comfort, a "pleas-
ure" to blow the smoke into the air. Therefore, I
practiced the art of blowing smoke with variations ;
now I would blow the smoke from the middle of
the mouth, now from the right, now from the left
corner, now through the nose. Then again I would
expel it while I held the cigar between my lips, and
the next time I would take the cigar in my hand.
Yes, I even learned to make an essential difference

336 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

between the smoke that I blew away immediately,
after I inhaled it, and that which I retained in my
mouth for a quarter of a minute. But the greatest
pleasure was to take a very long pull and then to puff
out my entire stock of smoke in perfect rings, so that
it made a chain of ever larger and larger rings, up
to the ceiling. It is self-evident that during this en-
tire performance no thought could approach within
a distance of ten miles. Vacancy within me, and
nothing but smoke before me — that was the world
of my thought, and after smoking for several hours
it took several more hours before the smoke had
dissipated before my mind.'

"This confession actually frightened me. It is
dreadful to think of a man in his best years, a man
of intellect and character, a man that we can respect
and love, in a condition of childishness, even of
idiocy. Whenever I think of tobacco now I think of
idiocy, and whenever I see an otherwise presentable
man with a 'tobacco sausage' in his mouth I say to
myself: 'I wonder how this man looked when he
still had his reason, when he still saw the light!' "

STUDENT SCHWARTENBAGH— I second
my sister's motion with all my heart. When she ex-
posed me to public disgrace in the meeting day be-
fore yesterday I left the hall with the determination
to revenge myself thoroughly. But, after I had
thought the matter over calmly, I realized that the
best revenge, and one that would be most likely to
be in accordance with my own interests, would be

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 337

to resolve to reform. (Bravo, from all si'des.) In-
stead of scolding my sister, I am, on the contrary
grateful to her that she took this opportunity to use
a most drastic and energetic method, when, hitherto,
she had exhausted all remonstrances and admoni-
tions in vain. For the crime that I committed in
this assembly I now atone, with the confession that
the method has proved effective, and with the prom-
ise that never again shall either pipe or cigar touch
my lips. (Bravo.) I have always been for woman's
rights. I am glad that I also give you an oppor-
tunity to exercise them, especially the right to free
men from their evil habits, assumptions, vulgarities
and vices.

General clapping of hands. The motion is ac-
cepted.

After all the propositions were disposed of, the
President closed the transactions with the following
farewell address :

IDA JOH. BRAUN— Permit me to make a few
closing remarks concerning the question which has
been the subject of our transactions. It is a ques-
tion of such transcendent importance that even
among those who advocate it, perhaps the very
fewest are able to realize its entire scope. In the
race's struggle for development, hitherto, the issue
has always been between hostile forces within the
masculine half of humanity, of which the feminine
half was merely a passive appendage, always sharing
the fate of the former. Now, at last, the feminine

338 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

half has come to a consciousness of its own rights,
and likewise begins to take an active part. However,
its struggles are not within its own ranks as are
those of the masculine half, but against this latter,
which opposes it as a hostile force. It is a separation
of the two halves of humanity that belong together.
Six hundred millions of women stand opposed to six
hundred millions of men to claim only through a
small number of pioneers, as yet, recognition as hu-
man beings. As human beings, I say, for only he
is of value as a human being who is his own master
and law-giver. To the extent to which I deny rights
to a man, which I myself possess and exercise, to that
extent do I degrade him as man below myself. To
deny him all rights would be to degrade him com-
pletely to the level of the brute. What the feminine
half of humanity has hitherto possessed of so-called
rights does not deserve the name, because women
did not themselves determine them, nor were they
able to maintain them. They were only a gift of
mercy, and arbitrary power, presented in the inter-
ests of the giver himself.

What women want now is to change this gift of
grace not only into their own achievement, but to
extend this achievement so far as to annihilate every
difference that exists between their rights and the
rights of men. They demand that since there has
hitherto existed only a male right, there should now
at last be established a human right which excludes
no one, and no longer metes out uneven measure

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 339

to anyone. This is the greatest, the most comprehen-
sive progress after which human aspirations have so
far aimed, and to misapprehend this is possible only
to the blindness of an ancient habit, and a hardened
egotism, that sees in a hoary privilege the immuta-
ble decree of nature. This universal prejudice, so
old, and so deeply rooted, which has erected a barrier
'between the two halves of humanity, must be over-
thrown by a revolution that will create a new ethical
consciousness, but a revolution, which, although it
is directed against a wrong sustained only by force,
will for the first time give an example of a peaceful,
purely intellectual resistance. Six hundred million
women are fighting with purely intellectual, humane
weapons against six hundred mil'lion men, and will
conquer them, that they may change themselves as
well as their opponents into truly humane beings.
Was there ever a struggle more interesting than
this?

I know that our aspirations will also meet with
opposition from some women, but they are irre-
sponsible, by their numbers, as well1 as by their
qualities. It is a well-known fact that in Paris, after
the storming of the Bastille, several of the prisoners,
instead of rejoicing in their liberty, begged to be
returned to the prison. Long habit had so dulled
them and estranged them from the external world
that the prison atmosphere had become their vital
air. In a somewhat similar manner some of the
negroes in the South, after the emancipation, pre-

34° THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

ferreci their slavery to the liberty of which they
never had had any conception. Women who oppose
their emancipation belong to the same class, but are
just as exceptional in civilized countries as the ne-
groes and prisoners just mentioned. We may there-
fore rest assured that the opposition we have to face
comes from the men. Although I can very well un-
derstand this opposition, I am nevertheless tempted
to exclaim: "Forgive them, they know not what
they do." Indeed, they are not aware of the vul-
garity they evince by denying us that which they un-
hesitatingly grant to the most degraded of their own
sex; they do not know how they expose their intel-
lectual and moral deficiencies when they betray and
deny all the principles and arguments in our case,
which they promulgate and emphasize in their own ;
and finally they do not know that it is treachery to
themselves to prevent us from doing our share to-
wards ennobling and humanizing their own lives.

What I am here saying holds good especially of
German men, for the Americans have outstripped
them in this question by half a century. When do
you ever hear an American dispose of woman's
rights by such vulgar witticisms as are customary
among the German spokesmen of their sex? And,
if our local legislatures were constituted of Germans,
how long would we still have to wait until such im-
portant minorities would appear in behalf of our
emancipation, as have already appeared in several
Western legislatures? But the majority of our

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 341

German men, however ostentatiously they flaunt
the flag of "radicalism," cannot yet quite divest
themselves of the spirit of servility. Descended from
a country where the degradation of both men and
women was systematically eonducted by three dozen
courts, through a million agents of vulgarity,
throughout every stratum of society, where, natur-
ally, the stronger of the oppressed found a sort of
consolation or diversion in the assumption of su-
periority over the weaker of the oppressed — some-
what after the manner the "Democratic" party slaves
in this country deported themselves as a sort of lord
over the negro slaves — and where the contempt for
women as subordinate beings created only for the
service and lust of men was bred into them from
childhood in an infected moral atmosphere, although
now emancipated from their prince, these one-time
subjects cannot yet emancipate themselves from
themselves, and while they, as superior minds, dic-
tate our "sphere" to us, they are not aware that it
is only the degenerate spirit of the creature of roy-
alty, the student, the musketeer, the philistine, that
asserts itself in them. In the officer's clubs, the
beer-houses, the guard-rooms, and the students' inns
on the other side of the water the question of
woman's rights is probably treated in exactly the
same manner as here by the German newspaper
writers, and popular leaders.

I regret this, I am ashamed of it, for the sake of
the German name, which is boasted of so much,

342 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

whenever the talk is of "ideas," "principles," "hu-
manity," and "radicalism." But I am not so faint-
hearted as to fear that our aims could be frustrated
by this vulgar opposition of the German subject.
No, this movement, because it is based upon reason
and right, will overcome every obstacle, and will not
rest until its last demand is fulfilled, exactly as in the
question of negro rights. And exactly like this will
be its practical course, after the victory of the prin-
ciple has once been acknowledged; the sanguine
will, therefore, be as much disappointed as the whin-
ers. The negroes, after attaining the suffrage, did
not all immediately turn politicians and hasten to
the polls in a body in order to rule the state, neither
will the women immediately come in multitudes to
take part in political life; the emancipated negroes
do not now claim the daughters of their former mas-
ters as wives, or turn communists, as some brilliant
"Democrats" had feared; neither will the emanci-
pated women change into masculine beings, and
sacrifice their domesticity. Their pioneers will have
to continue to break the way, after the attainment of
the suffrage, as well as before, and only very gradu-
ally will the participation in public life become gen-
eral. At the same time nature will continue to assert
her rights, in private or family life, as hitherto, but
according to humane agreement, and not by a one-
sided dictatorship. Thus gradually a condition of
society will be developed that has sacrificed nothing
that was good and tenable, but that, by abolishing

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 343

the privilege of the stronger sex, ceases to cripple
the weaker and enriches a nobler life with the fruits
of free co-operation.

I feel actual compassion with the shortsightedness
that does not foresee all this. But we must not allow
our activity to flag on this account any more than we
must allow ourselves to be overcome with indigna-
tion at the vulgarity we meet. The honor of the
feminine sex, yes, of the entire human race is at
stake, and it is of vital importance what part the Ger-
man women play in its redemption. Even if we
should never be able to make use of the rights for
which we fight, merely to attain them is worth the
struggle of a lifetime. As I have already intimated,
the most immediate issue to be decided is whether
we are human beings ; it is necessary to establish a
new, comprehensive conception of humanity; it is
necessary to legally establish the abstract truth that
we are sovereign members of the human race, as
well as the men, equipped with the right of self-
determination and self-government; that one-half
of this human race is not born and destined to be
under the tutelage of a foreign will, and used like
children, or even like animals. If we have once
attained to the recognition of our sovereign human
dignity, all practical reform will become a matter of
course. With this recognition we have reached the
turning point, and that part of humanity, to whom
we must be an example here in America, will enter
upon the path of true, universal humanity. The

344 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

accession of women, the weakest part of society, in-
capable of using force, to the common rights of
men and citizens, will form the keystone of the
edifice of the humane state.

With this confidence in a beautiful future, I close
the transactions of our convention, which, it is to
be hoped, will not remain without influence upon the
thought, and the aspirations, of the German women
of this country.

When the members of the convention were on
the point of separating, a committee of the German
radicals of Frauenstadt appeared upon the scene,
with an invitation to a farewell reception and ball for
the evening.

The President accepted the invitation with the
following words:

"I do not fear to meet with any opposition if I
accept this cordial invitation of our male sym-
pathizers, in the name of the entire assembly; but
with the following condition : Among the privileges
which men have hitherto possessed and asserted was
that of entertaining the ladies at parties and balls and
of asking them to dance. The gentlemen who have
now tendered us this invitation are no usurpers of
power, but as members of the male sex they are
accustomed to the above privilege like all the rest.
In any case, it can do no harm to let them feel, for
once, how it is to be disqualified. Therefore, we
want to make this condition, that the roles be
changed this evening, and that the ladies entertain

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 345

the gentlemen, and ask them to dance. Every gen-
tlemen who acts contrary to this condition commits
a breach of etiquette, and for punishment is not
asked to dance."

The invitation was accepted with this condition.
The new order of things proved a great success that
evening, and all were agreed that they had never on
a similar occasion enjoyed themselves so much.
Several American ladies, who were present, were of
the opinion that things were managed in a more
humane and more social manner at a German con-
vention of women than at an American convention,
and declared that they would hereafter try to intro-
duce the German fashion.

Thus closed the first convention of German
women in America.

346 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

CONCERNING WOMANHOOD AND MAN-
HOOD.

(A Lecture. 1873.)

In the treatment of my subject the question arose
with which sex I should make the beginning, to
which I should give precedence. The answer to this
question would not embarrass me if I were to con-
sult merely my taste or the injunctions of "gallantry."
My hesitation arises from the story, especially the
Christian story of the origin of the sexes. The Bible,
the source of the prevailing wisdom and knowledge,
accords priority to man, and traces the descent of
woman directly from him, from one of his ribs. Not-
withstanding the high authority, however, on which
such genesis is based, it does not seem to me reason-
able, for the simple reason that, according to general
belief, man and woman are made to love each other.
Montaigne says: "I should not like to be a woman
because I could no longer love her then," and Lady
Montaigne declared that "the only reason why she
should not wish to be a man is that she would then
have to marry a woman." How then could a woman
have any charm for a man if she were formed out of
his bodily substance? Conceive of Adam kissing
Eve, after having, only yesterday, carried her about

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. l\l

him as a rib. And then the vexing rib as such! I
have sought in vain to trace the meaning of the
Biblical origin of woman, and could explain it only
if man belonged to those beings whose best part is
the cutlet. Perhaps this interpretation is also ad-
missible, that the Bible meant to convey the impres-
sion that man's need of woman was so great that he
would even "cut her out of his ribs," as we say,
rather than do without her. But in that case it would
have been more poetical and aesthetic to cut her out
of his heart; however, at the time the Bible was
written, aesthetics was as yet in a bad way.

The male origin of woman is, therefore, untenable,
and if anyone insists on adhering to it, I would agree
with him only if he meant to indicate thereby that
man lost his most human part when woman was
separated from him, and that that is the reason why
he has remained as brutal and barbaric as he still
shows himself to be on the average. Lessing says:
"Nature wished to make of woman her masterpiece.
But she made a mistake in the clay; she took too
fine a quality." The fineness of the clay is certainly
not one of man's defects; in that respect we shall
still have to make the most strenuous efforts in or-
der to become masterpieces. I attribute the fable
of the paradisiacal genesis to the domineering ar-
rogance, with which man always condemns the
weaker sex to dependence, and would even have it
believe that it is indebted to him for its very exist-
ence. I, therefore, consider that interpretation of

348 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

the Biblical story of the origin of woman as the
most correct one, which sees in it the most striking
expression of masculine egotism and despotism;
in order to condemn woman to the most complete
dependency upon himself, he traces her origin to
his own sex, but at the same time, the cowardly
barbarian is not ashamed, in the story of the "fall
of man," to shift his own guilt on the shoulders of
his own creature. The Christian myth of the origin
of Eve corresponds to the Grecian myth of the birth
of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, from the head of
Zeus, who, on his part, manifested his chief wisdom
by shaking his locks, by the noise of thunder and
lightning, and occasionally by amorous adventures
with the daughters of the earth. But the noble
Greeks, however, greatly they sinned against woman
elsewhere, at least did her the honor to let the source
of her intelligence be the brain of the highest God,
while the vulgar Bible, out of a masculine bone,
creates a being possessing so little intelligence that
she must call a serpent and an appletree to her aid,
to make the man understand that she is a woman.
If both sexes did not come into existence simul-
taneously, or were formerly united into one, if one
is to claim priority before the other, then this pri-
ority must be granted to the woman, by the logic of
development, and if, according to the most recent
theory of development, man has evoluted from the
ape, it certainly was the female ape who first smiled
a human smile, and who weaned her forest-mate

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 349

from grinning and showing his teeth. Even Chris-
tianity cannot refrain from correcting the Biblical
genesis by the story of the Virgin, who, without
human aid, brought into the world the noblest of
men, according to the Christian conception. Where
is the man who would attempt, without the aid of
a woman, to bring a Virgin Mary into the world?

Let us therefore place woman first, and let us
prepare ourselves by a reflection upon womanhood
for an adequate examination of manhood. But the
object of this reflection cannot be to merely em-
phasize the difference between the two sexes; the
object is rather to find the characteristic traits
through which each sex presents itself in its ideal
character, its greatest perfection; in other words, to
learn to know the ideal woman as well as the ideal
man. This task presents the peculiar difficulty that
it cannot be solved in an objective sense, and with-
out partnership, because, although both sexes are
dependent upon each other, they have, in spite of
their belonging together, different interests and dif-
ferent points of view. In truth, man and woman can
only be judged objectively by a neuter. But since
we have not yet reached this neutrality, since all that
is possible, to us, is the peculiar point of view of the
one sex with regard to the other, since neither sex
exists for itself, but each for the sake of the other, or
has significance only with relation to the other,
therefore this relationship alone ought to determine
the judgment, so that woman would be the com-

35° THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

petent judge of true manhood, and man the com-
petent judge of true womanhood. It is a futile at-
tempt to investigate why this dualism of the sexes
must exist, and if it were not possible to have an
organic world without this division; the fact is that
the organic world does consist of male and female
beings, who could not and would not exist without
each other, and a sex "in itself" and "for itself,"
without relation to the other, is no more to be
thought of than a thing in itself or for itself. There-
fore, it is proper for each of the two parts to decide
what qualities the other ought to have, in order to
meet its expectations. According to this I ought to
be content to express my opinions only on true
womanhood, and to leave the judgment of my own
sex to a representative of the other. But since, ac-
cording to various signs, there is danger that a great
part of the male sex, at least of the German tongue,
is about to disappear, and all the world seems will-
ing to leave it to its fate, I must, even in the interest
of the female sex, include the male in my observa-
tions, and do my duty in attempting to come to its
rescue.

Another difficulty, besides the one resulting from
sexual one-sidedness that stands in the way of find-
ing an ideal of universal validity, is the diverging
conceptions of various nations and finally of the
single individuals. Every nation has a different ideal
of womanhood, and among the individual men each
one will be inclined to make that woman his ideal

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 351

with whom he happens to have fallen in love. An
average ideal of manhood could be established with
much greater ease than one of womanhood. If a
vote could be taken on the matter, then surely a
bearded biped in uniform, that is, a trained homicide,
skull-splitter, or first-class blood-and-iron man,
would receive the majority among men. But which
woman would receive the majority, whether it would
be the Virgin Mary or the not Virgin Venus, I can-
not tell in these Christian times. In this state of
helplessness I am thrown upon my own taste, and if
I follow this I have the encouraging consciousness
that in at least one important particular, namely in
regard to nationality, my judgment is no prejudice.
Let Olympia — in order to give a name to the ideal
woman — speak German, or French, or English, or
Italian, or Spanish, I shall honor her equally if Only
she unites within herself those qualities which make
of her the model female of the human species.

Even without being a materialist, I would have to
begin with the physical personality in order to sketch
the model female of the human species, and the first
physical requirement is, of course, beauty. But
what is beauty? Even if all the artists and philoso-
phers, all the painters, sculptors and poets came to
my aid, I would not be able to determine absolutely
and exactly what feminine beauty consisted of.
Shall I study it in Raphael's Madonna, or in the
Venus of Medici? Neither of the two would call out
my enthusiasm if I saw them bodily before me. This

352 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

spirituality may infatuate, this sensual charm may
intoxicate, but only intellect can inspire. As often
as I visit a picture gallery I am astonished at the
lack of intellect and imagination that most painters
display in the choice of their subjects. Why has
none of them yet had the idea of painting a modern
Venus, that is, a model woman, who represents those
qualities which the perfected taste, the superior con-
ception of womanhood, and the more liberal views
of a new era attribute to a female ideal, not only in
the physical form, but also in the expression of the
face? Artists have 'never been wanting in the rep-
resentation of blameless physical forms, any more
than they have been hampered for want of models,
both living and copies; but where is the painter or
sculptor, who has created a face that could belong to
a modern Venus, that is, to a woman in whom the
greatest physical charm was united with the highest
expression of intellectual endowment. That such a
work of art has <not yet been created is due, in my
opinion, not only to a paucity of artistic imagination
but also to the position of woman up to the present
time. Whoever studies the statues of the antique
Venus carefully must at once be struck by the mean-
inglessness x>f the face which shows itself especially
in the unintellectual forehead, a significant fact for
the thoughtful observers. The Greeks looked upon
and treated woman in general as a subordinate be-
ing that existed only for the gratification of male
desires. Therefore, physical charms had to furnish

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 353

the chief points of excellence in their feminine ideal.
For did they not designate the girdle of the goddess
of love as the seat of her charms, and even give her
the surname of Kallopygos, by which they glorified
the beauty of her back? An expressive and intel-
lectual face did not harmonize with the conception
of a slave. Venus might be a ruler in so far as she
could subdue men by her physical charms; but she
must be a slave, like all women, in so far as she
was not allowed to be intellectually equal to man,
and thus, as an equal, to make the same claims upon
him as he made upon her. In my opinion the con-
temptuous conception of woman in Grecian myth-
ology is nowhere brought out more significantly
than in the choice of a husband for the beautiful
Venus. According to human and aesthetic logic
it ought to have married her to Apollo, the god of
beauty and of light ; but instead of that, it gave her
to his direct opposite, the god of ugliness and dark-
ness, the blacksmith Hephaestos, or Vulcan, whose
only qualification for a husband consisted in his
ability to forge chains. To be sure, the sentiment
of justice and common sense tried to correct this
incongruity by allowing Venus to seek compensa-
tion in the society of Mars, Bacchus, and other
friends; but, after all, the antique goddess of beauty,
and of love, never really advanced beyond the posi-
tion of a slave or a prostitute, be she called Urania
or Vulgivaga. Wherever the mythology of the an-
cients accorded to woman a higher, an intellectual

354 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

position or function, it left out love. Its goddess
of wisdom was even a cold, inaccessible virgin.
Who would nowadays hold up a woman as a model
of wisdom who does not or cannot love? A woman
without love, or ability to love, inspires as little
interest as a man without valor and without aspira-
tion. But as I have said before, woman's love
ought, according to the more worthy conceptions of
our age, not meet the passion of man passively, with-
out intelligence, and without will; but in the con-
sciousness of her equal sovereignty and dignity, she
ought to demand and exchange choice for choice,
passion for passion, devotion for devotion, adora-
tion for adoration. But such a position can be
thought of only as coupled with gieat intellectual
endowment. Nevertheless the artists of our time
still adhere to the models of antiquity, whose addi-
tional characteristic is that they celebrate feminine
beauty more through sculpture than through paint-
ing, presumably because the former can better satis-
fy the sensual taste, by its plastic physical form,
while the latter, with the same facial expression of
intellectual insignificance, can produce only a very
unsatisfactory effect. Were I to offer any sugges-
tions to an artist, concerning the creation of a mod-
ern Venus, they would be something like the fol-
lowing:

For the physical form, as far as the head, you may
choose among the customary models, if you will
avoid excessive length of fingers, sloping shoulders,

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 355

and the famous swan's neck — beauties of which
only a lover of consumption can approve. Do not
study only the conditions of beauty, but also those
of health, even of strength, in so far as it is compat-
ible with grace. Do not choose a decidedly national
type, above all not a too northern character, and
not a blonde Thusnelda. The northern element is
more typical of the masculine, the southern of the
feminine character. But for both a blending of the
two is the foundation and condition of elevation and
perfection. Let your picture have brown eyes and
black hair; if you make the eyes blue, then let the
color of the hair, eyebrows and eyelashes be a dark
blonde, approaching to black. The complexion
must not incline toward yellow or brown, but must,
in spite of the dark hair and dark eyes, betray the
predominance of rosy, Caucasian blood. Spare the
red on cheeks and lips, but be not sparing of intel-
lectual expression in the shape of the eyes, the
mouth and the forehead.

Would not a picture of this sort, derived from
the most advanced civilization and executed by a
Praxiteles or Apelles of our time, to represent the
modern Venus, make a different impression than
the sea-born Venus of the ancients? Would she not
be a nobler and more timely object of adoration
than the unintellectual, comfortless and joyless
Madonna? Would it not give a higher tone to the
culture of the beautiful? Would it not, as the fem-
inine ideal, help to elevate woman in general?

356 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

Would not the idea of personifying the goddess of
love, in union with intellectual endowment, give to
love itself a higher sanction and help to destroy the
dominant, although not openly avowed, conception,
according to which love and intellect do not agree
with each other in woman? Does not the concep-
tion, which men in general entertain of the destiny
of woman, presuppose her intellectual inferiority?
Do they not, even where they adore her beauty and
loveliness, secretly look upon her intellect either
with contempt or with jealousy? There is no true
beauty which is not permeated with intelligence,
and there is nothing more glorious in the world than
a beautiful woman of intellect. But how many men
have enough intellect, masculine and humane intel-
lect, not to fear the feminine intellect where they
extol and demand feminine beauty? Are not most
of them inclined to attach the suspicion of unwom-
anliness to the intellectual endowments of a woman,
merely because their instinct tells them that a gifted
woman can and must lay claim to a higher position,
and greater respect, than that of a slave to man?
"The eternal womanly draws us on" — thus declaims
every hero with a tuft of hair under his nose. A
woman could answer him: "The eternal manly
draws us down."

If I have so far coupled true womanliness with
physical beauty I do not wish to be understood that
the former could not exist without the latter. Two
chief requirements of true womanliness are grace

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 357

and goodness, and both can suffice without physical
beauty; they can even conciliate one with homeli-
ness, or shall I say that they actually preclude home-
liness? Just as there is no true physical beauty,
without the expression of soul, so the expression of
the soul can compensate for the lack of physical
beauty. These two indispensable qualities, grace
and goodness, can bestow advantages and charms to
a woman under circumstances and at a period of life
when a man sees his disappear or turn into their
opposites. There are few fathers, who, at an ad-
vanced age, can still inspire their children with in-
terest in them, while the filial love for a mother,
especially that of sons, can increase with her age.

On this occasion I should also like to protest
against the prejudice, confirmed by many facts, that
the physical charms of a woman are a necessary
condition for the duration of man's love. To be
sure, it cannot be a matter of indifference to any
man, whether the object of his regard retains or
loses the agreeable appearance which she possessed
in Schiller's "beautiful time of young love;'' but if
he cannot fold her in his arms as tenderly after she
has become the emaciated inmate of the sickbed, as
he embraced her on the bridal couch, then he lies
when he asserts that he ever really loved her. But it
is a sad fact that most men, as they are now edu-
cated, lose the capacity for true love, together with
the true respect for women, before they have had
any opportunity to test this love.

358 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

So far, for the sake of realizing a picture of true
womanliness, I have taken a point of view from
which intellectual endowment is one of the indis-
pensable attributes of woman. It is self-evident that
this presupposes all the accompanying results of
intellectual endowment, such as participation in all
the achievements of education and science, interest
in everything that is good and beautiful, the taking
of an active part in the humanization of human
society, the noble assertion of nature and truth in
manners and life. Now let us see what will become
of our ideal picture if we leave our point of view, to
step down into the street, and place it face to face
with* reality, with the present. To the great annoy-
ance of our musical or music-making German coun-
trymen I once asked the question: "Need a musi-
cian have brains?" At the risk of incurring the ill-
will of the entire fair sex, I would like, in reviewing
the great majority of our present female world, to
put the question: "Must a woman have brains?"
When I began my campaign of the so-called emanci-
pation of woman in New York, twenty-two years
ago, a German woman said to me: "What do you
want with this emancipation? We women do not
need to be emancipated. If my husband beats me, I
scratch his eyes out." Well, this woman was modest
enough to consider security against conjugal blows
as sufficient emancipation, and had sense and cour-
age enough to obtain this security for herself by
means of her own natural weapons. But how many

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 359

are there not, who will quietly submit to the blows,
without thinking of the eyes of their affectionate
executioner, and who nevertheless consider them-
selves emancipated? How many are there not who
have never thought of rights, because they do not
know what to do with them? How many are there,
even among the cultured, who have brains enough
to know that a man who does not accord to his wife
equal rights with himself, in all things, cannot truly
love her? But then these are domestic affairs be-
longing to the department of the interior. Let us
step outside the door, and look at these candidates
of emancipation on the street. There we shall be
able to admire feminine brains, especially in two
of its appendages by which women strive to assist
nature. One will construct a monstrous elevation
on her head, the other an even more monstrous ele-
vation on another part, which nature has found best
to deprive of the ornament with which it has embel-
lished only animals. There might be some sense
in the elevation on the head, as indicating a desire
to enlarge, at least externally, that member, which
is known as the seat of the understanding, and this
is corroborated by the fact that those skulls which
contain the least within them are wont to be loaded
with the highest structures. But the passion of
women to increase the opposite part by an appen-
dage is all the more incomprehensible, because
among animals it is the male sex that distinguishes
itself by the size of its rear ornaments, as we can

360 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

observe in the turkey, the peacock, and other tail-
bearing dignitaries. What is to become of our views
of the feminine ideal, if we see even the model speci-
mens of the fair sex wander about the streets, the
delicate head adorned with a Babylonian tower, con-
sisting of a collection of international hair and in-
fusoria, and the curved model back ending in a mys-
terious elevation of drygoods and architectural de-
signs, moving with strange contortions, and threat-
ening changes of form, before which, if they really
were a part of the person, the entire male sex would
flee into the forest? At such a sight the question:
"Must a woman have brains?" involuntarily changes
into the question: "Can a woman have brains?"
And yet nobody will maintain that "there is nothing
to it." Fairy lore has told us of mermaids who are
women above and fish below; but without straying
into the realm of fancy we could say of most of our
landmaids, they are grenadier above and dromedary
below. And to complete the model woman as a
monstrosity in the extreme, she also drags a silk or
velvet train, of several yards, along her earthly pil-
grimage, in order to bring home with her into her
boudoir, redolent with ^patchuli, all the odors and
delicacies of the public thoroughfare. George Sand,
Ninon de l'Enclos, Heloise, Aspasia and all ye other
women of intellect and taste, of aesthetic sense and
feeling, save me from despairing of your living sis-
ters, who, by such monstrous deformities and con-
cessions, voluntarily and assiduously, without com-

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 3&i

punction and without shame, prostitute themselves
into thoughtless and vulgar slaves of the most in-
sane tyranny of fashion! And these want to be
emancipated? Every tower of hair, and every
"bustle" is the public exhibition of a protest against
emancipation!

What a grand triumph for the opponents of
woman's rights, when they see the pre-eminently
fair sex abjure, not only all common sense, but also
all sense of the beautiful and all good taste! And
what humiliation, what an embarrassing position for
the advocates of those rights, who, with the claim
for equal rights, must at the same time assert and
prove equal ability! But even in this predicament
comfort and encouragement is not wanting. For
without drawing parallels, without, for instance,
contrasting woman's slavery to fashion, her passion
for finery and gew-gaws, with the imitative passion
of men for tobacco fumes and playing at soldiers,
and thus balancing the two sides of the scales, or
even causing them to fluctuate in favor of woman,
we must admit that the time for a final test has not
yet come for either sex. And if this holds of man,
who could assert his rights and choose his task un-
hampered, how much more must it hold of woman,
who has hitherto been without rights and without
self-determination, and who, dragging with her the
inheritance of thousands of years of dependence
and degradation, has had no opportunity to arrive
at a sovereign consciousness of her own ability, and

3b2 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

could only become what man either directly or in-
directly made of her through education and ruler-
ship! To demand qualities and to pass judgment
on qualities in a state of slavery which only liberty
can develop or destroy, would be to crown injustice
by stupidity. Only the free woman can manifest the
true nature of woman. The woman of the future
will be an entirely different being from the woman
of the present. What she may once be, what she
may strive after and accomplish, we can even now
realize by the aid of the example given us by several
favored natures, and by the contrast between free
conditions and the unfree conditions in which she
moves and has her being. What a difference, for
instance, between the aspirations and achievements
of American and of German women! Women,
brought up in the philistine, police and military at-
mosphere of Germany, have no idea of what women
undertake and accomplish in America. Neither can
we now have an adequate conception of that which
American, and, it is to be hoped, also German-
American women, will one day undertake and ac-
complish, when they can enter every arena which a
free government opens to human aspirations, in the
full possession of their rights and independence.
Let us not be afraid that in an atmosphere of liberty
womanliness will disappear. It will not commit
suicide because it is permitted to unfold freely. Op-
pression, not liberty, destroys true womanliness, as
it does true manliness. This so frequently expressed

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3^3

anxiety, translated into sincere language, is nothing
more than the fear that masculine vulgarity must
retreat before the civilizing influence of woman. In
order to secure its existence and continued sole-
rulership, this vulgarity strives to prevent woman
from entering public life, by intimidating her with
the false alarm that she will sacrifice or besmirch
her nobler self, by associating with her former mas-
ters on a plane of equality. A very extraordinary
way, this, of making the calling of a person the de-
cisive judge in the matter of the exercise of human
rights! Is it not strange that men do not trust
women to decide for themselves what is womanly?
Let them once learn to recognize and appreciate
the true woman and it will be with pride, rather
than anxiety, that they will behold woman entering
the polls or the halls of legislation side by side with
them. Before the woman who breaks her chains,
before the free woman trembles not — the free man.
In the time when this shall have become the de-
sire, the senseless clamor will also cease, that now
still arises whenever woman tries to make her most
personal property, her emotions and affections, her
person and her happiness, independent of the tyran-
nical egotism of man, by asserting that inalienable
right, which is wont to be called "free love." There
are certain ruling prejudices and dogmas of habit,
which, being favored by narrowmindedness and
hypocrisy, take on the character of a moral ban, be-
cause the intellectual arguments which could give

364 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

them the power to convince are wanting. I should
like to designate such dogmas and prejudices by
the general name of rabble philosophy, and to this
rabble philosophy belong also the denunciations
and the sham indignation against "free love." "Free
love" can surely not encounter any more hostile op-
position than it meets with on the part of proprie-
tors of harems. The Sultan of Constantinople will
condemn it as true reprobateness, as a danger to so-
ciety, as an underminer of all morality. Among the
men of our present education there are not ten in
a hundred who are not sultans at heart. Under
the reign of free love, many a one who now triumph-
antly recites the list of Don Juan, would sing the
sentimental tune of "Lonely am I, all alone." When
I hear a man denounce even the theory of free love
as a crime, I suspect him of being in practice a friend
of free lust. Free love, rightly understood, is noth-
ing else than free marriage, that is, true marriage;
but the conception of such a marriage completely
excludes those abominations, which male egotism
and male corruption try to connect with woman's
free choice, in order to keep her in servitude by a
false idea of duty. Whoever wishes to bind a woman
by another tie than that of her free love, and thinks
of deserving this love by something else than his
own worthiness and reciprocal affection, is as much
fool as despot, and has no idea of the most beautiful
relationship, for which nature has fitted mankind.
Having always treated the love of a woman in a

AND THE SEXUAL BELAT10NS. 3^5

domineering manner, as a matter of duty, liberty
alone can teach men the meaning and the price of
true love. The free woman will teach them to re-
gard that as a reward that must be earned, which
in the unfree woman they had regarded as booty.
With the liberation and elevation of woman we
liberate and elevate ourselves. Indeed, I would
almost say: Only in so far, as we men learn to
understand and appreciate woman, are we true
human beings. The full wealth and the complete
significance of the relationship between man and
woman only superior individuals have hitherto been
able to grasp and to represent. We must look to
the liberty of the future to bring it into more general
consciousness. Love is more than the desire for
sexual union, or the renewal of self in progeny;
marriage is more than the means of setting up
housekeeping and founding a family; the upward
striving toward the "eternal womanly" is more than
a dark longing for an object that may agreeably
occupy the emotions and the imagination. It is the
longing, equivalent to a noble life, toward the per-
fection of our being through the union with a being
in harmony with ourselves; toward the complete
satisfaction of our personality by becoming one with
another personality, by a blending of souls that per-
fects both, as the blending of two metals results in a
third that is superior to and more durable than either
alone. It is finally the need that every nobler indi-
vidual feels for the realization of the ideal, a realiza-

366 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

tion which we look for in vain in every direction,
and Which life can offer us nowhere but in true love.
Whithersoever a man's fancy, his discoveries, or
aspirations, may lead him, nothing in the whole do-
main of nature can take the place of the relationship
that true love unfolds to two thinking and harmoni-
ous beings. Such a double life alone is true life.
Place man into nature alone, as its sole ruler, place
all its secrets, all its* pleasures at his disposal, make
earth into a paradise or a heaven for him wherein
every fabled splendor becomes a reality — still he
will remain a stranger in his great realm, he will feel
forsaken and impoverished with all his riches, he will
despair in all his wisdom, his thought will search
through all the spaces of the universe to find the
something that he lacks, his fancy will strive to fill
out the deadening void with the pictures of that
which he longs for, and he will arraign nature, who
has lavished her gifts upon him with the supplicating
reproach , take everything from me, wherewith you
have vainly sought to bless me, and give me instead
that which you have denied me, the best, the most
indispensable gift of all, give me a woman !

And if nature sihould then grant his wish, and he
should hold in his arms the object of his desire,
would it be with the Christian barbaric greeting, I
will be "your master," that he would receive her?

Let us now turn from the pre-eminently "fair" to
the pre-eminently "strong" sex. The appellation
itself indicates that as grace is considered the chief

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3^7

attribute of womanliness, so strength is considered
the chief attribute of manliness. But what is
strength and which strength is of the right kind?
Here we find ourselves placed before a delicate
question. It must be answered relentlessly, even if
the answer should be : What is considered by most
men to be manly strength is nothing but animal na-
ture, brutality and barbarity.

As in the case of woman, so let us in the case of
man begin with the physique. But the chapter on
beauty I must here skip entirely, since in this re-
spect we can count upon the indulgence of women,
who are more apt to be guided in their choice by
minor qualities than we. It is not empty flattery if
I say of them :

Beauty is not much to miss,

Women's verdicts are not serious,
One that no Thersites is,
Often may cut out a Nireus.

Die Schoen'heit wird nicht oft vermisst,

Die Weiber sind nicht streng im Schaetzen,

Und wenn du kein Thersites bist,
Den Nireus kannst du leicht ersetzen.

It is, however, self-evident that we cannot look
for an ideal of manliness in a crippled Liliputian, or
a scrofulous weakling, but neither will Herculean
limbs, a broad bull's neck, and the strong fists of a
prize-fighter represent it. A vigorous, symmetrical

368 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

body with sound organs, to which must be added —
in contrast to woman — broad shoulders, with a
corresponding chest, and narrow hips over legs
which are neither too long nor bowed, that is the
necessary material substratum for a manly intellect
and character, for endurance and energy ; but phys-
ical size as well as physical strength becomes doubt-
ful as soon as they exceed the general standard to a
marked degree. The usual outcome in such a case
is that the animal and aggressive element predom-
inates, and that the intellectual and humane element
does not suffice to spiritualize the bodily organism
correspondingly. How many physical giants have
there been who were also intellectual giants? The
human brain does not seem to grow beyond a cer-
tain measure. The largest male skulls that have
been measured were twenty-four inches in circum-
ference. If a skull of twenty-four inches can make
a genius of a man six feet and less, then a skull of
twenty-two indhes on a seven-footer would stamp
him as a partial idiot. I actually feel like warning
people against men that are too tall as well as
against those that are too stout. Tall men rarely are
great men. In short, no one, desirous of entering
the lists in a review of manliness, ought to be taller
than six feet, and if any one can lift a weight of a
thousand pounds it would be wise for him not to
mention it, and if he can throw six opponents, he
ought to be satisfied with two, so as not be banished
from the ranks of respectable men and classed

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3^9

among the uncouth Cyclops and giants. The an-
cients made of their mythological representative of
clumsy physical strength, Hercules, a stable-sweep,
while they represented Apollo as their ideal of man-
liness, whose moderate physical dimensions corre-
sponded to as much athletic strength and skill as he
required.

In spite of this well-known type, however, the
man with the strongest bones approaches most
nearly to the vulgar, I am tempted to say the demo-
cratic ideal of manliness, and if a man should arise,
who could pick his teeth with a church steeple, the
priests themselves would proclaim him pope. In
America he would be elected king in a frock coat
for life, with an extra allowance for cloth for his
immense coat, and extra grub-money for his un-
usual stomach. But in Germany, in the fatherland
of Goethe and Schiller — ah! what an ideal suc-
cessor to Barbarossa! Of course, he would then
also have to have a corresponding beard, that would
grow through the table, and down into Hades, so
that the spirits of Father Arndt and Father Jahn
could most submissively twitch it, by way of tele-
graphing their patriotic blessedness to him. What
would a man be without a beard, and what especially
would our Germans be without hair on their face?
Hair is so essential and indispensable to them that
they even transfer them from the face into the
mouth, and have not only hair on their lips but "hair
on their teeth." It surely cannot be very compli-

37° THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

mentary to a man, to receive his name from his
beard instead of from his head. And yet Frederick
the Red-Beard has become the German ideal of a
ruler. Barbarossa would surely not have become
such a popular figure if he had not had such a large
red beard, and his present substitute, ad interim, in
Berlin, has already been dubbed Barba blanca by
German professors, in order to increase his popular-
ity. If his beard were likewise red, half of the popu-
lation of Germany would now be inmates of the in-
sane asylum, from sheer red-haired ecstacy, and
would be playing Kyffhaeuser. A malicious demo-
crat, to be sure, might be struck by quite a different
thought. He might call attention to the fact that
the most intellecual of the Hohenzollerns, Freder-
ick II., and Frederick William IV., had no beards,
but that the hero-emperor and his son, like their
bushy brother, Victor Emanuel, let theirs grow into
regular coachmen's beards, as if anxious to manifest
thereby their ability to guide the wagon of state.

What a mysterious thing it is, this hair in the
face! With our first ancestors, the apes, who did
not yet indulge in any reflections on womanhood
and manhood, much less on humanity, and who had
no women as yet, but only females, the latter, ac-
cording to Darwin, also had hairy faces ; but as the
female gradually became a woman, the hair dis-
appeared, and if we should now imagine our women
with hairy cheeks, our hair would stand on end.
Does the beardless face of the woman not indicate

AND THE SEXUAL BELATlONS. 37 *

that the hairy face of the man is a survival of the
time of brute man? Does it not suggest the conclu-
sion, .the more hair the less human being? It must
not be inferred, however, that bald-headed men are
the representatives of humanity. We also note that
where inhumanity is cultivated most — namely,
among soldiers, the beard, too, plays a great part,
just as animals of prey, lions, bears, wolves, etc.,
distinguish themselves by the thickest and most
shaggy furs. We cannot well imagine a true cham-
pion of the sword, a model policeman, a thoroughly
qualified bailiff, without a bristling thicket under his
nose wherein his commanding and swearing voice
can break itself in a right threatening manner. If
we could imagine all beards as suddenly extermin-
ated we should involuntarily have to presuppose at
the same time the abolition of wars, for hairless faces
remind us of humanity, while the shaggy, rough
appearance can be interpreted and justified only as a
constant advertisement of a corresponding barbaric
calling. It seems to me that if two armies of smooth-
ly shaven faces were confronted with each other,
they would hesitate to fire.

I cannot help thinking that the more men ad-
vance in intelligence and humanity, the more will
they lose the hair in their faces. Also in this re-
spect the intellectual and refined Greeks give us an-
other eloquent hint. While they furnished all those
gods to whom they attributed the coarser qualities
and manifestations — Zeus, the thunderer, first of

372 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

all — with an abundant growth of hair on the face,
they represent their ideal of manliness, the god of
light, of beauty and of the muses, without a beard.
They spared him all the cheap, martial distinctions
that remind one of coarseness, in order to let his
intellect and character speak undisguised in all his
lines and forms. The whole Apollo would now be
distasteful to us if we were to conceive of him like
one of our modern men, with cheeks, mouth and
chin covered by a growth of hair, beneath which
the lips would open like a hidden fissure in a rock
that led into an underground cave, while the nose
would protrude like a wind-broken tree trunk from
the underbrush. And now the aesthetic reflections
to which such a hairy god of the muses would stimu-
late us, if, with the help of the achievements of our
modern civilization, we should equip him with all
the consequences of a beard, among others such as
remnants of food adhering from the just completed
divine meal, flavored with the juice of the Olympian
cigar, smoked after dessert, and perfumed with in-
fernal tobacco-smoke — and then imagine this di-
vine mouth, enriched by this threefold cosmetic,
pressed upon the unsoiled lips of a horrified muse.
Alas, our women submit to such kisses without
being horrified. They are as great sufferers as their
tobacco perfumed lords are aesthetic barbarians. Is
there any more hostile contrast in the world than a
tender kiss on a beautiful mouth, by the lip adorned
with a tobacco-saturated brush? But they meet,

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 373

nevertheless. Truly, man is always the greatest
monster when he least thinks of it.

But is not, in spite of all aesthetics, a beard, espe-
cially a beard under the nose, considered to be just
as indispensable an attribute of manliness as the
fuming instrument called a pipe or cigar, with which
even ten-year-old fire-eaters practice manliness, un-
til they, like other volcanoes, emit smoke followed
by an eruption? How very cheap is this manliness,
whose credentials are a bush of hair and a cloud of
smoke ! Even the ancients felt that this pretentious
growth of hair was a superfluous addition, or a
cheap ornament, and they tried to get rid of it by
the aid of burning nutshells and similar expedients.
But since the razor has been invented, this greatly
depreciated instrument of civilization, almost all in-
tellectual men have attempted to free themselves of
this animal distinction, and to show their human
physiognomy openly to the world. We can no more
think of a Rousseau or Voltaire, a Schiller and
Goethe, a Lessing -and Boerne, a Kant and Hegel, a
Mozart and Beethoven with a mustache, or a
Henry IV., than we can think of the hero-emperor,
and his blood-and-iron men, without bristles in their
faces. But this man of bristles cannot hide his taste
for the barracks, even behind the diplomat, unlike
that French ambassador to the Turkish court, who,
when the Sultan made some remarks about his
smooth face, answered : "If my master had known
that the beard was considered the principal thing

374 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

here he would have sent a billy-goat as ambassa-
dor."

If I could ascribe design to nature, I could see
behind this freak of afflicting man with a beard no
other motive than that of helping along the barber
business, or of thwarting physiognomy. While our
women show us all the feature of their face openly,
so that we can read everything that nature has im-
printed there in her own language, our overgrown
countenance is to them, if not a book with seven
seals, at least one with an obscure text, from which
they perhaps read something very different than it
really contains. Who knows but that many a bride,
who goes to the altar with a bearded man, would
think of divorce on reaching home, if her new hus-
band should happen to get shaved on the way? If
1 were a girl, I should only accept my husband from
the hands of the barber, and should at most show
some leniency toward his side whiskers, for I should
want to see his true face ,and only the face without
the beard is the true face. But I should certainly
not allow the beard to decide his manliness. We
see many a man, viewing his surroundings from out
of his shaggy face like a lion, seeking whom he may
devour; but after he has been under the barber's
care, a most pathetically innocent and childlike
physiognomy will perhaps smile at us, so that a
mother might be tempted to offer her breast to the
lion. Nature seems to have supplied many a man
with a beard for no other reason than that no other

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 375

man should be tempted to propose marriage to him.
Nevertheless, these bushy men are all proud of their
shagginess, as a sign of "manliness." Whoever is
afflicted with a strong beard, very well, let him see
how he can get along with it; but whoever is proud
of his beard, he surely has nothing else of which he
can be proud.

I have spent so much time over the physique of
the male sex, and its most striking characteristic,
because it furnishes the foundation for the coarse
and stupid conceptions of manliness that have come
down to us from past barbaric times, but are even
now the prevailing notions of the great majority. If
we suppose the bony framework of the male re-
duced to a moderate size, and the male faces de-
prived of their bearded addition, then the chief
foundation for male brutality and conceit seems
likewise to have disappeared. The soldier, as well
as the rowdy, the tyrant of woman as well as the
braggadocio, is lost to view, and the human being
alone stands before us. But it is the human being
that we have above all to deal with. Whenever,
therefore, we investigate the requirements of true
manliness, we must first of all answer the question:
Can he be a true man, who is not, first of all, a true
human being? And what is it to be a true human
being? This last question I have attempted to an-
swer in a special lecture on "Humanity." I must,
therefore, be as brief as possible in its application
to manliness.

376 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

Although we must retain strength as a necessary
attribute of manliness, we are yet bound to look
for the distinctions of manliness in the intellectual
and ethical domain, especially in an age when in-
ventions and discoveries constantly tend to diminish
the value of physical strength. It is in the work of
its own destruction in murder at wholesale that it
still plays a chief part. What a hopeless and dis-
gusting thought this is that we must form our mas-
culine ideal according to the ideas of a king of Prus-
sia, or a similar military type ! And yet how many
men and women are there who would not bow be-
fore the uniformed, betressed, beribboned and
bearded form of a barbarian, whose entire skill and
knowledge, whose whole thinking and striving,
consists in the senseless and bloody craft of mur-
dering his fellowmen! The longer his list of slain,
the greater the man; the more bullets he heard
whistling past him, the more admirable his cour-
age. Picked patriots harness themselves to his tri-
umphal chariot, and virgins, all clad in white — O
Lord, forgive them, they know not what they do ! —
strew flowers in the path of the monster. But who-
ever expresses his disgust at such manliness, and
allows his disgust to increase with the size of the
bloody deeds, who despises such courage as the
brutal insensibility of a hardened barbarian, he is
branded by the vulgar judgment of thoughtless
slaves and patriots as an enemy of the people or
fantastic crank. How very cheap would be man-

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 377

liness and manly courage if we had to con-cede it to
all those who have stood in a "shower of bullets,"
or looked into the mouths of cannon ! Every Rus-
sian musketeer would by this test occupy a higher
plane than the noblest and most courageous trib-
une of the people. Let those be most highly appre-
ciated as men who, although they are enemies of
the murderous craft, still risk their lives against bar-
barians for humane ends; but so long as we do not
place this bloody craft itself, and all those that do
homage to it, together with their distinctions and
heroic deeds, their glamour and their fame, under the
ban of our contempt and disgust, so long as we do
not acknowledge it to have a brutal rather than a
manly character, so long have we no idea of true
manliness. Where manliness shall and must still be
decorated with blood, let it be at least with the blood
of barbarians or tyrants.

But the contemptibility of these greatly admired
models of manliness, reared in the barracks, be-
comes downright unfathomable, if we view them
in the light of a combination of slaves and barbari-
ans. What caricatures of men do those proud com-
manding heroes present who, in the thunder of can-
nons, gallop at the head of thousands of drilled
homicides, in order to shrink back tremblingly be-
fore the glance of an august superior, and who
would perish under the frown of a most gracious
master! Even the most dreadful become carica-
tures like these through their servility. There is no

378 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

more glaring antagonism and contrast than that be-
tween subject and man; but a uniformed subject, let
him wear epaulets or shoulder flaps, who will allow
himself to be drilled and butchered for a master,
does not only renounce every manly and human
dignity, he even sinks below the animal, for even
the trained hound does not make an attack with
the consciousness that he is using his teeth for his
master. Only a free man, conscious of his sover-
eignty and individual aims, deserves the name of
man, and below the republican there cannot be a
true man any more than a true human being. So
true as it is that there are still slaves in the world,
so true is it that he can lay no claims to manliness
who can live and sacrifice himself for a master. For
our loved ones and friends, as well as for an im-
periled right, or any other noble cause of our con-
viction, we may risk our lives without forfeiting the
consciousness of manliness, and individuality; but
to give it up for a master or idol, who sends us into
the fire as his creatures and instruments, is the deep-
est degradation and prostitution of which a male
being is capable. What a boon for mankind would
it be if this great and simple truth could be made
clear to all subjects! If the twenty millions of our
male countrymen on the other side of the water,
who have allowed themselves to be puffed up as
masculine ideals, on account of their deeds of servile
heroism, would but once become truly conscious
of what it is to be a man, Germany would be a re-
public within twenty-four hours !

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 379

Struggle, constant struggle is the soul of human
life, but let the objects of the struggle be humane,
and the weapons intellectual. Let us struggle with
nature, through whose bounty we are able to
achieve a more beautiful and a nobler existence.
Let us likewise struggle with ourselves, in whom
nature has repeated the play between its destructive
and creative forces, in the strife between passion
and reason. That man must be tedious and devoid
of character who is not stirred by passions; but he
who has not learned how to control himself becomes
despicable and disgusting. Let us struggle with the
necessities and adversities of life, which impose
upon us the ordeal of remaining firm in our pur-
poses and true to ourselves. Let us struggle with
baseness, that would degrade everything that is
beautiful and noble to its own level. Let us finally
struggle with those numerous enemies, who live
longer than the uniformed ones, and will never be
exterminated — the enemies of intellectual progress,
of the universal rights of man, of universal truth. This
struggle will bring our strength and our courage
to a nobler test than the raging turmoil of the battle-
field, in which even the best is but a blind, uncon-
scious murderer of unknown victims. Without
courage there is no manliness, and cowardice is the
death of manliness; but its highest courage is moral
courage, the courage of truth, just as moral coward-
ice is the most shameful cowardice, and the lie is
the most unmanly vice. Falsehood and manliness —

380 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

who would undertake to harmonize the two? And
yet how many are there who do not lie, with whom
it is a point of honor, and a necessity of character,
that their words shall always correspond to their
thoughts, and their deeds to their words? How
many, indeed, who as much as live up to the adage,
which has become an everyday and popular motto :
"A word, a man?" How many care whether they
are acting manly or unmanly? Is it manly to be
satisfied with half-way measures and compromises,
in the antagonism of irreconcilable contrasts, while
an unflinching principle calls for completeness and
decision? Is it manly to wax enthusiastic over a
cause while it is on parade, but to desert it later on,
when action is called for? Is it manly by means of
intrigue and hypocrisies, to indulge in a vain ambi-
tion, that finds higher satisfaction in external posi-
tion, than in the consciousness of inner worth? Is
it manly to devote all the activities of life merely to
base gain, that leaves no inclination and no strength
for nobler aspirations ? Is it manly to flee from sens-
ual enjoyment after the fashion of the ascetic, and
is it manly to sink into debauchery? Is it manly to
be a slave to woman, and is it manly to be a woman-
hater? These and similar questions suggest their
own answer as soon as they are put. But another,
which will furnish us material for some final obser-
vations, we must consider more at length. It is the
serious question : Is it manly to condemn woman to
subordination and refuse to grant her equal rights?

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 381

If even in general anyjwant of magnanimity toward
the defenseless, and the abuse of superior strength
as a right against the weak, is considered unmanly,
I know of nothing in the world that is more un-
manly than the egotistic denial of equal rights to
beings whose equal worth we cannot question, and
who are, moreover, as indispensable to us as our
own life, whom we, in a state of exaltation, elevate
to angels and goddesses, and "at whose feet we lie,"
according to a common poetic expression of the
Don Juans, in order to gain their favor. Is it per-
haps more manly "to lie at the feet" of a being who
is our inferior in rights than of one who is our equal?
I should like to hear such a prostrate model of man-
liness deliver one of his usual declamations on the
"feminine sphere," at the moment when, with hum-
ble mien, he is bending his knee before his adored.
The sovereign master kneeling before the disfran-
chised slave, from whom, by cringing flattery, he
would obtain a gracious smile, in order, later on, to
turn against her as the brutal tyrant, the heartless
deceiver! What model specimens of manliness!
Any little goose with a pretty face can daily amuse
herself with putting a grim-bearded lord of crea-
tion to the test, and then avenge her disfranchise-
ment upon him by a scornful refusal. Indeed, no-
where does this proud manliness, that rises with
so much sovereign dignity above the disfranchised
woman, suffer shipwreck more frequently and more
wretchedly, than in his dealings with this weak

382 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

woman, without whom the "strong sex" would feel
so desperately lonely that it would have to curse
its .own existence. Alas, that the greatest part of
the curse still falls upon the weaker sex, whose de-
plorable lot of misery, grief and shame, in hundreds
of millions of its degraded members, impeaches
male brutality, baseness and want of conscience!
If humanity is one hundred thousand years old we
men have to atone to women for a wrong of one
hundred thousand years' standing, and we can do
that only if, by granting them equal rights most
completely, we give them an opportunity of not only
bettering their own lot, but also of helping to make
us unworthy ones worthy of them. Who can real-
ize the self-delusion of egotism that it requires not
to be surprised at the monstrous contradiction of
which man makes himself guilty in refusing rights,
most obstinately and most invidiously, just there
where he claims to be ruled by the most tender re-
gards, and the most powerful affections! To the
despised negro he grants his rights, because he is
forced to do so by the stress of circumstances; to
the adored woman he refuses them because she is
not backed by an overpowering necessity that came
to the aid of the negro. Even with the promptings
of his most powerful, most irrepressible emotions,
only force, and not a voluntary resolution, can bring
him to acknowledge and grant rights which he can-
not contest on any reasonable grounds. Does this
not prove the shameful fact that the entire male

AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS. 383

sex, in blind egotism, insists on the same thousand-
year-old, historical wrong, for the senseless and
wicked allegation of which we have always re-
proach feudalists and princes? The thorough de-
struction of this egotism, the complete renuncia-
tion of every privilege, and the free union of the
sovereign woman with the sovereign man that will
result from it, will usher in a new, a nobler, more
beautiful and happier life for humanity. It is not
difficult to show that the degradation of woman is
not only the chief symptom, but also the chief
cause, of the social and moral corruption of society.
Her elevation, however, will be its salvation and
will ennoble the race in general. And, however we
may meditate upon and construct a picture of a fu-
ture humanity, its most beautiful adorment, and
highest happiness, will consist in the nobler rela-
tionship between the two sexes, resulting from an
equality of rights. Already Goethe declared woman
to be the bearer of the ideal, which he missed in the
masculine world, and minds who have been unable
to perceive this have always shown themselves un-
able to reconcile human existence with the course
of the world. Let me call attention to two notable
personages of most modern times. The philosopher
Schopenhauer was a woman-hater. An apostle of
his, von Hartmann, a blase Berlinian, and son of a
general, is a despiser of woman, who would grant
man the privilege of ending his so-called love with
the satisfaction of his sensual desire, to which the

384 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

loving woman must of course submit. And what
is the meaning, the moral, the logical outcome of
the "pessimistic" philosophy of these two woman
haters? In a word, the hopeless doctrine that it
were better if the world did not exist at all, that
really life is not worth living. Of course, life is not
worth preservation, if we cannot appreciate its most
beautiful part, or trample it under foot, as the bru-
tality or satiety of men has hitherto done, in spite
of all the poems and romances of love. Every
philosophy of the world and of life which results in
despair must be unsound, unnatural and false, since
a contradiction, justifying such despair and its con-
sequence, the self-destruction of that part of the
world-life that we represent, is inconceivable.
Everything that we, as thinking products of the
world, require, must be attainable by us on the spot
upon which we have been placed by its develop-
ment. All phantasies about a heaven and another
life are done away with for us. Outside of humanity
there are for us no motives, no hopes, no future, no
ideals. Here upon this planet our being must run
its course, and our contentment be found. But
where and wi/th whom shall we find it but in living
with our fellow-beings? And what nobler and more
complete contentment could this life and all nature
offer to man but the true love of man and woman?
In this relationship must the aspirations and the
outcomes of the reforms of the future find their
sublime culmination, and their most beautiful suc-
cess. To educate humanity not only for knowing

AND THE SEXUAL BELATIONS. 3§5

and thinking, for working and creating, but also
for loving, which our present groveling life seems
designed to destroy, that will be the most beautiful
and most profitable task of future society. But by
education for love I do not mean instruction in the
"art of loving," as was given by the frivolous Ovid,
but an education which, beginning in youth, strives
to secure all the conditions for true marriage, which
will free love from all narrow-minded prejudices and
hypocrisies, but will lead the free virgin into the
arms of the uncorrupted man, and teach both to find
their most beautiful destiny and their only true hap-
piness in an intimate and lasting union. What we
are now reforming and striving for will some time
lead us to such an end, however distant its future
may be, and however meager the hope that we our-
selves may live to see it. That will neither discour-
age us or weaken our interest. In the realm of ideas
is it not always the better future that we anticipate
in thought which inspires and sustains our reforma-
tory efforts? Do not the highest aims toward which
the mind strives always lie beyond the grave? And
has the striving, on that account, less of charm and
of value ? Where we ourselves live to see the accom-
plishment of that for which we have struggled, the
reality always falls short of our expectations, and
the residue that remains must then serve as an in-
centive to further aspiration; only that which we
experience in thought, either by retrospection or
prevision, do we experience wholly, undefiled and
unobscured.

JSk

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