THE FOURTH CHAPTER continued....
English translation copyrighted 2nd April 2023.
|
|
|
Part C.
The young man and young girl attend society. The prudent mother knows that her son is gently insinuated that she is a stickler, a rambunctious woman who knows nothing of passions; who does not suspect that everything is good in nature and must be respected; and who has read the history of our species so badly that it has failed to see that humanity has all the forms of Love: the polygamous and the polyandric and even... the ambiguous.
She knows that she is still told that the satisfaction of the brutal instinct is a health necessity for man and that brothels are places of public utility.
She knows, finally, that the young evaporated without solid principles, makes dangerous confidences to her daughter.
It is time, against these weakening doctrines, and pernicious examples, to give to his children the philosophy of Love. According to her method, she makes them formulate it herself.
My son, she said, what is the purpose of the attraction of mineral molecules to each other?
The son. It is to produce a body having a determined shape.
THE MOTHER. What is the purpose of the plant's attraction to heat, light, air, and the elements it absorbs?
THE SON. The production of one's own body, the development of its organs, its properties, its preservation.
THE MOTHER. And you, my daughter, do you know what is the purpose of the attraction of the pistil and the stamens of the plant?
THE GIRL. The production of a being similar to its parents.
THE MOTHER. Why do we, and do animals, feel attraction or attraction for certain foods?
THE SON. It is to be encouraged to set in motion the organs which provide the organism with the elements suitable for producing blood.
THE MOTHER. Why are two sexes of the same species attracted to each other?
THE GIRL. To produce offspring that perpetuate the species.
THE MOTHER. Why do the females of animals, and often the males, feel attraction or attraction to care for the young?
THE GIRL. In order to preserve them, and give them the education of which they are capable so that they can provide for themselves.
THE MOTHER. Are you quite sure, my children, that the aim of the attractions is not the attraction itself, a pleasure to be procured?
THE SON. Pleasure seems to me only the means of leading the being to fulfill a necessary or useful function. Thus, the aim of our scientific, artistic, and industrial attractions or attractions is not the pleasure we have in satisfying them, but the production of science, art, and industry.
THE GIRL. That is to say, the increase, the progress of our intelligence by the knowledge of the laws of nature, in order to modify this nature in view of our needs and our pleasures.
THE MOTHER. To what attraction or attraction is Society due?
THE SON. To our attraction for our fellow human beings.
THE GIRL. This attraction is the father of justice and Goodness: it produces them.
THE MOTHER. Do you want to generalize the character of the attraction or attraction, according to what we have just said?
THE SON. The goal of any attraction or allure is the production, progress, and conservation of beings.
THE MOTHER. Are all the instincts that are only attractions or attractions good?
THE SON. For animals, subject to fate, yes, because they go straight to the goal, without ever seeming to deviate. In our species, they are good in principle if we consider their end, but they can become bad by the deviations to which our freedom subjects them.
THE MOTHER. By what mark can we recognize that our instinct is in its way?
THE GIRL. By comparing the use with the purpose; by ensuring that this use does not harm the practice of Justice, that it does not injure in us the right of any faculty, that it does not disturb our individual harmony any more than that of others; for it is only under these conditions that he can contribute to the realization of the social ideal.
THE MOTHER. Alright. Now apply this general doctrine to human Love, my children.
THE SON. Since Love is one of the forms of attraction, and since the general aim of attraction is the production, progress, and preservation of beings and of species, it is obvious that human Love must have these characteristics. Its main function seems to me to be the reproduction of the species.
THE GIRL. It seems to me, brother, that you give it an insufficient part, since, this goal is fulfilled, two honest spouses do not cease to Love each other, and one can Love the other without having children.
THE MOTHER. You are right, my daughter; our faculties being more numerous, more developed than those of animals, our Love cannot be incomplete like theirs; nor can it be the same in our progressive species as in fatal and unprogressive species by themselves. With us, each faculty, suitably employed, aids in the improvement of all the others; misused, breaks our harmony, and brings us down: it is the same with our Love. What am I saying, this passion is above all the one that makes us grow or fall.
You know, my children, humanity only advances by formulating an ideal of perfection and striving to achieve it. Each passion has its ideal which is modified by that of the whole. Originally, the animal man gave Love as its goal the pleasure resulting from the satisfaction of an entire physical need: he was not concerned with the most obvious goal: offspring. A little later, the man, less coarse, loved the woman for her beauty and her fertility: it is the patriarchal age of Love. Later still the northern races transformed this instinct: Love was decomposed, if I may say so: the lover had the Love of the soul; the woman was loved not only for her beauty but as the inspirer of great deeds: the husband had only the body and the children were the fruit of marriage: it is the chivalrous age of Love.
Since peaceful labor became organized and prevailed in public opinion, Love entered a new phase: many moderns consider it the initiator of labor. Some regard the attraction of pleasure as playing the principal part in industrial production and leave all liberty to attraction, however inconstant it may be; others preserve the couple, transform the woman into a motive for action: it is the Love that she inspires that excites the efforts of the worker.
What humanity has thus far acquired is that Love has its end the perpetuity of the species, the modification of man by woman, and the production of labor.
In a superior ideal of Justice, the sexes being equal before the Law, Love will have a higher goal: the spouses will reunite because there will be the conformity of principles, the union of hearts, the marriage of intelligence, and common work: Love will unite them to double their strength, to modify them one by the other: from the shock of their hearts, will spring feelings that none of them would have had alone; from the union of their intelligence, will be born thoughts that none of them would have had alone; from the cooperation that they lend to each other in their common work, will emerge works that none of them would have accomplished alone, as from the union of their whole being, new generations will be born, more perfect than the preceding ones, because they will be the product of harmony as perfect as possible. It will therefore only be when a woman takes her rightful place, that humanity will see Love in all its splendor, and that this passion, subversive today in inequality and incoherence, will become what it must. to be: one of the great instruments of progress.
We, my children, who are too reasonable to take the means by which naturally leads us to fulfill her intentions for her very intentions, we will be careful not to believe that Love has pleasure for its goal; on the other hand, we have too much respect for equality to imagine that it is done only for the benefit of one sex. We will remain faithful to the ideal of our great destinies, defining Love: the reciprocal attraction of man and woman with the aim of perpetuating the species, of improving the spouses one by one. other in relation to intelligence and sentiment and to advance science, art, and industry through the work of the couple.
Part D.
Sophists have told you, my son, that all our inclinations are in nature, that they are good and must be respected.
You probably asked them if the inclination to theft, murder, rape, to cannibalism, which is in nature, are good inclinations and why, far from respecting them, society punishes their manifestation.
You have shown them, I think, that there is nothing respectable in the exaggeration or perversion of inclinations.
You have demonstrated to them, I hope, that nature is a brutal fatality against which we are bound to fight inside and outside of us; that our justice and our virtue are composed only of the conquests made over it in us; like everything that constitutes our physical well-being, is only the result of the conquests made on it outside of us.
These sophists told you that Love comes and goes without our knowing either how or why; that it can no more be commanded to be born than to last.
This is true, my son, of the brutal desire for the flesh, which is only the passion of brutes and is extinguished by possession.
This is also true of that complex passion that has its seat in the imagination and in the senses and ends with the ever-short-lived illusion.
But this is not true of Love itself. That one sees the faults and the qualities of the loved one; only it pales the former and exalts the latter; and he hopes to put an end little by little to what hurts him.
This feeling that fills the heart is patient; he fears to fade away; he surrounds himself with precautions to remain constant; if it dies, it is not without our knowing it: for we suffer cruel tortures before resolving to Love no longer.
We told you that Love is incompressible: are we therefore beings of fate? This sophism makes a man a coward, a depraved man: for what good is it to fight against what is said to be invincible, and why not sacrifice to it the best of our tendencies? Examine, my son, the conduct of the partisans of such a doctrine.
The human ideal demands that they do not do to others what they would not find the right to be done to them, and they seduce girls, make them mothers, and abandon them without worrying about the children born of these unions; without caring that the young mother commits suicide, dies in pain, or becomes corrupt; without caring that the parents descend into the grave.
Like filthy reptiles, they slip into the domestic hearth of others, rob their friend of the affection of his wife, and force him to work for the children of adultery.
The woman who believes in incompressible Love fails in her commitments to her husband; makes a life of cunning; puts disorder and pain inside other women whose lives she destroys.
This is how those who practice sophism fulfill their duty to be just, not to sadden their fellows, to work for happiness, for the improvement of those around them, and to preserve the weak from oppression and evil. To this pretended incompressibility of Love, they sacrifice justice, goodness, happiness, rest, and the honor of others, engage in a path of disorder, and bring dissolution into the family and society: in one word, they offer in holocaust to the bestial instinct, the moral sense, and the Reason.
You have also been told that all Love is in nature: the polygamous and the polyandric as well as that of the constant couple.
Yes, my child, all Love is in human nature, as are all vice and all virtue. But you know that it is not enough for a thing to be in us, for it to be good: it must conform to the ideal of our destiny, conform to our harmony: it is bad in the case opposite.
Love, as we have defined it, needs duration and equality; of duration, because one does not change in a few months; that one does not accomplish great works in a few months; that one does not bring up children in a few months: duration is so much an aspiration of Love that he imagines that eternity will hardly be enough for him. He needs equality; sharing is odious to him: therefore, he wants one-for-one and one-for-one. However, polygamy and polyandry are the negation of equality, of dignity in Love.
Consider the effects of these two deviations of instinct.
Oriental polygamy profoundly unequal’s human creatures transform women into cattle mutilates millions of men to guard the harems, depraves the possessor of women through despotism and cruelty; concentrates all its vitality on a single instinct at the expense of intelligence, Reason, and activity; whence it follows that it is lost to science, art, industry, society according to law; that he submits without repugnance to despotism, and passively stretches his neck to the cord. There, is no influence of the woman who is subjected to a calculated lessening; who is hideously depraved as well as the eunuch his guardian. Thus inequality before Love and before the law, the abandonment of the arts, sciences, and industry, intellectual and physical nervousness, and the lowering of the moral sense are the vices inherent in the polygamy of the child. East. You see, here we are far from the ideal of our destinies.
In our West, de facto polygamy produces the cattle of the brothel and legions of courtesans who ruin families. As many of these women are not healthy, they communicate to those who frequent them dreadful illnesses which undermine their temperament, and thus prepare weak generations, consequently, weak souls, and lowered intelligence. I appeal to the test of conscription: never have we seen so many exemptions for insufficient size, and yet we are less demanding than in the past: never have we seen so many for constitutional defects and organic diseases.
To vitiate the generation in its germ is not the only crime of our polygamy; it annoys the people who practice it; for nothing leads to excesses, consequently to weakening, like the change of relations. On the other hand, our polygamists are transformed into sensational machines; their intelligence sinks; they become dazed, and selfish. Look, my son, at these sad young people of today, etiolated by the vices of their fathers and theirs: they are scoffers, without faith, laughing at the holiest things, despising not only their worthy companions, the women corrupted, but still all the sex to which their mothers belong: look at them, they are rude enough to raise the heart: nothing attracts their respect any more: they throw the woman with white hair into the stream to keep the upper hand; they bully the old man, they make the young girl blush by their cynical speeches: polygamy has made them ignoble, and has killed French urbanity as well as all dignity.
They'll tell you that women aren't much better than them. But this result becomes inevitable in a country where women are not locked up. Polyandry is there the obligatory companion of Polygamy; for since men think they are allowed to have several wives, why should women think they are forbidden to have several men?
In sum, my son, the results of incompressible Love, Polygamy, and Polyandry in our West are:
The seduction and corruption of women;
Adultery, lowering of character, moral and intellectual lessening of both sexes;
The weakening, the bastardization of the race;
Falsehood, cunning, cruelty, injustices of all kinds, the exploitation of women by men for their beauty; that of the man by the woman for his money or his credit;
The dissolution and ruin of the family;
Every year a few thousand natural children, not counting the terminated pregnancies:
This is the value of theories put into practice.
Doesn't all of this conform to our ideal of human Love? Consistent with our ideal of human destiny which demands that we progress, and advance others in good; that we practice Justice and Kindness?
One more word, and we'll be done.
When Rome had ceased to believe in chastity, in the religion of the oath; when it wallowed in polygamous and polyandric mores; when she took pleasure as her goal, tyranny showed itself. Nothing could be more natural: man chains only he who has chained himself under the yoke of bestial instinct: he who knows how to govern himself does not obey man: he bows only before the law when it is the expression of Reason.
Remember, my son, that one is powerful only through chastity: it is only then that one can produce great things in science, art, and industry; only then can one practice justice, be worthy of freedom. Outside of chastity, there is only degradation, injustice, impotence, and slavery; and every nation that forsakes it falls from the arms of despotism into the grave.
So do not let yourself be shaken by modern sophisms; always have before your mind your obligations as a moral and free creature, your duties as a member of humanity; submit everything in you to Reason, to Justice, to the feeling of your dignity and live as a man, not as a brute.
English translation copyrighted 2nd April 2023.
English translation copyrighted 2nd April 2023.
Home. |
||
The Book of Women’s Rights. 1860.