Societies for total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks have undertaken a war of extermination against the use of all poisons used for purposes of pleasure, when experience has proved their social danger. Let us hope that they will succeed; then a second fundamental root of degeneration of sexual life will be destroyed.
3. The Emancipation of Woman.—A third source of sexual anomalies is due to the inequality of the rights of the two sexes. This can only be attacked by the complete emancipation of women. In no kind of animal is the female an object possessed by the male. Nowhere in nature do we find the slave-law which subordinates one sex to the other. Even among ants, where the male, on account of his great physical inferiority, is very dependent on the workers, the latter do not impose on him any constraint. We have already refuted the argument which is based on the intellectual inferiority of woman.
The emancipation of women is not intended to transform them into men, but simply to give them their human rights, I might even say their natural animal rights. It in no way wishes to impose work on women nor to make them unaccustomed to it. It is as absurd to bring them up as spoilt children as it is cruel to brutalize them as beasts of burden. It is our duty to give them the independent position in society which corresponds to their normal attributes.
Their sexual role is so important that it gives them the right to the highest social considerations in this domain. I will not repeat what I have said in Chapter XIII, but simply state categorically that, when women have acquired in society rights and duties equal to those of men (in accordance with sexual differences), when they can react freely according to their feminine genius, in a manner as decisive as men, on the destinies of the community, a third fundamental root of present sexual abuses will be suppressed. The complete emancipation of woman thus constitutes our third principal postulate, and in this I am in accord with Westermarck, Secretan and many other eminent persons.
The difference which exists between the two sexes does not give any reasonable excuse to man for monopolizing all social and political rights. The external world and our fellow beings, by whom and for whom we live in body and mind, are the same for woman as for man, so that even when the mentality of one sex is on the average a little higher than that of the other, the first cannot claim the right of refusing the second the liberty of living and acting from the social point of view according to her own genius. The two sexes differ in many respects it is true; on the other hand, all legal and consequently artificial constraint of one by the other has the effect of hindering the free development of both. Each sex has the right to look upon the world and assimilate it according to its nature. It can thus develop its personality so that it does not become etiolated and atrophied like a domestic animal. It is only the right of the stronger, cultivated by narrow-minded prejudice, that can deny or misunderstand these facts. The legal restrictions which we impose on woman, on her mentality and her whole life, especially her conjugal life, have nothing in common with the just restrictions which the law should provide against the encroachments of individual egoism, which injure the rights of others or those of society.
4. Prejudice and Tradition.—There is still another enemy opposed to reform, which is so deeply rooted in human nature that we can only hope for a slow improvement in the quality of men, by its progressive weakening. I refer to the host of prejudices, traditional customs, mystic superstitions, religious dogmas, fashions, etc. I should require many pages of moral preaching to deal with all the vices which are perpetually created and supported by the wretched tendency of the human mind to sanctify every ancient tradition and consider it as unalterable.
Prejudice, faith in authority, mysticism, etc., with conscious or unconscious hypocrisy, and by the aid of more or less transparent sophisms, place themselves at the service of the basest human passions—envy, hatred, vanity, avarice, lewdness, scandal, desire of domination and idleness—and clothe them all with the sacred mantle of ancient customs, the better to sanction their ignominy by relying on the authority of tradition. There is no infamy which has not been justified, glorified or even deified in this way.
I am convinced that it is only by the introduction of the scientific spirit, of an inductive and philosophical manner of thinking, into schools and among the masses, that we shall be able to contend efficaciously with the routine and parrot-like repetitions which are rooted in the worship of authoritative doctrines and prejudices based on the sanctity of what is old.
We have already sufficiently dealt with the superannuated prejudices and customs to be contended with in the sexual domain, and need not return to them. The whole of this category of causes of evil, a category which also plays a great part in all other domains of human life, can only, therefore, be contended with by true science combined with an integral and free education of the character of youth.
I must once again insist on the necessity of a fight to a finish on this ground. It is necessary for this that scientists should from time to time emerge from their sanctums, and let their lights shine in the whirlpool of human society. They must take part in social conflicts and avoid losing touch with what is and always will be human.