PROUDHON. Let young people marry without repugnance, that is right.... But "when a son, a daughter, to satisfy inclination, tramples under foot the wishes of the father, disinheritance is his first right and most sacred duty."—Id.
AUTHOR. Thus love, the motor of justice, the cause of civilization, the necessity for reproduction, is at the same time a thing of shame which should be feared and banished from marriage, and that, in certain cases, deserves disinheritance!... May the gods bless your contradictions, and posterity pass lightly over them!
PROUDHON. I can say nothing more satisfactory on the subject; but, let us talk of marriage; I am strong indeed on that point.
Every function supposes an organ; man is the organ of liberty; but justice exacts an organ composed of two terms: the couple. It is necessary that the two persons that compose it should be dissimilar and unequal, "because, if they were alike, they would not be completed by each other; they would be two beings wholly independent, without reciprocal action, incapable, through this cause, to produce justice.... In principle, there is no difference between man and woman, except a simple diminution of energy in their faculties.
"Man is stronger, woman is weaker, that is all.... Man is the power of that of which woman is the ideal, and reciprocally, woman is the ideal of that of which man is the power."—Id.
Androgyny laid down, I define marriage to be: "the sacrament of justice, the living mystery of universal harmony; the form given by nature itself to the religion of the human race. In a lower sphere, marriage is the act by which man and woman, elevating themselves above love and the senses, declare their wish to be united according to the law, and, as far as in them lies, to pursue the social destiny, by laboring for the Progress of Justice.
"In this family religion, it may be said that the father is the priest, the wife the god, the children the people.... All are in the hands of the father, fed by his labor, protected by his sword, subjected to his government, within the jurisdiction of his court, heirs and continuers of his thought.... Woman remains subordinate to man, because she is an object of worship, and because there is no common measure between the force and the ideal.... Man will die for her, as he dies for his faith and his gods, but he will keep for himself the command and the responsibility."—Id.
In result, the spouses are equal, since there is community of fortune, of honor, of absolute devotion; "in principle and practice ... this equality does not exist, cannot exist.... The equality of rights supposing an equilibrium between the advantages with which Nature has endowed woman and the more powerful faculties of man, the result would be that woman, instead of being elevated by this equilibrium, would be denaturalized, debased. By the ideality of her being, woman is, so to speak, beyond price.... That she may preserve this inestimable charm, which is not a positive faculty in her, but a quality, a manner, a state, she must accept the law of marital power: equality would render her odious, would be the dissolution of marriage, the death of love, the destruction of the human race.
"And the glory of man consists in reigning over this admirable creature, in being able to say: she is myself idealized, she is more than I, and, notwithstanding, would be nothing without me.... In spite of this or on account of this, I am and ought to remain the head of the community; if I yield the command to her, she becomes debased and we perish."—Id.
Marriage should be monogamous, "because conscience is common between the spouses, and because it cannot, without being dissolved, admit a third participant."—Id.