Page:Marquis de Sade - Adelaide of Brunswick.djvu/16

 "The destiny of a woman is to be like the she-wolf; she should belong to any man who wants her."

"Adultery in marriage is not only right, but natural."

"Theft represents energy, courage, force and skill. Would it not be better to punish the man who was negligent enough to let himself be robbed?"

"Murder is natural and should not be punished by the state. A murderer should have to watch out for the friends and relatives of the victim."

Naturally we cannot accept the absurd ideas expressed above; most of them were written to shock the reader. But in the Philosophy in the Boudoir the Marquis de Sade applied his fertile mind to other problems which he solved in a fashion which gives him a place among the great thinkers of his time. He expressed, before Malthus, the theories on population which still appear to apply. Before Darwin was born he had worked out all the theories of the natural man. Perhaps his most astounding discovery was that there is some element in the body (hormones) which, when disturbed, causes perversion. He recommended that people not be punished for perversion unless physical violence were perpetrated.

In spite of the success of his books, Sade did not make any money from them. He almost starved at one time, and had to take a job as an usher in a theatre where one of his plays was shown.

In 1800, the marquis heard some stories about Josephine, wife of Napoleon. Without investigating these stories, he wrote a little book, hardly more than a pamphlet, called Zoloé and her Two Acolytes. This book treated Josephine as though she were a character in Juliette, and was so insulting that Napoleon swore to get his revenge if he ever found the author. After a few months, the secret police of Bonaparte arrested Sade. He was declared insane, and, in 1801, was sent to an asylum. In spite of the fact that his mind was extremely good, he was never able to establish his sanity.

During the last thirteen years of his life, spent in three asylums, Sade was very much interested in the production of plays. He had the theory that getting the insane interested in plays might help them to recover. These plays became very