Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/255

 does not necessarily intrude and to which sex is no essential.

It is true also that feminists believe in freedom, but the freedom that the feminist stands for is not freedom of passion, better called licence, but freedom to develop, freedom to achieve, freedom to serve. Anarchists there are who do not believe in law at all for any purpose. These people are the free lovers in the sense in which this language is used. Neither are they necessarily immoral people, for selfishness only is real immorality. Many mistake freedom of passion for the real freedom which ennobles and dignifies, and wreck themselves on the rock of self-indulgence before they discover that freedom is of the spirit and of the intellect rather than of the flesh. This is the freedom for which the feminist yearns.

Although feminism does not stand for the abolition of the marriage laws, but for the equality of man and woman in the married state, the supporters of the movement realise that, with communities as with individuals, there is no standing still; that laws which were useful in the past are of little use and of much harm to-day, and that the laws of to-day will not reflect the public opinion of the future. Thus she is in sympathy with the majority of the Divorce Commissioners in wishing to see the divorce law altered, not