Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/123

Rh weaker sex, in whom his coarse heart could not yet find a lasting charm. Still his feeling must gradually have brought him to reflect whether woman had not really a right, and all the more a right, to follow his example the oftener he set her that example. Woman, however, made no use of this right, because she continued ever to love him in spite of his arbitrariness, and this undeserved fidelity appeared to him so astonishing and difficult that he saw in it an exceptional virtue. And since he was an egotist and a despot, he came to claim this fidelity which in the beginning had excited his astonishment; he came to demand fidelity of the woman even when she no longer loved him, and made a crime of unfaithfulness. We have also seen that among all savage peoples there is such a thing as adultery on the part of woman, but not on the part of man. And even among civilized nations the law makes an essential distinction. Thus adultery on the part of woman is universally a ground for divorce, but adultery on the part of man generally only in such cases where the husband has kept a concubine in the common dwelling.

When a woman becomes unfaithful her love has also ceased. No man will contest that. His own love, however, he wishes to be considered as independent of his fidelity, for he is as much a sophist as a despot. Goethe comforts one of his beloved with the words: