Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/127

Rh of adultery we must presuppose the present condition of prostitution.

I can foresee that husbands will be frightened at this theory. But I will give them a word of advice. If you wish to keep your wives from adultery, see to it that they can love you; do not charge it to them as a crime if they love you no longer, and do not force them into hypocrisy if they love some one else. Try to bind them only in so far that they are to tell you openly when another has gained their heart, and then part from them in friendship as is becoming to humane men, in order to let them enter, unhindered, a new relationship which promises them greater happiness. If they can be sure of this humane treatment and this liberty, then you can also generally be.sure that they will not deceive you. But the man who wishes to hold the woman. in the bonds of marriage, although she no longer loves him, is both a fool and a barbarian, and deserves that badge with which women are wont to distinguish tyrannical husbands.

How much has adultery already been moralized over by priests and disputed over by jurists! And what barbarities has it not called forth! Among almost all savages man has the right to kill the adulterous woman without further preliminaries. Among the ancient Egyptians the woman's nose was cut off, because a woman "who incited to forbidden joys had to be deprived of the most