Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/130

114 make the married persons, not the married persons marriage. Married people exist for the sake of marriage, not marriage for the sake of married people. Though, after becoming acquainted and familiar with each other to a degree not permissible or possible before marriage, they should tire of each other; though they should hate and loathe each other; though they should become as disgusting to each other as horrible pictures — they have once been married, they are called husband and wife, they have become a common social firm, they have a "claim" upon each other, they have once for all become I and you, and must never again become I and I. To be sure, nobody, not even the most bigoted theologian, says that marriage is destined to be an institution of unhappiness, and the marital chamber a chamber of torture; but if it has come to be so, it must remain so, because otherwise — marriage might become what it ought to be, namely, a relationship based on spontaneous affection, which is formed without help, and, even without force, is not dissolved, just because it finds in this affection, in the satisfaction of the mutual heart interests, the only true, the only legitimate, and the only lasting bond of union.

It is due to the theological, inhuman, misanthropical; barbaric conception of marriage that the laws inflict punishment upon those married persons who no longer respect a relationship