Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/158

142 to make the satisfaction of human needs dependent on its permission or conditions, in order to become in this way the mistress of the entire man, and to remind him every moment of his dependence. The Catholic "Church" has, therefore, also introduced a great number of fast-days, etc., in order to rule over man even in the matter of eating and drinking. And how should she have forgotten to rule over him in the matter of sexual love! But she exercises the most exquisite cruelty of authority by the prohibition which makes it impossible for divorced people to marry again. This prohibition means in other words: "The more unhappy people feel, the more they need our consolation; the more unhappy marriages are, the more occasion have we to intrude into family life, and especially to take advantage of the helpless women. We are the physicians who make the cure of diseases a crime in order to secure the longest possible control of the patients, We must, therefore, seek to prevent the dissolution of marriages; to that end we refuse to recognize divorce; and in order to erect another barrier against the temptation to secure one nevertheless against our will in a merely legal way, we make it an impossibility or a crime to marry again for those who are narrow enough to regard no marriage as valid without the blessing of the priest."

It is in the power of women wherever civil marriage obtains to upset the humane calculation of