Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/19

Rh am convinced that I have some new points of view to offer which deserve your attention.

But whoever you may be, in giving your attention to these pages may you be prevailed upon to publicly express your opinion on a common and important matter! But frankly, truthfully, and without reserve, as will be done here. False modesty is not only a weakness; it is also a fault, because it throws a suspicion on what it attempts to conceal. So long as we still shrink from speaking about human matters in a human manner we have not yet developed into true men and women; so long as we still play the hypocrite out of sheer "morality" we have not yet a conception of true morality; so long as we still seek for culture in the perversion of human nature we have no reason to boast of our culture. But in regard to the question of rights now under consideration, a radical straightforward examination of the relations of the two sexes to each other is an essential requisite for its solution.

There are three rocks upon which the truthfulness of the world, especially of the masculine world, is wont to come to grief and to change into the most intolerable and contemptible hypocrisy: the Revolution, Religion, and Love. Thousands-want the revolution and. feign legality; thousands are without religion and go to church; thousands seek the clandestine satisfaction of their sexual desires, while outwardly they