Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/241

Rh Strange human beings! Here I stand in the presence of sun, moon and stars, in the presence of the whole universe, as a free being; no star, no "god," obstructs my way; the whole universe silently acknowledges my freedom. Only these beings, which call themselves men, and even free men, have the audacity to deny my freedom, and even to fix a term for my humanization in case I reform. Poor things! You only convince me that I know better what 1s right and what is wrong, what I can do and what I may do, than you. Me you certainly need not liberate; I have for myself all the liberty that I need and desire. But I know that you yourselves have it not, and that you will never have it without free women. Just as the woman without a man, and the man without the woman fulfills only one-half of his and her existence, just as the contentment and the harmony of human existence, can only come from a union of the two beings, so also, in public life, this union is the indispensable condition of a truly humane and harmonious order of things. Is public life anything else than the sum of all individual lives? Must not every individual life be interested in the public life, and must not every individual union be involved in the union of the whole? To postpone such a state of society would only be to prolong the inhumanity and disharmony of our present social life. Family and state must correspond to each other, and those who constitute the family must also constitute the state, otherwise both can come to