Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/263

Rh consequences which inevitably follow every suppression of rights, but must needs maintain a defective, discontented state of society, by depriving it of the co-operation of its noblest perfecting and humanizing forces. All reforms will remain fragmentary and botch-work so long as not all the members of society can participate in them as equals.

6. The foundation of a humane co-operation of both the sexes in the state is their personal union in marriage for the purpose of forming a family. But in order that marriage may accomplish its aim of a harmonious relationship, it must be the result of a free need and a free choice, and not be treated as a duty and a coercion. It is a glaring inconsistency to expect free individuals to unite to form a state in order that this same state may, through the institution of marriage, rob them of their individual liberty.

It is the inherent and exclusive right of every individual to determine his own actions. This right cannot be forfeited by a voluntary union with another individual. Marriage is a free relationship between sovereign and equal individuals, entered into for the sake of mutual happiness, and its dissolution, as well as its contraction, cannot be determined by any other will than that of the united parties, even although the conception of a true marriage presupposes a union for life.

Corresponding to this conception of marriage, and the equality of the two individuals concerned in it, all the property of the united couple, that which