Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/27

Rh machine, the Spartans would have abolished women, and introduced in their place State child factories. According to the purely political or patriotic purpose, which called for merely warlike manhood and coarse republican insensibility, the women received a thoroughly masculine training, and in order to guard them against the danger of effeminating the men and of occupying them too much by their charms, they were trained after their marriage for the manufacture of wool, and treated like factory implements. Woman, as such, did not exist in Sparta; her femininity was rather a fault, and this fault was corrected through barbarity. Marriage proper was unknown to the Spartans. The men could visit the women only for afew minutes; the object was merely to beget children. Weak or old men, by virtue of their right of control over their wives, brought them good breeders, and if any one was especially pleased with a woman he would ask, not her, but her husband, for the permission to beget a "noble child" with her — all this was done for State purposes, which had crowded out every other consideration, and would not allow the question of the existence of an independent inclination on the part of woman to be raised at all.

The Spartans furnish the classic example of that error which sacrifices to the enthusiasm for a political end, the end of all political endeavor, namely humanity, because they neglected to take