Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/303

Rh speak openly on this subject, which even in this country is still treated with.the most unbecoming prudery, and the most senseless reserve. I do not know the gentleman whom I am to answer. He need not take my remarks personally — they are aimed at the masculine world in general.

I begin with the declaration that I advocate "free love" completely and decidedly. But the expression is incorrect and ought to be "freedom in love." Indeed, can any other kind of love exist except free love? Can love be commanded or forced? Something of this sort seems hitherto to have been in the minds of our philosophers of love, who have learned their philosophy in Constantinople or Utah apparently, and who can let a slave pass as their beloved. Among all the daughters of the goddess Liberty there is none, who, according to her nature, must possess the properties of her mother in a higher degree than Love. Love and free love are therefore synonymous. It ought not to be necessary to talk of free love, any more than of wet water, or hot fie. I might, however, conceive of love as not free in the sense that the feeling, the necessity, the passion that unites two beings, binds them completely, destroys their free will, turns them irresistibly away from everything else. But just because true love has this effect, exerts this power, creates this necessity, it ought no more to be hindered in its choice, by external force, than it will require external bonds to insure its permanence. A man and woman who