Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/346

330 thing, gives him the right to indulge himself without regard for others, then all good manners and all decency cease, and every sin against aesthetics is permissible.

"Enjoyments and needs agree with liberty only when they are natural necessities and justified by reason, i. e., when they are aesthetic and not injurious. But the smoking of tobacco is:

"1. Not a natural necessity.

"2. Known to be injurious to the health of the mind as well as of the body.

"3, Unaesthetic in the highest degree, in that it affects in the most disagreeable manner the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and also (through the grimaces of the executing artist, as well as by the visible traces on his mouth, his hands, his dress, and the floor) the eyes of every not utterly callous person.

"Whoever, therefore, cannot dispense with this ‘pleasure' consciously acts contrary to his reason, is not free in the use of it, and makes himself the slave of a habit that is a sin against nature, against health and against aesthetics. How can such a weakling call himself a free man?

"But the inconsiderateness with which these puffing tobacco-chimneys victimize others is their greatest condemnation. I have been present in companies of "respectable" Germans, where, with truly boorish obtuseness, ladies, to whom tobacco smoke was actual poison, have been expected to endure