Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/38

22 that which they are accustomed to have as playthings of the courts. In the age of the Roman emperors, when men were enervated, the importance of woman naturally had to rise. A number of excellent ladies played important rôles at courts and ruled the nations through debauched despots. But this contained no indemnification for the disability of the sex, and that once there has been a Julie, a Messalina, an Agrippina, a Poppæa, a Faustina, etc., can accrue as little to the satisfaction of the feminine sex as the fact that later times have produced a Catherine, a Pompadour, a DuBarry, a Lola, etc.

The reaction against the extravagancies of immorality and sensual debauchery under the Roman emperors was caused by Christianity, by the religion of the man who was not begotten by any man, was born of a virgin, and is said never to have associated with any woman. A religion which referred mankind from the living world to the dead hereafter, which destroyed the value of earthly things, i.e., of reality, and caused humanity to abandon itself to spiritualistic phantasies and reveries, had to put spirituality in place of sensuality, asceticism in place of voluptuousness, and unnatural restraint in place of dissoluteness. Opposing one extreme to another, [sic]Christiantity would make nonsense into sense, and a virtue of the violation of nature. If the Romans were immoral through intemperance, the Christians were