Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/73

Rh Our priests, moral teachers, and schoolmasters, great and small, maintain, however, that nature is a vicious, disqualified person whose demands must be rejected until they, the priests, etc., shall grant her a hearing, and mark her with the stamp of official approbation. That through this rejection ten times the evil is brought about which these wise gentlemen pretend to avoid, they themselves know very well; but if there is no more censorship the censors will lose their bread and butter.

Our political and social conditions conform to the prejudices sustained by our religious and moral falsifiers. Partly through police limitations, partly through the degeneration of our economic conditions, most men are prevented from marrying until the uneasiest period of their sexual life is passed. Yes, thousands, especially among our idling military, are not able to support a wife until they are almost old men, and after they have for half a lifetime been masters in the school of debauchery and seduction; and as concerns the thousands of priests whom celibacy compels to revenge oppressed nature with hypocrisy and all manner of secret means, I do not know whether the disgust at their loathsome lives or pity for their inhuman lot should furnish the standard by which we should judge them.

Attention must be repeatedly called to the fact that, besides celibacy, student and military life