Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/87

Rh and natural morality through the school of immorality to true morality.

Civilization and liberty make man a moral being. To recognize the natural laws by means of reason, and to execute them freely for the purpose of, or within the limits of, civilization — that is moral destiny, moral endeavor, moral life. Man is by means of reason lord of his nature, not for the sake of suppressing it, but that he may, as it were, renew it as his handiwork in ennobled. form.

Let us apply these principles of liberty and morality to natural needs. The animal is by nature limited in its desires; instinct directs it and binds it within definite tracks of needs, to step out of which it has neither the power nor the temptation, It does not eat in order to eat, or to enjoy itself by eating, but only to appease its hunger, and when it has eaten its fill it is also satisfied; it mates from a physical need in a definite measure and at definite times, and outside of these times the sexual instinct is of itself quiescent. Neither in appeasing its hunger nor in satisfying its sexual instinct can it impel itself beyond the measure fixed by nature, or, as it were, compose variations to the theme of nature. In a word, it is not free, but merely a slave of nature. Man, however, is free. To him no need is merely physically prescribed or measured out; he has rather the liberty than the instinct to overstep his mere need, to make the indulgence of it an "enjoyment" and