LOVE; ITS FUNCTION IN HUMANITY.I.
LOVE; ITS FUNCTION IN HUMANITY.I.
You tell the child that lies, "it is wrong to deceive; you would not wish others to deceive you."
You tell the child that pilfers, "it is wrong to steal; you would not wish others to steal from you."
You tell the child that takes advantage of his strength and knowledge to torment his younger companion; "you would not wish others to do these things to you; you are wicked and cowardly."
These are good lessons. Why then, when the child has become a young man, do you say:Young men must sow their wild oats?
To sow their wild oatsis to deceive young girls, to destroy their future, to practice adultery, to keep mistresses, to visit brothels.
Yet mothers, women thus consent to the profanation of their sex!
Those who forbade their child to steal a toy, permit him to steal the honor and repose of human beings!
Those who shamed their son for falsehood, permit him to deceive poor young girls!
Those who made it a crime in their son to oppress those weaker than themselves, permit him to be oppressive and perfidious toward women!
Then they complain later that their sons treat them ill; that they dishonor and ruin themselves;
That they desire the death of their parents, in order to enrich the usurers from whom they have borrowed money to maintain their mistresses in luxury.
They complain that they destroy their health, and give their mothers puny grandchildren, for whose existence they are in continual anxiety.
Ah! ladies, you have only what you deserve; bear the weight of a joint responsibility which you cannot escape. You authorized your sons to sow their wild oats; endure the consequences.
But a mother cannot be the confident of her son, it is said.
Why not, madam, if you have brought him up in such a way as to have no dishonorable confidence to make to you.
He would have none to make, if you had accustomed him to conquer himself, to respect every woman as though she were his mother, every young girl as though she were his sister; to treat others as he would think it right to be treated by them; if you had fully inculcated on him that there is but one system of morality, which both sexes are equally bound to obey; if you had caused him to honor, love and practice labor; if you had told him that we live to improve ourselves, to practise justice and kindness, and to render back to humanity what it does for us in protecting us, enlightening us, rendering us moral, surrounding us with security and comfort; that in fine our glory lies in subjecting ourselves to the great law of Duty.
If you had reared him in this manner, madam, on surprising in your son the first signs of the ardent attractionthat man feels toward the other sex, far from abandoning the education of this instinct to the chances of inexperience, you would do for it what you did for the others; you would teach the young man to subject it to a wise discipline.
Instead of repeating the stupidly atrocious phrase;young men must sow their wild oats, you would have taken your son's hand affectionately in your own, and, looking in his face, would have said: "My child, Nature decrees that a woman should henceforth attract you more strongly than I, and should maintain or destroy what I have so laboriously built up: I do not murmur at this; it must be so. But my affection and duty require me to enlighten you in this grave juncture. Tell me, if a young man, to satisfy the instinct which is now awakening in you, should corrupt your sister, should sacrifice her life, what would you think of him? what would you do?"
The young man, accustomed from childhood to practise Justice, would not fail to reply: "I should think him depraved and cowardly. Would he not be punished?"
"No, my son, the seducer is not punished by the law."
"Well! I would kill him, for my right of justice reverts to me when the law makes no provision."
"Right, my child. Then you will be neither depraved nor cowardly with respect to any young girl; you will not deserve the sentence which you have pronounced; namely, death. You will respect all young girls and women as you would wish your sister, your daughter to be respected.
"Another question: what would you think of a man who should persuade me to betray your father; who should rob him of my heart and cares; who should drawme aside from the grave duties of maternity? What would you think of the man who should act thus with respect to your own companion?"
"I would judge him like the former and would treat him no better."
"Right again. Then you will respect all married women as you would wish your mother and your wife to be respected; and if you should meet any one towards whom you should feel attracted, or who should be disloyal enough to seek to attract you, you will shun her: for flight is the sole remedy for passion.
"A multitude of women, innocent at first, have been turned aside from the right path by men who do not think as you do. They now avenge themselves upon your sex for the evil it has done them. They corrupt and ruin men who, in their company, lose all sense of morality, who learn to laugh at what you believe and venerate, and undermine and destroy their health. Do you feel the deplorable courage to expose yourself to such risks?"
The young man, practised from childhood to subject his inclinations to reason and justice, would reply: "No, mother, I will not do what I would not wish my companion to do; I will neither degrade myself morally, nor destroy my health, nor contribute my share towards perpetuating a state of things which degrades the sex to which belongs my mother, my sister, my wife and my daughters, should I be so happy as to possess them.
"I acknowledge frankly that I foresee a violent struggle with myself, but, thanks to the moral training to which you have accustomed me, thanks to the ideal of destiny which you have given me, which I have accepted in the plenitude of my reason, and which my dutymarks out for me, I do not despair of subduing myself."—"This victory will be less difficult to obtain, if you employ yourself usefully and seriously; for you will thus attract your vitality to the superior regions of the brain. You will do wisely to add to this, much physical exercise; to abstain from too substantial a diet, and especially from stimulating drinks! you know the reaction of the physical upon the moral system. Carefully avoid licentious reading and improper conversation; give a place in your mind to the virgin who will be united to you; think and act as if in her presence; it will guard you and keep you pure. This sweet ideal will strengthen you against temptation, and contribute greatly to render you insensible towards those women who should have no place in your heart."
"Love, my child, is a thing most serious in its results; for the beings whom it unites become modified by each other; it leaves its traces, however short may be its duration.
"Its end is Marriage, one of the ends of which is the continuity of the species. Now, you know the effects of solidarity of blood; it is most important therefore that you should choose for your companion a woman whose character, morals and principles are in unison with your own; not only for your happiness, but for theorganizationof your children, the harmony of their nature and conduct.
"If passion does not leave you sufficiently free in your judgment, come to me: I will see for you, and if I say: my son, this woman will debase you, will cause you to commit faults; be sure that your children will have evil propensities; she is not adapted to rear them according to your ideal, which she will never accept, becauseshe is vain and selfish; if I tell you this, I know, my son, that whatever may be your suffering, you will renounce a woman whom you would cease to love after a few months' union, and will prefer a transient sadness to a life of unhappiness."
II.
The mother who has just shown her son why love should be subjected to Reason and Justice, and has pointed out to him what he should do to subdue its animal phase, perceives also the awakening of this instinct in her daughter. She wins her attention and gains her confidence by revealing to her what is passing within her heart, telling her that, at her age, she felt the same.
"Hitherto," continues she, "you have been but a child; your career as a woman is now commencing. You desire the affection of a man, and your heart is moved at the sweet thought of becoming a mother. Do not blush, my daughter; it is lawful, on condition that your desires are made subject to Reason and the law of Duty.
"Many snares will be spread before your steps; for men of all ages address to a young girl innumerable flattering speeches, and surround her with homage which renders her vain and coquettish if she has the weakness to suffer herself to be intoxicated thereby. Persuade yourself fully that all this adoration is not addressed to you individually, but to your youth, to the brightness of your eyes, to the freshness of your complexion, and that, were you far better than you are and far superior in intellect, these men would be ceremoniously and frigidly polite, were you thirty years older. This thought present in your mind will make you smile at their frivolous and common-place jargon, and willpreserve you from many weaknesses, such as rivalry of dress, petty jealousies, and the ridiculous blunder of playing the young girl at fifty.
"As you can espouse but one man, it is sufficient to be loved by one in the manner that you wish. A woman who comports herself voluntarily so as to captivate the hearts of many men, and leaves each to believe that she prefers him above all, is an unworthy coquette, who sins against Justice and Kindness: against Justice, inasmuch as she demands a sentiment for which she can make no return; as she acts towards others as she would think it unjust that others should act towards her; against Kindness, inasmuch as she risks causing suffering to sincere hearts and sacrificing their repose to a pleasurable impulse of vanity: such a woman, my child, is contemptible; she is a dangerous enemy of her sex; first, because she gives a bad opinion of it; next, because she is an enemy to the repose of other women; I know that you are too ingenuous, too true and too worthy to fear that you will fall into such errors.
"You have acknowledged to me that your young imagination had pictured to itself a man. Far from banishing this ideal, let it be always present to your mind, much less in its physical aspect than in that of intellect, morality and industry. This image will do more to keep you safe than all my counsels, than all the surveillance that I might, but never would exercise over you, because this would be unworthy of us both.
"Do not forget however that an ideal is absolute; that the reality is always defective; do not therefore seek in the man to whom you shall give your heart, a realization of the ideal, but the qualities and faculties which, with your aid, will permit him to approximate to whatyou wish to see him. You yourself are the ideal of a man, not such as you are, but such as he will aid you to become.
"I dwell upon this point, my daughter, because nothing is more dangerous than to insist on finding the ideal in the reality; this makes us over difficult and lacking in indulgence; and, if we have a lively imagination and little reason, renders us unhappy and involves us in innumerable errors.
You know and feel that the end of love is Marriage; now one of your duties as lover and spouse is the improvement of the one to whom you shall be united. You will stand with him in two different relations! first as his betrothed, afterwards as his wife. Your modifying power will, in the first case, be exercised in a direct proportion to his desire to please and to be worthy of you; in the second, in proportion to his confidence, esteem and affection for you. In the first case, he willwishto modify himself; in the second, he will do so without knowing it."
"What, mother, will he not always love me the same?"
"Love, my child, undergoes transformations which we should expect and to which we should submit; in the beginning it is a fever of the soul; but fever is a condition which cannot last without destroying life. Your husband, while loving you perhaps more deeply, will love you less ardently than before Marriage. Your love will become transformed, why shall not his be the same?
"You cannot imagine how much trouble results from the ignorance of women on this point, and from the vain pursuit of the ideal in love. Many women, believing that their husband loves them no longer becausehe loves them in a different manner, become detached from him, suffer, and betray their duties; others, dreaming of perfection in the loved one, fancy that they have found it, and becoming disabused after the fever has past, quit him, accusing him of having deceived them; they love others with the same illusion, followed by the same disenchantment, until age creeps on without curing them of the chimera. Lastly, there are others who, comprehending only the first period of love, cease to love the man who has passed beyond it, and pursue another love which will bring them the same fever; these, as you comprehend, have not the slightest idea of woman's grave duties in Love.
"What I have just said of women is equally true of men. You will avoid these dangers, my daughter, you who have been accustomed from childhood to submit to reason; who know that all reality is imperfect, that habit weakens sentiment, you will therefore take the man who suits you, as he is, designing to improve him and to render him happy, knowing in advance that his love will change without becoming extinguished, if you succeed in gaining his affection, confidence and esteem, so that he will find in you good counsel, peace, assistance and security. You are too pure, my daughter, to foresee all the snares that will be spread for you. It belongs to me therefore to arm your youthful prudence: You will perhaps encounter men married or betrothed who, according to the common expression,will pay court to you, and will utter innumerable sophisms to justify their conduct."
"Their sophisms would fall to the ground before the simple answer: Sir, as I should be driven to despair if another woman should rob me of him whom I loved,as I should despise and hate her, all your compliments cannot persuade me that it is right for me to do what I would not that others should do to me. If you return to the subject, I shall inform the person interested.
"Right, my child: but if a young man who was free should speak of love, and urge you to write to him in secret?"
"Might he not have good reason for acting in this manner?"
"None, my child. You must know that men are exceedingly corrupt; that many among them eschew marriage, flit from one woman to another, take advantage of our credulity, and make use of the most impassioned language to lead us in the way of shame and perdition. Now, my child, know besides that we bear the weight of men's faults as well as of our own; the verbal and written promises of a man bind him to nothing. If, suffering yourself to be led astray, you should become a mother, the child would remain your charge; and you could no longer hope for marriage; I say nothing of our grief and shame, nor of the terrible risks to which you would expose your brother, who might perish in punishing the vile seducer whom the law does not touch. If a man seeks you therefore unknown to us, be sure that it is because his intentions are evil; that he considers you as a toy which he purposes to break when it ceases to amuse him. Now, my daughter, you know that woman is created to be the worthy companion of man; that she is not born to be sacrificed to him as an object of pleasure. Instead therefore of suffering yourself to be seduced, profit by the influence over men which is given you by your beauty and grace, to recall them to their duties: in this manner, you may be themeans of saving many women; you will give a favorable opinion of your sex, and will prepare a good example for your daughter by setting one to your companions, many of whom will follow it in order to share in the esteem that will surround you; always remember that our acts not only injure ourselves, but we have a joint responsibility with others, and consequently no one can be lost or saved alone.
"One word more, my child. In your uncertainties, do not hesitate to confide your troubles to me; do not say, My mother is too reasonable to understand me in this. Was it not by becoming a child again in order to comprehend you, that I fulfilled my sacred task of instructor? be persuaded that it will not be more difficult for me to become a young girl again in order to comprehend, while remaining a tender and experienced mother to advise you.
"You are free: I am not your censor, but your elder sister, who loves you with devotion and desires your happiness before all things. As a recompense for my love and my long-continued cares, I only ask to be your best friend; that is, the one in whose presence you will think and speak aloud. Is this asking too much of you, who are my joy and crown."
This is the way, ladies, in which the woman who has attained majority, strives to educate the world in Love.
III.
The young girl and young man enter into society. The prudent mother knows that it is gently insinuated to her son that she is aprude, adotardwho knows nothing of the passions; who does not suspect thateverythingin nature is good, and should be respected; and who has read the history of our species to so little purpose that she has not perceived that humanity has love in all forms: thepolygamicandpolyandric, and even ... theambiguous.
She knows also, that he is told that the satisfaction of the animal instinct is necessary to thehealthof man, and that brothels are places of public utility.
She knows, lastly, that young and giddy girls, with lax principles, make dangerous confidences to her daughter.
It is time, in opposition to these lax doctrines and pernicious examples, to give to her children the philosophy of Love. According to her method, she suffers is to elucidate itself.
My son, says she, what is the end of the attraction of mineral molecules towards each other?
SON.Theproductionof a body having a determined form.
MOTHER.What is the end of the attraction of the plant for heat, light, air, the elements which it absorbs?
SON.Theproductionof its own body, the development of its organs, and of its properties, its preservation.
MOTHER.And do you know, my daughter, what is the end of the attraction of the pistil and stamens of the flower.
DAUGHTER.Theproductionof a being resembling its parents.
MOTHER.Why do we as well as the animals experience an inclination or attraction for certain kinds of food?
SON.It is evidently in order to incite to action the organs which procure to the organism the elements adapted toproduceblood.
MOTHER.Why do both sexes of the same species experience an attraction towards each other?
DAUGHTER.For theproductionof young to perpetuate the species.
MOTHER.Why do the females, and often males among animals experience an inclination or attraction to take care of the young?
DAUGHTER.In order to preserve them and to educate them as far as is in their power, that they may be able to provide for themselves.
MOTHER.Are you quite sure, my children, that the end of these attractions is not the attraction itself, the procurement of a pleasure?
SON.The pleasure seems to me only the means of impelling the being to fulfill a necessary or useful function. Thus the end of our scientific, artistic and industrial inclinations or attractions is not the pleasure which we take in their satisfaction, but theproductionof science, art and industry.
DAUGHTER.That is, the increase and progress of our intellect through the knowledge of the laws of Nature, in order to modify this nature with a view to our wants and pleasures.
MOTHER.To what inclination or attraction is Society due?
SON.To our attraction for our fellow beings.
DAUGHTER.This attraction is the father of Justice and of Goodness: itproducesthem.
MOTHER.Will you generalize the character of this inclination or attraction in accordance with what we have just said?
SON.The end of all attraction or inclination is theproduction,progressandpreservationof beings.
MOTHER.Are all instincts good which are merely inclinations or attractions?
SON.For animals, which are subject to fatality, they are; because they tend directly to their end, without ever appearing to deviate from it. In our species, they are good in principle, if we regard their end; but they may become evil through the deviation to which our liberty subjects them.
MOTHER.By what token can we know that our instinct has a right tendency?
DAUGHTER.By comparing its use with its end; by assuring ourselves that this use is not prejudicial to the practice of justice, that it does not detract from the right of any of our faculties; that is, that it disturbs neither our individual harmony nor that of others; for it is on these conditions alone that it can coöperate in the realization of the social ideal.
MOTHER.Very well. Now apply this general doctrine to human love, my children.
SON.Since love is one of the forms of attraction, and since the general end of attraction is the production, progress and preservation of beings and species, it is evident that human love should possess these characteristics. Its principal function appears to me to be the reproduction of the species.
DAUGHTER.It seems to me, brother, that this is not enough; since true husbands and wives do not cease to love each other after this end has been fulfilled, and since persons may love without having children.
MOTHER.You are right, my daughter; our faculties being more numerous and more fully developed than those of the animals, our love cannot be incomplete like theirs; it cannot be of the same nature in our progressivespecies as in those species fatal and unprogressive of themselves. In us, each faculty, properly employed, aids in the improvement of all the rest, wrongly employed, it interrupts our harmony and lowers us; it is the same with our love. Or rather this passion is the one that most of all causes us to grow or to decline.
You know, my children, that humanity advances only by forming itself an ideal and endeavoring to realize it. Every passion has its ideal, which is modified by that of the whole. In the beginning, man, in the animal state, made the end of love the pleasure resulting from the satisfaction of a wholly physical want: he cared nothing for the most evident aim—progeny. A little later, man less gross, loved woman for her beauty and fruitfulness; this was the patriarchal age of love. Later still, the Northern races wrought a change in this instinct; love became decomposed, as it were; the lover possessed the love of the soul; the woman was loved not only for her beauty, but as the inspirer of lofty deeds; the husband was the possessor of the body alone and the children were the fruit of marriage; this was the chivalrous age of love. Since pacific labor has been organized and has gained a place in public opinion, love has entered a new phase; many among the moderns consider it as the initiative of labor. Some regard the attraction of pleasure as playing the chief part in industrial production, and leave full liberty to the attraction, however inconsistent it may be; others preserve the couple, and transform woman into the moving power of action; the love that she inspires excites the efforts of the worker.
The progress hitherto made by humanity is thereforethat love has now for its end the perpetuation of the species, the modification of man by woman, and the production of labor.
In a higher ideal of Justice, the sexes being equal in rights, love will have a higher end; the spouses will unite on account of conformity of principles, union of hearts, wedding of intellects, common labor: love will join them to double their strength, to modify them by each other, from the friction of their hearts will be struck out sentiments which neither would have had alone; from the union of their intellects will be born thoughts which neither would have had alone; from the aid that they will lend each other in their common labor will proceed works that neither would have accomplished alone, as from the union of their whole being, will be born new generations more perfect than the preceding because they will be the product of the greatest possible harmony. It will be only when woman shall take her lawful place that humanity will see love in all its splendor, and that this passion, subversive to-day in inequality and incoherence, will become what it should be; one of the great instruments of Progress.
We, my children, who are too rational to mistake the means by which Nature impels us to accomplish her designs for the designs themselves, will take care not to fancy that the end of love is pleasure; on the other hand, we have too much respect for equality to imagine that it is for the benefit of one sex alone. We will remain faithful to the ideal of our lofty destinies, in defining love as the reciprocal attraction of man and woman with the end of perpetuating the species, of improving the partners mutually with respect to intellect and feeling, and of advancing science, art and industry by the labor of the pair.
IV.
Sophists have told you, my son, that all our inclinations are in Nature; that they are good and should be respected.
You asked them doubtless whether the inclinations to theft, to assassination, to violation, to anthropophagy, which are in Nature, are good, and why, instead of respecting them, society punishes their manifestation.
You demonstrated to them, I hope, that there is nothing commendable in the exaggeration or the perversion of instincts.
You demonstrated to them, I hope, that Nature is brutal fatality against which we are bound to struggle both within and without ourselves; that our Justice and virtue are composed only of conquests made over it in us, as all that constitutes our physical well-being is only the result of conquests made over it outside of us.
These sophists have told you that love comes and goes without our knowing how or wherefore; and that we can no more command it to spring up than to endure.
This is true, my son, of the brutal desires of the flesh, which is the passion of animals alone, and is extinguished by possession.
This is also true of that complex passion which has its seat in the imagination and the senses, and ends with the illusion that is always of short duration.
But it is not true of genuine love; this sees both the faults and the virtues of the loved one; but softens the first and exalts the last, and hopes by degrees to put an end to that which wounds it.
This sentiment which takes possession of the heart,is patient; it bears lest it become effaced, it surrounds itself with precautions in order to remain constant; if it becomes extinct, it is not unconsciously: for we suffer cruel tortures before resolving to cease to love.
You have been told that love is irrepressible; are we then beings of fatality? This sophism renders man cowardly and depraves him; for what is the use of struggling against what we know to be unconquerable, and why not sacrifice to it the best of our tendencies? Examine the conduct of the partisans of such a doctrine.
The human ideal requires that they shall not do to others what they would not think it just that others should do to them; yet they seduce maidens, make them mothers, and abandon them without caring about the children born of these unions; without caring whether the young mother commits suicide, dies of grief, or becomes depraved; without caring whether the parents go down to the grave.
Like deadly reptiles, they glide to the domestic fireside of others, rob their friend of the affection of his wife, and force him to labor for the children of adultery.
The woman who believes in irrepressible love breaks her pledges to her husband; lives a life of deceit; brings trouble and sorrow into the houses of other women, whose lives are blighted by her.
It is in this way that those who practice this sophistry fulfil their duty to be just, not to afflict their fellows, to labor for the happiness and improvement of those about them, to preserve the weak from oppression and wrong. To this pretended irrepressibility of love, they sacrifice Justice, goodness, the happiness, repose and honor of others; lead them into the path of dissipation;bring dissolution into the family and society; in a word, offer up as a sacrifice to animal instinct, moral sense and reason.
You have also been told that every species of love is found in Nature; the polyamic and polygandric, as well as that of the constant pair.
Yes, my child, every species of love is found in Nature, as is every species of vice and every species of virtue. But you know that it is not enough that a thing exists within us to prove it to be good; it must be in conformity with the ideal of our destiny, with our harmony: it is wrong in the opposite case.
Love, such as we have defined it, needs duration and equality; duration, because we do not become modified in a few months; because we do not accomplish great works in a few months; because we do not rear children in a few months; duration is so truly an aspiration of love, that it imagines that eternity will hardly suffice for it. It must have equality; division is hateful to it; it will therefore have a unit for a unit, both male and female. Now polygamy and polyandria are the negation of equality, of dignity in love.
Let us consider the effects of these two deviations of instinct.
Oriental polygamy renders human beings profoundly unequal, transforms women into cattle, mutilates thousands of men to guard the harems, depraves the possessor of women by despotism and cruelty, concentrates all his vitality upon a single instinct at the expense of intellect, reason and activity; whence it follows that he is lost to science, art, industry, society according to right: that he submits without repugnance to despotism, and passively extends his neck to the halter. There,no influence is wielded by woman, who is subjected to designed enervation, who is depraved in as hideous a manner as the eunuch, her keeper. Thus, inequality in love and in right, abandonment of art, science and industry, intellectual and physical enervation, debasement of the moral sense—such are vices inherent to the polygamy of the East. You see that this is far from the ideal of our destinies.
In our West, polygamyde factoproduces the cattle of the brothel, legions of courtesans who ruin families. As many of these women are diseased, they infect those who associate with them with fearful maladies which undermine their constitutions, and thus pave the way for puny offspring, consequently, for weak minds and feeble intellects. I appeal for proof to the conscription; never were so many exemptions seen as now on account of under size, although the standard has been lowered, never were so many exemptions seen as now for constitutional imperfections and acquired disease.
To vitiate the generation in its germ is not the only crime of our polygamy; it enervates those who practice it, for nothing leads to excess, consequently to enervation, so much as the change of relations. On the other hand, our polygamists become transformed into machines of sensation; then intellect grows weak; they become stupid and selfish. Look at the pitiable young men of the present time, emaciated by their vices and by those of their sires; scoffers, faithless, jesting at the most sacred things, despising, not only the corrupt women, their worthy companions, but also the whole sex to which their mothers belong; look at them; so gross as to sicken the observer, nothing longer commands their respect; they thrust aside gray haired womenfrom the sidewalk into the gutter; they are impertinent to old men; they put young girls to the blush with their cynical speeches; polygamy has rendered them ignoble, and has destroyed our native urbanity as well as all dignity.
They will tell you that women are but little better than they. But this result becomes inevitable in a country in which women are not kept in seclusion. Polyandria becomes the necessary companion of polygamy; for since men consider themselves at liberty to have more than one woman, why should women consider themselves forbidden to have more than one man?
Finally, my son, the results of irrepressible love, Polygamy and Polyandria in our Western country are:
The seduction and corruption of women;
Adultery, debasement of character; the moral and intellectual enfeebling of both sexes;
The enervation and degeneracy of the race;
Falsehood, deceit, cruelty, injustice of every kind, the use of woman by man for her beauty, that of man by woman for his money or position;
The dissolution and ruin of the family;
Several thousand illegitimate children annually, without counting abortions;
Such is the value of these theories put in practice.
Is this in conformity with our ideal of human love? Is it in conformity with our ideal of human destiny, which requires that we shall progress and cause others to progress in good; that we shall practice Justice and Goodness?
A word more, and we have done.
When Rome had ceased to believe in chastity, in the sacredness of oaths; when she wallowed in polygamicand polyandric customs; when she took pleasure for her end, tyranny appeared. Nothing was more natural: man binds captive those only who have first suffered themselves to be bound under the yoke of bestial instinct: he who knows how to govern himself does not yield obedience to man; he bows only before the law when it is the expression of Reason.
Remember, my son, that we are powerful only through chastity; only thus can we produce great works in science, art and industry; only thus can we practice Justice, be worthy of liberty. Outside of chastity, there is nothing but degradation, injustice, impotence, slavery; and every nation that forsakes it falls from the arms of despotism into the grave.
Do not suffer yourself therefore to be moved by modern sophisms, have always before your thoughts your obligations as a moral and a free being, your duties as a member of humanity; subject all that is within you to Reason, to Justice, to the sentiment of your dignity, and live like a man, not like a brute.