viii
PREFACE.
try; who as none else knew how to express his thoughts in the most pregnant, incisive, and energetic form — a master of pure classical style.
That a spirit who could proclaim such principles was bound to throw his entire revolutionary energy on the side of the liberation of woman from the fetters of social and political slavery is a matter of course.
The treatise here submitted, which appeared for the first time in the German ‘language in 1852 and later in an expanded form in 1875, is translated into English by an American lady of German descent, Mrs. Emma Heller Schumm, of Boston;[1]
- ↑ Perhaps this is the proper place to state that, greatly as I admire and esteem the character and genius of Karl Heinzen, I cannot entirely agree with all the views laid down in the following treatise. From some of the positions taken therein I emphatically dissent. Not where he is most radical and thoroughgoing in his advocacy of liberty in the sexual relations and of the independence of woman, for I am with him there; but where he seems to forget his radicalism, and to lose his grand confidence in the power of liberty to rejuvenate, to regulate, and to moderate, and falls back upon the State for that readjustment and guidance of human affairs which one day will be accomplished only in liberty and by liberty, — it is there where I radically dissent; and I make this statement for the sake of setting myself right with those who happen to be acquainted with my views on these points.
Goethe says somewhere: "Die Menschen werden durch Meinungen getrennt, durch Gesinnungen vereinigt" — Men are
