Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/400

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THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

loving woman must of course submit. And what is the meaning, the moral, the logical outcome of the "pessimistic" philosophy of these two woman haters? In a word, the hopeless doctrine that it were better if the world did not exist at all, that really life is not worth living. Of course, life is not worth preservation, if we cannot appreciate its most beautiful part, or trample it under foot, as the brutality or satiety of men has hitherto done, in spite of all the poems and romances of love. Every philosophy of the world and of life which results in despair must be unsound, unnatural and false, since a contradiction, justifying such despair and its consequence, the self-destruction of that part of the world-life that we represent, is inconceivable. Everything that we, as thinking products of the world, require, must be attainable by us on the spot upon which we have been placed by its development. All phantasies about a heaven and another life are done away with for us. Outside of humanity there are for us no motives, no hopes, no future, no ideals. Here upon this planet our being must run its course, and our contentment be found. But where and with whom shall we find it but in living with our fellow-beings? And what nobler and more complete contentment could this life and all nature offer to man but the true love of man and woman? In this relationship must the aspirations and the outcomes of the reforms of the future find their sublime culmination, and their most beautiful success. To educate humanity not only for knowing