Auguste Forel

“ Every one appeals to right and liberty, and naturally thinks of himself first, without perceiving that in continually claiming his proper rights, he tramples under foot those of others. How beautiful are these words Rights and Liberty! But in everyday life in what an uncompromising way they oppose each other! To give satisfaction to my rights and liberty, the right of complete development, according to my natural sentiments, is a thing which is perfectly impossible; or, is only practicable by constantly infringing the right and liberty of my fellow beings. ”

“ Both parents, in proportion to their fitness and ability, must be made responsible for the support of their children. It is in the highest degree immoral to make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, and so to expose them and their mothers to public disgrace because of the fulfilment of a natural function. Is it not senseless, from the standpoint both of ethics and of law, to declare the existence of a child, and therefore of a human being, to be legal or illegal, or to speak of “natural children,” as if the others were unnatural! ”

“ A true woman rejoices at the progress of her pregnancy. The last pains of childbirth have hardly ceased before she laughs with joy, and pride, at hearing the first cries of the newly born. The instinctive outburst of maternal love toward the new-born child corresponds to a natural imprescriptible right of the child, for it needs the continual care of its mother. Nothing is so beautiful in the world as the radiant joy of a young mother nursing her child, and no sign of degeneration is more painful than that of mothers who abandon their children without absolute necessity, to strange hands. ”

“ Art and Morality.—True art is in itself neither moral nor immoral. Here we can well say—to the pure everything is pure. In the mirror of an impure mind, every work of art may appear as a pornographic caricature, while to the high-minded it is the incarnation of the noblest ideal. The fault is not with art and its products, but with nature and the peculiarities of many human brains, which deform everything they perceive, so that the most beautiful works of art only awaken in their pornographic minds cynical sexual images. ”

“ I ask in all sincerity, if such mild and humane treatment of an unfortunate love affair, in which the three interested parties each strove to avoid all scandal and everything which could damage their mutual reputation, I ask if this good and loyal treatment is not, from the moral standpoint, far superior to scenes of jealousy, duels, divorces and all their consequences, things which are all sanctioned and even sanctified by custom? ”

“ The emancipation of women is not intended to transform them into men, but simply to give them their human rights, I might even say their natural animal rights. It in no way wishes to impose work on women nor to make them unaccustomed to it. It is as absurd to bring them up as spoilt children as it is cruel to brutalize them as beasts of burden. It is our duty to give them the independent position in society which corresponds to their normal attributes.
Their sexual role is so important that it gives them the right to the highest social considerations in this domain. ”

“ In place of love, force of character, capacity, harmony of sentiments, intellectual and bodily health, money is the alpha et omega of marriage. Money dazzles most men so that they are blind to everything else. They no longer understand that the health and the physical and moral worth of a woman constitute a capital which is far preferable to all the title-deeds deposited in the coffers of the future father-in-law, which are rapidly squandered by children tainted with bad physical or mental heredity. ”

“ It has often been stated that a woman can only love once in her life. Such a false and cruel generalization must be energetically opposed. It is the business of sentimental poets to delude themselves with such sentiments, but those who think it a duty to adhere to dogmas of this kind are to be pitied. It is not only death or illness of one of the conjoints, dissensions and infidelity, which may cause separation of a sexual union, but as is frequently the case, rejected love may transform into perpetual martyrdom the life of a person imbued with such ideas. ”

“ Cannot man also be more happy in giving than receiving? How can we explain the great sacrifices, the martyrs who suffer and die for their country, for their family, for science, for an idea, if enthusiasm—an expanded sentiment of pleasure—did not lead man to disinterested sacrifice, or if an inner obsession did not find its satisfaction in the welfare of humanity? ”

“ I may, however, remark that among a number of primitive races, and in young and progressive nations, whose sexual life is still comparatively pure, prostitution is only feebly developed. It is especially to Napoleon I that we owe the present form of regulation and organization of prostitutes. Like all his legislation on marriage and sexual intercourse, this regulation is the living expression of his sentiments toward woman; oppression of the female sex, contempt of its rights, and degradation of its individuals to the state of articles of pleasure for men, and machines for reproduction. ”

“ The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. And we should sit still and witness our civilization go into decay and fall to pieces without raising the cry of warning and applying the remedy? ”

“ We can affirm that whoever pretends never to have been a hypocrite lies, quite as much as one who swears he has never lied. But nowhere, save perhaps in the domain of religion, does hypocrisy play a greater part than in the sexual domain. Nowhere is there so much falsehood, and men who are most honest on other points make no scruple of deceiving their wives in this respect. I do not speak here of the simulation of sentiments of love, for it is too banal, and there is no need to be too exacting over this point, for there are strong attenuating circumstances. ”

“ All that we have just spoken of binds the woman for months or years to each of her children, and we can understand that her whole soul is adapted in consequence to maternity. Even when birth has detached the child from the maternal body, it remains attached to its mother by a hundred bonds, not only during the period of suckling, but long afterward when the conventions do not violate natural laws. Little children are deeply attached to their mother, and while the father is impatient with their cries and the embarrassment which they cause, the mother takes a natural delight in them. ”

“ But what is much worse than this douche of cold water which suddenly substitutes the reality of coitus for the ideal exaltation of sentiment, are the subsequent discoveries made by the young wife, when the cynical mind of her husband on the subject of sexual connection and love is unveiled to her in all its grossness, resulting from his previous life of debauchery. Torn and sullied in its deepest fibers, the feminine mind then becomes the seat of a desperate struggle between reality full of deceptions and the illusions of a dream of happiness. ”

“ Bestiality is not rare in women who are also subject to this filthy, obnoxious and degenerative practice. Even if we put aside cases of torture inflicted on small animals and if we avoid all prejudices, we can still, in all normality, consider bestiality as a crime, manifested by the depraved mind. In fact, considered from the point of view of law and humanity, bestiality is one of the most indecent of all the pathological aberrations of the sexual appetite. Human imagination only has marked it with the stigma of moral depravement and has made it a crime. ”

“ In practice it is no doubt difficult to always make an exact distinction between necessity and luxury. What our ancestors considered as luxuries we now regard as necessities. Man knows no limits in his desires; he is insatiable in his passion for pleasure and change. Certain socialists, especially anarchists, make a great [469] mistake in proclaiming the right of man to satisfy all his desires. This is a proclamation of corruption and degeneration. As it is just to exact the right to satisfaction of the natural wants of each, so is it unjust to sanction every desire and every appetite. ”

“ Analyzing the facts in the most diverse domains, I have simply attempted to find those which seem to me suited to solve the sexual problem of the human race most advantageously under the present social conditions. Every one to-day admits that our sexual life leaves much to be desired, but is afraid of touching the crumbling edifice.
I leave it to my readers to decide whether my ideas are nothing more than Utopian, or whether they do not rather represent a realizable ideal, begging them to reflect as calmly and independently as possible before giving their judgment. ”

“ Whilst an independent prostitute still possesses some human sentiment and a vestige of modesty which cause her to choose as far as possible a limited number of clients, the police certificate of regulation officially places the woman who receives it in the class of the pariahs of society, and this leads to her losing the little that remains of her womanly nature. In brothels, the last vestige of her human nature is trampled under foot. ”

“ The Moral Effect of Healthy Art.—Art has great power, for man is directed by sentiment much more than by reason. Art should be healthy; it should rise toward the heavens and show the public the road to Olympus—not the Olympus of superstition, but that of a better humanity. It is not necessary for this that it should diminish the energy of its eternal theme—love. No truly moral man would wish to eliminate the seasoning of eroticism whenever artistic necessity requires it, but art should never prostitute itself in the service of venal obscenity and degeneration. ”

“ For this reason the morality of the god of war and of patriotic chauvinism has had his day and loses more and more his reason for existence. Modern ethics has already become a social and international human ethics, and will become more so in the future.
As in olden times a true hero knew how to combine love of his wife with love for his country, to obtain in his conjugal union the strength to fight for his ideal, so our modern love will serve to stimulate us in the pursuit of an ideal, in our fight for social welfare. ”

“ A single pleasure, a single desire, a single passion lays hold of the organism and urges it toward the individual of the opposite sex, and to become united with it in intimate contact and penetration. It is as if the nervous system or the whole organism felt as if it had for the moment become a germinal cell, so powerful is the desire to unite with the other sex. ”

“ Such a misfortune, which often leads to the most tragic consequences, not only in novels but also in real life, is only reparable by the renunciation of the one who loves. It is surely less cruel to renounce a proposed union than to become the sexual prey of a person one does not love. It is, therefore, inhuman and immoral, as much in religion as in poetry, to preach in any form, the exclusiveness of sentiments, the indissolubility of monogamous marriage, and the immutability of love. ”

“ Nevertheless hypocrisy has its good side. It has been said not without reason that "hypocrisy is a concession which vice makes to virtue." In their nakedness human thoughts are often so sadly vulgar and so offensive that a little varnish improves them. In this sense, and when it comes from a feeling of shame or good-will, hypocrisy deserves a good deal of the eulogy which Mark Twain has heaped on it in his charming satire, "The Decadence of the Art of Lying." ”

“ I do not admit that constitutionally frigid natures or those who find it easy to control their sexual appetite, have any right whatsoever to pose as normal samples of the human race and to simply ignore the existence of temperaments, characters, and constitutions so widely differing from their own. This world's history teaches us that nothing good has ever come from such vain assumptions, unless it be empty phrases and dead letters. ”

“ Christianity is called the religion of love, and the apostle Paul even places charity higher than faith. But what is charity but the synthesis of the social sentiments of sympathy, devotion and self-denial, for the benefit of humanity? Cannot it, therefore, be established on another basis than that of cheques to be drawn on paradise? Cannot exaltation and fervor apply their powerful faith, the beauty of their form and the elevation of their sentiments to the social ideal and the future welfare of our children? ”

“ All that men can expect by mutual exchange of their wisdom and good will is to do as little evil and as much good as possible, that is to say, to diminish the amount of their physical and psychic ills by improving their mutual conditions of existence, and thus increasing the amount of good. Even this is only possible by limiting the ideas of good and evil almost exclusively to humanity, trampling on the conditions of existence and the development of other beings, or at least concerning ourselves with them only as far as they are useful to us. ”

“ When a poor imbecile, ridiculed by women and overcome by his sexual appetite, copulates with a cow, the latter is not injured in any way; neither is the owner. Moreover, the question of property does not trouble the judge, for he punishes sodomy even when the culprit owns the animal. How does the law obtain the right to punish an act which does no harm to any one, nor to society, nor even to an animal? It is evidently a vestige of religious mysticism, something like punishment for sinning against the Holy Ghost. ”

“ In struggles between parties and classes, in the abuse of privileges of caste and fortune, in war, in commerce, in a word in everything, private interests of egoism take precedence of the general interests of humanity.
These facts, and a thousand other pitiable phenomena of the same kind in human society, bear witness to the egoistic and rapacious nature of man, which proves how little the social instinct is developed in his brain. Human society is founded much more on custom and tradition, imposed by the force of circumstances, than on nature. ”

“ I again emphasize the fact that in normal women, especially young girls, the sexual appetite is subordinate to love. In the young girl love is a mixture of exalted admiration for masculine courage and grandeur, and an ardent desire for affection and maternity. She wishes to be outwardly dominated by a man, but to dominate him by her heart. This sentimentalism of the young girl, joined to the passive role of her sex, produces in her a state of exaltation which often borders on ecstasy and then overcomes all the resistance of will and reason. ”