Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/109

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AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS.
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and a bad conscience can fear being led too far in such a discussion.

The general opinion amounts to this, that the man has greater sensual needs, especially a greater need for change, therefore also a greater right to satisfy it than the woman. I have even heard intellectual men who were not by education especially disposed towards sensuality, and who in every way distinguished themselves by moral aspirations, express themselves to the effect that in the society of the future man could not be restricted to a single woman, but would have to be granted the liberty of living with a certain number of women — who, however, need not live together — in a simultaneous marriage relation.

So the man is to be a sort of human rooster, as it were, who keeps a court of human hens.

If women were hens, it is not at all to be doubted that the roosters would assemble in sufficient numbers about them. But the first difficulty with which we meet here is the opposition of the women. If we inquire among all women, not a single one will be found who would be willing to share a beloved man with another woman, except she had been deprived of her reason by a silly fanaticism, as is the case with the Mormons. The Count of Gleichen would in our time have to narrow down his broad nuptial couch to one half its dimensions. Only very superior and imposing manly personalities, as for instance Goethe, have succeeded in