Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/275

been raised seem to be justified if we consider merely the present conditions of society. But we must remember above all things that our point of departure is an assumption of better conditions, which we ourselves will help to create. Just as the exercise of suffrage, which we demand, and the equality of the sexes for which we strive, can only be expected in a future which is more susceptible to such reforms than the present, so in the conception of a reformed institution of marriage, we must count upon future conditions in which the obstructive elements of the present are at least partially removed. When we imagine the marriage relation of the future, as we desire it, we also assume, for example, that the women of the future have received a more adequate education, that they will be better able to secure their own existence, that their economic dependence on men ceases in part, and that they are to that extent less tempted to marry from necessity and speculation instead of from love. On the other hand, we must expect that in the same proportion as women gain in independence and influence, men will change their habits, and ennoble their sentiments, whose present vulgarity and baseness find their chief nourishment in the existing helplessness and degradation of woman. We must here, above all things, remember that this is a question of principle, which cannot be modified, or condemned to silence, out of consideration of existing conditions. What do equal rights demand? And what does a true conception