Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/395

Struggle, constant struggle is the soul of human life, but let the objects of the struggle be humane, and the weapons intellectual. Let us struggle with nature, through whose bounty we are able to achieve a more beautiful and a nobler existence. Let us likewise struggle with ourselves, in whom nature has repeated the play between its destructive and creative forces, in the strife between passion and reason. That man must be tedious and devoid of character who is not stirred by passions; but he who has not learned how to control himself becomes despicable and disgusting. Let us struggle with the necessities and adversities of life, which impose upon us the ordeal of remaining firm in our purposes and true to ourselves. Let us struggle with baseness, that would degrade everything that is beautiful and noble to its own level. Let us finally struggle with those numerous enemies, who live longer than the uniformed ones, and will never be exterminated — the enemies of intellectual progress, of the universal rights of man, of universal truth. This struggle will bring our strength and our courage to a nobler test than the raging turmoil of the battlefield, in which even the best is but a blind, unconscious murderer of unknown victims. Without courage there is no manliness, and cowardice is the death of manliness; but its highest courage is moral courage, the courage of truth, just as moral cowardice is the most shameful cowardice, and the lie is the most unmanly vice. Falsehood and manliness —