hood from that of the shopkeeper! She was a great woman, one of the greatest women of history; and you, according to your ideas, you must classify her with the "immoral," because you are not human beings, but priests.
If you want to cultivate shame, then base it upon the strictest ideas of true morality; but do not look for this morality in the domain of your conventional stupidity, your inhuman unnaturalness, and your shameful hypocrisy.
It is not immoral if a man and-a woman, even "unmarried," give themselves up to true love; but it is immoral if an old roué marries a young girl whom he knowingly cannot make happy, merely for her physical charms.
It is not immoral if a man and a woman, even "unmarried," give themselves up to true love; but it is immoral if the man merely uses the woman for the satisfaction of his lust, without giving dignity to the relation by real affection or taking his share of the responsibility in the fate of the loving one.
It is not immoral if a woman unites herself with the man whom she loves against the wish of an other; but it is immoral if she becomes the wife of a man whom she does not love, because another wishes it.[1]
- ↑ How far "morality" can go astray in such cases where personal liberty and free inclination submit to a "higher will" is shown among other things in the "New Héloïse" by Rous-
