l appetite in a bestial
manner, thereby leading to the most absurd and disgusting excesses,
although at the same time they weaken the sexual power. The transient
pleasure produced by these substances is, therefore, of no real and
lasting advantage, while it results in the most terrible individual
and social miseries.

Societies for total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks have
undertaken a war of extermination against the use of all poisons used
for purposes of pleasure, when experience has proved their social
danger. Let us hope that they will succeed; then a second fundamental
root of degeneration of sexual life will be destroyed.

=3. The Emancipation of Woman.=--A third source of sexual anomalies is
due to the inequality of the rights of the two sexes. This can only be
attacked by the complete emancipation of women. In no kind of animal
is the female an object possessed by the male. Nowhere in nature do we
find the slave-law which subordinates one sex to the other. Even among
ants, where the male, on account of his great physical inferiority, is
very dependent on the workers, the latter do not impose on him any
constraint. We have already refuted the argument which is based on the
intellectual inferiority of woman.

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. I will not repeat what I
have said in Chapter XIII, but simply state categorically that, when
women have acquired in society rights and duties equal to those of men
(in accordance with sexual differences), when they can react freely
according to their feminine genius, in a manner as decisive as men, on
the destinies of the community, a third fundamental root of present
sexual abuses will be suppressed. The complete emancipation of woman
thus constitutes our third principal postulate, and in this I am in
accord with Westermarck, Secretan and many other eminent persons.

The difference which exists between the two sexes does not give an