n poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities
that thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute
dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her
social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its
gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human
character.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other
protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles,
outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only
when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her
to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy
her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only
sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion?
Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant
passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and
carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to
contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood
would exclude it forever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of
hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all
conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human
destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that
poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but
all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued
bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man
has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love.
Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly
helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp
his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him
by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life
and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.
Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it
gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the
statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil,
once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, h