egoism forbids us to allow misery and its offspring--the vices--to harbour anywhere among our fellows. Free, and 'of noble birth,' a king and lord of this planet, must everyone be whose mother is a daughter of man, else will his want grow to be a spreading ulcer which will consume even us--the strong ones. So much as to the right of maintenance in general. As to the provision for women in particular, it was considered that woman was unfitted by her physical and psychical characteristics for an active struggle for existence; but was destined, on the one hand, to the function of propagating the human race, and, on the other hand, to that of beautifying and refining life. So long as we all, or at least the immense majority of us, were painfully engaged in the unceasing and miserable struggle to obtain the barest necessities of animal life, no regard could be paid to the weakness and nobility of woman; her weakness, like that of every other weak one, could not become a title to tender care, but became inevitably an incitement to tyranny; the nobility of woman was dishonoured, as was all purely human and genuine nobility. For unnumbered centuries woman was a slave and a purchasable instrument of lust, and the much-vaunted civilisation of the last few centuries has brought no real improvement. Even among the so-called cultured nations of the present day, woman remained without legal rights, and, what is worse, she was left, in order to obtain subsistence, to sell herself to the first man she met who would undertake to provide and 'care for' her for the sake of her attractions. This prostitution, sanctioned by law and custom, is in its effects more disastrous than that other, which stands forth undisguised and is distinguished from the former only in the fact that here the shameful bargain is made not for life, but only for years, weeks, hours. It is common to both that the sweetest, most sacred treasure of humanity, woman's heart, is made the subject of vulgar huckstering, a means of buying a livelihood; and worse than the prostitution of the streets is that of the marriage for a livelihood sanctioned by law and custom, because under its pestilential poison-breath not only the dignity and happiness of the living, but the sap and strength of future generations are blasted and destroyed. As love, that sacred instinct which should lead the wife into the arms of the husband, united with whom she might bequeath to the next generation its worthiest members, had become the only means of gain within her reach woman was compelled to dishonour herself, and in herself to dishonour the future of the race.