He also attacks the theory, as often urged in our own as in those days, that those who do not believe in the dogmas of religion should hold their peace and not deprive others of the mainstay of their lives. He argues warmly, passionately, asserting that the cultivated classes and the town populations no longer believe in dogma (we must remember that he is writing of 1801-2), and as regards the lower classes, putting the matter thus: Even if we take for granted that it is both impossible and inadvisable to cure the masses of their delusions, does this justify deceit, does this make it a crime to speak the truth, or an evil that truth should be told? As a matter of fact, however, the masses now universally display a desire to learn the truth; it is clear that faith is everywhere undermined; and our first endeavour ought to be to prove clearly to all and sundry that the obligation to do right is quite independent of the belief in a future life. Obermann, then, maintains that the laws of morality are natural, not supernatural, and are consequently unaffected by the collapse of belief. He repeatedly emphasises the disastrous practical results of silence in matters of religion; it is the system of silence which makes it possible for the education of woman to be still carried on upon the old lines, keeping her, as a rule, in a state of ignorance that makes her the enemy of progress, and too often delivers her, body and soul, into the power of her father confessor. A comparison between love as a happiness-producing power and love in the rôle it plays in marriage, leads him on to express some very strong opinions regarding the then prevailing ideas on the relations between the sexes, and the principles according to which a woman's conduct is judged in civilised society.