But every reasonable and just man must ask the question, Where, then, are the unmarried men to gratify their sexual impulse if at the same time the unmarried girls are condemned to absolute chastity? It is merely necessary to place these two facts =side by side= in order to expose the utter mendacity and shamelessness of the coercive marriage morality, and to display the true cancer of our sexual life, the sole cause of the increasing diffusion of =prostitution=, of =wild sexual promiscuity=, and of =venereal diseases=. When hereafter, before the judgment-seat of history, the dreadful “_j’accuse_” is uttered against the sexual corruption of our time, then there will be a good defence for those of us who, under the device, “Away with prostitution! away with the brothels! away with all ‘wild’ love! away with venereal diseases!” were the first to indicate =free love= as the one and only means of rescue from these miseries. We are always told that men are not yet ready for the free, independent management of their sexual life; mankind is not yet ripe for the necessary responsibility. Our opponents point especially to the danger of such an opinion and such reforms for the lower classes. But human beings are better than the defenders of the obsolete conventional morality would have us believe, and above all, it is the members of the lower classes whom we may quietly allow to follow the dictates of their own hearts. They, indeed, give us the example that freedom is not equivalent to immorality and pleasure-seeking; that, on the contrary, it is freedom that awakens and keeps active the consciousness of duty and the sense of responsibility. Alfred Blaschko rightly draws attention to the fact that among the proletariat for a long time already the idea of free love has been actually realized. In a large majority of cases men and women of these classes have sexual intercourse with one another, especially between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, without marrying.[187] “Among the proletariat free love has never been regarded as sinful. Where there is no property which is capable of being left to a legitimate heir, where the appeal of the heart draws man and woman together, from the very earliest times people have troubled themselves little about the blessing of the priest; and had it not been that at the present day the civil form of marriage is so simple, whilst, on the other hand, there are so many difficulties placed in the path of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, =who can tell if the modern proletariat would not long ago, as far as they themselves are concerned, have abolished marriage=?”[188] Blaschko adduces proofs that in all places in which free love is not possible =prostitution takes its place=. This fact affords a striking proof of the necessity of free love. For there can be no doubt as to the correct answer to the question which is better, prostitution or free love.