Philosophy in the Boudoir
Philosophy in the Boudoir appeared for the first time in 1795 as a "posthumous work by the author of Justine" in two volumes with five pictures and for the second time in 1805 in two volumes with ten pictures and appeared frequently thereafter.
The book is an imitation of the Education of Laura by Mirabeau and the Luisea Sigea of Nicholas Chorier. The main theme, the rearing of a girl in vice, is told in the form of dialogues and long, instructive lectures, which from time to time are interrupted by practical applications of the philosophical principles of vice.
The preface is characteristic of the book: "Libertines of all ages and sexes! Only to you do I dedicate this work; feed on those principles which feed your passions. These passions, from which cold and weak moralism shrink back in fear, are only the means of nature in allowing men to come closer to her and recognize her purposes. Listen only to this joyous passion, its organ is the only one that can bring you good fortune.
“Lascivious women, whose model might well be the sensuous Madame St. Ange, follow her example and despise everything that brings you into opposition with the divine laws of pleasure and that stand in your way of a joyous life.
"Dear girls kept at home by ludicrous tenets of virtue, superstitious parents and mere circumstances, step on anything that prevents you from enjoying your bloom of youth. Allow no one to prevent you from seeing that every maiden wish of yours be fulfilled.
"And you dear libertines who know no reins but those which give free vent to your desires, know no other laws than your fancies; may the cynic Dolmancé serve as a model for you! Go as far as he; so that when you have reached the end of your journey through a joyful land strewn with flowers and fruit you can look back and feel certain that this is the only purpose of life, the only master nature, in her very prolificness, intended you to serve. Then will you cry indeed that this is the only way to pluck roses from the thorns of life."
We summarize very succinctly the main points. In the first dialogue appeared Madame St. Ange and her brother, Chevalier de Mirvel. The former was the Juliette type that poisoned everything it came into contact with. Her brother was more receptive and was pushed in the rear by the more powerful individuality of Dolmancé. He was a perfect cynic who always ruled the entire situation with his brilliant and spirited sophistry. According to Mirvel's description he became hard through his early start in the path of vice and instead of a human heart had only animal passions. He was a pederast and never ceased to revel in it.
Eugenie de Mistival was a young girl whose mother was a bigot and whose father had an affair with Madame de St. Ange. The latter had already given her a theoretical discussion in vice, had thrown out all her ideas of religion and pure morals and so ensnared her that Eugenie trusted everything to her. So today—the whole plot takes place in one day—she was to be initiated into the mysteries of the service of Venus and sodomy. Eugenie came and betrayed her true nature by a confession that she hated her mother, the old bigot. Dolmancé then appeared and instructed Eugenie, who at the beginning blushingly pretended modesty, in the anatomy and physiology of the male and female privates, not omitting practical demonstrations. She learned the arts of amour physique et anti-physique. She was later given Chevalier, the gardener-boy and an idiot so that she might learn the different kinds of obscene groups. Towards evening as Eugenie had turned herself into the most horrible erotic monster, her mother, Madame de Mistival, opportunely arrived. Under the eyes of the triumphant daughter she was overpowered and received a dose of syphilis from a servant, Lapierre; before they sat down to eat Eugenic had to consummate the infibulation.
This is the action of the play. More than three-fourths of the book is taken up by instructive excursions.
Other Works of Marquis de Sade
Justine, Juliette and the Philosophy in the Boudoir are the works to which Marquis de Sade owes his herostratic fame. All the others of his numerous works are milder imitations of the above-named. It is for this reason that Marciat named the class of erotic pleasures that the Marquis delighted in as sadism.
Aline and Valcour, a philosophic novel written in the Bastille and during the Revolution, first appeared in 1793 in four volumes and again in 1795. Girouard was entrusted with the printing of this work in 1792 by de Sade. But the printer became embarrassed in a royalist conspiracy, was condemned and guillotined. Meanwhile the novel was secretly printed and appeared in 1793 under the firm name of Madame Girouard. It found few buyers. In 1795 the title was changed. In the same year the bookseller, Maradan, procured the remaining copies, changed only the title and frontispiece. It is undoubtedly an original of Justine and Juliette for it described almost the same characters. Valcour, a virtuous young man, loved Aline, the noble daughter of the noble wife of the cruel and degenerate President de Blamont. The latter wanted to marry his daughter to the old libertine Dolbourg since he had earlier given to this old friend as a mistress, the virtuous Sophie whom he acknowledged as his daughter. When the marriage was to go through he wanted to give his wife also to Dolbourg and to receive in exchange Dolbourg's daughter and wife. The plan failed. Aline killed herself. Madame de Blamont was poisoned by order of her husband. Valcour entered a monastery, Dolbourg became virtuous and the president had to flee. Two degenerate females were pictured in Rosa and Leonore. Leonore, who everywhere found fortune, was evidently a counterpart to Juliette. The work is also rich in descriptions of other personalities. Until the poisoning and some flagellation scenes there are no descriptions of cruelty.
Quérard thinks that the author described himself as Valcour and at times told some of his own experiences.
The Crimes of Love (Paris, 1800) is a collection of romantic tales, as Juliette and Raunai, Clarisse, Laurence and Antonio, Eugene de Franval, etc., in which the struggle between vice and virtue is described. Virtue usually conquers.
As a preface to Crimes of Love de Sade wrote Ideas on the Novel, a survey of the novel in the eighteenth century, introduced by an historical sketch of the development of the novel, which he defined as "a painting of the morals of the century, that has to compensate history in a certain sense. Only a keen observer of human nature can write a good novel. This keen observation can be derived only from misfortunes or travels." At the end he called unjustified the attacks on the cynical expressions in Aline and Valcour. Vice in order to be shunned must be shown. The most dangerous works are those that beautify and describe vice in brilliant colors. It must be shown in its entire nudeness so that its true nature can be recognized.
We finally mention the pamphlet that brought the displeasure of Napoleon on de Sade. Zoloé and Her Two Acolytes appeared in Paris in 1800. Zoloé is Josephine de Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon. She was described as a lascivious, avaricious American. Her friend Laureda (Madame Tallien) a Spaniard, was "all fire and all love," very rich and hence could satisfy all her perverse desires. She and Volsange (Madame Visconti) took part with Zoloé in an orgy of libertines. Among the latter one recognized Bonaparte in the Baron d'Orsec and Barras in the Viscomte de Sabar. One word is sufficient to discover the author. That is the word "virtue." He wrote in Zoloé: "You have to remember that we are speaking as historians. It is not our fault if your pictures are painted in the colors of immorality, perfidy and intrigue. We have painted people of an age that is past. May this age produce better ones and give to our brush the charms of virtue!"
Of the comedies of Marquis de Sade only Oxtiern or the Misfortunes of Libertinage, praising the joys of crime, and Julia, or Marriage Without Women, an idealization of pederasty, are worthy of mention.
Character of the Works of Marquis de Sade
Whoever wants to note the results of a complete preoccupation with the purely sexual functions and pursuits of man can find them in the works of Marquis de Sade. This can readily be assumed from the analyses that we have given of Justine and Juliette. But de Sade went further: he made cold and naked crime the climax and dénouement of the action of his works. This union of sex and crime and destructive processes of all kinds must have had the most fearful effects since it was varied a thousand times by an unequalled imagination. Janin recognizes that "de Sade possessed the most indefatigable imagination that has perhaps ever terrified the world." A mind that could have conceived such a gigantic work of pornography in ten volumes demanded a painstaking genius and an experience that had to cover every walk of life and every phase of the human mind. And yet the Marquis de Sade was great enough to transcend this; for he always interrupted the action or broke up an orgy with long philosophic discussions and dialogues, often more horrible in their effects than the actions he preached.
Finally to complete the terrifying picture, all the truly monstrous assertions and convictions, all the products of a hyperbolic fantasy of erotica, were given by specific incidents and characters. Minski, drinking 60 flasks of wine at one time (Juliette III, 332); the Carmelite monk, Claude, with three testicles (Juliette III, 77); the theatre of horrors at Naples where 1176 people were killed at one time (Juliette VI, 22-2é), etc., etc., etc.
The works of Marquis de Sade are extremely important and instructive for the history and culture of the human race. Yet they are still repugnant and repulsive and repellent to any person save the most degenerate libertine; and at that I believe it would be difficult to find such an absolutely corrupt person that he would not shudder at some episode or person in Justine or Juliette. The effect of the original to a casual reader is one of immediate horror. Napoleon had all the copies of Marquis de Sade’s works that he could find burned in an immense pyre. It was not, in his opinion "fit for any human being to read." In fact the obscene pictures accompanying the text were less potent than the writing itself. In later times his works were indeed given the generic title Opus Sadicum.
The Philosophy of Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade was the first and only philosopher of vice. But his importance goes deeper than that. His works analyzed carefully everything in life that is related to sexual instincts which, as Marquis de Sade has shown with unmistakable clearness, influences in some manner or other almost all human affairs. "Love and hunger" do not equally "rule the world" for love is much more important and domineering in its rule.
The gross physical debaucheries and atrocious cruelties are covered with a resplendent mental veil because of the systematic exposition of the philosophic principles in all fields of vice. Its justification by logical method as well as by precepts and examples only makes vice more horrible in effect, both for degenerate and normal beings. Delbène, for example, recognized "sensations must not only be experienced but also exhaustively analyzed. It is at times just as sweet to speak of them as to enjoy them. And when one can no longer enjoy them it is divine to speak of them" (Juliette I, 105). Jerome said that the orgies in Sicily were interrupted only by philosophic discussions and that new cruelties were not attempted until they had been thoroughly "legitimized" (Juliette III, 45).
All the observations of de Sade were derived, as expected, from his materialism. He deified nature, which was for him the principle of the good in opposition to her enemy, virtue. The universe was moved by its own power and the eternal laws inherent in nature were sufficient to bring forth and explain everything that we saw without dragging in a "first cause." Why is a motor necessary for an object that is always in motion? The universe is a collection of diverse beings that alternately and successively act and react with one mother. There are no boundaries. There is everywhere a continuous change from one state to another in relation to the individual essence which takes on, one after another, new forms (Juliette I, 72, ff.).
The movement and impact of molecules explain all physical and mental phenomena. Hence the soul, as an "active, thinking" principle must be material. As an active principal it is divisible. For "the heart still beats after it is taken from the body." All divisible things are matter. Matter is further overcome by "danger" (periclité). The "spirit" cannot be endangered. But the soul follows the impressions of the body, is weak in youth, depressed in old age, is overcome by all dangers of the body, and hence matter (Juliette I, 86). Bressac gave an easier proof. As the body of the dead wife of Count Gernande made its last convulsive movement he cried out delightedly: "You see! Matter needs no soul for its movement" (Justine IV, 40).
The immortality of the soul is hence a chimera. This nonsensical dogma had made men fools, hypocrites and liars. There is only left virtue to which immortality is not ascribed. Juliette asked Delbène of immortality. "Have courage, believe in the universal law, resign yourself to the thought that you will return to the womb of nature and be reborn in another form. An eternal laurel grows on the grave of Virgil, and it is better to be entirely destroyed for ever than to burn in the so-called hell." "But," asked Juliette anxiously, "what will become of me? This eternal destruction frightens me, this darkness makes me tremble." "What were you before your birth? You will again return to the same. Did you enjoy anything then? No. But did you suffer? No. What being would not sacrifice all pleasure for the certainty that he would never suffer pain again!" (Juliette I, 83-85).
These doctrines of the soul are not the only possible ones for materialism. Durand, e.g., asserted that the soul was a fire that was extinguished after death and permitted its content to pass over into the world of matter (Juliette III, 247). Saint Fond constructed the world from molecules malfaisantes. Hence he only saw wickedness in the universe, evil, disorder and crime. Evil existed before the creation of the world and will exist after it. Virtue hence suffers great torments. Actually Saint Fond believed in a beyond, punishment and rewards. In order to prevent his victims from reaching heaven he concluded a bargain with them and had them sign their soul to the devil with their own blood on a piece of paper, which was sealed in a pederastic fashion; the victim was thereafter horribly tortured to death (Juliette II, 287, 341).
Following Holbach's methods, who characterized every religious impulse as a mental insanity, de Sade never tired of ridiculing the concepts of God and religion. His atheism was clothed in "a fanatic misotheism: ‘if there isn't a God, I'll invent one' for the sole purpose of mocking and deriding the invented God." The idea of such a chimera and the erection of such a monster is the only injustice that Delbène cannot forgive mankind. "My blood boils at His very name. I think I see around me all the trembling shadows of the poor unfortunates whom this horrible superstition has sacrificed." Delbène then delivered a critique of the different theories of God. The Jews indeed spoke of a God but they did not explain this concept and spoke of him only in childish allegories. The Bible was written long after Moses by different people and "stupid charlatans." Moses asserted that he received the Commandments directly from God Himself. Was not this preference for a God, Delbène declared, by a petty, ignorant people ridiculous? The miracles in the Bible were not reported by any historian. And how this God treated "the chosen people!" Scattered all over the world and hated by all the world. God need not be sought among the Jews. But perhaps among the Christians? And Delbène found even greater absurdities here. Jesus is even worse than Moses. The latter had God perform the miracles. The former made them himself! The religion proved the prophet and the prophet proved the religion.
Since the existence of a God cannot be proven by either Christianity or Judaism, we must fall back on our own reason. But this in both man and animal is the result of the coarsest mechanisms. If one tries to recall a thing as an absent object then memory becomes a reminder. If one tries to recall it, without being told of its absence, he sees it as an actually present object as the result of fantasy, the true cause of all our errors. The imagination consists of "objective ideas," which do not show us reality, and the memory consists of "real ideas," which actually show us existing things. God is the product of the imagination, the "stupid chimera" of a "debilitated imagination" which belongs only to an idea objective without real existence. God is a "vampire" who sucks the blood of men (Juliette I, 49-62). In actuality God does not exist since the eternally working nature finds herself in perpetual motion from her own power and not received from the creator as a present. For then one would have to believe in the existence of an indolent being who after he had made his gift went back to sleep. Such a being is ridiculous on account of its superfluity (Philosophy in the Boudoir I, 56).
And what a monster is this God! He drowned, murdered, tortured, harassed and did more damage to His people than any dozen Satans could ever dream of. His chief torment was His creation of a religion and a traveling salesman sent to curb amid a fanfare of angels and some thunderbolts. But nay! He was conceived by a sinful Jewess in a stall! Let us follow him and see what he does and hear what he says! What divine mission did he fulfill? What secrets did he reveal?
We see first of all an obscure childhood, some work he did for the Jewish priests of the temple of Jerusalem, then a fifteen year disappearance, during which time he imbibed the virus of the Egyptian cult, which he brought to Judea. He went so far as to reveal himself as the Son of God, and equal to His father in power: He created at the same time a third being, the Holy Ghost, and tried to make us believe that these three persons were not three persons but really only one! He said He took on a human form so that He could save us. This sublime ghost had to become matter and flesh to set the world ablaze with his miracles. He changed water into wine at an evening meal for some drunken men. He deludes some fools into thinking He knows the secrets of life. One of His companions plays dead for Him so that he can be "brought back to life." He climbs a mountain with two or three of His friends and performs some awkward legerdemain of which a thousand jugglers of today would be ashamed. He damns all who will not believe in Him and promises the kingdom of heaven to His believers. He left no written work, spoke little and did less. Yet He drew many by his rebellious talk and was finally crucified. In His last moments He promises his believers to appear as often as they call upon Him so that he might be eaten by them. He lets Himself be executed without His dear papa exerting the slightest effort to save Him from such an ignoble death. His followers gathered and cried that humanity would be lost unless they saved appearances by some trickery. Let us drug the watchmen, steal the corpse and announce His resurrection! This is a sure way of making people believe in a miracle. Then it will aid us in spreading this new theory. The trick succeeded. All idiots, women and children go gadding about this miracle and hence no one in the city will believe in this God. Not a man lets himself be converted. The life of Jesus is publicly advertised. This empty fairytale finds people who believe it true. His apostles put words into the mouth of their self-created redeemer which He had never dreamt of. Some exaggerated maxims are made the basis of their morals and since this was announced to all the beggars, love of neighbors and charity were made the first virtues. Diverse bizarre ceremonies were introduced under the name "sacraments," one of the most foolish of which is the changing of a piece of bread into the body of Jesus by a few words from a sinful priest (Philosophy in the Boudoir I, 60-64). It is hence not surprising that one frequently encounters the statements by the Marquis that he considers the defamations of the priests and religion to be a moral obligation. The discovery of new insults and curses takes up a good bit of the time of his characters. Dolmance becomes very angry that there is no God for he often wants to insult this dégoûtante chimère and at such times desires his existence (Philosophy in the Boudoir I, 125-126).
From these theoretical maxims Marquis de Sade succeeded in arriving at a practical philosophy of life, his "philosophy of vice."
To realize the triumph of vice in human society there must be a suitable pedagogy at hand. Marquis de Sade rightly recognized that the corruption of the youth meant the general downfall of morality. So from the pattern of Mireabeau’s Education of Laura he wrote the Philosophy in the Boudoir as a manual for the education in vice; he developed in it the theoretical principles and practical applications for the seduction and demoralization of a young girl. The education bans all nonsensical religious theories which tire out the "young organs" of the children and substitutes in its place instruction in the "social principles." They are also to be instructed in the difficult science of nature. If any one tries to smuggle in some childish religious fancies, he is to be treated as a criminal (Philosophy in the Boudoir II, 62 ff.). Marquis de Sade correctly saw that custom and habit were everything in education. Hence vice should be made an integral part of the customs and habits of the young people. "So be evil as often as possible! Then vice will gradually assume tremendous pleasurable proportions which cannot be dispensed with. Vice must become a virtue! And virtue a vice! Then there will be a new universe before your eyes, a consuming, passionate fire will heat your veins; it will become the 'electrical activity' that is the principle of life. Every day you will enfold new ruthless plans and see in all parts and in all ways the victims of your perverse feelings. Thus you will reach the rose-covered path that leads to the final goal, the last excesses of unnaturalness. You must never stop, hesitate and rest upon this path for then the highest pleasure will be forever lost to you. Above all, look out for that hydra, religion, whose dangerous whisperings will try to turn you from the good path." Delbène addressed these words to the fourteen-year-old Juliette (Juliette I, 27-30). The same advice was imputed later to the daughter of Saint Fond, her own daughter and Mademoiselle Fontages. Its effects have already been given in the statistics of Count Belmor.
So vice is systematically introduced into all the social relations; we mention only the most important.
Love and marriage are chimerical concepts for de Sade. With a jesuit casuistry Duvergier distinguished the two kinds of love, the moral and the physical. A woman can morally regard her beloved or husband and love physically and temporarily whoever sets his foot in her garden. Besides the temperament of woman demands many lovers (Juliette I, 286). Delbène, that great pedagogue of vice, delivered a long speech on the uselessness of morals for young girls and women. She asked astonishedly in the beginning: is a woman better or worse if a certain part of her body is more or less ouverte? According to her, morals must guarantee individual fortune. Otherwise they are worthless. Hence a maiden need not be forced to protect her virginity, if things go well and she burns to lose it. Indeed the more a girl gives herself the more she is to be loved and honored for making so many men fortunate. Hence one should not despise deflowered girls (Juliette I, 108).
As for marriage the question is not whether adultery is a crime in the eyes of the Laplanders who allow it, or of the French who forbid it, but whether humanity or nature is injured by such actions. Coition is as necessary as drink and food. Modesty is only a conventionnelle mode whose first origin was as a raffinement du libertinage. Now it is only a virtue of "dolts, bigots and idiots." It injures the health because it restrains important secretions. The "horrible results of sexual abstinence" have been described by many authors and especially by the author of The English Spy (London, 1784, p. 409-456). The communal possession of women is the only true law of nature and not monogamy, polyandry or polygamy. Since marriage is a subjective concept, independent of others, adultery by the wife does not infringe upon the honor of the husband. Delbène therefore gave many methods of how wives may best fool their husbands (Juliette I, 109-131).
The position of prostitution in society can easily be imagined from the foregoing tenets. Only a woman who has made companions and men happy with her embraces lives in the memory of mankind. Lucretia was very soon forgotten while Theodora and Messalina were sung of in thousands of poems. Shall woman be ascetic and live cold-bloodedly and unsung or shall she not rather walk the way of fire and blood and passion and satisfy her every desire?
The great influence of the doctrines of race conservation, leading to the theories of Malthus, may perhaps be underestimated today but in the eighteenth century it was like the Gospel in the middle ages.
To wars, diseases, famines, murders, "acts of God," etc., were added all possible methods of prevention of birth as an additional aid to nature. The spilling of the seed is no crime but a praiseworthy act; for it combines two useful objects, the creation of pleasure and the prevention of the increase of mankind. Less and better people than an influx of stupid masses! It was a natural result of the aristocratic system that limited the number of children mainly for the reason that they could pass on their great fortunes intact into one hand. Thus besides "moral restraint" Marquis de Sade lauded all the preventive means that satisfy pleasure yet prevent conception.
The most decided Malthusian was Saint Fond. He declared that France needed "blood let out of all her veins if she wanted to live." The artists and philosophers must be ejected, the hospitals and other institutions of mercy must be destroyed, and wars and famines must be brought about. At least two-thirds of the population must vanish (Juliette, III, 126, 261). Such an attempt was made by Borgia in Rome. Thirty-seven hospitals were destroyed and 20,000 persons burnt to death (Juliette IV, 258). In Justine the bishop developed a system of practical Malthusianism. Firstly, all children were to be murdered. Secondly, there were to be periodic visits of the villages by the soldiers and all superfluous members of the family were to be killed. Thirdly, the freedom won by the Revolution must be again taken from the people, so that hunger, disease, etc., would return. Fourthly, a total suppression of all charitable institutions. Lastly, all celibates, pederasts, tribades, masturbators, murderers, poisoners, and suicides were to be held in the greatest esteem and honor (Justine IV, 280-293).
Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population first appeared in 1798 but his ideas on the danger of overpopulation were preceded, as we have seen, not only by Marquis de Sade but by other French philosophers such as Quesnay and Mirabeau. Indeed Oliver Goldsmith in his Vicar of Wakefield (1766) showed how great was the preoccupation of the people of the eighteenth century with this problem. Marquis de Sade developed in many books his theories of crime which were closely connected with his Malthusian ideas. They were very systematically given in the Philosophy in the Boudoir, which he had Dolmancé read from a brochure bought in the Palais Royal. In Justine Bressac declared that crime was a chimera. For murder only changed the form of matter and did not destroy it. Nothing was lost in nature. Hence there could be no crime (Justine L 209 ff). Dellsime gave a different exposition on the necessity of crime. Nature made men differently and gave them different fares. Hence one was fortunate, another unfortunate. The latter were subdued and tortured by the former. Hence crime was a part of the "plan of nature" and was as necessary to her as war, famine and disease (Juliette L 176).
In the Philosophy in the Boudoir crime was analyzed with the flambeau de la philosophie. There were four general classes of crimes: defamation, robbery, murder and immoral offences.
Defamation is either against an evil or good man. In the first case it does not matter much if one says more or less bad things about him. It does not harm a virtuous man and the poison of the defamer returns to himself. Defamation serves as a purgative and compensatory method. For it places virtue in its right light. For the victim must be in the position to disprove the defamation and hence his virtuous actions become well-known. But a defamer is not dangerous to society. For he serves to place the vice of evil men as well as the good of honorable men into general knowledge and hence should not be punished (Philosophy in the Boudoir II, 78-81).
Robbery was allowed at all times and was indeed praised as in Sparta. Other races considered it a martial virtue. It is certain that it provides strength, courage, dexterity, etc., all notable virtues for a republic. There have even been societies in which the victim was punished for not watching his property any better! It is unjust to sanction possession by a law for then all doors are open to the criminals who are reduced by this knowledge. It is indeed fairer to punish the victim than the thief (Philosophy in the Boudoir II, 81-84). According to Dorval, that great thief and theoretician of his profession, power is the first root of thievery. The stronger steal from the weaker. Nature desires it this way. Laws against thievery are invalid works of men. Man now steals legally. Justice steals when it is paid for its decisions, a service that should be free. The priest steals when he is paid for being a pander between God and man. Dorval enumerated the thefts of all the professions and then gives a history of robbery in all lands concluding with the statement that at the end of the rule of Louis XIV, the people paid 750 millions a year as taxes and only 250 millions went into the state treasury. Hence 500 millions were stolen (Juliette I, 203-222).
Moral crimes must also be regarded indifferently by a republic for it does not matter whether the person is modest or not. Modesty is a product of civilization, principally due to the coquetry of women. Clothing, for example, which serves more to excite the curiosity than to protect from the weather. The care and development of clothing reveals the fact that women feared that men would take no notice of them if they were naked. Prostitution is the natural result of moral laws. It is hence viewed as a disgrace because the prostitutes take gifts for the pleasures they both give and receive. For marriage is also prostitution. For a man can get a wife only in most cases when he has a good position. Just as we give the right to pleasure to men so in a republic there can be no double standards and women must be given the same right. The results of such double freedom, children without fathers, are not injurious for all men have a common mother, the "fatherland!" The right of pleasure must be given to the girl from the tenderest age. Indeed the pleasures of love serve to beautify women.
Adultery is a virtue. There is nothing that is so opposite to nature as the "eternality" of the marriage bond. The adulterer is the champion of nature. Many ethnological examples are given to show the usefulness of adultery.
Incest is also a virtue! It serves freedom and strengthens the family love. Incestuous relations are found in all times and places. Again many examples are produced to show that incest bred strong races and was generally beneficial. This custom must be made a law because it has "fraternity" as a basis. But "sorority," too, must not be forgotten. Women have as much right as men.
Rape is also no crime and is less harmful than robbery. For the latter robs property irreparably and the former uses and returns the property. And besides it had to be done sometime or other, with or without the sanction of the church.
To punish pederasty is a barbarity for no "abnormity of taste" can be a crime. Just as little is tribadism a crime. Both practices are highly regarded by the aged. Marital people indeed highly praised them because they enhanced courage and bravery (Philosophy in the Boudoir II, 84-114).
Finally the fourth class, murder. There are two ways to view it, by natural and political law. From the standpoint of nature murder is no crime. There is no difference to nature between men, plants and animals. Man is born, grows, multiplies, dies and returns to the soil as all the other creatures of nature. It is just as great a crime to kill an animal. It is only our vanity that finds a distinction. Of what value can a creature be if its creation cost nature no trouble at all? The creative material of nature proceeds from the decomposition of other bodies. Destruction is a law of nature; but it is merely a change of form, the transition from one existence to another—the metempsychosis of Pythagoras. Therefore murder is no crime since a change is not destruction. As soon as an animal ceases to live other small animals are formed from it. Therefore it is logical to assert that we help the purposes of nature by assisting in the change of forms. It is due to natural impulses that one man kills another just like famine, disease and primal events. Nature has given us hatred, vengeance, and war. Therefore murder is no crime against nature.
It is also a great factor in politics. France became free by murder. What is war? A science of destruction. It is strange that men teach the art of war openly, reward those who kill their enemies yet damn murder as a crime.
From the social standpoint murder is also no crime. What matters a single member to society? The death of a man has no influence upon the entire population. Even if three-fourths of the people die out, there would be no change in the circumstances of the survivors.
How must murder be considered in a martial and republican state? A nation that has thrown off the tyrant's yoke to become a republic can maintain itself only by crime. All intellectual ideas in a republic are subjugated under the "physics of nature" and so the freest people give themselves most gladly to murder. De Sade here gave many examples. For example, in China the undesirable children are thrown into the sea and the famous traveler, Duhalde, estimated that the daily toll of victims was more than 30,000! Is it not wiser for a republic to stem the number of its citizens? In a monarchy population must be encouraged since the tyrants can become rich only by the number of inhabitants. Revolutions are only the results of overpopulation.
These ideas of Marquis de Sade did not spring from the brain of a madman. Very similar ideas were developed by the great terrorists of the first French revolution. The justification for crime and murder was a natural trend of the time. It is notable that in his pre-revolutionary work Aline and Valcour little or no importance was given to robbery and murder and that he took them both in his system of sexual theories during and after the Revolution.