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BEBEL’S LIBEL ON WOMAN1
By
the
Rev. W. MacMAHON, S.J., M.A.
It is time a protest was made against the publication,
as No. 15 of the Bellamy Library, of Bebel’s Woman.
What is the history of this issue ? As long ago as 1885
there appeared Woman in the Past, Present, and Future ;
translated from the German, Vol. I of the International
Library of Social Science.2 A reprint was issued in the
Bellamy Library in 1893 ; and now it is again reprinted
without any date and without any alteration—an old
translation foisted upon the public with no indication
that the work makes no attempt to correspond to the
present German edition. English publishers have
failed during an entire month to procure for the present
writer a copy of the 1910 German edition, but there is
evidence enough that the work has been considerably
changed.3 In the Reichstag Bebel protected himself
against quotations from his own writings by saying he
had “ developed,” and that his party was “ continually
1 Reprinted with additions from The Crucible for June, 1911.
2 Not only is this book being industriously circulated among the
half-educated, but its anti-Christian statements find their way,
usually unacknowledged, into writings of various kinds touching on
social and women’s questions which reach a more cultured class.
The Social Democratic Party Almanack for 1911 has a portrait of
Bebel filling the centre of the sheet. He thus becomes the patron
for the year. Yet he can be known in English to the S.D.P.
only through his Woman of at least twenty-six years back.
s See Postscript, pp. 24-30.
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Bebel's Libel on Woman
moulting.” Die Frau has gone through an incredible
number of editions, and Bebel, in a letter dated April
28, 1911, says that since the time of the English
translation “ my book has been much changed both
in title and contents. I undertook alterations and
amplifications at various times.” Whether these are
for the better or the worse, the English version remains
as it was more than a quarter of a century ago, and by
it we are for the present constrained to judge him. Is
this scientific ? Yet we read in italics on p. 256,
“ Socialism is science, applied with knowledge and
understanding to all branches of human activity.” And
the Introduction concludes, “ In the following argu
ment I shall not hesitate to draw such conclusions as
are demanded by results based on the examination of
facts.” Again on p. 108, “ It is with facts alone that
we are concerned.” Has there been no advance in our
knowledge of facts during the interval ? Was there no
need to bring up-to-date arguments based on statistics
ranging from 1856 to 1877 ? no need for a footnote to
the figures of the “ last census in London ” (p. 107) ?
Is it still a fact that there is in Germany only
one suffragist authoress (p. 143) ? There would
appear to be considerable contempt for English
intelligence on the part of the Fabian Society 1 which
recommends the book, of Justice which advertises
it exactly under the notices of “ Women’s Socialist
Circles,” of Herbert Burrows who praises it, of Mrs.
Dora B. Montefiore who urges that “ every Socialist
woman who has time to read a book of over two
hundred and fifty pages should make a point of study
ing Bebel’s work.”2 Is it zeal for the truth that urges
1 Wliat to Read, October, 1910.
2 Position of Woman, p. 1. Mrs. Montefiore has some qualms
about her recommendation, and over the page she continues, “ As,
however, biological and sociological studies have advanced rapidly
since Bebel wrote his book on Woman, there are to be found now
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
5
on the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist
Sunday Schools who make the work a class-book for
girls ?1
It is to be feared that it is altogether another quality
in the book which procures for it its vogue. That those
who push its sale have other interests than those of
mere truth is cynically confessed by Bebel in the
preface to the sixth German edition (1886), where he
remarks that he no longer agrees with all the positive
statements made in the book, yet he re-issues it again
“ because it is still of some value for agitating ” ! From
the character of the work, from its open attack on
God and religion, from its slander of humanity, from its
nauseous treatment of the question of sex, the publica
tion seems to be part of what Bebel has stated to be
the policy of orthodox Socialists in Germany—“ to
retain the wounds of the body social in a festering
condition?’
Examination of the book in detail is a troublesome
task, partly because much of it is defiling, partly from
the uselessness of contradicting wild general state
ments, partly owing to the absence of reference to
authorities alleged for particular facts. To find a single
sentence which Bebel quotes, it has been necessary, for
instance, to hunt through six volumes of Eusebius,
nine of Origen, eleven of St. Jerome, sixteen of St.
Augustine.
Where we can bring Bebel of the early eighties
in the writings of modern scientists interpretations of the past, and
forecasts for the future, which are necessarily not contained in
August Bebel’s writings.” But why are they “ necessarily not con
tained ” at least in last year’s German edition ? And can Mrs.
Montefiore honestly hope that every Socialist Woman who has
time to read 250 pages will be able to detect and reject these old
errors ?
1 Cf. Syllabus of the Hyde Socialist Sunday School, p. 26.
“ Course 7. Girls' Class. Age about 15 to 18. Why Women are
■prevented from fulfilling their mission. (1) Historical and Econo
mic Reasons. Reference book, Woman (Bebel).”
�6
Bebel's Libel on Woman
to book, his failure to stand the test makes us marvel
that such stuff should be of use to push the cause of
Socialism either in Germany or England. The most
unlearned reader must be pulled up by the assertion
(p. 187) that technical improvements have succeeded in
stripping the perilous calling of the miner of its dangers,
and that from this success we may gather how Socialism
will reduce the disagreeables of all labour to a minimum
(pp. 186-7). But will the ordinary reader know enough
history to answer when he is asked (pp. 32-3) “ What
shall we say when we hear that Charles the Great . . .
had no fewer than six wives at one time ? ” The
monarch was not a moral man, he repudiated his first
wife against the Pope’s protest ; but his second wife
died before he married his third, and she in turn was
dead before he took a fourth.1 Are we to believe that
Bebel has unearthed secret history ? Let us try him
again. One would have thought that the Carnival was
a simple matter. It might have a history of precedent,
but in itself, as a natural ebullition previous to the
restraints of Lent, it is very human. Not so. It was
a machination of the Papacy, encouraging wild mirth
and profanation the better to keep the populace docile.
It took place, not when we had supposed, but “ for the
three days before Passion Week ” (p. 40) ! The dis
graceful indecency which is alleged on p. 33 to have
attended the entry of the Emperor Charles II into
Bruges must be an error of some kind, as in
Charles Il’s time there was hardly any Bruges to enter.
What authority can attach to a writer who asserts
(pp. 29, 102) the existence of the Jus Primae Noctis ?
Even when Bebel wrote, the absence of evidence for
the Right was proved, and there is no excuse for one
1 For a different ordering of his marriages, which, however,
equally bars out the six wives, see Lavisse, Histoire de France,
II, i, pp. 281, 306.
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
7
writing as though no investigations had been macle and
published since the myth was put forward again by the
Encylopasdists of the eighteenth century. The pious
custom of continence on the wedding night came to be
known as the Droit de Seigneur, God’s Right ; fines
were paid in feudal times on occasion of the marriages
of vassals ; brutal nobles abused their might not only
when a wedding was toward. But these facts are no
help to Bebel’s argument, and he falls back on the
reassertion of an exploded fable.
Equally unsound is the alleged fact with which he
seeks to bolster up the assertion that Christianity
thought slightingly of women. Twice he tells us
(pp. 18, 26) that the'Council of Maqon (sz'c) in the sixth
century discussed the question whether women had
souls, thus proving that the Church was apt to regard
woman as a thing and not as a human being. It is easy
to see behind the misprint that the allegation refers to
the Council of Macon held in 585. Now of this Council
we have the official decrees, and there is no reference
to any such discussion. Whence then springs the
story ? From a misunderstanding of a clear paragraph
in Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum (viii. 20).
Gregory, who was not himself present at the assembly,
relates what he had heard of a discussion on a point of
grammar.
In this Council,” he says, “ there was one
of the bishops who declared that a woman could not
be called homo. But when the other bishops had
reasoned with him, he held his peace, for they showed
him that the sacred text of the Old Testament laid
down that in the beginning when God created man it
was said ‘ male and female He created them, and He
called their name Adam,’ which means man of the
earth, thus applying the same term to woman and man
alike, for He designated each of them equally homo.”
There is no question as to the souls of women ; the
�8
Bebels Libel on Woman
story is simply that one of the bishops doubted whether
it would be correct to apply to a woman the generic term
homo, and that he yielded before the appeal to Scripture
use brought forward by the other bishops. Gregory
himself followed the classical use of the word homo as a
generic term applicable to both sexes ; and he puts it
down in his Chronicle as a little point of interest that a
brother bishop questioned the linguistic correctness of
the usage. How can there be found here any sugges
tion of a conciliar discussion as to whether women had
souls ?1
More baseless and more repulsive is a parallelism
asserted (p. 16) when, after recounting the prostitution
that too frequently formed part of pagan worship and
instancing the chambers at the temples of Venus, &c.,
Bebel continues : “When Jesus drove out the dealers
and money-changers for desecrating the Temple of
Jerusalem, these same chambers existed there, in which
sacrifices were offered to the Goddess of Love.” Bebel
has read of the horrible defiling of the Temple by the
conquering Antiochus and of the revellings of the Gen
tiles ; how has he come to forget the solemn purification
by the Jews three years later, and how has it escaped
him that all this took place two centuries before our
Lord drove out the money-changers (2 Machabees, chaps,
vi., x.) ?2 Really his only qualification for speaking on the
subject seems to be his hostility ; let us turn to a matter
where we would expect him to speak from knowledge.
A Socialist leader should be accurate in economics,
yet Bebel thus formulates (p. 245) the law of Diminishing
Returns: “The returns of a field are directly propor1 See an article by Fr. Thurston in The Month, January, 1911.
2 As often as the regular reading of the Law in the synagogue
reached Deuteronomy xxiii. 17, 18, the Israelite heard the express
prohibition of the monstrous association of immorality with worship.
Bebel does not seem to be familiar with the books of the Law, rior
can he know that the Hebrews had no word in their language to
express the idea of goddess.’
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
9
%
tionate to the amount of labour (including science and
technical appliances) expended on it, and to the amount
of suitable manure employed.” If he believes in the
possibilities of great advances under Socialism, there is
no reason for him thus to throw dust in his readers’
eyes and shirk the law as defined, say, in the Encyclo
pedia of Social Science : “ In each stage of progress
there is a limit beyond which the labour expended upon
a given area cannot be increased without causing a
diminution of returns.” In a note (p. 201) he remarks
011 the communistic tone of three former Popes and
Fathers of the Church.
Unfortunately his first
quotation is from a spurious letter which he uncritically
attributes to Pope Clement I. Next he quotes “ Bishop
Ambrosius Milan ” (as who should say, “ Deputy Bebel
Berlin”), and seems to refer to the De Officiis Ministrorum, i. 28, where St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, tells
of the original common possession of Paradise which
has been followed (i. 29) by private property. Bebel
might read the Bishop’s tractate on Naboth’s Vineyard,
a recognition of the plucky farmer’s just defence of his
private property. His third quotation is Pope Gregory
the Great’s condemnation of those who refuse food to
the starving (Regale Pastoralls, iii. 21). Bebel cannot
have gone to the sources at first-hand and has suffered
accordingly.
The more general treatment of sociology is equally,
false and ignorant. From page 7 to page n Bebel
deals with the history of marriage. “ On the threshold
of the past we find the horde as the first human
community.” “ At first, and for a considerable length of
time, no lasting union existed between man and wife ;
unrestricted intercourse (promiscuity) prevailed.” From
male egotism rose the marriage of a single man to a
single woman. Polygamy was later introduced by
ambition, and woman became the most valuable booty
�io
Bebel's Libel on Woman
of war. With a priori dogmatism he asserts primitive
promiscuity, and the rise of the monogamic family along
with the rise of private property ; and passing from
false history to misleading prophecy he tells us that
with property will disappear indissoluble monogamy.
He draws an imaginary line of development back into
the past and forward into the future, and sets monoga
mous marriage as a stage midway between the horde
and the day-to-come of easy divorce. Nor does he
present this history as an hypothesis, but as established
fact. A sorry example of the Socialism that is “ science
applied with knowledge and understanding to all
branches of human activity.” Anthropologists, the
real scientists upon this branch, hold it unscientific
to lay down stages of development ; for them the
problem is open because of the lack of evidence ; they
acknowledge that they cannot get back to the earliest
stage of human life. The main “ proof ” of primitive
promiscuity, viz., succession through females, has been
shown to be no proof, not even a presumption.1
Scientists suspect the supposed state of promiscuity as
suicidal ; it seems the race would never have survived
it. Even as an hypothesis it is rejected by Darwin
as least likely : “ It is exceedingly improbable that
primeval man and woman lived promiscuously
together” (Descent of Man, ii. 346). To those who
derive our origin from the highest apes and yet start
us with promiscuity, we may retort that this is to lift
us below the ape. To the Catholic, primitive man is
Adam and Eve and their children, and here we have
not savages, but human beings worthy of a Creator
who desired creatures capable of paying Him rational
worship. As to the degradation of the entire race, or
the alternative continuation at all times in some regions
of such a civilization as science now disinters at ever
1 See Devas, Studies in Family Life.
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
11
more remote dates in Assyria and Egypt, the Church is
silent. No Catholic is Westermarck, but in his History
of Human Marriage he rejects promiscuity as a proved
world-condition : “ There is not a shred of genuine
evidence for the notion that promiscuity formed a
general stage in the history of mankind ” ; he cannot
even accept the hypothesis of a continual up grade :
“ We may, perhaps, say that irregular connexions
between the sexes have, on the whole, exhibited a
tendency to increase along with the progress of civiliza
tion” (p. 69). Careful students stand arrayed against
Bebel when he emerges from beyond the dawn of
history.
We expect Bebel to be a hostile critic when he treats
of the Bible narrative, but we are surprised when we
find his hostility blinding him to statements made in
the book he is judging. Thus in a note (p. n) he says
of Cain : “He possessed no sister, as, according to
the Bible story, the first pair of human beings were
Malthusians or adherents of the Two-children System.”
But “according to the Bible story” besides the children
Abel, Cain, and Seth, Adam “ begot sons and daughters ”
(Gen. v. 4).
Bebel is scandalized (p. 18) that Abraham “lent his
wife Sarah without scruple to other men, e.g., to'
Pharaoh.” Abraham is blameworthy enough because,
not rising to a higher morality, he said, “They will kill
me,” and for fear of his life did not protest when “ the
woman was taken into the house of Pharaoh ” (Gen. xii.),
and there is no necessity to invent the charge that
he used to “lend his wife without scruple.” The
polygamy of the patriarchs found no disfavour with
Jehovah (p. 19) ; and has Bebel now to learn that this
was so because, for the increase of the chosen people,
God, the author of marriage, gave leave for more than
one wife—a leave that was not subversive of the end
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Bebel's Libel on Woman
of marriage (as would be polyandry), and so could
be granted by the supreme Legislator, though it is
ultra vires for any other power ? Surely, it is trifling
to object that “The ten commandments of the Old
Testament are, as a matter of fact, addressed only to
man, for the tenth commandment names women along
with the servants and the domestic animals” (p. 24).
Was there no commandment addressed to servants not
to kill, not to steal ? Were those only understood to‘
be bound who had been brought out of the land of
Egypt ?
Equally hard is it to believe in the sincerity of the
inference put forward on the same page that Christ
despised women, because “ when His mother humbly
sought His assistance at the marriage feast at Cana, He
replied, ‘Woman, what have I to do with, thee?’”
Did no doubt enter Bebel’s mind that in the original
(John ii. 4) there might be no reproof, no rudeness such
as is conveyed by the sound of the salutation in
European versions ? Christ gives His mother her title
of prophecy, and gently lets her know that He needs
no pressure on her part to perform the miracle of kind
ness she asks of Him. What perversity to pass by such
incidents as that of Christ conversing with the Samaritan
woman upon the profoundest truths, His dealing with
the woman who was “ a sinner in the city,” with the
woman taken in adultery, His friendliness with the two
sisters of the family of Bethany, and to wrest a charge
of churlishness from the account of His presence at
the marriage of Cana, so full of human sympathies !
From the words “Some there be that are eunuchs
for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”—where, in answer to
the disciples who urge .that it is better to avoid the
burdens of matrimony, the Master replies that it is not
better for all, but to some is given the gift of living
singly for God—Bebel (p. 24) concludes that Jesus
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
13
looked with contempt upon marriage. And that the
disciples may not be greater than their Master, all are
accused of regarding marriage as evil (p. 25). In
support he gives quotations without references from
Tertullian, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Origen, Eusebius.
Jerome and Augustine are amongst the Fathers who
wrote entire tracts in defence of marriage against
Gnostic and Manichaean heretics. Origen declares
that God is the author of the matrimonial union
(Comment, in Matthaeum, xiv. 16). Tertullian writing to
his own wife exclaims, “ Whence are we to find lan
guage adequate to describe the happiness of that
marriage which the Church cements, and the oblation
confirms, and the benediction signs and seals, which
angels report and the Father holds as ratified” (Ad
Uxorem, ii. 9). Eusebius says, “To those who are not
called to the priesthood, holy Scripture gives liberty,
nay more, openly proclaims to all that 1 marriage is
honourable and the bed undefiled ’ ” (Demonst. Evang.,
i. 9). There is not a Father who while praising virginity
does not explicitly guard himself against the libel of
Bebel that marriage is accounted evil. St. Jerome’s
phrase (Against Jovinianus, i. 3) is typical of all : “Will
silver cease to be silver if gold is more precious than
silver ? ”
St. Paul, says Bebel (p. 25), hating the flesh hated
woman. This of St. Paul who says that those who
forbid marriage “give heed to spirits of error and
doctrines of devils ” (1 Tim. iv. 1, 3)^ who gives com
mand “ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved
the Church, and delivered Himself up for it” (Eph.
v. 25). And “ So also ought men to love their wives as
their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth him
self. For no man ever hated his own flesh ; but
nourisheth it and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the
Church” (Eph. v..28, 29). On p. 26 we are given
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Bebel's Libel on Woman
i Tim. ii. it, 12 in italics and told that here St. Paul
“ raises his influential voice against the higher education
and culture of women ” ; but St. Paul is here engaged
in giving instructions for the ordering of public worship.
St. Peter and St. Paul are said to justify “ any simpleton
of a man” in considering “himself better than the
cleverest woman” (pp. 25, 26), because they require
the obedience of the wife to the husband “ even as
Christ is the head of the Church.” St. Joseph was head
of the holy family (Matt. ii. 13, 20), does the Church
therefore consider him better than Mary ? The simple
fact is that the husband’s headship, his right within
the society of two to decide on matters morally in
different, confers no personal superiority. The wife is
not inferior to the husband any more than in Bebel’s
imagined Socialism the worker is inferior to the
“business executive” (p. 181) who see that he gets his
due return in goods, and no more, for work done
(pp. 180, 194). Before the Church and before God the
sexes are equal: “ there is neither male nor female ”
(Gal. iii. 28). Listen to Tertullian on the equality
in marriage : “ Both are brethren, both fellow-servants,
no difference of spirit or of flesh” {Ad Uxorem, ii. 9).
Christ himself is for all the type of virtue ; the same
law binds all; “ With us what is not allowed to woman
is equally disallowed to man” (Jerome, Epist., 77).
What injustice this equality of moral burdens would
entail if there were any doctrine of woman’s natural
inferiority! The Church recognizes what nature
teaches, that woman is different from man, not that
she is his inferior. Physically, mentally, and morally
she is other than man ; the sexes are complementary,
each supplying the defects of the other. Her constitu
tion is normally more delicate and is at times taxed
more than man’s. Her outlook is more ideal, her
imagination more lively, her emotion more pervading ;
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
15
he is generally colder of temperament, more abstract in
his views, more critical in discernment. Who shall
range these diverse gifts in a scale of superiority ? The
Church may recognize an actual inferiority due to
education and the conditions that have ruled the life of
women in the past; the Church may realize that the
cares of maternity will for ever bar the majority of
womankind from identity of opportunity with man.
But she refuses to agree that these circumstances can
touch with degeneracy woman’s being. If anything,
the Church sees a more spiritual mind in the woman,
adapting her more naturally for the education of the
soul as of the body of the young.
Bebel is confused and contradictory on this vital
matter of the difference of the sexes. He says (p. 8)
that woman’s sexual peculiarities are the foundation of
the bondage to which he declares she has been sub
jected ; that this bondage of centuries has lessened her
bodily and mental powers ; that her education has been
deliberately directed to increasing this weakness (p. 65) ;
that consequently “she is a fruitful soil for all forms of
religious and other charlatanism” (p. 66). He main
tains that : “ the only dissimilarity which has a right to
permanence is that established by nature for the fulfil
ment of a natural purpose, which is externally unlike
but in substance the same ” (p. 122). What precisely
does he wish to convey by this last belittling clause ?
“ I too,” he concedes (p. 141) “ consider it an advan
tageous division of labour to let the men defend their
country in the field, while the women undertake the
care of house and home.” Yet he decries this division
on pages 112 and 113. He looks forward to the realiza
tion of “the first fundamental law of the Socialistic
community—the equal duty of all to labour without the
distinction of sex” (p.180), to the day when “ she works
under exactly the same conditions as man ” (p. 229), when
�i6
Bebel's Libel on Woman
all “functions may become simply alternating ones to be
undertaken in turn by all those engaged in the branch,
without distinction of sex” (pp. 183-4). we are to under
stand from this that the weakness of the female sex and its
peculiar endowments are due entirely to centuries of
slavery, and that the progress of science (p. 130) will
make the sexes identical, assimilating them in nature,
function, and formation, then Bebel’s woman in the past
has never existed, his woman in the present is a creation
of his own out of this nothing, and his woman of the
future is a chimera. The difference of man and woman
meets us at every stage of history ; long ago woman
would have turned and revolted beneath this victimiza
tion ; the future will not destroy woman by making her
identical with man, nor by identifying these two complementaries destroy progress.
But let us take advantage of his want of clearness to
assume Bebel to mean that woman has ever been, is, and
will always be fundamentally different from man, and
that this difference has been in a variety of ways pressed
to the subjection of women. What are we then to
make of his assertions (p. 26) that “the advancing civi
lization of the West, acting in spite of Christianity,” was
the cause of gradual improvement, and that Christianity
“ has merely denied its true attitude with regard to
woman, and that reluctantly and under pressure ” ?
“Christianity,” says Bebel on the same page, “was a
mixture of Judaism and Greek Philosophy.” , Yet he
must know that, if it were only this mixture, Christianity
would not be in the world to-day the strong bulwark,
against which he finds it necessary to hurl his pages of
attack. Celsus in the second century, accused the early
Church of doing all for women. If the elevation of
woman was not due to Christianity, let Bebel explain
why it was present under the Christian emperors and
not in the unchristian Germanic tribes ? In the early
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
Church, women shared the charismata, later they were
in honour as deaconesses and eminent as martyrs.
Could St. Paul do more to elevate the union of husband
and wife than he does when by a sublime comparison
he gives as the model for married life the union of
Christ and His Church ? How often he salutes women
as his “ fellow-workers” in the Lord, and most touchingly
in Romans xvi. 13, “ Salute Rufus, chosen in the Lord,
and his mother and mine.” Hear St. Peter’s exhortation
in his first Epistle (iii. 7), ‘‘Ye husbands, likewise dwelling
with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the
female as to the weaker vessel, and as to the coheirs of
the grace of life.” Christ Himself ordained that the
message of His Gospel should carry with it the story of
the woman who anointed His head with precious oint
ment : “ Amen, I say to you wheresoever this Gospel
shall be preached in the whole world, that also which
she hath done, shall be told for a memory of her”
(Matt. xxvi. 13, Mark xiv. 9). The fact is that to
Christianity the world is indebted for its highest con
ception of the equality that should exist between the
married ; it has effected more than all other forces com
bined against polyandry and polygamy and to preserve
Europe from the polygamous civilization of Mohamme
danism. Lecky, no friendly witness, bears testimony in
the passage, too long to quote in full, on pp. 234-5 of
vol. i of his Rationalism in Europe : “ The world is
governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there
been one which has exercised a more profound and, on
the whole, a more salutary influence than the medieval
conception of the Virgin. . . . All that was best in
Europe clustered around it, and it is the origin of many
of the purest elements of our civilization.” Where
paganism protected woman by subjecting her to a tute
lage that betrayed an absence of all confidence in her,
Christianity shields her by means more honourable to
�i8
Bebel's Libel on Woman
her, regarding her as privileged because of her physical
weakness and because of her dignity.
What compulsion forced Christianity to adopt this
attitude ? Is it not the natural working of the mission
of the Church to sanctify the individual ? Was it
“ shrewd calculation ” on the part of the Catholic Church
that honoured Mary as the Mother of God (p. 26), or is
the shrewdness Bebel’s, who sees in this a substitution
for heathen goddesses (p. 27) ?
Bebel strangely argues that the presence of known
sexual evil in the world proves that the Church condoned
it. He quotes Augustine (p. 92) as confessing the ne
cessity to the Church of the existence of prostitution,
and cites the provincial Council of Milan in 1665 as
though it “ expressed itself to the same effect.” He
does not say that his quotation (de Ordine, ii. 4) is from a
work written by St. Augustine immediately after his
conversion with which he later expressed his dissatis
faction in his Retractationes. Nor does he tell us that
Augustine’s argument is “ Cease to distinguish between
dishonest women and honest matrons and you have dis
order.” The date for the Council must be a misprint
for 1565, when bishops, princes, and magistrates were
urged to extirpate panderers out of their territories and
not to suffer bad women to dwell outside of some remote
assigned locality (Mansi 34A, Col. 72). In similar fashion,
England, when it enacted a muzzling order, must be
said to have declared rabies “ inevitable and organized
it by state regulations.”
To what effect is it to quote strong expressions from
ascetical sermons, when the congregations are reminded
that Adam’s sin, to which we owe the fall, was preceded
by Eve’s failure to observe the command laid upon them
both ; that in a pagan world woman’s safety, or her re
putation, often depends on withdrawing herself from
public association with lawless men ; that where licence
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
19
is rife woman is the spark, man the tow whence bursts
the flame of passion ; that as woman is glorified in Mary,
called the gate of heaven, because with her began the
recovery of the world, so is she humbled by the memory
of Eve, styled the gate of sin and death and hell, because
with her began the destruction wrought by Adam ?
Above all, such expressions fail to convey the spirit of
the Church when they are not merely misinterpreted,
but tainted in the original with Manichasism.
Bebel’s history of the Sacrament of Matrimony is brief
but full of errors. He says (pp. 28-9) that the early
marriage ceremony “had merely the character of a
private contract between two persons of different
sexes,” that not till the ninth century was its vali
dity made to depend on ecclesiastical sanction, and
that “it was not till the sixteenth century that the
Council of Trent raised marriage to the rank of a sacra
ment.” 1 Marriage as a natural contract was instituted
1 This charge of inventing sacraments was echoed by the Arch
bishop of Armagh (then Bishop of Down and Connor) at a Belfast
meeting. The Church Times of Jan. 13, 1911, thus comments on
his speech : “ It is with feelings of peculiar shame that we read
the outpouring of the right reverend prelate. It is true that he
began with a sort of hyper-orthodoxy by speaking of marriage
as 1 the most sacred institution which God had ordained since
man and woman came to be.’ We have always known marriage
to be a sacrament, but we must protest against its undue
exaltation to be the most sacred of all sacraments. But the
Bishop went on with a complete somersault to say that marriage
was discovered to be a sacrament only at the Council of Trent.
Furthermore, he made the astonishing assertion that the whole
of this doctrine was founded on ‘ a mistranslation in the
Douay version of the one text Ephesians v. 32.’ Thus the ‘ sacra
ment of marriage ’ was never heard of before the Council of Trent
—was never spoken of, for example, by any of the Schoolmen—and
the Council depended on an English translation which did not
appear till twenty years afterwards. This is theology with a
vengeance, not to say history. . . . With a further excursion into
history, the Bishop of Down informed his audience that before the
Council of Trent ‘marriage was a civil ceremony.’ He should
really have given some examples of this hitherto unknown cere
monial. But enough. We are filled with shame, we say, in hear
ing of this rubbish poured from the lips of a Bishop of our Com-
�20
Bebel's Libel on Woman
by the Author of Nature when He created the two
sexes, and its object and duties were determined by
Him. Jesus Christ elevated it to a sacrament and
committed its discipline to His Church and to “ the
ministers of Christ and the dispensers of the mysteries
of God” (i Cor. iv. i). When Christ forbade polygamy
and divorce, and St. Paul condemned the incestuous
Corinthian, the Head of the Church and His Apostle, in
their official capacities, controlled the union of the
sexes. It was in view of the denials of Luther and
Calvin that Trent declared anathema upon those who
should say that the sacrament of matrimony was in
vented by man. On a similar occasion of an error of
the day, Innocent IV three and a half centuries earlier
required the Waldenses to retract a like denial of the
sacrament. The Church, beginning from St. Paul in
his Epistle to the Ephesians, has ever taught of matri
mony what belongs to the essence of a sacrament. St.
Augustine makes matrimony equally a sacrament with
Baptism and Holy Orders (de Nupt. et Concup., x. ii :
de Bono Coniug., xxiv. 32), St. Ignatius, the martyr of the
second century, writes, “It is fitting that brides and
bridegrooms should.marry with the judgement of the
bishop, that their nuptials may be according to the
Lord and not according to passion ” (Epist. ad Polyc.} v.
2). St. Ambrose testifies to the Church’s ceremonial:
“ For as marriage itself ought to be sanctified by the
priestly veiling and blessing, how can that be called
marriage where there is no wedding of faith ?” (E/>., 19,
ad Vigil, n. 7). As we should expect from these few
early extracts, the liturgical books show a tradition of
matrimony as a sacrament going back to Apostolic
times ; this is attested even by the rituals of sects that
muuion in the greedy ears of Belfast groundlings. So speaks the
worst kind of demagogue, pandering to the fiercest prejudice,
stirring the most odious passions, and doing all in the name of ‘our
civil and religious liberties.’ Poor Ireland^! ”
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
21
separated themselves in the first centuries. The Church
never regarded ' marriage as a purely private concern
beyond her control ; witness her legislative regulations,
e.g., the second canon of the Council of Neo-caesarea in
the year 314, declaring null a marriage within certain
degrees, which the civil law allowed.
When this control has been thrown off, Bebel pro
mises the woman of the future freedom to enter a union
where “should incompatibility, disappointment, and dis
like ensue, morality demands the dissolution of a tie
that has become unnatural and therefore immoral ”
(p. 230). Such amorous relationships of mere whim or
passing inclination are likely to bring about a real sub
jection of woman to man’s injustice.
In Luther, Bebel finds one whose words, a true
interpretation of healthy nature, should be chiselled
over the doors of churches, declaring the begetting of
children a physical necessity for each man and woman,
that man or woman can no more oppose the sexual
instinct than he or she can cease from eating, drinking,
and sleeping (pp. 36, 43). “ The so-called animal
passions occupy no lower rank than the so-called
mental passions ” (p. 44). Marriage is the law for all ;
celibacy is unnatural and for none. Bebel needs a little
fundamental knowledge of physiology and psychology.
Animals satisfy their innate appetites according to their
instincts, and so fulfil the law of Nature. Man lacks
this sovereign instinct; his body is the seat of animal .
appetites, every one of which is good and implanted of
set purpose ; but they are means, not an end ; they are
means to be used for an end under the control of
reason where the appetite is inordinate. Some inclina
tions point to laws which have for their end the perfec
tion of the individual ; they are of obligation for each
individual ; every one is bound to take food and to
check any impulse to overeating. Other laws have the
�22
Bebel's Libel on Woman
perfection of the race for their end, and do not per se
bind each individual. Thus Nature’s tendency which
urges to the multiplication of the race is strong enough
to ensure the continuance of the race without making
necessary the marriage of a given couple. The bearing
of children is not always a social duty. Bebel on his
reading of Nature must be prepared to say that Nature
requires each individual absolutely to carry out the law
as soon as he or she has reached the age of being
capable.
“ Every one hath his proper gift from God (i Cor.
vii. 7), and different individuals meet different needs of
the community, which has to be maintained not alone
in bodily multiplication, but also in spiritual increase.
Virginity is a gift of God as is marriage ; but heroism
does not lie with marriage, and there is no fear of the
world taking the harder way.
Bebel again and again (pp. 36, 43-4-5-6-7, 84-5-6,
89, 253) lays it down that each must gratify this sexual
impulse undei' pain of bodily and mental disease. Let
us answer shortly by referring him to the resolution
passed unanimously by the Conference of Preventive
Medicine (Congress of Brussels, 1902) and signed by
more than 150 leading medical men, representatives
from all parts of the world : “ Young men should be
taught not only that chastity and continence are not
harmful, but further that these virtues are to be highly
recommended from the point of view purely of medicine
and hygiene.” The Lancet (February r, 1896) condemned
“ the heresy . . . that chastity is physiologically bad
for young men. We have quoted the words of leading
physicians and surgeons, e.g., Sir William Jenner, Sir
James Paget, Dr. Gowers, and Dr. Lionel Beale, to the
effect that chastity never did harm to mind or body,
that such discipline as it involves is excellent, and that
marriage can be safely waited for, even for years,
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
23
without the least clanger to health.” The British Medical
Journal says on December n, 1897 (p. 1742), “ Adult
men are sometimes under the impression that chastity
is a danger to health, and to them it is often useful to
be distinctly assured that such is not the case.”
But, urges Bebel, as an historic fact, an unmarried
clergy has carried licentiousness as a plague (pp. 30,
3T> 83, 97, 104). Scandals there have been, and not
least, there where is the source of much of the so-called
evidence. Take the testimony at the widest, and we
find marriage relations the purest in regions where
there is religious celibacy, and the harm is doubled
where the clergy is not celibate. Such a man as
Dollinger was well aware of the lesson of present and
past, and he held that celibacy was essential to the
efficiency of the clergy. Renan testified, “ The fact is
that what is commonly said about the morality of the
clergy is, so far as my experience goes, absolutely
devoid of foundation.” 1 Clerical celibacy (which
Bebel would seem to think (pp. 26, 252) only came in with
Gregory VII in the eleventh century) both on utilitarian
grounds and for the deeper reason of the spiritual
paternity forming Christ in souls (Gal. iv. 19), was from
the beginning regarded as the more excellent way ;
though it was not possible always to find unmarried
candidates for the priesthood, nor by the imposition of
hands to enjoin departure from wedded union. In the
fourth century the self-denying ordinance was general
in the West, and the Church has known how to provide
the means to enable her clergy to lead the celibate life.
What defections there have been are not due to the
law imposing an impossible burden, but the blame of
them must be laid upon those who, had there been no
law, would have been dishonest still.
It is impossible to be enthusiastic for Bebel’s picture
1 Catholic Encyclopedia, “ Celibacy.”
�24
Bebel's Libel on Woman
of the world to come, where as soon as the child is old
enough to leave the breast he passes to “ common
guardians ” (pp. 216-17), *° be reared in the atmosphere
of presumptive state-love ; where police, crime, and
religion disappear (pp. 212-15) anc^ there succeeds
“ the conviction that heaven is on earth ” (p. 224). His
vision of the future is not likely to be more true than
his view of our present world, where he sees no venera
tion for old age, no reverence towards innocence, no
joy in work done, no power of devotion or attachment
to transfigure the lowliness of service ; where marriage
is ever an affair of the market, pleasure always sought
in unlawful ways, crime and failure and misery the only
outcome of humanity’s struggle. Hypothesis, sophistry,
railing at the “ bourgeois,” will nevei* get rid of human
passions and the ills our flesh is heir to.
Woman has an ennobling work to accomplish for
the spirit of humanity ; the good genius of the race,
she balances the movements of the world of thought
and action. She is not condemned to mediocrity
because she may not aspire to masculine qualities. Her
lot demands amelioration and she rightly strives for
the recognition within organized society of the rights
which that organization entails. Bebel’s out-of-date
book is a stumbling-block in the way of woman’s
redress. Its facts are fictions ; it denaturalizes nature ;
its creed is corrupting ; it makes sex the divinity to be
served in an unrestrainedly animal world.
Postscript on the German Edition of 1910.
The title of the book is altered to Woman and
Socialism, but the method and main doctrine are un
changed. Religion is still charlatanism ; when Socialism
comes there will be no immorality, the sexual impulse
will be obeyed in unions that will last as long as liking
lasts. Statistics are fuller and more up to date ; the
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
25
“only” (Eng., p. 143) German suffragist authoress is
now (Germ., p. 292) the “first,” but the Council of
Milan (see above, p. 18) is still (Germ., p. 176) a
hundred years out. The curiosities about the Carnival
(above, p. 6) have disappeared ; the Malthusianism of
Adam and Eve (above, p. 11), the lending of his wife
by Abraham (above, p. it), and Jehovah’s attitude
towards polygamy (above, pp. 11-12), no longer find
mention. Instead of the horrible charge against the
worship of the Jews (above, p. 8) we now read
(Germ., p. 39) that up to about 150 years before our
era the Temple at Jerusalem was the ordinary
gathering ground of prostitutes—a statement which
1 effects as much on the doctrines of the Jews as a
Trade Union meeting in Trafalgar Square impugns
the management of the National Gallery. The fable
of the Council of Macon (above, pp. 7-8) is repeated
(Germ., p. 61), with the addition of the detail that
the Council by a majority of one decided for the fact
that women had souls !
Bebel still holds (Germ., p. n) as undoubted an
oiiginal horde stage of promiscuity for the human race
(above, pp. 9-10), and with him savages are a picture
of the past through which man has worked his way
upward in an infinitely long and slow course of develop
ment. In this realm of conjecture his faith is unhesi
tating, and in a phrase, saying there is no documentary
evidence, he rules out the possibility of contradiction
from the Bible even as a merely historical witness.
As to the differences of physical capabilities in men
and women, he has not yet spoken his mind definitely ;
but he has toned down an extreme evolutionary theory
and now holds quite safely that present differences are
to some unknown extent due to conditions of life and
education and to social developments. He clearly
admits a difference of physical characteristics which
�26
Bebel's Libel on Woman
ought not to be altered (Germ., p. 252), and agrees
(Germ., p. 261) that the qualities of men and women
are different but of equal value. Here is a portion of
page 122 of the English translation printed with
square brackets round the significant omissions of page
248 of the German (see above, p. 15): “ The only
dissimilarity which has a right to permanence is that
established by Nature for the fulfilment of a natural
purpose [which is externally unlike, but in substance the
same]. Neither sex can overstep natural boundaries,
as it would destroy its proper purpose in doing so ;
[upon this we may confidently rely. Neither sex is
justified in erecting barriers for the other, any more
than one class for another].” So that sex is something
deeper than class-distinction.
Bebel reaffirms (Germ. pp. 66-7) his interpretation
of the Jus Primae Noctis, and he appeals to Jacob
Grimm’s Weistumer, i (1840) and to Sugenheim’s History
of the Abolition of Serfdom-Vassalage (St. Petersburg,
1861). On Grimm Bebel should read his compatriot
Michael’s History of the German People in the Middle
Ages, i, pp. 54-5 (Freiburg, 1897) and see the long
list of authors there quoted. Modern research might
be expected to have discovered protestations and
evidence of resistance to a custom that would so
outrage human dignity ; but there is no new support
found for what historians call a “legend,” “a learned
superstition,” and the old foundation in such old writers
as Grimm and Segenheim consisted of anecdotes,
suspected passages, and misunderstood texts. To take
an instance which though remote in time has something
of local nearness to us, Bebel on Sugenheim’s
authority says that in Scotland the Jus was made
convertible into a tax by Malcolm III at the end of
the eleventh century. The source of this evidence
can be traced back to a History of Scotland by one
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
27
Hector Boethius of Aberdeen in the early sixteenth
century. He attributes the abominable right to the
clays of a legendary king Evenus, “ long centuries ”
before Malcolm, and states that it was only stamped
out by Malcolm’s substitution of the Laws of the
Merchet. Now the Leges Malcolmi, lib. iv, cap. xxxi,
give no hint of the conversion of any custom, have
no penalties for any one who should assert an ancient
Jus ; they simply give the different amounts to be paid
to the feudal lord on occasion of marriage. These
sums are to be paid by free or unfree, noble’s
daughter and thane’s daughter ; a count’s daughter
paid twelve cows to the Queen ! Where is there here
so much as a hint of the conversion of an old corrupt
practice ? The infamous right never existed, and for
historians the question is closed. See the works with
the subject-title by Louis Veuillot, A. de Foras, Karl
Schmidt.
There are in the German edition (pp. 414-15)
quotations from St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom,
and Bossuet additional to those on p. 201 of the
English version, to prove the communism of Early
Popes and Fathers (see above, p. o). No references
are given for these quotations, an omission which is
an affront to the intelligence of readers, and entails
vexatious toil on any one who is anxious to see that
authorities are rightly used. The quotation, which is
said to show the communism of St. Augustine, has
been discovered in his Interpretation of Psalm 131,
where after speaking of the law-suits and discords that
follow private property, he says : “ Let us then,
brethren, abstain from the possession of private
property, or from the love of it if we cannot abstain
from the possession.” This is not communism, but is
preaching the doctrine of the Master who gave the
Counsel (not Command) of Evangelical Poverty : “ If
�28
Bebel's Libel on Woman
thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and
come, follow me” (Matthew xix. 21). In the same
sermon the saint warns his hearers not to presume
on wealth or powerful friends if they have them. He
tells them that the man who has “ a full house, rich
lands, many farms, much gold and silver,” but does
not put his trust in them, knows that he must possess
them and not they possess him—such a one, he says,
is numbered among the poor of the Church to whom
the fifteenth verse of this psalm promises “ I will satisfy
her poor with bread.” Detachment, not communism,
is St. Augustine’s teaching.
Bossuet is cited from the Art of Government, drawn
from the Words of Holy Scripture, a work written for
the instruction of his pupil, the Dauphin. The place
may be found in Bk. I, Art. 3, Prop. 4 : “ Take away
government, the earth and all its goods are as common
among men as air and light. . . . According to the
primitive right of nature no one has a particular right
over anything, and everything is the prey of all (tout
est en proie a tons). . . . Hence springs the right of
property.” Mark how the last portion of the quotation
reads in Bebel, and hear the conclusion he draws from
it: “ ‘ Everything belongs to every one : and it is from
state government that property comes.’ This last phrase
means when more clearly explained that the transition
from common to private property is the cause of state
government which has to protect private property.”
Bossuet’s meaning is nothing of the kind. His argu
ment is that by nature the possession and use of the
earth and its fruits belong to man, but nature does not
assign and mark off particular goods as the property of
particular individuals. Hence in the absence of authority
might is right, none is secure against violence, and
“ everything is the prey of all.” But, says Prop. 4 : “ In
�Bebel's Libel on Woman
29
an ordered government each individual renounces the
right to seize by force whatever suits him ” ; under a
government legitimate claims are backed by the power
of the magistracy, the natural enemy of all violence ;
and the sustenance of each from the fruits of the earth
is assured. Bebel cannot have read his quotation in
Bossuet, or he would not have mistranslated the
French and distorted the argument.
There is a quotation from St. John Chrysostom which
a search through his works has failed to disclose.
Possibly the failure to recognize it may be due to the
translation not faithfully rendering the Greek. Bebel’s
alleged quotation runs, “ Let no man call anything his
own. We have received everything from God to be
used in common and mine and thine are lying words.”
The nearest parallel that can be found in St. Chrysostom
corresponds in nothing to the greater portion of the
quotation, but there is a resemblance to the last six
words in a homily on 1 Cor. xi. 19, “ mine and thine, that
chilling phrase ” (tovto to x^v^pov pfjp.a). In hundreds of
places Chrysostom preaches against the evils of luxury
and the immorality of the rich ; but he is careful to
point out that destitution is not virtue, nor wealth sin.
His doctrine is clear, and Bebel cannot give chapter
and verse to prove him communistic.
In the German, p. 60 (corresponding to p. 26 of the
English translation), where Bebel purports to be giving
the Christian view of woman, two quotations from St.
Thomas Aquinas are introduced. Here again there is
no reference, and an examination of the several prob
able places in St. Thomas has not discovered any such
texts as Bebel attributes to him.
On the whole, then, the 1910 edition in contrast
with the old English translation is disappointing ; the
wisdom that should come with years and with criticism
has borne little fruit. The promise Of “ conclusions
�30
Bebel's Libel on Woman
demanded by results based on the examination of facts ”
remains and seems likely to remain for Bebel an un
attainable ideal. A baseless history, warped Bible texts,
mistranslation of the Fathers, a travesty of Christianity,
spurious decrees of Councils, the Jus Primae Noctis—
these are the alleged facts. That on examination they
turn out to be fables leaves Bebel unconcerned and
makes no difference to his argument. But if that is
his attitude—and from his admission that he prints in
the 1886 edition statements with which he no longer
agrees, as also from the 1910 edition in general, such it
emphatically is-—he removes the whole discussion from
the level of serious historical enquiry down to that of
cynical mischief-making which trades on the ignorance
or gullibility of his readers. We regret that we must
take leave in this spirit of a book widely influential in
the Woman movement, but the position is of Bebel’s
choosing not of ours. We are fully alive to the need of
solid advocacy of the cause of Women, but it is only
fair to point out that this is an instance of a good cause
damaged by invoking the aid of the cynic and the
agitator. In the truth lies Woman’s strength, and
truth will win.
September, 1911.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
U.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Bebel's libel on women
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MacMahon, William
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. "Reprinted with additions from The Crucible for June, 1911." Bebel's book Die Frau in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft was published in English in 1885 as Woman in the Past, Present and Future. Ferdinand August Bebel was a German socialist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP).
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Catholic Truth Society
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[1911]
Identifier
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RA1550
Subject
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Women
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Bebel's libel on women), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
August Bebel
Women