-study impartially their effects upon the peoples living under them-make annual reports of the same for the enlightenment of present generations, in order that they may profit by the experience of the human family in past ages; this report to be accompanied with such recommendations as may be thought best calculated to contribute to the happiness and moral and physical improvement of the people. This public functionary should be the central and guiding power of the various local boards recommended in the chapter commencing upon page 830, and in him should be vested the final power to decide all matters coming up from the local boards, wherein injustice may be alleged to have been done to any individual. Monogamy, complex marriage, and polygamy should be tolerated expressly by national consent, and it should be the duty of the local boards and this national officer to see that no one of these institutions exercises tyrannical control over any individual, or even restraint beyond what may be regarded as necessary for the peace and good order of society, and the moral and physical health of generations present and those to follow. As fast as science reveals them, the laws governing propagation should be thoroughly disseminated through these channels thrown broadcast over the whole country, like the speeches of our members of Congress—and if, as is believed by all intelligent physiologists, the moral, the mental, and physical condition of parents at the moment of conception, is impressed upon the human being that is to be, this information should be so diffusively scattered as to find lodgment in every hamlet in our great and constantly expanding nation, and in no way can this be so effectually done, as by a national bureau established expressly to regulate marriage and procreation. We have at Washington a Commissioner of Agriculture, who scatters information and approved seeds to the agricultural people of the country, and it just may be that a human being is of as much consequence as a "big potato." The trial of such a plan as I have proposed, is of course, an experiment; but it can hardly be regarded as a dangerous one. "History," remarks a newspaper writer, "is only a record of national experiments. They are going on now in Russia, in England, in Mexico, and in all South America. A nation that does not try experiments is not merely bone-broken but dead and decaying."

Now, reader, I have presented an outline of some of the reforms which are manifestly necessary for the improvement of the health and happiness of the people under the restraints of marriage. You will doubtless, many of you, demur to the proposition to make laws that will expressly tolerate complex marriage and polygamy, but are not either or both in their most unfavorable aspects better than prostitution? Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of our race, people are not nowadays all run in one mould. Some men are by nature as it were polygamists-other men and women are omnigamists in their tastes and passions, while we affect to believe that

nearly all women and a majority of men in our country are satisfied with monogamic marriage. Or, if you like, put it in this shape. We have to-day living in one civilization and under the parental care of one government, those who in their natures are little above the barbarian; those who are considerably advanced beyond this stage; those of middling intelligence; those belonging to still a little higher sphere; and finally we have those who are gifted with moral and intellectual endowments which challenge our admiration. And then-shall I say it-even among this last class you shall find polygamists and omnigamists (or freelovers) as well as monogamists. We have among our Christian missionaries the example of toleration in respect to polygamic marriage. They find that many of the people among whom they are laboring cannot be restrained from having a plurality of wives, and consequently,—and I think very wisely,-they let the marriage question alone. If those people are heathen, we have any number of them among us; and you need not go to Utah, nay, you need not leave the limits of Manhattan Island, to find them. Many of them achieve what the world calls greatness, and when they die long obituaries extol their virtues. Some of those who are casting stones at the Mormons would break their own windows if they leveled their missiles at the nearest domiciles wherein polygamy is practised. The Mormons, indeed, are better than this class of assailants, for they do not morally degrade their women. But you may ask, "Why legalize polyg amy?" Simply that women may better be the wives than the mistresses of men; better the slaves of the respectable-possibly the religious-polygamic household, than the traffickers in lust in the dens of harlotry. One of the early Christian emperors offered rewards to those who would marry their concubines. It is vain to say that you will yet banish the mistress, or that you will blot out prostitution. The religious world has been working at it most vehemently, and with an army of strong men and strong women, for at least five hundred years, and Christianity has been pitted against it for nearly nineteen hundred years; and to use the language of a western orator-"Where are we now; where are wo driftin' to?"

As for "Complex Marriage," as remarked before, let it run along side by side with other marriage institutions, and we can then determine if it is better or worse than the older systems. The polygamic system is nearly as old as the world, and the monogamic system is at least two thousand five hundred years old, and the society-makers certainly have not yet attained any very gratifying results in their efforts at perfecting the morality, health, and happiness of the people living under them. We need, I repeat again, the inventive and progressive spirit of the age directed to the discovery of means whereby the human family may be wholesomely governed in their sexual relations, so governed, indeed, that nature's insti

tutes and individual rights, may not be disregarded, while all that relates to the moral and religious well-being of every individual, may be made still more perceptibly operative. Under the auspices of a national bureau, devoted to the investigation of this great social problem, prizes might well be offered for the best theses on the subject. When any thing is proposed that looks rigat and feasible, if there be found those willing to go on to some unimproved lands and make the experiment, let them do so, followed with our prayers, instead of our denunciations. If a dozen social experiments were being made at this moment on our almost limitless territory, they could hardly affect those who would prefer to adhere to monogamy ; and that form of society which time and trial should prove to possess the greater merit, would, and by right should, ultimately become the prevailing one. Galile whispered to himself when compelled on bended knee to recant "The world does move." Who will have the courage to-day to shout on the house-tops, Let it move!

CHAPTER VII.

SEXUAL IMMORALITY.

S sexual morality, even among nations nominally the most Christian, a prevalent virtue? If so, where is the moral oasis? It is not in our great cities; they are as destitute of it as were the cities of Rome and Athens in the "Augustan Age," when legai penalties without measure failed to restrain the illicit sexual practices of the people. It is not in our villages, where there is always enough scandal based on fact, for the villagers to keep up an incessant talking at their tea-tables and sewing-circles; nor does it present itself conspicuously in rural districts, where one might expect surely to find it, for apropos to the application of some people to the city doctors for that great myth and humbug, "Love Powder," come others, for something to destroy the pas sions of some unprincipled lover, who has succeeded in getting the fair name of some woman, single or married, so in his keeping, that she dare not leave off amours unwisely commenced. In addition to these, come the pitiful appeals of young women living in small as well as large neighborhoods, for something to save their name from the disgrace which awaits them, in a system of society where the masculine rake is the admitted guest of the respectable family, and the mother of a bastard the horrid creature that can scarcely be tolerated under the shelter of her parental roof. These letters have often drawn tears to my eyes, for while the trembling hands that penned them, importuned with the most touching eloquence for relief, neither pecuniary compensation, nor the deepest and most heartfelt sympathy could induce me to extend the criminal aid so frantically sought. It may be asked why I have been appealed to for relief in such cases. I can solemnly assure my readers that it is not because anybody has ever had relief of this nature at my hands. It is considerably over ten years since I first commenced the publication of this work, and as I have ever in its pages, and its revisions, espoused the cause of women, I am naturally made their confi. dant in the hour of trouble, and most gladly would I have lifted the wretchedness from the breaking hearts of those who have been plunged into misery through the treachery of bad men, or the terrible mistakes of those otherwise good, had I not ever entertained the greatest abhorrence to this

crime against natural and moral law. And let me state here-lest I may forget to do so in some more appropriate place--it has not been my custom in the past, nor will it be in the future, to lend my professional assistance in any case of this description; and those who fall into trouble of this kind, will greatly spare my time and mental tranquillity by not presenting cases which my resolutions prevent me from touching. And, furthermore, as I always tell this class of unfortunates, if they are bent on such desperate measures, they do not want a novice to help them out. No one wants to be the subject of an experiment, or the material to be sacrificed in the hands of an apprentice. Therefore do not ask me. Forgive the digression. We will return to the consideration of the subject of our chapter, sexual immorality, and first examine

The Causes.

Having, with facts in hand, possessed by comparatively few in or out of the profession, charged both country and city with sexual immorality, the next step will be to inquire into the causes. What are they? It is my deliberate opinion, that one of the greatest causes is the inadaptation of our popular marriage-system to the natural wants of the people. It would almost be repetition for me in this place to argue this proposition after what I have said in several places in this Part. I would refer the interested reader to the essay on the influence of the sexual organs on health, and to the chapter on the "Defects of Marriage."

It is also my serious opinion, that a cause almost as potent as the foregoing, is, that the sexual morality generally preached to us is mainly based upon a false idea, one so in conflict with Nature, that many do not at heart believe it, and those who do, excuse its violation by themselves, with the reflection that human nature is imperfect and that God is gracious. The popular idea is this: that sexual intercourse in itself is sinful in all cases unless hallowed by marriage. This idea is mainly based upon the supposed divine origin of marriage, which fallacy I have attempted to overthrow in a previous chapter. But it is difficult to see how this opinion could have been derived from Scripture. I have not the time nor inclination to go into any extended Scriptural argument on this point, for the doctors of divinity themselves disagree in regard to it, and a doctor of medicine may look grotesque if he intrudes in this discussion with a physiological work instead of a Bible in hand. But I must say a little something from recollection of what is presented in the Good Book. Unless the commandment, communicated through Moses "Thou shalt not commit adultery"-appertains simply to the enforcement of honor in man's civil relations, it is difficult to understand it in the light of Hebrew history, for not only did Abraham and Isaac, who were in personal communication with Jehovah, have connection with