“Mr. Midith, will you please give us an account of your relations between parent and child, and between husband and wife?” asked Mrs. Uwins as the whole family, including Rev. Dudley, were seated in the cool, refreshing shade on the following Sunday afternoon. “We are not quite able to settle those questions to our satisfaction.” “Certainly,” said Mr. Midith, “with the greatest of pleasure. “But allow me to tell you before I begin this subject, that I am well aware that I am here treading on treacherous ground. My ten years’ mundane experience and observation convince me that of all the superstitions there is none so wide-spread, none so deeply rooted in the minds of the masses of your people, as the sex superstition. It is more barbarously cruel, more blindly superstitious, more grossly prejudicial, and more intensely jealous than any other superstition on earth, whether it be religious, political, social or industrial. The masses of your people seem to hug with the same fondness the sex superstition, as the contemporaries of the inquisition hugged that ‘Holy Institution;’ and, no doubt, the vast majority of your men and women believe as sincerely that your present sexual slavery is as essential to social harmony as the contemporaries of the inquisition and of the institution of chattel slavery believed those institutions absolutely necessary for the highest social welfare. “You have asked me to give you the Marsian view of these relations, and I shall be very much pleased to do so; for, in our opinion, there is no subject of human inquiry of which a thorough knowledge and a right adjustment conduces more to our health, to our well-being, and therefore to our general happiness than the subject of sex relations. It often seems to me that your parents here endeavor to make ignorance the safeguard of their children’s virtue and chastity. As a rule, neither the relation of parent and child nor the sex relations are ever openly and honestly discussed in the presence of the whole family; and when children arrive at the age of puberty, they know nothing about the evils resulting from sexual abuse, and in a state of ignorance, the child is apt to follow the promptings of its passions whether they are normal or still abnormal.