“You all know that not long ago you imprisoned people who were unable to pay their debts, and the contemporaries of that age argued that people would not pay their debts without such a law; but this law has long since been repealed or is entirely ignored, and people pay their debts perhaps better now than they did when the law was in force. But now you say that you could not do business without laws for the _collection_ of debts, but you see we, under a better system, have no use for such laws, because we have no debts to collect. We have changed the conditions. It is your old barbarous profit system that makes you think you require such laws. As soon as you adopt a _just_ system of trade there can be no debts to collect. “The Czar very likely thinks that a government like that of the United States is no government at all, because the people enjoy too much individual freedom, and he, no doubt, has often predicted that it must soon crumble to pieces on that account, and you and I believe that the Russian government is destined to crumble, because the people have too little individual freedom. You look at our sex relations as the Russians look at your government of the United States. “Now just notice your illogical position. If physical force is a factor of _goodness_ in a government, the government of the Czar is one of the best on earth, because it perhaps employs a maximum of physical force; and if physical force is a factor of badness in a government, then our Marsian government is the best, because it employs a minimum of physical force. No doubt, in your opinion both the Czar and the Marsites are wrong, the former for too much compulsion and the latter for too little. You are standing somewhere between these two points. You are standing at a point which exactly corresponds with your intellectual culture. Each person measures his position by his own ethical standard. But notwithstanding your constant protest against individual freedom, you are slowly drifting away from the Czar toward individualism, and whenever, in time, you stand in our footsteps, you will see that _your_ present sex relations are as slavish, despotic and impure as you, at present, look upon the despotism and injustice of the Czar.” CHAPTER XVIII. COMPARISON OF OUR SEX RELATIONS WITH YOURS. “I have so far told you,” continued Mr. Midith, “of our sex relations as they now actually exist on Mars. I have so far offered no comments on either our practice of individual freedom sexually, or on your marriage system. But to leave it without further investigation and comparison would be a very incomplete account. Let us closely and impartially investigate whether it is your or our system of sex relation which is most nearly in accord with the known laws of life, health and happiness. Let us see what defects and demerits we can find in either of them.