“It may be true, Rev. Dudley, that your sexual, and even your social and industrial relations, are better now than they ever were before, but that may not be a sign that they need no further improvement. _Best_, as I have told you once before, has nearly always been a deceptive, unreliable criterion. Nothing is good enough unless it is _faultless_. You must remember that every age always had the best of everything, perhaps better than any preceding age. There was a certain people two thousand years ago that had the best system of sex relation, and the contemporaries of that age doubtless used the same argument against those who desired to improve it then as you are now using against me. You are undoubtedly proud of the progressive achievements of your ancestors, but you seem to fear the improvements of your contemporaries and of your posterity. But you need not fear progress of any kind. As I have told you some time ago, all wrong arises from ignorance. Hence, there can be but one line of advancement, and that line is by the way of acquiring more and more intelligence, which, on the one hand, tends to adjust and perfect voluntary co-operation on the highest possible scale, while, on the other hand, it tends to give more and more freedom to the individual. Any proposed improvement which does not bear these marks is not in the line of progress. If our sex relation is more nearly in harmony with these principles, it is better than yours; if yours is more so, yours is the better. We must continually strive to improve what we have. The microscope, the spectroscope, the engine, and human intelligence are more nearly perfect now than they ever were before, as far as you know; but we should all strive to improve them as much now as any of our ancestors did, to whom we owe the previous improvements. Only a _faultless_ thing is good enough. Improvement should cease only when _perfection_ makes further improvement impossible. “It is like this, then, Rev. Dudley: As long as we can point out wrongs in any system, no matter whether the system is the _best_ or the _worst_, it is not what it ought to be; and no honest, progressive person who has the welfare and happiness of his fellow-man at heart can remain silent or indifferent as long as this wrong or evil remains in sight. “The way to test a system is to analyze it; to look at all its parts and relations; to endeavor to find all the faults we can; to compare it impartially with any system that may be offered in place of it. We should never try to cover up the defects by a few merits which it may contain. A truthful system contains not a single demerit. If it does it is faulty, and the faults should be eliminated.”