“With us no men and women are together who do not really love each other. Those who do not love each other sexually are no sexual companions; and those who once did love each other, but have ceased loving, forsake each other’s company to the extent that it becomes agreeable to them. They are much freer, at any time, to seek other company than you are to make your _first_ choice, which must continue for life. Why should two persons be compelled to live together when they do not desire to? When they fight, quarrel, and dislike each other? Why should not parting be as free and honorable as coming together? Why should a man and wife eke out a miserable existence, simply because they for once selected the wrong person to live with?” “But every one, in making this choice for life, should be very cautious. They should know each other well before they entered into this life-contract. Too many marriages are entered into carelessly. The parties do not understand each other well enough,” said Rev. Dudley. “We fully agree to what you have said,” observed Mr. Midith. “You say that great caution should be exercised by the contracting parties. But can we always be so cautious as never to make a mistake? I think that in all our undertakings we are liable to make mistakes; and would you recommend that one mistake should condemn us to a life of misery forever after? You say that the contracting parties should know each other well before they entered into a marriage contract. We agree perfectly with you there. We believe that it requires more than a whole lifetime for a man and a woman to know each other well enough to enter into a contract which is to be binding for life; therefore, you see, we exercise the greatest caution, because we study each other during our whole lifetime, and then claim that our knowledge of one another is too limited to give ourselves away even for a single day. The evil of the earthites lies in the fact that your ill-adjusted social and economic institutions require _binding promises_; and a promise, according to your common acceptation of the term, is a _binding_ declaration made by one person to another to do, or not to do, a certain act at some _future_ time. According to this definition, there can be no place for a binding promise in a _harmonious, progressive_ world. Promises and harmonious progress are incompatible, unless all the parties are, at all times, as free to break them as they were to make them; and this admission eliminates the _binding_ element, and, therefore, destroys the popular meaning of a promise.