“Under the head of sex relations I showed you how marriage was instituted, both here and on Mars. How the primitive savage often stole or captured his wife or wives; how he often compelled prisoners of war to become his wife or wives; how, later on, the father or parent sold his daughters to become the wives of the purchasers; how, still later, the parents, instead of the young couple, made the marriage contract; and now the contracting parties to the marriage, at least in the United States and in some European countries, are generally only interfered with by the state; that is, the state demands of them certain acts before they can live together, and it also demands of them, when once married, certain other acts before they can separate or live with some one else; that is, your marriage contract is always a life contract, and nothing but the most flagrant cruelties, as the state looks upon them, will induce the state to grant a divorce. “The last is the highest point in the sex relation that the earthly inhabitants have thus far reached, and I need, therefore, not point out any of the gradations below this point, for you have passed through them in almost the same manner as we did, and how you did pass through your past gradations can, to a certain extent, be ascertained from your historical records. But what interests you most is how we made the transitional steps of advance from the highest point that you have at present attained to that complete sexual and other freedom which the Marsites now enjoy. “We have seen that all advancement is wrought out by intelligence, and if sexual freedom is a higher and purer state of human activity than the practice of wife-stealing or life-wedlock, we must have attained that higher plane by some intellectual powers which taught us that life, accompanied with a certain quantity and quality of intellectual culture, is, as a whole, purer, more complete, and therefore happier under sexual freedom than under the various forms of force marriage systems; otherwise the statement that happiness is a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there is not true. “The trend of human advancement, then, must ever be toward individual freedom; not only in the sex-relations, but in all other directions also. Let me therefore point out to you a few of our transitional steps from _your_ highest present sex-relations to that which now exists on Mars. Let us also, as we go along, try to discover if any of the same signs are already discernible here on earth. “When we were in your present stage of progress, our marriage contract began to be much less esteemed than formerly; the power of the church and state was rapidly waning; the ceremonies grew less solemn, and divorces increased in number and respect. All these signs are already more or less strongly visible with you, too.