In view of general happiness and virtue, we must seek the abrogation of all laws based on or involving sex-inequality. And, further, that marriage may become transformed into a sacred, sympathetic and permanent bond—a deeper and truer relation of life—we must seek facilities for divorce or the abrogation of the specific law that binds beings together for life in ill-assorted or artificial unions. CHAPTER V PARENTAGE The simple fact that the birth of a human being, the image of God, as religious people say, is in so many cases regarded as of very much less importance than that of a domestic animal, proves the degraded condition in which we live.—AUGUST BEBEL. The reproduction of species yields to no other special function of life in respect of importance and the wide scope of its vital issues. Notwithstanding that vast numbers of illegitimate children are born in every civilized country where monogamy reigns, this function of reproduction is popularly regarded as allied with marriage in the order of a natural and necessary consequence—a result irrespective of human will. Now scientific meliorism makes a clear distinction between marriage and parentage on the ground that, while the former comparatively is of insignificant importance to the interests of humanity in general, parentage is of vital moment to these interests; moreover, between the two there exists no integral or essential relation. On the one hand, progeny spring from unions not legalized by marriage; on the other, many married people, swayed by motives chiefly egoistic, but sometimes altruistic, are consciously exercising a voluntary restraint over propagation. The late Matthew Arnold tells us that when gazing on one occasion in company with a benevolent man upon a multitude of slum children eaten up with disease, half-sized, half-fed, half-clothed, neglected by their parents, without health, without home, without hope, the good man said: “The one thing really needful is to teach these little ones to succour one another, if only with a cup of cold water.” Mr. Arnold promptly rejected that theory. “So long as the multitude of these poor children is perpetually swelling,” said he, “they must be charged with misery to themselves and us, whether they help one another with a cup of cold water or no, and the knowledge how to prevent them accumulating is what we want.” That knowledge is no longer inaccessible to man. There are known rational methods by which to keep the populating tendency within due limits, and at the same time to promote individual prudence, foresight and self-dependence.