I will pass by the contention that men are by nature polygamous and women monogamous; for it rests on evidence created by a dual standard of conduct for the sexes. Certain women of independent spirit are at present rather conspicuously engaged in proving themselves not merely polygamous but promiscuous; and a great many men have always proved themselves to be monogamous. Probably human beings vary in respect of these tendencies as of others. All people, perhaps, can not attain the highest plane in love, either for want of capacity or of opportunity; nor can all people conform to a single mode of conduct. But all people can attain sincerity in sexual relations, and at least a certain degree of self-knowledge. Sincerity, self-knowledge, respect for oneself and for other people; these are essential to a genuine ethic of sex; and they are uncontemplated by the sanctions of conventional morality. Yet the person who violates this ethic sins against his own spirit, which is to sin against the Holy Ghost, and on the spiritual plane he will be punished. An increase in extra-legal relationships does not of itself imply spiritual retrogression. It might imply instead one of two things, or both, namely: an increase in the economic obstacles to legal marriage; or a growing disinclination to admit an affair so personal as the sex-relation to sanction and regulation by people whom it did not concern. If men and women were economically equal and independent, the number of marriages might increase enormously; on the other hand, institutionalized marriage might be superseded by marriage without legal sanction, which before the birth of children might not be even known or recognized as marriage.[25] Free people would probably want less of official interference in their personal affairs, rather than more. But for those who wanted to avoid the terrors of autonomy there would still be marriage; and for those who wanted to walk in the strait and ennobling way of freedom, there would be the right to love without official permission, and to bring forth children unashamed. Those who wished to sell themselves would be free to do so if they could find buyers; but no one would be forced to live by violating the law of love which is the law of life. Freedom implies the right to live badly, but it also implies the right to live nobly and beautifully; and for one who has faith in the essential goodness of the human spirit, in the natural aspiration towards perfection which flowers with touching beauty even in the bleak soil of that hardship, degradation and crime to which injustice condemns the mass of humanity--for one who has this faith in the human spirit, there can be no question what its ultimate choice would be. FOOTNOTES: