conception of religion than himself. He has observed that those whom he has hitherto found wanting in respect for the ordinances of religion have been disorderly, immoral men, capable of all kinds of foolish actions. From this he too quickly draws a general conclusion; his intellect is not sufficiently developed to enable him to distinguish between the different types of assailants; he confuses the earnest thinker and champion of a higher truth with the common rabble of graceless scoffers--confuses his superior with his inferiors. The very same thing happens in the matter of the traditional conception of the proper relation of the sexes. The rules and regulations of this relation in a given country at a given time are no more marriage than Catholicism in Spain in the eighteenth century is religion. Some men are below the standard presupposed by the institution of marriage as it exists, some are above it, whilst the majority in civilised countries exactly come up to it, bring public opinion into harmony with their views, and, confounding the two groups of those who think otherwise, hold them up together to public scorn. The same idea which leads to the assertion of the principle of authority in religion and in the state leads to its assertion in the matter of the relation of the sexes. The mistake as regards religion consists in the supposition that the church, because its mission for centuries has been to ennoble, is of essential importance in the production of nobler feelings and thoughts--the supposition that love of truth is not natural to man, increasing with his general development, but must be communicated to him and kept up in him by the perpetual agency of bishops, priests, churches, church councils, &c. The corresponding mistake in the matter of the mutual relations of man and woman lies in the belief that human beings do not by nature love order and refinement in this relation, and love it the more the more highly developed and consequently refined they are, that men do not instinctively love their children and protect their children's mother, but that all these qualities and virtues must be first manufactured, then preserved in the human soul by the aid of legislation--although the requisite laws are, strangely enough, only produced by the combined action of all those persons who, taken separately, are supposed to be devoid of the qualities and virtues in question. Entirely the opposite of this is the real truth; it is only their love of these same virtues and blessings which induces men patiently to submit to all the artificial arrangements and compulsory rules under which they groan. They submit because it has been impressed on them from their childhood that such institutions as the existing ones are the only guarantee for the maintenance of the virtues and benefits they so highly prize.