Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under these conditions. The minimum of national celibacy (ascertained by dividing the number of males in the community by the number of females, and taking the quotient as the number of wives or husbands permitted to each person) is secured in England (where the quotient is 1) by the institution of monogamy. The modern sentimental term for the national minimum of celibacy is Purity. Marriage, or any other form of promiscuous amoristic monogamy, is fatal to large States because it puts its ban on the deliberate breeding of man as a political animal. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT All scoundrelism is summed up in the phrase "Que Messieurs les Assassins commencent!" The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the garotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garotter who has been kicked by his father and cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires. Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death. Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. The assassin Czolgosz made President McKinley a hero by assassinating him. The United States of America made Czolgosz a hero by the same process. Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination, because there it is invested with the approval of society. It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. Crime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale, we call penal law. When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater. Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells. The most anxious man in a prison is the governor. It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is necessary to replace a guillotined social system. TITLES Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior. Great men refuse titles because they are jealous of them. HONOR There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones. You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world. Your word can never be as good as your bond, because your memory can never be as trustworthy as your honor. PROPERTY