Some people say that example is better than precept; but in the case of social reform and the need of a real change in public opinion, my experience shows me that precept is no good at all, if one is suspected of inventing it to serve one’s own purposes of self-indulgence. I own I have indulged myself by leading a solitary life as described above, therefore I do not propose to try to destroy the home and family life. Those who are suffering from the home want to do away with it. With philosophic calm I can suggest improvements and ways of escape that would make it bearable, but would not destroy it. As a matter of fact the home is in a very poor way just at present. Public-houses, clubs, restaurants, the servant difficulty are all devastating it. Still, it does not do to say we are glad, so I register the fact with as long a face as I can pull, and trust my readers will recognize the sad truth in the same serious spirit. But, to return to experiments, let us go back a little in time, and we find that all gay societies, such as that under Louis XIV and XV of France, The Empire and the Second Empire, practised every kind of experiment. Yet one looks upon Rousseau, Mary Wolstonecraft, Shelley, and Godwin as the real pioneers of experiment, because they made a kind of religion of their protests against convention. Of late years it has become the fashion to solemnly register a protest every time one omits to register one’s marriage. It is partly my stupid objection to public indecency that makes me object to the advertisement of marriage, legal or illegal. One has to clean one’s teeth, some people have to marry, but for the life of me I cannot see the use of talking about either of these necessities. Surely the whole object of modern civilization is to conceal the fact that we are animals. It is true that we have begun to make a public art of eating, but although we permit ourselves to munch in public, we disguise the nature of our food, and we have sternly suppressed the more ancient freedoms of the dinner-table. We no longer think it polite to go about when we suffer from catarrh, and it is seldom that we encounter unpleasant expectorations, except in the immediate haunts of admittedly hooligan circles. They say that nowadays it is possible to talk of any subject as long as one does so with sufficient delicacy and avoids the words of the gutter and the club smoking-room. Still, I admit that it is difficult to explain that just as we feel that every other necessary function of nature should be performed without attracting attention to it, so I feel that I would rather not be informed every time the bold experimenters in marriage see fit to take a partner.