It is my belief that monogamous love is the most desirable of human sex relationships, the most fruitful in happiness and spiritual development. The laws and institutions of civilized society pretend to defend this relationship, but the briefest study of the facts will convince anyone that these laws and institutions are not really meant to protect monogamous love. What they are is a device of the property-holding male to secure his property rights to women, and more especially to secure himself as to the paternity of his heirs. In primitive society, where land and other sources of wealth were held in common, and sex monogamy was unknown, there was no way to determine paternity, and no reason for doing so. But under the system of private property and class privilege, it is necessary for some one man to support a child, if it is to be supported; and when a man has fought hard, and robbed hard, and traded hard, and acquired wealth, he does not want to spend it in maintaining another man's child. That he should let himself be fooled into doing so is one of the greatest humiliations his fellowmen can imagine. If you read Shakespeare's plays, and look up the meaning of old words, so as to understand old witticisms and allusions, you will discover that this was the stock jest of Shakespeare's time. In order to protect himself from such ridicule, the man maintained in ancient times his right to kill the faithless woman with cruel tortures. He maintains today the right to deprive her of her children, and of all share in his property, even though she may have helped to earn it. But until quite recent times, the beginning of the revolt of women, there was never any corresponding penalty for faithlessness in husbands. Under the English law today, the husband may divorce his wife for infidelity, but the wife must prove infidelity plus cruelty, and the courts have held that the cruelty must consist in knocking her down. While I was in England, the highest court rendered a decision that a man who brought his mistress to his home and compelled his wife to wait upon her was not committing "cruelty" in the meaning of the English law.