In regard to the first of these three, it was recognized that no one function in the human body contributed so much to the health or malady of the race as this; and that free love, which had constituted one of the planks of the Socialist party, would be fatal to the survival of the community, in consequence of the physical and moral abuses to which incontinence would give rise. The survival of the races which practised continence over those which did not practise it was too clearly recorded in history for its lesson to be neglected. Thus, the promiscuous savage disappears before the savage who exercises the continence, however slight, involved in metronymic institutions; these last disappear before the races which exercise the higher degree of continence required by the patriarchal or polygamous system; and these last succumb in the conflict with those which practise the highest degree of continence, known in our day under the name of monogamy. The lesson of history, then, is that continence is essential to the progress of the race. The problem consists in defining continence. This could not be done by written laws; the attempt to regulate sexual relations by law had broken down in my own day. Divorce was the attempt of morality to rescue marriage from promiscuousness. The greatest immorality prevailed where divorce was forbidden; in other words, the institution of marriage became a screen for immorality; women took the vow of marriage only the easier to break it, and even those who took it with the sincere intention of being faithful to it, once the bond proved intolerable, finding no moral escape from it adopted the only immoral alternative. Divorce, therefore, was the only escape; and the easier divorce became the more did the sanctity of marriage diminish; so that at last it became impossible to decide which system resulted in more demoralization--the one which maintaining a theoretically indissoluble marriage resulted in secret promiscuousness, or the one which through divorce by making marriage easily dissoluble opened the door wide to the satisfaction of every caprice.