This belief springs from the doctrine of original sin, which has always been popular among quiet and well-behaved persons. If man is by nature wicked and sinful, and woman is very little better, then, indeed, contraception and the economic independence of women will lead to an orgy of sex indulgence in which the population will shuffle itself like a pack of cards. Nothing of the kind is likely to happen. The purely sexual elements in love have come to occupy an entirely disproportionate amount of attention owing to the taboos with which they have been invested. Once these taboos are removed, they will revert to their natural position of comparative unimportance. If it were permissible to reproduce the sexual act upon the stage we should all lose our interest in chorus girls’ legs. Moreover, playwrights would not trouble to avail themselves of the permission. Within reason, continence and constancy are natural to human beings. It is only the intolerable strain to which our absurd social arrangements have subjected them that has caused us to regard ourselves as being by nature unfaithful and incontinent. There is no ground for the belief that the average man or woman who allow themselves to be guided by their own impulses must needs be scoundrels. For among their impulses must be numbered self-respect, moderation, and a sense of what is right and fitting. Because this sense may be, and often is, at variance with the herd morality which is crystallized in the law, it does not mean that it does not exist. On the contrary, it may be in advance of the morality it disowns, so that people thrown helpless on their passions may find that honesty, that self-respect, that hatred of cowardice and deceit, and the desire for cleanliness, health, and efficiency were master passions disciplining them far more effectively than the artificial inhibitions of a mediaeval morality based on an obsolete religion and deriving its power from lethargy and fear. Some changes in social arrangements there will no doubt be. In Russia, for example, where the knowledge of birth-control is accessible to all classes, where any two parties by agreement, or either of the two parties by request, may obtain a divorce, and where no stigma is placed upon illegitimacy, there has been a considerable relaxation of the family system.[7] If this means, as it probably does, that unhappy families have broken up and that husbands and wives who disliked each other have availed themselves of the opportunity to make a fresh start, we need not regret the change. Nobody would contend that society is the gainer by condemning the unhappily married to a lifetime of domestic misery, and it is difficult to see why the common sense of the community which considers the wishes of the parties concerned a sufficient ground for consummating their marriage does not regard the wishes of the same parties as a sufficient reason for terminating it.