[79] Take for instance Mr J. S. Mill's peculiar views as to the status of women, "The law of servitude in marriage" ["Wives be obedient to your husbands," St Paul], he says, "is in monstrous contradiction to all the principles of the modern world" (p. 147). "Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law," _id._ But at p. 49, Mr Mill says, "The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother." But he then adds (p. 37), "It will not do to assert in general terms that the experience of mankind has pronounced in favour of the existing system. Experience cannot possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there has only been _experience of one_. If it be said that the doctrine of the equality of the sexes rests only on theory, it must be remembered that the contrary doctrine also has only theory to rest upon. All that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater than it would have been under the other system, experience does not say." Take in illustration, again, the communistic schemes as against the institution of property. Now, although Christianity has realised all that will ever be possible in the way of communism in its religious orders, the communistic sects have always instinctively directed their first efforts against religion as against the basis of the social order of things which they attacked. This was forcibly brought out in certain letters on "European Radicalism," in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, October and November 1869, _e.g._ "all the contests on the three capital questions ('government, property, religion') which we are now engaged in, are but continuations of the _original divergence_ of opinion (before settled government), considerably modified, of course, under the influence of time, the various _traditional notions_ mankind preserves under the _name of beliefs_, and the whole stock of experience it has accumulated under the name of knowledge. So like, indeed, are the ancient and modern contests on these matters," &c.... (Letter I.) Again (Letter V.), speaking of our English socialist discussing "the necessity of building social edifices upon material, not religious grounds," the writer adds, that among continental socialists "no one thinks there of the possibility of matters standing otherwise;" and that in the socialist workshops of France and Germany it is well known "that the very basis of social radicalism requires