and society seem to offer them the chance of union without black looks and moral indignation, only in legalized “marriage,” they seize society’s offer without thinking much about the question of natural or unnatural solutions of natural problems. Thousands, it is true, do not wait for the unnatural solution.[51] They simply unite and consummate their desire without taking any public vow. Then, however, they find the social machinery for discouraging such simple behaviour so formidable and unrelenting that they are frequently unable to face it, and resort to crime in order to attempt to wipe out the consequences of their action. Unmarried motherhood, with all the moral indignation it provokes; prosecutions for affiliation, and the weekly payments in which they result—are some of the unpleasant menaces that face those who refuse to wait for the State’s conditions before consummating their desire; and, in the end, the great majority, preferring the more peaceable and more generally accepted course, resolve on marriage the moment they feel they must consummate their desire. The desire that makes the two young positive people wish to unite is called “love.” It is mutual attraction culminating in a condition of mutual irresistibility. It is the power which, in the course of evolution, each has acquired to draw the other into that condition which best serves the purpose of Life and its multiplication. Now, as we have already pointed out, this power of attraction serves its purpose—multiplication—whether they unite legitimately or illegitimately. Since, however, the purposes of society are best served by their uniting according to certain rules, and since these rules are chiefly designed to secure each party to the union against the evil consequences (to society) of promiscuous mating, it is expedient that the two should be bound together for life; and the marriage tie is made a permanent tie: “_Till death us do part_,”—that is the ideal aimed at. But in this way a lie is tacitly smuggled by society into the marriage of two young people. Since society’s purposes are best served by a permanent match between the young positive couple, they are led to believe that the desire which the moment before union has drawn them together, and which is called “love,” is also permanent; in fact that it is really the _best_ reason for making the match permanent! Having once been perpetrated by the social organism, this lie is repeated in all the moral prejudices and saws, all the fairy-tales, the popular novels, the poetry and the songs, of a whole nation—of a whole continent—and soon acquires the sanctity of truth; and he who dares to nail it to the counter as a piece of counterfeit psychology or physiology, is dubbed a cynic, an anarchist, and a misogynist.