The husband, therefore, in a monogamic marriage consisting of the union of two positive, healthy people, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. If he be sound and normal he cannot dream of abstaining for the number of months that would be necessary for his child’s welfare (for even if he indulges in cohabitation during gestation, he still has to face the seven or nine months of suckling, during which he _must_ at all costs leave his wife in peace); and yet society (modern society) and convention generally bid him rather ruin his child than practise even the most innocuous form of virtual polygamy. Of course the intelligent, thoughtful and good-natured man in such circumstances turns to some sort of modern substitute for polygamy. But the curse of modern civilization, its great blot and disfigurement, lies in the fact that at this stage in his wise resolve, he must perforce resort to secrecy, to deception, to concealment, to a hole-and-corner liaison, which may and frequently does expose him to every conceivable danger and expense—danger from disease if he be a fool and unwary, danger from blackmail if he fall into the hands of knaves, danger from ruin if he happen to have lighted upon unscrupulous associates, and danger from a criminal prosecution into the bargain. But in any case, however fortunate he may be in forming his liaison, he is certain, if found out, to incur the moral indignation of all the snivelling, worthless, ignorant and “respectable” people of his circle, among whom the loudest in their outcry will be the spinsters and the Puritans, of whom not one—_no not one_—can have or ever has had the faintest beginnings of an understanding of any aspect of the sex question. This is how our society is organized. Its whole basis, its whole prepossession, is directed stubbornly towards degeneration. Nothing that points, however meekly, the other way, is any longer listened to, much less observed! Can it be wondered at, in the circumstances, that the average unresourceful and timid man, prefers to remain strictly faithful to his monogamic vows? Can it be wondered at that he prefers to ruin his child’s constitution and temper? This is the gravest charge that can be brought from the standpoint of the race against the monogamic marriage, and it embodies the outline of an explanation of perhaps half the physical and mental degeneracy of modern times.