with any man, it would be of great advantage in various ways. Many occasions to quarrels, assaults, and murders would become removed; by not passing the whole night in sexual pleasure, both male and female would the next day be fresh awake and better fitted to their daily work. The sleeping together of man and wife in the same room, or even, as it is customary in England, in the same bed, is unhealthy, and even indecent. Unhealthy it must be during the woman's time of menstruation; or any other ailings, as violent coughing, crying out in dreams, restlessness, snoring, with which one bedfellow disturbs the sleep and repose of the other,—both of which are indispensably necessary to the preservation of health and cheerfulness. Indecent it is, because the sexes must dress and undress in sight of each other.

sense.

Free social intercourse is the only mode of sexual union which guarantees the greatest amount of freedom to both parties, and any other arrangement going beyond this would be a wanton outrage against the dictates of reason and common It has often been asserted that the modern communistic school advocates the community of women. Marriage, it is said, has been declared by them incompatible with Communism, and this on the ground that the satisfaction of all our wants, and therefore also of our sexual desire, must be rendered equally possible to all; which cannot be done without the community of women. The detractors of Communism had an easy proof at hand for their insinuation by referring to Plato's Republic," and pointing out this passage to his modern disciples" After the enactment that our male and female guardians are to manage all things in common, the following comes naturally. The women shall be all common to all the men; no one woman is to dwell privately with any man; and that their children likewise be common;-so that neither the parents shall know their own children, nor the children their parents." It is further quoted by these insinuators, that both Socrates and Plato propose to carry out the practice of the community of women in the following manner:-"Once every year all marriages shall be dissolved, and renewed by the casting of lots, by which means every woman can successively become the wife of from fifteen to twenty different husbands, and every man the husband to as many wives."

That these great philosophers of antiquity have overstepped the bounds of reason is clear, for there is one fatal objection to be encountered by the advocates of the community of women; it is the question, what will become of the liberty of woman, and, in Plato's allotment marriage, even of man? If the claims of equality are allowed to destroy the action of personal freedom they infringe upon the sacred rights of man, and become as such inadmissible; nor can the claims of absolute liberty, as invoked by the advocates of polygamy, be permitted to ignore the principle of equality (see page 382). The political emancipation of woman* will in the end prove the strongest safeguard of her own freedom in her social relations, including sexual intercourse.

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CHAPTER XXXV.-CELIBACY.

YELIBACY has been and is still encouraged. From the time of the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome up to our own enlightened age, there have always been men and women who, from religious motives, chose a voluntary celibacy. The Church of Rome counts, even at the present time, a great number of well-filled monasteries and nunneries in all countries of the world, England included. Men and women are attracted to these sacred abodes, and to renounce marriage, by an article of faith which teaches them that virginity and chastity kept for ever intact is more pleasing to the Deity than even breaking it under the sacramental sanction of matrimony. "To marry is well, but not to marry is better." In teaching celibacy to be a chraster state of Christian life than marriage, the Roman Catholics have no scruple to cast odium on matrimony, although it be one of their seven holy sacraments. Perhaps when they become alive to the incongruity that celibacy is chaster and holier than matrimony, they will raise the former into a sacrament too, and promulgate a new dogma! St. Paul, in writing to Timothy, describes the forbidding to marry as a demoniacal doctrine and a sign of the great apostacy (1 Timothy iv. 1-3).

"According to all the principles involved in modern society, the question rests with women themselves-to be decided by their own experience, and by the use of their own faculties."-J. S. MILL.

That there is even a model republican state in which celibates are tolerated, may be learned from Sir Thomas More, who says:-" In Utopia, there exist two religious sects; the members of the one live unmarried, but those of the other prefer a married state to a single one; and as they do not deny themselves the pleasure of it, so they think the begetting of children is a debt which they owe to human nature, and to their country; nor do they avoid any pleasure that does not hinder labour: the Utopians look upon these as the wiser sect."

"Of the celibate sect he also says:-" Some of these visit the sick; others mend highways, cleanse ditches, repair bridges or dig turf, gravel, or stone. Others fell and cleave timber, and bring wood, corn, and other necessaries, on carts, into their towns; nor do these only serve the public, but they serve even private men, more than the slaves themselves; for if there is anywhere a rough hard and sordid piece of work to be done, from which many are frightened by the labour and loathsomeness of it, if not the despair of accomplishing it, they cheerfully, and of their own accord, take that to their share; and by that means, as they ease others very much, SO they afflict themselves, and spend their whole life in hard labour and yet they do not value themselves upon this, nor lessen other people's credit, to raise their own; but by their stooping to such servile employments, they are so far from being despised, that they are so much the more esteemed by the whole nation."

:

Idle celibates, then, there are none in Utopia, and their voluntary participation in all rough, hard, and loathsome labour is an admirable and convincing proof that religious motives may and do play an important role in the conscientious performance of labour; but it is also evident that this may take place without the abstention from marriage. Nevertheless, Sir Thomas More has in this narrative contributed his quota to the extremely difficult solution of the problem, as to how rough, dangerous, and repulsive labour will be performed when both money and property have gone out of existence; for although he has not perceived the inexorable and irrefutable consequences of the principle of equality, which demands that all physical labour be equally shared by all the members of the

community, yet he coincides with the views of modern communists in this, that even the most absolute inforcement of equality in the performance of labour does not prohibit one man to do the work of another, be it from motives of charity, friendship, gratitude, or any other consideration.

Robert Owen condemns celibacy as an evil to be suppressed for moral and physiological reasons. He says:-"Celibacy, in either sex, beyond the period designed by nature, is not a virtue, but, on the contrary, a crime against nature, causing other unnatural crimes." And again" Marriage will be encouraged, and celibacy discouraged as a cause leading to disease the body and mind, and to unnatural thoughts, feelings, and conduct." Both voluntary and forced celibacy are most hurtful, when, at the time of the age of puberty, nature makes her most violent demands for the satisfaction of the sexual instinct. Involuntary seminal emissions have a tendency to become chronic, and are in many instances the secret steps to self-abuse, ending in the bodily and mental prostration and moral ruin of the unfortunate youths, the innocent victims of a state of society in which the opportunities to marry at the right time do not exist for them.

CHAPTER XXXVI.-OVER-POPULATION.

TH THAT a universal facility of marriage and subsequent increase in the number of people is not to be dreaded, Robert Owen argues in this manner:-"The vast increase of productive power from the abolition of useless professions and destructive luxury, will so augment the riches of the world that no providential considerations will be necessary to restrain the production of children." And also:-" The earth is yet a wilderness for want of people to drain its marshes, and to cultivate its soil,* nor does it yet produce one-thousandth part of the excellence and enjoyment which it is capable of bringing forth."

* Mr. Cobden used frequently to say that the valley of the Mississipi, when once brought under proper cultivation, would alone suffice to feed the whole of Europe.

Since Robert Owen first propagated these views, the means of conveyance by railroads and ocean steamers have increased to such an extent that cereals, breadstuff, ham, bacon, cheese, preserved meats, and even live cattle can be brought from the most distant transatlantic countries without any perceptible deterioration.

This facilitated intercourse of all countries of the world will finally bring about the realization of Owen's idea, that the immense increase of production in manufactured articles can be exchanged for an equivalent amount of food. If to this facilitated interchange between agricultural and industrial produce we add, as new means of subsistence, the extension of the fisheries of all countries having any seacoast; the new discovery of the fish and oyster culture; the continually increasing number of new alimentary substances, and the application of scientific treatment to the art of cookery, we need not be alarmed by the prediction of a great and calamitous human inundation, against which the Malthusians propose to erect a new Tower of Babel by a system of checks, which are not only opposed to human nature, but must be discarded as superfluous remedies for an evil that does not and never will exist.

Malthus and his disciples are also wrong in asserting that the great amount of pauperism actually existing in all civilized countries is the sad result of over-population. Malthus himself may be excused for taking this erroneous view, for at his time, emigration from populous countries had scarcely yet begun; but his disciples, especially the author of “Physical, Sexual, and Natural Religion," cannot have been ignorant of the fact that Ireland, whose population has been reduced by nearly one half, is still encumbered with a most luxuriant crop of roaming and stationary pauperism.

Let us pass by the Malthusian alarmists, and listen once more to the refreshing and hopeful thoughts of Robert Owen: --The increased power of industry by mechanical and scientific appliances will saturate the world with wealth."

And from this fructifying process of human labour, including both agriculture and manufacture, such an abundance of every consumable and useful article will be created, that it never can be overtaken by population; for industrial progress does not