involves, seem half-hearted and cold. Those who preach this doctrine remind
us--and very justly--of the weakness and insincerity of the "orthodox"
moral standard, whether it is enforced by law or by custom. They revolt
against the proprietary and possessive view of marriage as giving a
woman "a hold over her husband" when he has "grown tired of her," or as
justifying a man in enforcing upon his wife the rights which only love
makes right, when she has grown tired of him. I appeal, therefore, to those
to whom the dispassionate discussion of "free love" seems quite outrageous,
to remember that there are those to whom this teaching is _not_ a mere
excuse for licence, but an attempt to reach something lovelier and nobler
than the present moral code, whose failures and insincerities no thinking
person can ignore.

In considering this view, I want first to point out that although to have
no legal or enforceable tie in sex-relationships seems on the surface much
the simplest and easiest way to arrange life, although permanent monogamous
marriage is exceedingly difficult and inconvenient, yet the movement of
humanity does seem to have been on the whole in that direction. It is, of
course, untrue to say that among primitive peoples there is anything that
can fairly be called promiscuity. Historians and anthropologists have
taught us that among all peoples, however barbarous, there are conventions,
sanctions, tabus, by which the relations of men and women are regulated.
The customs of such people may seem to us mere licence; but they are not
so. And some of the customs of more "civilized" countries are at least as
horrifying to the "savage" as his can be to us. Nevertheless, it is true
to say that as civilization advances, and especially where the position of
women improves, the movement has been towards a more stable and exclusive
form of marriage. We grope uncertainly towards it: we fail atrociously. Yet
we do not abandon an ideal which asks so much of human nature that human
nature is continually invoked to prove its impossibility.