e wonderful power of shaking off the
prejudices of the place and time in which it was written. The government
of Utopia is described as founded on popular election; community of
goods prevailed, the magistrates distributed the instruments of
production among the inhabitants, and the wealth resulting from their
industry was shared by all. The use of money and all outward ostentation
of wealth were forbidden. All meals were taken in common, and they were
rendered attractive by the accompaniment of sweet strains of music,
while the air was filled by the scent of the most delicate perfumes.
More's ideal state differs in one important respect from Plato's. There
was no community of wives in Utopia. The sacredness of the family
relation and fidelity to the marriage contract were recognized by More
as indispensable to the well-being of modern society. Plato,
notwithstanding all the extraordinary originality with which he
advocated the emancipation of women, was not able to free himself from
the theory and practice of regarding the wife as part and parcel of the
property of her husband. The fact, therefore, that he advocated
community of property led him also to advocate community of wives. He
speaks of "the _possession and use_ of women and children," and proceeds
to show how this possession and use must be regulated in his ideal
state. Monogamy was to him mere exclusive possession on the part of one
man of a piece of property which ought to be for the benefit of the
public. The circumstance that he could not think of wives otherwise than
as the property of their husbands only makes it the more remarkable that
he claimed for women absolute equality of training and careers. The
circumstance that communists have so frequently wrecked their projects
by attacking marriage and advocating promiscuous intercourse between the
sexes may probably be traced to the notion which regards a wife as being
a mere item among the goods and chattels of her husband. It is not
difficult to find evidence of the survival of this ancient habit of
mind. "I will be master of what is mine own," says Petruchio. "She is my
goods, my chattels."

The Perfectionists of Oneida, on the other hand, held that there was "no
intrinsic difference between property in persons and property in things;
and that the same spirit which abolished exclusiveness in regard to
money would abolish, if circumstances allowed full scope to it,
exclusiveness in regard to women and ch