nority, looking in an exact opposite direction, turn to an
ideal morality, considering the facts of sex not as they are, but as
they think they ought to be. Both these attitudes are alike harmful.
The one refuses to go forward, the other rushes on blindly, goaded by
sentiment or by personal desires. And to-day the greater danger seems
to me to rest with the hasty reformers. It is an essentially feminine
crusade. By this I do not mean that it is advocated alone by women,
but that in itself it must be regarded as _feminine_; a view which
elevates a subjective ideal relationship of sex above all objective
facts. The desires and feelings and sentiments are set up in
opposition to historical experience and communal tradition. We hear
much, and especially in the writings and talk of women, of such vapid
phrases as "Self-realisation in love," "The enhancement of the
individual life," and "The spiritualising of sex." Such personal
views, which exalt the passing needs of the individual above the
enduring interests of the race, are in direct opposition to progress.
What is rather needed is an examination of marriage and other forms of
our sexual relationships by practical morality, by which I mean the
estimating of their merits and defects in relation to the vital needs
of the community under the circumstances of the present.

To do this we must first clear our minds from the belief that regards
our present form of monogamic marriage as ordained by Nature and
sanctified by God. He who accepts the development of the love of one
man for one woman from other and earlier forms of association may well
look forward in faith to a future progress from our existing marriage:
yet, though eager for reform, he will, remembering the slowness of
this steady upward progress in love's refinement in the past, refrain
from acting in haste, understanding the impossibility of forcing any
Utopia of the sexes. No change can be made in a matter so intimate as
marriage by a mere altering of the law. Only such reforms as are the
natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling can be of benefit,
and thus permanent in their result. I must go further than this and
say that what may very possibly be right for the few cannot be
regarded as practically moral and good until it can be accepted and
acted upon by the people at large. In sex more than in any other
department of life we are all linked together; we are our brother's
keeper, and the blood of the ra