ltogether.

Apart from the broad proposals of Socialism, as a matter of personal
conviction quite outside the scope of Socialism altogether, I am
persuaded of the need of much greater facilities of divorce than exist
at present, divorce on the score of mutual consent, of faithlessness, of
simple cruelty, of insanity, habitual vice or the prolonged imprisonment
of either party. And this being so I find it impossible to condemn on
any ground, except that it is "breaking ranks" and making a confusion,
those who by anticipating such wide facilities as I propose have sinned
by existing standards. How far and in what manner such breaking of ranks
is to be condoned I will presently discuss. But it is clear it is
an offence of a different nature from actions one believes to be in
themselves and apart from the law reprehensible things.

But my scepticisms about the current legal institutions and customary
code are not exhausted by these modifications I have suggested.
I believe firmly in some sort of marriage, that is to say an open
declaration of the existence of sexual relations between a man and a
woman, because I am averse to all unnecessary secrecies and because the
existence of these peculiarly intimate relationships affects everybody
about the persons concerned. It is ridiculous to say as some do that
sexual relations between two people affect no one but themselves unless
a child is born. They do, because they tend to break down barriers and
set up a peculiar emotional partnership. It is a partnership that kept
secret may work as anti-socially as a secret business partnership or
a secret preferential railway tariff. And I believe too in the general
social desirability of the family group, the normal group of father,
mother and children, and in the extreme efficacy in the normal human
being of the blood link and pride link between parent and child in
securing loving care and upbringing for the child. But this clear
adhesion to Marriage and to the Family grouping about mother and father
does not close the door to a large series of exceptional cases which our
existing institutions and customs ignore or crush.

For example, monogamy in general seems to me to be clearly indicated (as
doctors say) by the fact that there are not several women in the world
for every man, but quite as clearly does it seem necessary to recognize
that the fact that there are (or were in 1901) 21,436,107 females to
20,172,984 males in our British c