enereal disease, and hence avoiding much
misfortune for families and children.

It would also be desirable to prevent the procreation of syphilitic
infants, for instance, by the use of preventatives (vide Chapter XIV).

=Prostitution.=--Another difficult question is that of the relation of
civil law to prostitution. All State regulation of prostitution is to
be absolutely condemned; but what position should civil law take up
with regard to free prostitution? We have already seen what an
abominable social evil is this commerce in human bodies, as regards
social morality. But it is absolutely useless to try and abolish this
commerce without attacking its lord and master--_money_. The venality
of man implies the commerce of his body, and as long as everything can
be got for money, coitus can be bought. It is, therefore, this
venality which must be attacked, not only by condemning it in words
but by cutting its roots. If the State will not withdraw its
protecting hand from prostitution, it might at least combat
proxenetism and the public manifestations of prostitution, by all the
legal and administrative measures at its disposal. It would thus
reduce the matter to intimate personal relations.

Let us hope that, little by little, a social organization more just to
labor and wages, combined with the prohibition of alcoholic drinks,
will, in the future, annihilate the causes of commerce in human
bodies.

=Children as a Reason for Civil Marriage.=--To resume; we find that
civil marriage should, by progressive reforms, become a much more free
contract than it is at present, having for its object a common sexual
life. The law should abandon its useless and often harmful chicanery
concerning the questions of sexual relations and love, and regulate
more carefully the duties of parents toward their children, and thus
protect future generations against the abuse of the present
generation.

The difference which exists between marriage and free love should
gradually disappear, by instituting natural intimate relations on the
basis of sentiments of social morality, instead of maintaining the
pretended divine origin of a social institution. It is difficult to
avoid a smile when we hear the term "divine institution" applied to
the marriage of a rich girl with a man who has been bought for her.
(Vide Chapter X.)

Various propositions have been made to give more dignity to the unions
of free love, which now exist and which always ha