ee and becomes
all the more innocent because divorce is facilitated and strict laws
on the feeding and education of the children limit the male sexual
appetite.

I even venture to maintain that the stability of monogamous marriage,
which should be based on mutual sentiments of respect and love, would
be much better guaranteed than hitherto by legal liberty of conjugal
ties, and by duty to children such as I have proposed. If this became
recognized as conventional, men and women fit to understand each
other and love in a lasting manner, would find suitable mates more
easily, and would become united more permanently when their chains
were voluntary.

If marriages on trial became more frequent in the form of short
unions, ending with separation, this would not be a great evil, for
similar unions occur every day in a much baser form. Moreover, the
effect of legislation with regard to children would put a curb on
immorality and passion, which cause their worst effects.

If the objection is raised that this would lead immoral people to
avoid the procreation of children so as to enjoy more varied sexual
pleasures, I reply that this would be beneficial, for this anti-social
class of individuals would be eliminated by sterility, by a kind of
negative selection. We thus place two natural appetites in antagonism;
that of procreation on the one hand, and sexual enjoyment on the
other. Whoever inclines to the first, which is the higher and tends to
preserve the species, is obliged to restrain himself in the second,
without, however, falling into unnatural asceticism.

=Consanguineous Marriages.=--To avoid injurious consanguinity, it is
sufficient, in my opinion, to prohibit the procreation of children
between direct and collateral relations, especially between parents
and children and between brothers and sisters. Anything more than this
is only useless chicanery. Laws which prohibit marriage between
relations by alliance are absurd, for instance those which forbid a
widower to marry his sister-in-law (deceased wife's sister), etc.
Among some peoples such unions are ordained by law!

There is also no valid reason to prohibit unions between first cousins
or between uncles and aunts, with nephews and nieces. There is nothing
to prove that such marriages are injurious to the offspring. What is
harmful is the accumulation of hereditary taints, whether they occur
in relations or persons who are strangers to each other. Nevertheless