ay to deal with polygamy is
to let it alone" (E.D. Cope, "The Marriage Problem," _Open
Court_, Nov. 15 and 22, 1888). In England, Dr. John Chapman, the
editor of the _Westminster Review_, and a close associate of the
leaders of the Radical movement in the Victorian period, was
opposed to State dictation as regards the form of marriage, and
believed that a certain amount of sexual variation would be
socially beneficial. Thus he wrote in 1884 (in a private letter):
"I think that as human beings become less selfish polygamy [i.e.,
polygyny], and even polyandry, in an ennobled form, will become
increasingly frequent."

James Hinton, who, a few years earlier, had devoted much thought
and attention to the sexual question, and regarded it as indeed
the greatest of moral problems, was strongly in favor of a more
vital flexibility of marriage regulations, an adaptation to human
needs such as the early Christian Church admitted. Marriage, he
declared, must be "subordinated to service," since marriage, like
the Sabbath, is made for man and not man for marriage. Thus in
case of one partner becoming insane he would permit the other
partner to marry again, the claim of the insane partner, in case
of recovery, still remaining valid. That would be a form of
polygamy, but Hinton was careful to point out that by "polygamy"
he meant "less a particular marriage-order than such an order as
best serves good, and which therefore must be essentially
variable. Monogamy may be good, even the only good order, if of
free choice; but a _law_ for it is another thing. The sexual
relationship must be a _natural_ thing. The true social life will
not be any fixed and definite relationship, as of monogamy,
polygamy, or anything else, but a perfect subordination of every
sexual relationship whatever to reason and human good."

Ellen Key, who is an enthusiastic advocate of monogamy, and who
believes that the civilized development of personal love removes
all danger of the growth of polygamy, still admits the existence
of variations. She has in mind such solutions of difficult
problems as Goethe had before him when he proposed at first in
his _Stella_ to represent the force of affection and tender
memories as too strong to admit of the rupture of an old bond in
the presence of a new bond. The problem of sexual