, and the whole of the common
property, was pledged for the maintenance and protection of the
women, and the support and education of the children." It is not
probable that the Oneida Community presented in detail the model
to which human society generally will conform. But even at the
lowest estimate, its success showed, as Lord Morely has pointed
out (_Diderot_, vol. ii, p. 19), "how modifiable are some of
these facts of existing human character which are vulgarly deemed
to be ultimate and ineradicable," and that "the discipline of the
appetites and affections of sex," on which the future of
civilization largely rests, is very far from an impossibility.

In many respects, the Oneida Community was ahead of its
time,--and even of ours,--but it is interesting to note that, in
the matter of the control of conception, our marriage system has
come into line with the theory and practice of Oneida; it cannot,
indeed, be said that we always control conception in accordance
with eugenic principles, but the fact that such control has now
become a generally accepted habit of civilization, to some extent
deprives Noyes' criticism of our marriage system of the force it
possessed half a century ago. Another change in our customs--the
advocacy, and even the practice, of abortion and
castration--would not have met with his approval; he was strongly
opposed to both, and with the high moral level that ruled his
community, neither was necessary to the maintenance of the
stirpiculture that prevailed.

The Oneida Community endured for the space of one generation, and
came to an end in 1879, by no means through a recognition of
failure, but by a wise deference to external pressure. Its
members, many of them highly educated, continued to cherish the
memory of the practices and ideals of the Community. Noyes Miller
(the author of _The Strike of a Sex_, and _Zugassant's
Discovery_) to the last, looked with quiet confidence to the time
when, as he anticipated, the great discovery of Noyes would be
accepted and adopted by the world at large. Another member of the
Community (Henry J. Seymour) wrote of the Community long
afterwards that "It was an anticipation and imperfect miniature
of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth."

Perhaps the commonest type of proposal or attempt to improve the
biological level o