able at Paris, or at London, may be, and frequently is,
held innocent at Calcutta or at Pekin."

And Emerson, the intellectual Seer, says: "There is a soul at the
centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us
can wrong the universe."

It is a colossal piece of impudent presumption, when we come to think
about it, for Man to ask the Supreme, Absolute, Infinite Power to
forgive him. But, if we cannot wrong the universe, we can and we do
wrong ourselves and each other as mortals.

That is the whole gist of the story. We are constantly wronging
ourselves and each other and calling upon God to support us in our
strife when God cannot know aught save the call of Love.

The growing, evolving race, has found it necessary to establish
certain loosely defined codes of morals and of social ethics, in the
same way that man has bridled the horse that he may control him;
incidentally, we may observe that where this bridle formerly included
"blinders," it now permits the horse to see whither he is going.

Perhaps a brief survey of the standards of sexual morality which have
upheld (or down-held, just as we look at it) the human race until now,
may be illuminating.

It has been disputed, if, under the matriarchal system of polygamy,
the moral condition of the people was higher than under the
patriarchal system, and probably no satisfactory conclusion can be
reached upon this point, save and except that any condition, however
primitive, which permitted to the female freedom of choice, must be
better than that in which she is the object of coercion. This is
evident, because the degree of coercion can never, under any
circumstances, be as great with the male as with the female.

Therefore, matriarchal polygamy is comparatively more nearly moral
than is patriarchal polygamy, and when all is said and done, historic
morality is comparative.

But from the standpoint of modern idealism matriarchal polygamy seems
to be a very low estimate of moral conduct; and from the standpoint of
sexual idealism it is a low standard; a standard only a degree higher
than that of patriarchal polygamy--a standard which is the lineal
descendant of the ethics of the marriage-by-capture period of human
evolution, and from which we are today by no means free, owing to
economic, religious, and ethical conditions.

There is a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the unorganized
brotherhood of the Enlightened, that laws are made for th