ield--sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only
to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the
most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a
large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical
suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex
matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all
an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up
because of this deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex
without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as
utterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness
consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be
anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman,
full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her
most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must
stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience
until a "good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife?
That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement
end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important,
factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the
wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the
gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions,
young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken
in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become
"sensible."

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has
aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and
only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can
he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage.
Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are
not of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of
shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul poverty and
sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution.
The State and Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it is
the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and
women.

Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above
dollars and cents. Particularly this is true of that class whom