MARRIAGE
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which it refers.
The essential function of marriage is the continuance of the race, as stated in the Book of Common Prayer.
The accidental function of marriage is the gratification of the amoristic sentiment of mankind.
The artificial sterilization of marriage makes it possible for marriage to fulfill its accidental function whilst neglecting its essential one.
The most revolutionary invention of the XIX century was the artificial sterilization of marriage.
Any marriage system which condemns a majority of the population to celibacy will be violently wrecked on the pretext that it outrages morality.
Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under these conditions.
The minimum of national celibacy (ascertained by dividing the number of males in the community by the number of females, and taking the quotient as the number of wives or husbands permitted to each person) is secured in England (where the quotient is 1) by the institution of monogamy.
The modern sentimental term for the national minimum of celibacy is
Purity.
Marriage, or any other form of promiscuous amoristic monogamy, is fatal to large States because it puts its ban on the deliberate breeding of man as a political animal.