of monogamy, as he understands it, but at the same time believes and acts on the belief that monogamy by no means excludes the need for sexual variation.  Lord Morley’s statement (Diderot, vol. ii, p. 20) that “man is instinctively polygamous,” can by no means be accepted, but if we interpret it as meaning that man is an instinctively monogamous animal with a concomitant desire for sexual variation, there is much evidence in its favor.

Women must be as free as men to mould their own amatory life.  Many consider, however, that such freedom on the part of women will be, and ought to be, exercised within narrower limits (see, e.g., Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time, Ch.  X).  In part this limitation is considered due to the greater absorption of a woman in the task of breeding and rearing her child, and in part to a less range of psychic activities.  A man, as G. Hirth puts it, expressing this view of the matter (Wege zur Liebe, p. 342), “has not only room in his intellectual horizon for very various interests, but his power of erotic expansion is much greater and more differentiated than that of women, although he may lack the intimacy and depth of a woman’s devotion.”

It may be argued that, since variations in the sexual order will inevitably take place, whether or not they are recognized or authorized, no harm is likely to be done by using the weight of social and legal authority on the side of that form which is generally regarded as the best, and, so far as possible, covering the other forms with infamy.  There are many obvious defects in such an attitude, apart from the supremely important fact that to cast infamy on sexual relationships is to exert a despicable cruelty on women, who are inevitably the chief sufferers.  Not the least is the injustice and the hampering of vital energy which it inflicts on the better and more scrupulous people to the advantage of the worse and less scrupulous.  This always happens when authority exerts its power in favor of a form.  When, in the thirteenth century, Alexander III—­one of the greatest and most effective potentates who ever ruled Christendom—­was consulted by the Bishop of Exeter concerning subdeacons who persisted in marrying, the Pope directed him to inquire into the lives and characters of the offenders; if they were of regular habits and staid morality, they were to be forcibly separated and the wives driven out; if they were men of notoriously disorderly character, they were to be permitted to retain their wives, if they so desired (Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, third edition, vol. i, p. 396).  It was an astute policy, and was carried out by the same Pope elsewhere, but it is easy to see that it was altogether opposed to morality in every sense of the term.  It destroyed the happiness and the efficiency of the best men; it left the worst men absolutely free.  To-day we are quite willing to recognize the evil result