PERSONAL REFLECTIONS.

THE AUTHOR SALUTES HIS READERS.

In appearing before the conservative society of my country, I cast down the gauntlet of an honorable and courteous hostility. Originally of their class, having spent among them my happiest hours, inclined by the refinements of education to prize a graceful luxury, and all that has been conquered of actual harmonies, I never confound persons or even social classes with principles, and when I contend for justice and liberty to all men and women, nothing is farther from my thoughts and wishes than merely to reverse the social positions of those reared to luxury and those reared to labor; it would combine for both the advantages of both. Again, when I attack and logically annihilate what is compressive and arbitrary in the present institutions of marriage and the family, I do not fail to recognize that in these lie most of what little harmony the civilized world has known. I see clearly, and therefore I strike boldly. I distinguish the essence from the form, and I know that nothing of passional truth and refinement will be destroyed, but on the contrary, immensely developed and perfected in that beauty and order of which we now have only the aspiration, by cutting loose the bonds which now compress the passions, at the same time that we present to them the Social Order for which they were created. For that part of my work which is critical and destructive, I am conscious that others may be better fitted. It is a task I would resign to them with great relief. None but myself can conceive of

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SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL

the crucifixions I have suffered before I could have taken this position. The divine Harmonist created me a passional violin, whose heart-chords were strung responsive to all that is loveliest in nature or in social amenities, but on attempting with the instrument such music as it was fitted to produce, he grew indignant that the delicate purity of its tones should be marred and drowned by the noises of the civilized mob that composed his audience; he takes me up by the handle and wields me as a club to beat them over their heads, if perchance their bumps of music may be mechanically developed, or they be at least forced to make their escape. If the violin be broken by this rough usage, or their own heads be not so effectually belabored as though the instrument were a bludgeon, it is their own necessity, and not my choice, on which the blame must fall. I would gladly speak at once the harmonies of nature and society. It is my mother tongue, but first the mountains of moral rubbish that bury and hide every passional truth must be hewed away, the false institutions and organizations into which the stream of human progress has been turned aside and dammed up, to spin round in perpetual eddys or vicious circles, must be destroyed. Some years ago Political Liberty was the subject of a life-struggle for the American people. Now comes the question of Passional and Social Liberty, and there is another declaration of independence to be made, and another revolution to be achieved for the conquest of that happiness, the right to whose pursuit. constitutes one of the prominent articles in our last declaration. That was the shadow, the sham fight, the parade, the external contest with foreign powers, but now comes the substance, the real fight, the battle of souls, the struggle without quarter between the forces of heaven and hell in our midst, and the hottest of the fight must be fought upon this central position of the love relation between the sexes. To this all human actions ultimately converge. It is the pivotal thesis of social science, and gives its pivotal and distinctive character to every social period.

I am perfectly conscious of the forlorn and Quixotic attitude in which this book, cast in the very teeth of custom and

OUR NEXT PROGRESS IN LIBERTY.

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prevailing ideas, will place me in the eyes of my excellent and ever dear and honored conservative friends. Admitting his good intentions, and the ability in kind of his performance, how hopeless, how preposterous for an unknown individual to presume to stem the current of public opinion! It is like a squirrel pretending to swim across the rapids above Niagara Falls. Ah! little they know of that tremendous and all-conquering torrent, of which I am only a foam-crested wave! It is the principle of Self-Sovereignty, or Individual Liberty, for which Protestantism and Democracy, Luther and Hampden, the people of England, Germany, America, Italy, and France, and, finally, Fourier and all true Socialists, have so effectually combated. This principle-the divinely legitimate Spontaneity of the individual, and his or her indefeasible right to act in any manner whatsoever, and to contract or annul at pleasure any relation, with this sole proviso, that he or she shall not invade or compress the same personal liberty in others-this principle of self-sovereignty, which is totally incompatible with the fixed and arbitrary forms of the civilized marriage, will bear me through triumphantly; and those truths, which may seem to many so hopelessly in advance of my age, will prove to my censors that I have understood the spirit, meaning, and tendencies of this age better than they, and another generation will find trite and tautologous those truths which I now so painfully and rawly announce. From their superior position in the practical enjoyment of that personal liberty and true social order, in whose name I speak, they will recognize me as a living billow of that social tide, and our ancient marriage custom only as a shell left on the beach by a retreating wave.

I shall not be understood to deny that constant, and, if you please, conjugial love-ties will continue to be formed, but that their consecration will repose upon their spontaneity, and not upon civil authority and law.

CHAPTER I.

PROBLEMS.

1. THE real and essential tendencies and adaptations of human nature in its expression of the passion, Love.

2. The relations of the male and female sexes, which combine in the highest degree individual liberty with decency, good order, and social harmony.

3. The forms of social policy, and the corporations and institutions required for the objects above stated.

4. The mechanical and architectural arrangements corresponding.

The above problems are to be resolved, first, in respect to the general law or type; secondly, the modes of variation to be established in conformity with the particular passional characters of races, nations, societies, and individuals.

These problems lead us, in the first place, to examine the historical experience and practices of our race, and of its component nations and individual characters under the varying degrees of liberty which they have enjoyed, and under the various influences, climatic, religious, political, and others, which have moulded their characters and customs.

These investigations I have made, but it does not fall within the scope of the present work to enter into those elaborate details which any fair statement of the subject requires. So far as principles are concerned, this vast mass of experience admits of being summed up in a few pages; and those who are curious in details I refer to the work of Mr. T. L. Nichols, entitled, "Woman in all Ages and Nations," published Fowlers & Wells, 131 Nassau-street, New York.

by

The general tendency of love relations, so long as they are

confined to a spiritual development, is to multiplied, varied, and consecutive ties.

The most frequent fact of love relations, when the material tie of possession exists, is monogamy, or possession of one woman by one man; admitting of various degrees of latitude on the part of the male; of none on the part of the female. Exception to this custom is found in the South Pacific, in a nation in the interior of Africa, where the women are polygamous by custom and morality, without prostitution or promiscuity, and in Thibet, where one woman marries a whole family of brothers. The plurality of wives is, however, recognized as moral among most nations.

The material tie of possession is the only one which obtains universal recognition, and which is formulized by laws and institutions.

The general influences bearing on love relations and institutions, in common with others concerning the great mass or the whole of our race, in its past experience, have been those of poverty, ignorance, superstition, political oppression, and moral prejudice. Liberty has been restricted to a minimum, or reduced to nullity. Jealousy, crimes, and social disorders have abounded, and individual happiness has been rare and exceptional. Love has been generally considered and treated, politically, merely as an agency for the reproduction of the species, and its result, the family of children, has been the motive relied on for stimulating the laborer to industry.

Reactions against this burden, on the part of individuals, have led to licentiousness, seduction, swindling in love, and prostitution, for whose chronicles see Prostitution in Paris," by Parent Du Chatelet.

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The exceptions to the above statement have been found chiefly under the climatic influences of the tropical zone, and in general or social, and particular or individual cases of wealth or luxury, which have allowed greater freedom of action Religions, moralities, laws, and marriage institutions are not the primary causes of the evils and inconveniences under which man and woman suffer; poverty and ignorance are responsible