dition of things, as it brings them crowds of customers.
III.
But if the economic organization of the world is the principal cause of the falseness of the institution of matrimony, it is however, not the only one. A large share of the blame for the opposition between substance and form, between love and marriage, and for the frequent tragical conflicts between natural sentiments and conventional constraints, is due to the prevailing conception of morality, which is a consequence of Christianity. This morality considers the act of generation an odious crime, it covers its face before it as before an abomination, which at the same time does not preclude a stolen glance, and it lays upon everything which has the slightest connection with the sexual life, or even calls it to remembrance, the ban of a timorous silence. This is monstrous, it is unprecedented. This system of morality could not last an hour if it were not that in private all human beings, all without exception, set it aside as tranquilly as if it did not exist. It has not the smallest natural foundation and therefore not the faintest shadow of justification. Why should an organic function, the most important of all by far, because its purpose is the perpetuation of the species, why should it be less decent than others whose purpose is only the preservation of the individual? Why should eating and sleeping be legitimate actions which are openly practiced, spoken of and acknowledged, while generation is a sin and a disgrace which can not be sufficiently concealed and denied? Is not puberty the crowning point of the development of the individual, and its own reproduction its highest triumph and most glorious manifestation? All living beings, plants as well as animals, consider
