sire, which is an exotic growth, the outcome of
civilisation. Thus fidelity is much harder for man, who, to succeed in
being faithful, is obliged to dominate a natural instinct, which is a
far more difficult thing to do than to fight against an exotic desire;
because all natural things are governed by inexorable and eternal
laws, and are not at the mercy of circumstance. Thus the natural
instinct of man is at work all the time in continuous activity--and
the exotic desire of woman is intermittent, and the result of
circumstance.

Of course, all this has been said before by every serious thinker, and
I am only reiterating these facts because the general readers may have
forgotten them, and I must bring them to their recollection to make
the rest of our discussion upon marriage clear.

These nature instincts being admitted, we can get on to a survey of
legal marriage. At first, it must have been an affair of expediency.
The woman was probably expected to be faithful, and brute force took
care that she was so, or that she immediately paid the price of
possible contamination of offspring by being killed. She was expected
to be faithful for a natural reason, not for a spiritual or
sentimental one; the reason being, as already inferred, to ensure the
purity of the offspring. Man had no need to be faithful to one woman
to secure this end, and never, in consequence, dreamed of being so.

All through Pagan times infidelity in man was rampant and recognised,
and not looked upon as sin. And when woman became civilised enough to
have exotic desires, she lost her natural instinct, that of
preservation of pure offspring, and became liable to vagrant fancies
and often a vicious creature.

Then the Church arrived and turned marriage into a sacrament;
presumably with the noble intention of trying to elevate man and
overcome his carnal nature. Man outwardly conformed, and, with his
whole soul's desire to be true and to uplift himself, each individual
who really believed no doubt did war with his instincts, and numbers
probably succeeded in conquering them. While woman, always a creature
of more delicate nervous susceptibilities, flung herself with furore
under the influences of spiritual things, and in the truly devout
cases overcame her grafted desires and returned to natural instincts.
But in beings of both sexes who were unconvinced by religion,
infidelity continued to flourish, as it does even to this day. A man
who truly believ