l his reproductive
function must be included in his perfect life.

[Sidenote: Inner values already lodged in this function.]

Now, any function to reach perfection it must fulfil two conditions: it
must be delightful in itself, endowing its occasions and results with
ideal interest, and it must also co-operate harmoniously with all other
functions so that life may be profitable and happy. In the matter of
reproduction nature has already fulfilled the first of these conditions
in its essentials. It has indeed super-abundantly fulfilled them, and
not only has love appeared in man's soul, the type and symbol of all
vital perfection, but a tenderness and charm, a pathos passing into the
frankest joy, has been spread over pregnancy, birth, and childhood. If
many pangs and tears still prove how tentative and violent, even here,
are nature's most brilliant feats, science and kindness may strive not
unsuccessfully to diminish or abolish those profound traces of evil. But
reproduction will not be perfectly organised until the second condition
is fulfilled as well, and here nature has as yet been more remiss.
Family life, as Western nations possess it, is still regulated in a very
bungling, painful, and unstable manner. Hence, in the first rank of
evils, prostitution, adultery, divorce, improvident and unhappy
marriages; and in the second rank, a morality compacted of three
inharmonious parts, with incompatible ideals, each in its way
legitimate: I mean the ideals of passion, of convention, and of reason;
add, besides, genius and religion thwarted by family ties, single lives
empty, wedded lives constrained, a shallow gallantry, and a dull virtue.

[Sidenote: Outward beneficence might be secured by experiment.]

How to surround the natural sanctities of wedlock with wise custom and
law, how to combine the maximum of spiritual freedom with the maximum of
moral cohesion, is a problem for experiment to solve. It cannot be
solved, even ideally, in a Utopia. For each interest in play has its
rights and the prophet neither knows what interests may at a given
future time subsist in the world, nor what relative force they may have,
nor what mechanical conditions may control their expression. The
statesman in his sphere and the individual in his must find, as they go,
the best practical solutions. All that can be indicated beforehand is
the principle which improvements in this institution would comply with
if they were really improve