ENDS AND MEANS
husbands. Discussing this fact, Dr. Unwin hazards the
opinion 'that it was the unequal fate of women, not the
compulspry continence, that caused the downfall of absolute
monogamy. No society has yet succeeded in regulating
the relations between the sexes in such a way as to enable
sexual opportunity to remain at a minimum for an extended
period. The inference I draw from the historical evidence
is that, if ever such a result should be desired, the
sexes must first be placed on a footing of complete
legal equality.9
In this very brief summary I have certainly done much
less than justice to Dr. Unwin's very remarkable book;
but though doing it less than justice, I do not think that
I have misrepresented its main conclusions. The evidence
for these conclusions is so full, that it is difficult to see
how they can be rejected. They are conclusions which
will certainly seem unpalatable to the middle-raged relics,
of a liberal generation. Such liberals are liberals, not only
politically, but also in the sense in which Shakespeare's
'liberal shepherds * (the ones who called wild arums by a
grosser name than dead-men's fingers) were liberal. They
have been * heard to declare,* very frequently and loudly,
that they 'wish to enjoy the advantages of high culture
and to abolish compulsory continence/ Living as they
do upon the capital of energy accumulated by a previous
generation of monpgamists, whose wives came to them as
virgiqes zntactae, they can make the best of both worlds
during their own lifetime. Dr. Unwin's researches have
made it certain, however, that it will be impossible for their
children to go on making the best of both worlds.
If Dr. Unwin's conclusions are well founded—and it is
difficult to believe that they are not—how do they fit
into our-general ethical scheme? The first significant fact
to be noticed is that 'the continence caused the thought,
not the thought the continence.5 Zoistic societies live in a
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