A MODERN UTOPIA
other arrangement. It is no doubt true that the natural instinct of either sex is exclusive of participators in intimacy during a period of intimacy, but it was probably Aristotle who gave Plato an offensive interpretation in this matter. No one would freely submit to such a condition of affairs as multiple marriage carried out, in the spirit of the Aristotelian interpretation, to an obscene completeness, but that is all the more reason why the Modern Utopia should not refuse a group marriage to three or more freely consenting persons. There is no sense in prohibiting institutions which no sane people could ever want to abuse. It is claimed—though the full facts are difficult to ascertain—that a group marriage of over two hundred persons was successfully organised by John Humphrey Noyes at Oneida Creek.[1] It is fairly certain in the latter case that there was no "promiscuity," and that the members mated for variable periods, and often for life, within the group. The documents are reasonably clear upon that point. This Oneida community was, in fact, a league of two hundred persons to regard their children as "common." Choice and preference were not abolished in the community, though in some cases they were set aside—just as they are by many parents under our present conditions. There seems to have been a premature attempt at "stirpiculture," at what Mr. Francis Galton now calls "Eugenics," in the mating of the members, and there was also a limitation of offspring. Beyond these points the inner
- ↑ See John H. Noyes's "History of American Socialisms" and his writings generally. The bare facts of this and the other American experiments are given, together with more recent matter, by Morris Hillquit, in "The History of Socialism in the United States."
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