This system certainly shews a much higher development of social
intelligence than our marriage system; but if it were physically
possible to introduce it into human society it would be wrecked by an
opposite and not less important revolt of women: that is, the revolt
against compulsory barrenness. In this two classes of women are
concerned: those who, though they have no desire for the presence or
care of children, nevertheless feel that motherhood is an experience
necessary to their complete psychical development and understanding of
themselves and others, and those who, though unable to find or unwilling
to entertain a husband, would like to occupy themselves with the rearing
of children. My own experience of discussing this question leads me
to believe that the one point on which all women are in furious secret
rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a
child with the obligation to become the servant of a man. Adoption,
or the begging or buying or stealing of another woman's child, is no
remedy: it does not provide the supreme experience of bearing the child.
No political constitution will ever succeed or deserve to succeed unless
it includes the recognition of an absolute right to sexual experience,
and is untainted by the Pauline or romantic view of such experience as
sinful in itself. And since this experience in its fullest sense must be
carried in the case of women to the point of childbearing, it can only
be reconciled with the acceptance of marriage with the child's father by
legalizing polygyny, because there are more adult women in the country
than men. Now though polygyny prevails throughout the greater part of
the British Empire, and is as practicable here as in India, there is a
good deal to be said against it, and still more to be felt. However,
let us put our feelings aside for a moment, and consider the question
politically.