LECTURES 
 
 ON THK 
 
 MARRIAGES OF THE PRIESTHOOD 
 
 OF THB 
 
 OLD IMMORAL WORLD, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE YEAR 1835, 
 
 BEFORE THE PASSING OF THE NEW MARRIAGE ACT 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX, 
 
 CONTAINING THB 
 
 MARRIAGE SYSTEM OF THE NEW MORAL WORLD ; 
 
 And proving that the Author never entertained the sentiments attributed to 
 him by the opponents of Socialism. 
 
 LEEDS: 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLLSHED BY J. HOBSON, MARKET STREET, BRIGGATE 
 SOLD BY ABEL HEYWOOD, OLDHAM STREET, MANCHESTER ; 
 AND J. CLEAVE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
 
 1840. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILIjING. 
 
NOW PUBLISHING. 
 
 TRACTS EXPLANATORY OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM. 
 Price 4d. per dozen, for Tracts of eight pages ; and the others in, 
 proportion ; in quires at 2s., with usual discount. 
 
 1. Observations upon Political and Social Re- 
 form, with a sketch of the various and conflicting theories of 
 modern Political Economists. Addressed to working men, and wealth 
 prodticers of every class. 
 
 Miss Martineau says, " Nothing has been seen to equal the pgr- ,-• 
 fection of the Shaker and Rappite arrangements, in their fiefd^^ 
 vineyards, gardens, and homes. They have the best crops, tbe 
 best wines, the best provisions for the table, the best medidines, 
 furniture, house-linen, roads, fences, and habitations in the country, 
 with an enormously increasing amount of wealth, and very 
 moderate labour. The Rappites have an abundance, so much 
 beyond their need, that it is surprising that they work, except for 
 want of something else to do." 
 
 2. A Calculation of the result of the Industry of 
 600 Persons of the Working Classes. 
 
 3. The Pull all together ; addressed to the sober and 
 industrious of the working classes. 
 
 " Can our modern Christians be so infatuated as to suppose that 
 »the amiable and beneficient Jesus intended to establish a system 
 ^wherein some should enjoy supertluous wealth, and " o^^rs starve^ 
 ovyludf naked, heg from door to doorV No! no! Christ intended 
 to institute, and did establish, a system of united interest. — "When the 
 rich man came to him to know what he should do to inherit eternal 
 life, the answer was, "Sell all thou hast and give to the poor." 
 He knew that " private property" was the origin of all vice, of all 
 crime, and of all misery, and therefore strictly prohibited it. His 
 true disciples readily acquiesed in his views, " and sold all their 
 possessions and goods, and divided them to all as every one had. 
 need." " None said that aught he had was his own, for they had 
 all things in common." 
 
 ^* Put on charity, which is the bond of perfedness."- Col. iii. 14. 
 " If we love one another his love \s perfect'm us." — I John iv. 12. 
 "Finally, brethren, be perfect', be of good comfort; be of one 
 mind ; live in peace, and the God of love and peace shall be with 
 you." — 2 Cor. xiii. 11. 
 
 4. Man the Creature of Circumstances. 
 
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 " There are, and always will be, innate and unalterable differ- 
 ences of individual character, but national character is formed by 
 national institutions and circumstances, and is whatever these cir- 
 cumstances may make it — Japanese or Tupinamban, Algerine or 
 English. Until governments avail themselves of this principle in , 
 its full extent, and give it its best direction, the science of policy 
 will be incomplete." — Southey's Life of Wesley ^ VoU I, page 333. 
 
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 SOCIETY, 57, PALL MALL, LONDON. 
 
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 Essays on the Formation of Character ; first published in 
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 Address on the Opening of the Instit-ution for the Forma- 
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HOME COLONIZATION SOCIETY. 
 
 Whatever may be said or written on the improvement of all classes 
 of society, it is now evident to those who reflect, that that which is 
 necessary to this end is a sound, good^ practical education, and perma- 
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 It will also be ob\'ious to those who have thoroughly investigated 
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 posed Colonies will contain arrangements for the accommodation of 
 every religion : the only religious requisition being the practice of 
 charity and kindness to all. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON Tiia 
 
 MARRIAGES OF THE PRIESTHOOD 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OLD IMMORAL WORLD, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE YEAR 1835, 
 
 BEFORE THE PASSING OF THE NEW MARRIAGE ACT. 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX, 
 
 CONTAINING THE 
 
 MARRIAGE SYSTEM OF THE NEW MORAL WORLD; 
 
 And proTing that the Author never entertained the sentiments attributed to 
 him by the opponents of Socialism. 
 
 LEEDS: 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. HOBSON, MARKET STREET, BRIGGATB J 
 SOLD BY ABEL HEYWOOD, OLDHAM STREET, MANCHESTER ; 
 AND J. CLEAVE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
 
 1840. 
 
PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 In consequence of the frequent gross misapprehension of Mr. O^ven's 
 views on the subject of Marriage, the Editor, in offering to the public 
 the present edition of these lectures, deems it expedient, for the sake 
 of truth, to prefix the following remarks. 
 
 It has been imagined that Mr. Owen desires to abrogate all Mar- 
 riage. That this is a gross error is evident from the fact, that so long 
 ago as 1830, in a course of Lectures he then delivered in London, he 
 published the laws by which he proposes that Marriages should be 
 regulated in the New State of Society ; which laws were again pub- 
 lished in 1833 in the " Charter of the Rights of Humanity and 
 subsequently, in an address to his disciples, ( see ^New Moral World,"" 
 page 443,) he most explicitly stated that marriage regulations ought, 
 on no account to be abandoned, and that it is his opinion, they must 
 ever exist — improved as society advances in knowledge and goodness. 
 
 All reasonable persons must admit that it is a grievous evil for man 
 or woman to be induced to become, or compelled to continue, united in 
 marriage to an individual for whom they cannot feel a sincere affec- 
 tion ; and none but the most irrational can consider it otherwise than 
 a most gross and lamentable error to call such marriages virtuous, or 
 to imagine that the sanction of legal or religious ceremonies, so called, 
 can render them other than most vicious, demoralizing, and wretched. 
 It is needless to expatiate on this point : few are so utterly stultified 
 that their feelings will not respond to the truth of these remarks. 
 ^ Any person who reads Mr. Owen's writings with but a moderate 
 "9 degree of attention and candour, will at once perceive that it is tTiese 
 '** Marriages, with their innumerable evil consequences, which he desires 
 p to put an end to, by introducing arrangements and regulations dictated 
 ^ by common sense, or right reason, to insure all the happiness that can 
 ^ be derived, and avoid all the vice and evil that have hitherto been 
 ^ experienced, from the social converse of man or woman. 
 
 Nor can it, with any pretension to truth, be asserted that it is the 
 object of Mr. Owen to lessen conjugal fidelity, or the permanence of 
 5 marriage ; for he expressly states in these Lectures that " the unions 
 i of the New Moral World will be the result of affection ; and therefore, 
 ^ in the very great majority of cases, will be of a permanent nature 
 ^ and in the Manchester Lectures he says, " under the arrangements of 
 JSZ this new state of human existence, the affections will receive every 
 aid that can be devised to induce them to be permanent ; and there 
 C can be no doubt they will be far more durable, and produce far more 
 Q pleasure and enjoyment to the parties, and far less injury to society, 
 than has ever yet been experienced." In a word, a candid attention to 
 5f the true tendency of Mr. Owen's writings must convince all but the 
 <V most superficial or obtuse, that this single object, as regards the 
 social converse of man and woman, is to promote, to the greatest 
 possible extent, true purity, delicacy, virtue, and happiness, now most 
 ^ lamentably deficient, through the false notions of society on these 
 * subjects, and the vicious customs and institutions which have emanated 
 ' from those notions. 
 
LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 Mr. Owen commenced his Lecture, by stating that 
 in that morning's Discussion a lady had brought forward 
 three questions, which were put by the celebrated 
 Chateubriand in a work he had written, but which was 
 not to be published until after his death. The ques- 
 tions showed the anxiety in the minds of the Statesmen 
 of the world about the present state of society, which 
 they were satisfied could not much longer be bolstered 
 up. 
 
 The first question asked is : " What shall be the neuo 
 state of society ?" What ! does one of the leading min- 
 isters of France, and a high Tory — does he ask such a 
 question as this ; and a question, too, that shows that he 
 and his friends have made up their minds that a change 
 must take place ? Without entering further into the 
 subject now, I will merely say, that the new state of 
 society will be entirely different from the present state, 
 and will be based on principles totally distinct. I hope 
 our friends, in investigating our plans, will make no 
 attempt to unite the two states of society. I have said 
 again and again, that they never can amalgamate in any 
 proportion, and it will, therefore, be useless to draw in- 
 ferences on the new system from any thing we see 
 around us. 
 
 The second question is, " How shall women arrive 
 at legal emancipation ? Up to the present day, society 
 has proceeded upon the principle of classes, bodies 
 or corporations, and of distinct families." The third 
 is : " What appearance will society present when these 
 regulations shall 70 longer exists and women become 
 INDIVIDUAL, as is the tendency that they should 
 become V 
 
4 
 
 I rejoice that these questions have been put, and that 
 too by so eminent and intelligent an individual ; they go 
 to confirm my own impressions on the subject. 
 
 In my previous lectures I have stated, that the chief 
 of the kSatanic institutions over the world, though some- 
 what varied in name and form, are the priesthood ; the 
 lawyers and magistrates ; the military ; the unnatural 
 and artificial union of the sexes ; individual and national 
 competition and contest ; and the single-family, or 
 universally disuniting arrangements of society ; and the 
 metal, or any other medium liable to change in value, 
 for the circulation of wealth. And I then hastily 
 glanced at some of the leading evils necessarily arising 
 from the priesthood, the laws and magistracy, and the 
 military. I now proceed to notice, in the same hasty 
 manner, some of the remainder of these Satanic in- 
 stitutions, or institutions of moral evil ; and first of the 
 unnatural or artificial union of the sexes. It seems that 
 many of the readers of the New Moral World, many 
 of my usual audience, as well as a large portion of the 
 public, are much opposed to any thing being said openly, 
 to a mixed assembly, on the subject of marriage, because, 
 say they, we are none of us prepared to enter upon the 
 consideration of this delicate subject. The disciples of 
 our system say : " We readily acknowledge the tmth of 
 the three fundamental errors of moral evil, and the three 
 fundamental principles of moral good. We fully un- 
 derstand the facts whence they are derived, and consider 
 the developement of them, in this plain intelligible form, 
 the greatest boon that man has yet acquired from his 
 intellectual faculties. To know the cause of evil and of 
 good among the human race is the most valuable know- 
 ledge that can be given to man ; it is to know the cause 
 of misery and of happiness : in fact, it is to learn how to 
 make the earth a pandemonium or a paradise." All 
 this the disciples of the system readily admit ; but they 
 add: "What has all this to do with the present mar- 
 riages of the world, seeing that thje prejudices of the 
 human race are so deeply rooted in favour of their 
 continuance ?" 
 
 When I hear these sentiments repeated time after 
 
time, by many who have long professed themselves dis- 
 ciples of our system, and some who are esteemed the 
 most intelligent among them, I am obliged to say, as I 
 have often done, greatly to the annoyance of those who 
 deemed themselves sufficiently advanced in a knowledge 
 of the new system to be the experienced instructors of 
 others : " You really know nothing yet about the system 
 which you are teaching to others." And upon this 
 occasion, as we are nowabout to lay a solid foundation 
 in the minds of those who are to take an active part in 
 our future proceedings, it is incumbent on me to declare 
 to you, that no parties can be considered to understand 
 correctly or practically any part of the system which I 
 contemplate, unless they know how to apply the third 
 fundamental principle of moral good, and to trace the 
 third fundamental error of moral evil to practice, and 
 also to carry them out through all their ramifications 
 into the domestic and public arrangements of society, 
 and to trace the endless train of moral evil, and conse- 
 quent misery, which the present marriage system in all 
 countries necessarily engenders. 
 
 Surely none of you can imagine that I decided upon 
 relinguishing a situation, which was perhaps the most 
 enviable that man could hold under the existing vicious 
 system of the world, bringing me in, at the same time, 
 many thousands a-year, merely that I might instruct my 
 suffering fellow men in a few theoretical truths, which of 
 themselves could never be applied to useful practice, 
 much less to emancipate the human race from ignorance, 
 sin and misery ? Or that I gave up a situation in which 
 I could efiect much practical good, to teach so7n6 truths^ 
 and refrain from teaching others ; to flatter the preju- 
 dices of any man, woman, or child ; when the latter 
 truths were essential to efi'ect the great good intended, 
 and which could never be attained until all ancient 
 prejudices were removed ? Or do any of you imagine 
 that I meet you here to pander to your prejudices upon 
 important subjects, in which your permanent happiness 
 is involved ? No, my friends ; I have made the sacri- 
 fice of extensive wealth ; of an extraordinary personal 
 consideration among the great and good ones of the 
 
6 
 
 earth, as they are now called ; that, being freed from 
 all such shackles, I might attain the highest elevation 
 and the most enviable condition to Avliich a human 
 being can aspire ; that is, to be at full liberty to speak 
 to the world a new language of truth, unmixed with 
 error, upon subjects of the most vital interest to all of 
 human kind, and to send forth these truths, without 
 fear of man, to the great ones of the earth ; to emperors 
 and kings, and to the learned and wise, as they are 
 called, until they shall attend to them, become conscious 
 of their truth and high value, and shall willingly adopt 
 them. 
 
 Think you that I am to be withheld from this 
 course because a few or many of my readers or hearers 
 are alarmed at new, and to them astounding truths ? 
 truths essential to be known and publicly acted upon 
 for the eternal well-being and happiness of the human 
 race. 
 
 Those who have imbibed these impressions little* 
 indeed know the early determinations of my miftd, and 
 the thoughts which have long been within me. 1 tell 
 you now, I am not teaching in the midst of the metro- 
 polis of the British Empire to please my hearers, flatter 
 their prejudices, and live upon their ignorance. I am 
 purposely come among you to oppose all your oldest, 
 strongest, and most inveterate prejudices ; to stir them 
 up from their lotoest foundations^ and to withdraw them, 
 root and branch, out of your constitutions, or to sacrifice 
 all that man holds dear in the attempt. 
 
 You are prepared, you say, to give up some of your 
 old errors and prejudices ; but you wish I would not 
 touch upon others, and especially upon the present 
 married state. 
 
 What would you think of the wisdom of those who 
 were afflicted with some dreadful disorder, hitherto 
 deemed incurable, saying to a physician, who had 
 happily discovered a certain and efl'ectual cure for it : 
 " We are indeed diseased from head to foot ; we feel 
 the malady most excruciating from morning to night 
 and from night to morning, but, pray, dear good 
 doctor, do not touch this sad and incurable disorder, it 
 
7 
 
 is too bad to be interfered with ; but you may, if you 
 please, cure our tootliaclic, or one of our little fingeys 
 that occasionally gives us some pain \" 
 
 Such is your state and condition ; and knowing 
 what different beings you will be when you shall bo 
 restored to sound health, I shall disregard your sickly 
 or feverish complainings, and proceed to effect your 
 cure. 
 
 And I now tell you, and, through you, the population 
 of all the nations of the earth, that the present marriages 
 of the world, under the system of moral evil in which 
 they have been devised and are now contracted, are 
 the sole cause of all the prostitution, of all its incalcula- 
 ble grievous evils, and of more than one half of all the 
 vilest and most degrading crimes known to society. 
 And that, until you put away from among you and 
 your children for ever, this accursed thing^ you will 
 never be in a condition to become chaste or virtuous 
 in your thoughts and feelings, or to know what real 
 happiness is. For now almost all who are in the 
 married state are daily and hourly practising the 
 deepest deception, and living in the grossest prostitu- 
 tion of body and mind ; and misery is multiplied by it 
 beyond any of your feeble powers, in your present 
 irrational state, to estimate; for it extends directly 
 and indirectly through all the ramifications of life. 
 Yes ! your fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands, 
 wives, and children, are one and all suffering most 
 grievously from this opposition to nature ; from this 
 ignorance of your own organization ; from this un- 
 natural crime ; which destroys the finest feelings and 
 best powers of the species, by changing sincerity, kind- 
 ness, affection, sympathy and pure love, into deception, 
 envy, jealousy, hatred and revenge. It is a Satanic 
 device of the Priesthood to place and keep mankind 
 within their slavish superstitions, and to render them 
 subservient to all their purposes ; and until you can 
 acquire fortitude and moral courage to look this subject 
 fairly in the face and meet it fully on the ground of 
 common sense and right reason, and can show it to be, 
 as it is, in direct opposiiion to the laws of your organi- 
 
8 
 
 zation, it is eminently calculated to make you, in the 
 greatest extreme, ignorantly selfish, wretchedly vicious, 
 and most unhappy. And while this evil is suffered to 
 remain you cannot reasonably expect to advance one 
 single step in j^ractice in the right road to real virtue 
 and happiness. There is, therefore, no hope whatever, 
 for you until you acquire sufficient strength of mind to 
 overcome this evil, and openly denounce it both in 
 principle and practice. It is now ascertained that you 
 have not been organized to feel or not to feel at your 
 pleasure. You, therefore, commit a crime against the 
 everlasting laws of vour nature when you say that you 
 will " love and cherish" what your organization may 
 compel you to dislike and to loathe, even in a few 
 hours. Away then with this eminently false delicacy 
 and sickly appetite for truths which are the most essen- 
 tial to the progressive improvement and permanent 
 happiness of our species ! 
 
 The species, man, as approaching towards a rational 
 nature, is yet in its cradle ; and if we do not soon 
 remove it from this infant condition it will be rocked 
 too long, and the reasoning powers of man will be not 
 only of no benefit to him, but a grievous evil, and place 
 him, relatively to the enjoyment of happiness, greatly 
 below the majority of terrestrial animals. 
 
 Not speak of the present marriage state and its endless 
 crimes : why what absurdity yet remains in the public 
 mind ! Not to speak and expose the greatest of the 
 practical sources of vice and misery ! As well may 
 we at once close our eyes and put a seal upon our lij)s, 
 that we may not see or speak of the greatest deceptions, 
 the most abandoned wickedness, and the cause of the most 
 extended calamities known to the human race. The 
 time is now past for those who have a desire to amelio- 
 rate the condition of the human race upon everlasting 
 principles of truth, to pander to the prejudices of any por- 
 tion of mankind ; much less to this prejudice in favour 
 of artificial marriage and unnatural union of the sexes : 
 of a prejudice which is one of the deepest seated in 
 human society, and the most fatal to the happiness of 
 men and women from their birth to their death. 
 
9 
 
 Under this l)aneful crime against nature, man must 
 continually degenerate in his physical, mental, and 
 moral jjowers, as he has done during many past ages, 
 in proportion as this crime has been extended, and 
 made, through the influence of increasing wealth and 
 superstition, more and more unnatural and artificial. 
 The inhabitants of the British Empire, said to be the 
 most advanced of modern nations, although, through 
 the progress of science, the most powerful in all the 
 means requisite to insure the highest physical intellec- 
 tual and moral qualities to every member of its exten- 
 sive and widely-spread population, are greatly inferior, 
 individually, in all these respects, to the individuals of 
 former times, who possessed greater physical powers, 
 more intellectual strength and vigour, and more exalted 
 notions of public virtue, and of truth and sincerity, 
 then are to be found in modern times. When we look 
 at the ancient inhabitants of Greece and Rome, and 
 compare the present race of men to them, we find the 
 comparison greatly to the disadvantage of ourselves. 
 It is true we have scientific powers which they had not ; 
 but on these we are accustomed to place too much 
 reliance. We, the said-to-be-envied of the world, have 
 gradually degenerated, through all ranks and degrees, 
 into mere pedlars and panderers for money gains, or 
 some- tom-foolery of name or personal distinction, 
 which makes the individual appear only the more 
 conspicuously irrational to those who understand the 
 nature and real character of man. And instead of 
 natural connexions being formed between those whose 
 sympathies or qualities of mind and body are in 
 harmony with each other, wealth, family, titles, or 
 privileges of some kind, have been the artificial uniting 
 motive, in opposition to natural desires or pure and 
 chaste feelings. 
 
 It is full time that this increasing degeneration of the 
 species, bodily and mental, should cease, and that the 
 natural association of the sexes should be resumed, but 
 improved by all the experience of the past. 
 
 Previous to the great change which we have ultimately 
 in view, relative to the new position in which the sexes 
 
10 
 
 will be placed, many highly necessary arrangements 
 and provisions must be made, to render these changes 
 practicable and beneficial. For in the present irrational 
 condition of the human race relative to the association 
 of the sexes and to the single-family arrangements, to 
 mix the two most opposing principles and practices 
 together, would be to make the present confusion of ideas 
 and feelings and conduct ten times more perplexed and 
 irrational. 
 
 Many of our friends have, perhaps naturally, with 
 their very limited views of the great changes which 
 must be made in passing from a state of moral evil to 
 moral good, supposed that the principles and practices 
 of the one state were intended or could be made to 
 assimilate or amalgamate with the other. Yet, ha4 
 they any clear conception of these two systems, they 
 would, at once, discover that the greatest of all impossi- 
 bilities will be to unite the practice of the one with any 
 part of the practice of the other. We have now the 
 pure unadulterated system of moral evil, both in princi- 
 ple and in practice, producing a perfect terrestrial 
 pandemonium. Were any of our friends to attempt, 
 individually, to introduce any of our principles and 
 practices of moral good into this pandemonium of single- 
 family feuds and mal-arrangements, they would increase, 
 ten-fold, the evils which now reign triumphant through- 
 out almost all the families of mankind. But this now 
 most interesting of all questions, at this crisis of our 
 proceedings, must not longer be left in doubt or mystery, 
 or in a state liable to be misunderstood by the friends 
 and of moral good. 
 
 Therefore, let it now he known to all^ that when the 
 mind of man shall be regenerated, and he shall enter 
 upon the state of moral good, in an association of suffi- 
 cient numbers to support and protect itself, and its 
 rising generation, against the ignorance and consequent 
 prejudices of moral evil ; that Celibacy, beyond the 
 the period plainly indicated for its termination by 
 nature, (although esteemed a high virtue under the 
 reign of moral evil,) will be known to be a great crime, 
 necessarily leading to disease of body and mind, and to 
 
11 
 
 unnatural thoughts, feelings, and conduct, and to every 
 kind of falsification of our real impressions sympathies 
 and sensations, all of which are of nature's most wise 
 creation, in perfect accordance with the superior organi- 
 zation which it has given to man over the inferior 
 animals. 
 
 Also, in the present state of moral evil, it is esteemed 
 a high and superior vif tue to be chaste, according to 
 the unnatural notions and imaginations of a most degra- 
 ded order of men, called the Priesthood, who, in various 
 parts of the world, have taken upon themselves to direct 
 the opinions and feelings of the human race, as though 
 they were themselves divinities, and could by their fiat 
 of absurdities and almost ceasless irrational ravings, 
 reverse the laws of earthly things, and change the ever- 
 lasting decrees of that universal and hitherto incompre- 
 hensible power which " directs the atom and controls 
 the aggregate of nature." This order of men, to whose 
 oppressions of mind and body no rational being will 
 longer submit, have chosen to make chastity to consist 
 in having sexual intercourse in accordance only with 
 their most fantastic whims and unnatural notions; and 
 whom they thus discordantly join, " let " say they " no 
 man put asunder!" This human decree of the Priest- 
 hood is the origin of all prostitution, and of all its endless 
 crimes, evils, and sufi*erings; of all impure and unchaste 
 thoughts and desires, and of all the known and unknown, 
 and almost unimagined multiplied crimes and miseries 
 of the present married life ; and has been the most un- 
 natural grievous misconception of all the crudities which 
 the various insanities of the Priesthood have engendered. 
 They have ever been totally ignorant of the laws of 
 man's organization, and they have been governed in all 
 their proceedings by the imbecility of infancy or the 
 ravings of a disordered intellect or distempered imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Had they not been thus ignorant, they never would 
 have supposed that pure and undefiled chastity consisted 
 in men and women abiding by their bidding. Chastity 
 is a feeling and sympathy mysteriously implanted in 
 human nature, and exists only between the sexes when 
 
12 
 
 in their intercourse they feel a sincere and genuine 
 affection for each other: and this delightful union of 
 heart and mind the Priesthood never gave by their 
 unhallowed and grossly absurd ceremonies, which they 
 have invented for their gain, and called marriages ; nor 
 do they yet know how to create these pure affections, 
 or to retain them when created. 
 
 Real genuine chastity is a sentiment and a feeling far 
 too elevated and refined for their ignorant and gross con- 
 ceptions, or thay could never have artificially tied bodies 
 in their bonds of wedlock, and then said : " Be you 
 united, mind and body, for life ; or be miserable in this 
 world and everlastingly damned in the next." What 
 a sacrilege of the best and finest sympathies of our 
 nature ! What ignorance of the organization of man 
 and woman ! What horrid sacrifice of the happiness of 
 the human life ! 
 
 In the New Moral World no such destruction of 
 common sense ; of our most refined and best feelings ; of 
 our just and natural rights and privileges ; of our open- 
 hearted sincerity ; and of our highest enjoyment and 
 purest happiness, will ever be reijuired or permitted. 
 No ; for the unerring laws of our nature, that guide 
 which, when referred to, never deceives us, will alone 
 direct the mode by which the association of the sexes 
 shall be maintained, as well as every other arrangement 
 for the well ordering and conducting the whole business 
 of human life ; but, assuredly, the present marriages of 
 the Priesthood of the world, the source of so much crime 
 and misery, will form no part of it. 
 
 Celibacy is a virtue of the Priesthood of the world, 
 but it is a vice against Nature ; and, I ask, shall Nature 
 or the Priesthood prevail ? 
 
 When you and the public shall have had time to 
 digest this highly important and deeply interesting 
 subject, I will return to it, and expose, in detail, more 
 of its innumerable crimes and miseries. 
 
 In the meantime let no one misunderstand me. The 
 present system of society over the world is founded on 
 notions of unmixed falsehood, leading, of necessity, to 
 every absurdity and evil in practice ; a perfect unmixed 
 
13 
 
 system in principle and practice of moral evil, most 
 admirably calculated to give a false direction to all tlie 
 higher qualities and best feelings of our nature, and to 
 render the whole mass of the population of the world a 
 compound of ignorant selfishness, of folly and absurdity, 
 .of counteraction and division, of vice and crime, and of 
 sickening disappointment to all superior minds, and of 
 grievous misery to all : and that the New Moral sys- 
 tem is the reverse of it in all these particulars, and so 
 opposite in principle and practice that it will be for 
 ever utterly impossible to bend or blend the one to 
 conform to the other. The world must have the whole 
 of the one or of the other. 
 
 Now, my friends, I have just placed before you the 
 last obstacle in our way, and the most difficult to be 
 overcome. In 1818, I proclaimed that ignorance and 
 error, crime and folly, had their source in the different 
 religions of the world. I was at that time, perhaps, the 
 most popular man in the world. No daily newspaper 
 then refused to publish, however long, the addresses 
 delivered by me in London. I well knew I was oppos- 
 ing all the stronger prejudices of the world ; and that 
 when I stated what I did on the subject of religion, I 
 was casting away from me all the popularity which I 
 then possessed; but which I considered then, and I 
 consider it now, not worth one straw, except when 
 expressed in favour of truth. 
 
 I was then preparing the public mind for the princi- 
 ples I advocated ; and it has taken me ever since, a 
 period of seventeen years, to prepare it sufficiently for 
 the introduction of the subject of the present evening's 
 lecture. We are now fairly and fully before the world, 
 and we must keep our position. I now denounce the 
 priestly marriages of the old world, as I then denounced 
 religions. 
 
 Do not mistake me, my friends. Were you to 
 attempt to unite any parts of the two systems, you 
 would be sure to fail. When you go into the world, 
 tell your friends and neighbours, of all I have said ; but 
 tell them also that we shall reserve the practice of these 
 principles till we are so situated, in the New Moral 
 World, as to have a society of our own ; when, and not 
 
 B 
 
14 
 
 till then, we shall be prepared to put on the marriage 
 garment. 
 
 Can you go away, knowing all this, and not try to 
 change the existing state of things ? We are now form- 
 ing an association to effect this change soon, and which, 
 I hope, will spread over the world. I care not what 
 some individuals may think of our little nucleus here ; 
 I hope we shall soon show them that we are the grain 
 of mustard-seed, which shall flourish and spread until it 
 covers the whole world. 
 
LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 In my lecture on Sunday evening last I denounced 
 the present unnatural and artificial marriages of the 
 world, and stated them to be a cunningly devised fable 
 of the priesthood to keep the population of all countries 
 subservient to them, and to the unnatural and artificial 
 laws of the governments of all countries. 
 
 These proceedings of the priesthood and governments 
 some parties contend, were necessary while men were 
 savages, or in a partial state of civilization ; that ihey 
 were then necessary to control their brutality or mere 
 intellectual animal violence ; but they admit that now 
 they may be advantageously abrogated, and that better 
 arrangements for society may be in this enlightened 
 age, most beneficially introduced. 
 
 I will not now occupy time in discussing the question 
 with these parties whether real knowledge and straight- 
 forward truth would not have civilized society much 
 more speedily than the devious course of error, mystery, 
 and superstition ; because I am satisfied with the ad- 
 mission which they have made, that the time is come 
 when man may be instructed and treated as a rational 
 animal. 
 
 But I am desirous of proving to all classes, that the 
 marriage state, as devised and supported by the priesthood 
 of the world, and the single-family-arrangements neces- 
 sary tliereon, are calculated to produce, and have pro- 
 duced, a most ignorant, selfish, vicious character for 
 man and woman, and a disunited miserable state of 
 human existence : and that while the marriages devised 
 by the priesthood and the single-family-arrangements 
 shall be permitted to continue under the protection and 
 sanction of governments, this inferior character of man 
 will be formed and this miserable condition of the 
 human race will increase daily, and hypocrisy and 
 wickedness will more and more abound ; that in fact, 
 
16' 
 
 there can be no wise legislation, or government, or 
 virtue and happiness for the people, while these errors 
 in principle and practice shall be supported by the 
 governments, or by public opinion. 
 
 The evil of these institutions is not confined to any 
 sex, age, or class, for all classes and ages of both sexes, 
 suffer grievously from this unnatural mal-arrangement 
 of society. Unnatural, as well as most absurd and 
 farcical, because two persons of dilferent sexes are in- 
 duced to make solemn engagements to live together 
 during life, and to love each other, without reference to 
 the changes which may arise in the appearance, qualities, 
 and character of the j^arties. Now as men and women 
 have not been formed with power to create their own 
 feelings, or to love or hate at their own pleasure, but 
 are on the contrary, compelled to receive such feelings 
 as the influence of external objects produce in their 
 organization, it is blasphemy, if any thing is blasphemy, 
 against the laws of their nature, for man or woman to 
 make any promises or engagements relative to their 
 future feelings of affection or hatred, or of liking or 
 disliking, for each other. These feelings are neither to 
 be promised nor bartered away with impunity, for 
 nature will have her course, and her course is a wise 
 one ; and nature declares that man and woman shall 
 associate together without evil only when they shall 
 have a real affection for each other ; and that affection 
 will be strong and durable in proportion to the extent 
 of the good and superior qualities which shall have been 
 cultivated in each from infancy. Man, with the pre- 
 sent immoral and irrational character which has been 
 formed for him — immoral, because irrational — can form 
 no adequate conception of the altered state of mind 
 and condition in which he will be when he shall be 
 taught truth only, and shall be trained to be truly good 
 and virtuous ; for his mind will be born again, and all 
 his thoughts, desires, and affections will be regenerated, 
 and man will no longer see man as through a glass 
 darkly, but face to face ; and he will know others as he 
 knows himself, and as others shall know him; and there 
 will be no secrets or mysteries or hiding of the thoughts 
 or feelings among men. These thoughts and feelings 
 
17 
 
 will be known to be nature's thoughts and feelings, and 
 not of man's creation ; and nature can do no wrong. 
 The secrets of nature will be therefore no longer un- 
 wisely hidden, and man and woman will acquire more 
 knowledge of themselves and of human nature in one 
 day, than they have hitherto attained in a hundred 
 years. 
 
 The marriages devised by the priests have been the 
 chief cause of this long night of ignorance and super- 
 stition, of mystery and secrecy. Man and woman in an 
 artificial and unnatural bond of wedlock, could be only 
 hypocrites to each other and to the world. And the 
 more they became acquainted with the facts from which 
 the general laws of nature are deduced, the greater 
 would be their hypocrisy relative to the most obvious 
 laws of their nature, and the greater would be their 
 sufferings ; for hypocrisy and suffering advance to- 
 gether, for deception always produces misery. 
 
 Now the present artificial marriage state is most in- 
 jurious in all its consequences to the husband, wife, and 
 children of both sexes and^ all ages, to society, and to 
 human nature. 
 
 It is my intention to enter more fully on these sub- 
 jects in my lecture on Sunday next ; for it is now 
 necessary that all the disciples of the System should 
 make themselves well acquainted with every part of 
 this all-important subject. In fact they must under- 
 stand it thoroughly in principle, and how it should be 
 applied in practice, before they can become members of 
 any rational community. 
 
 B 2 
 
LECTUEE THIRD. 
 
 In my lecture on Sunday last I stated that the 
 marriages of the world, devised by the priesthood, 
 placing the whole of society in the most artificial and 
 vicious state, were the most injurious in their conse- 
 quences to the husband, to the wife, to the children of 
 both sexes and of all ages, to society, and to human 
 nature. 
 
 And first, it is most injurious to the husband, who 
 has been trained from infancy by the priesthood, to 
 believe that he has the power to feel or not to feel at 
 his pleasure. This is the foundation on which the 
 priesthood and governments form his character. With 
 this impression deeply made on his mind, we will sup- 
 pose him in the ordinary circumstances attending these 
 irrational unions; and that he is about to form a 
 marriage of affection, and of affection, too, on both 
 sides. He supposes, as he has been taught naturally to 
 believe, that the delightful feelings of aff'ection which 
 he entertains for his wife on the day in which they are 
 made by the priests and the government, to engage to 
 be one during their lives and to love each other until 
 death, will remain, and that he shall have no difficulty 
 in permanently retaining those feelings. Nothing, 
 according to his previous instruction, can be more easy 
 than to love or hate whom he pleases, and for as long 
 or short a time as he pleases. He had been told " that 
 to be good, he must love his neighbour as himself." 
 He therefore naturally concludes there can be no diffi- 
 culty in loving the selected most favourite object of 
 his choice with the most sincere and ardent affection 
 so long as they both may live. The solemn engage- 
 ment is therefore entered into, and the promise unhesi- 
 tatingly given by the " happy pair," as they are 
 
19 
 
 usually denominated by their relatives and neighbours, 
 and the ceremony concludes by the parties discovering, 
 in one short hour, that they are inseparably bound for 
 life. 
 
 Little are most men aware of the new and altogether 
 altered position in which they stand immediately after 
 marriage, from that in which they were immediately 
 before the ceremony was performed. They are in this 
 short space taken out of all their old accustomed 
 bachelor circumstances, and placed within others 
 altogether new to them; and they find themselves as it 
 were by magic (and it is a legerdemain trick,) linked 
 to a being of whose nature, as well as their own, they 
 have, from infancy, been not only ignorant, but of 
 which they have been continually misinformed, kept in 
 the dark, and totally deceived. The husband has thus 
 been taught to consider his wife a being possessing 
 powers and capacities altogether different from those 
 which nature has given her. 
 
 To this being of whom he is thus made ignorant, he 
 now, for the first time, feels and knows that he is, in a 
 mysterious manner, bound for life ; that he is hers and 
 she is his, for better and for worse; and both have 
 placed themselves in a state of bondage to each other, 
 not for any limited term, to ascertain if it increased or 
 diminished their happiness, but until the one or the 
 other shall die. Such is the wisdom of the engagement, 
 sacred and solemn as the priests and the law know how 
 to make it ! 
 
 The single independent man now becomes the husband, 
 and he is at once placed in a condition in which, from 
 morning to night, and from night to morning, he is 
 acted upon by an overwhelming new circumstance of 
 untried influence — one which, in most cases must 
 increase or diminish his pleasurable sensations. It is 
 barely possible, but not very probable, that it will do 
 neither, but keep them in static quo. When this case 
 occurs, it is the exception to the general rule. Now, 
 the two parties which are thus joined for life, are very 
 complicated, compound beings, each possessing a natural 
 and acquired character, consisting of a great variety of 
 faculties and qualities, physical, intellectual, and moral; 
 
20 
 
 and some of these faculties and qualities are in constant 
 action while in each other's presence or thoughts, the 
 qualities of the one continually influencing the feelings, 
 thoughts, and actions of the other. Previous to this 
 continued influence from the wife^ the husband could 
 form lio correct conception of the effects which it would 
 have upon him, that is, upon the physical, intellectual, 
 and moral parts of his nature. We say wife, because 
 the feelings, thoughts and actions which a wife produces 
 on the husband, are almost always very different from 
 the feelings, thoughts and actions, which the wooed 
 maiden calls into existence. The day after marriage 
 both husband and wife are placed in such new circum- 
 stances, that they become almost new persons in the 
 eyes and to the feelings of each other ; and not only to 
 each other, but it is no uncommon occurrence to see new 
 married persons exhibit a character and conduct some- 
 times for the better, and oft times for the worse, the 
 reverse of that which their relatives friends and neigh- 
 bours, previous to the union, had anticipated from both. 
 This change of character has not been the result of the 
 will of the parties, or of any premeditated design, but 
 it has arisen from one organization perpetually acting 
 upon the other, and imperceptibly changing both 
 through the natural influence of these new impressions, 
 and of the other new circumstances of a married life, so 
 different from their former state. 
 
 When the husband is the wooer, his will was in abey- 
 ance to the will of his beloved object; but usually when 
 the wooer becomes the husband, the reverse takes place, 
 and the wife is expected to be obedient to her husband. 
 They are now placed, as they have been trained, in a 
 false and most vicious position ; one well calculated to 
 commence a life of misery. Living, as they do continu- 
 ally, together from morning to night, and from night to 
 morning, one or other must become the leader or 
 master-mind; and in the struggle for this superiority 
 the aftections generally begin to abate in fervour — and 
 then once lost or weakened they are often difficult to 
 renew — and then painful sensations take the place, 
 more or less gradually, of those highly enjoyed pleasure- 
 able ones which were experienced previous to the 
 
21 
 
 marriage bond; and of these painful sensations the 
 husband begins to feel daily more and more ; and they 
 necessarily become more distressing from the sickening 
 knowledge that relief from them cannot be obtained, 
 without loss of character and consideration in the 
 circle in which his habits and association of ideas have 
 been formed ; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
 as society is now constituted, the husband had better 
 smother all the feelings which he is compelled to have, 
 and play the hypocrite to his wife and to the world, 
 than to openly avow the truth, and say : "I married, 
 expecting to increase my happiness ; but the new 
 influences of wedded life, of which, when I married, I 
 was totally ignorant, have produced, and are producing, 
 the most painful sensations, which are daily increasing; 
 and as the union I formed was under the expectation of 
 adding to my happiness, surely it would be better and 
 far wiser that my wife and I should not thus continue 
 to destroy each other's well-being and comfort — it 
 would be better that we should at once separate." 
 But no, this language is too natural and rational, and 
 this mode of proceeding would be too near an approach 
 to common sense — an approach which the cherished 
 system of moral evil will not with impunity permit to 
 any of its slaves or victims of the priesthood, and 
 victims conse(][ueutly, of hypocrisy and vice of every 
 description. 
 
 The husband, thus finding his situation without 
 remedy, as to change, tries to make the best of 
 what he feels to be the worst bargain he ever made, 
 producing day by day misery and the most vicious 
 thraldom of both body and mind. But he finds, by 
 living daily and hourly with a being who was trained 
 in a family of its own peculiar notions and habits 
 different from his own, that there is occasion for con- 
 tinual diff'erence of opinion upon family matters of one 
 kind or another ; and, when there are children, relative 
 to their treatment and management; and they are 
 called upon, by their peculiar situation as heads of 
 a single-family establishment, to coincide in num- 
 berless matters, more or less important, upon which 
 a decision must be made ; and thus a necessity is 
 
22 
 
 most unwisely created to render it unavoidable that the 
 taste, feelings, and judgment of the one should be 
 sacrificed to the other, to insure a life of even ordinary 
 indift'erence. 
 
 Thus the husband day by day looses the delightful 
 feelings of the lover ; the affections daily diminish ; 
 indifference succeeds : and but too often, it is to be 
 feared, when unsuspected by the world, dislike and 
 hatred, and the most sickening hopeless misery is the 
 consequence. 
 
 To be relieved for a short time from these dreadfully 
 annoying feelings^ he seeks alleviation by change of 
 scene and person ; he goes from home ; he sees others 
 properly or duly prepared to receive visitors, and, 
 when it is a pleasure to the party, to communicate 
 their thoughts and feelings without any family annoy- 
 ances ; and the husband thinks that he has made an 
 unfortunate choice ; that he could have escaped those 
 dreadful differences of opinions and feelings which 
 he suffers at home, if he had been more prudent, and 
 thought more coolly and calmly before he had ven- 
 tured upon this throw of the dice for life. He has 
 not been taught to consider the very varied circum- 
 stances in which he is placed when disputing with 
 his wife about pecuniary or other family matters, and 
 when he is conversing with a person feeling himself 
 independent, and bringing only her best feelings and 
 most fascinating powers of look, language and man- 
 ners into action. If the husband had been taught to 
 know himself and the influence of circumstances 
 upon human nature, he would become conscious that 
 the pleasurable sensations which he experienced in 
 the company of the person visited, and the painful 
 ones inflicted upon him in the company of his wife, 
 arose more frequently from the difference of the 
 circumstances in which these parties were placed, than 
 from the difference of persons. Were the wife, as she 
 was the first choice of the husband, placed in the 
 position of the visited female, and the latter within 
 the circumstances of the wife, it is most propable that 
 in nineteen cases out of twenty, the feelings respecting 
 them would be reversed. This unfavourable efiect of 
 
23 
 
 the married life arises naturally, and of necessity, 
 from the impolicy of forcing two persons, dissimilarly 
 trained, into daily and hourly unceasing communi- 
 cation with each other, under circumstances which 
 are almost sure to create, sooner or later, many 
 opposing opinions and feelings, or the frequent sacri- 
 fice of them by one party or the other. But the 
 husband finds his home less and less competent to 
 give him pleasurable sensations, and daily increasing 
 in those unfavourable circumstances which are pain- 
 ful. He then, according to his class in life, seeks 
 relief from his painful sensations, and naturally 
 desires to exchange them for those which give him 
 pleasure. He seeks his relief by some of the various 
 roads which present themselves, in the higher, middle, 
 or lower walks of life, to tempt or seduce men frem 
 their disagreeable homes. And thus, by degrees, the 
 husband withdraws more and more from his wife and 
 family, in which he can no longer feel healthy or 
 pleasurable sensations ; and he condemns the unfortu- 
 nate step which he has taken in forming this engage- 
 ment for life, without ever understanding that he has 
 been made the unnecessary victim of a most irrational 
 and ignorant convention among the human race, to 
 make each other miserable. The husband, trained in 
 the ignorant manner in which all human beings have 
 been, naturally attributes this permanent destruction 
 of his happiness to his wife ; and she becomes, in his 
 heart, whatever appearance to the contrary he may 
 assume to her and the world, an object of disgust 
 and hatred; and hence the bickering, quarrels, and 
 fightings in the lower ranks, and the more-hidden 
 differences among the middle classes, and separations in 
 them and in the higher orders. 
 
 If such is the general sketch of the positions, change 
 of habits and feelings of the husband, we shall find 
 those of the wife equally, if not more unfortunate. 
 Before marriage she is usually the idol of her lover ; 
 her will is a law to him ; and he even attends to her 
 whims, and anticipates her wishes. All is done by him 
 from aftection, and therefore it is done with alacrity and 
 pleasure. On the day of her marriage she, all at once, 
 
24 
 
 feels conscious that «omo great change has taken place 
 in her circumstances ; she has now upon every occasion, 
 another will to consult and obey instead of her own. 
 This of itself is a new position, which, without experi- 
 ence, she could not know, but merely conjecture ; but 
 this new will is strange to her, for it had been hereto- 
 fore in abeyance to hers ; she has now to learn what 
 kind of one it is, and she becomes perplexed often to 
 divine what it may be under the new circumstances in 
 which both find themselves. No human beings ought 
 to be thus most unfavourably placed : the great chance 
 is, that now their permanent happiness may be ship- 
 wrecked any hour. They know not whether their phy- 
 sical, their mental, or moral natures will assimilate or 
 accord. It is experience only that can give them this 
 knowledge, and we know how dearly this experience is 
 often acquired. We know that both often sorely repent 
 the union in a few months, not unfrequently in a few 
 weeks, and too often, it is to be feared, in a few days ! 
 But the poor wife is most generally the most to be 
 pitied of the two. If her expectations previous to mar- 
 riage have been raised too high, which is most frequently 
 the case with husband and wife, the disappointment is 
 the greater when these delightful anticipations vanish 
 like a dream, and the sad reality of misery take their 
 place. Under these altered circumstances, as she is 
 now her husband's by religion and law, she must have 
 no will of her own, no opinions, nor any feelings, but 
 in accordance with the will, perhaps a capricious one, 
 of her lord and master. 
 
 As nature, however, has never once been consulted in 
 all these proceedings of artifice, ceremony, and absurdity, 
 and all her laws have been neglected or openly opposed, 
 she interposes and insists upon having her laws oheyed ; 
 and the will, opinions, and feelings of the wife are con- 
 sequently not the husband's, but nature's, and if he will 
 insist upon that which it is not in the power of his wife 
 to give to any one contrary to nature's laws, he forces 
 her to learn hypocrisy and deceit, and to become an 
 adept in hiding from him her will, her opinions, her 
 feelings, and often her conduct. While to the wife the 
 long life of deception becomes the most destructive of 
 
25 
 
 every ennobling and superior faculty, feeling, and qual- 
 ity of human nature, and she is necessarily forced to 
 become a weak, cunning, deceptious, inferior being, 
 whatever she may be considered by her husband and 
 the world. The fault, however, is not hers ; she is 
 greatly to be pitied, as well as her husband ; both are 
 forced to become victims, through a wretchedly igno- 
 rant system of falsehood, to each other's duplicity. — 
 There can scarcely be any real confidence between 
 parties thus most unnaturally united to produce unna- 
 tural children, and to be placed under the most unna- 
 tural circumstances, that they may be trained, like 
 their parents, to become most artificial and unnatural 
 characters. 
 
 The highest happiness of human existence will be 
 enjoyed when the men and women shall be so naturally 
 and rationally placed, that they can and shall, upon all 
 occasions, speak to each other the innocent language of 
 truth alone ; for the language of truth is the only inno- 
 cent language that man can ever know. The present 
 general converse of the world is the guilty language of 
 falsehood, and there is, perhaps, now more deception 
 expressed in look, manner and words, all forming lan- 
 guage, between the husbands and wives, made such by 
 the Priesthood of the world, than there is between any 
 other parties throughout the whole of society, not even 
 excepting the present buyers and sellers of goods or 
 money for pecuniary profit. As soon as mankind shall 
 acquire a small portion of common sense, or the mere 
 elements of rational knowledge, this guilty language of 
 falsehood will be made to terminate, and the innocent 
 language of truth will be made universally to prevail. 
 And then, and not till then, mankind will feel and 
 know, for the first time in the history of their species, 
 what is the true meaning of virtue or happiness, the 
 terms being synonimous, for virtue is happiness, and 
 happiness is virtue. 
 
 We have slightly sketched the outline of the ordinary 
 married life, as devised by the priesthood of the world, 
 when it is a marriage of mutual affection, as it affects 
 the husband and wife. We refrain, as useless, from 
 tracing the existence of those parties who unite for 
 c 
 
26* 
 
 other motives than sincere affection ; some of their usual 
 results in every rank of life may be daily read in the 
 police reports, and in the newspapers, of separations 
 and trials for unfaithfulness, or the want of the chastity 
 of the priesthood, on the part of the wife ; while hus- 
 bands are allowed unnoticed the full natural sexual 
 animal freedom. 
 
 Hitherto, however, we have considered these unna- 
 tural marriages devised by the priesthood, as they aifect 
 husbands and wives personally. Wc have now to con- 
 sider them in the character of j^arents of unnatural 
 children, or children produced according to man's laws : 
 unnatural, in contradistinction to natural children, or 
 children produced according to nature's laws. 
 
 The first effect of these artificial marriages is to make 
 it necessary for the new married couple to have a single- 
 family establishment, varied in the detail, according to 
 the class or rank of life of the parties. Within these 
 new arrangements the husband and wife place them- 
 selves, to provide for their family, to the utmost extent 
 of their powers and capacities to advance themselves 
 and children towards the highest pinnacles of society, 
 and thus they are at once placed in a direct or indirect 
 contest with all other families having the same laudable 
 object, as it is now termed, in view. 
 
 Now this single-family arrangement is one of the 
 most unfortunate and vicious for the husband and wife, 
 for the children, and for society, that could be devised. 
 It is calculated, in the first place, to make the husband, 
 wife, children, and the public most ignorantly selfish, 
 and to make the greatest mistakes relative to their 
 individual interest. It next places the husband and 
 wife under such unfavourable circumstances relative to 
 each other, that there are many, many, chances, con- 
 sidering the erroneous notions respecting themselves 
 and human nature, which they have been forced from 
 infancy to receive, that they will sj)eedily create an 
 unfavourable difi'erence of feeling for each other, on 
 account of some of these single-family arrangements, or 
 daily and hourly transactions and proceedings. Then 
 this mode of life is highly injurious for well training 
 and educating of children. The family arrangements 
 
27 
 
 are made to be as convenient as the parties know how, 
 for the adult part of it, and they thus become most 
 inconvenient for the children. The whole furniture in 
 the house of a single-family establishment, in all ranks 
 of life, is itself a most vicious and unfavourable circum- 
 stance placed around the children from their birth; and 
 within such arrangements one, two, three, or half-a- 
 dozen children will require more care and attention to 
 bring them up, and train them to become ignorant and 
 vicious members of society, than would be necessary to 
 well train and educate one hundred children, to ensure 
 them to become, at maturity, superior, rational members 
 of society, provided the children were placed within the 
 arrangements which are alone calculated to give them 
 health, good dispositions, good manners, useful and 
 valuable acquirements, real knowledge, and a superior 
 character as men and women to become members of the 
 great family of mankind. It is worthy of remembrance, 
 not only that the single-family arrangements are thus 
 most opposed to the forming of good or desirable cha- 
 racters for children, but that parents are very generally 
 the least competent, owing to the excess of their igno- 
 rant, selfish, animal attachment for them, to do them 
 justice in forming their characters to become valuable, 
 superior men and women. 
 
 And we are speaking now of those parents and 
 single-family arrangements which are esteemed by the 
 world as examples, recommended to be followed by 
 others deemed in these respects greatly their inferiors. 
 A rational being cannot be formed within the existing 
 single-family arrangements of the world. 
 
 But as this subject is one of the most vital importance 
 to the well-being of every member of society it is my 
 intention to resume it where I now leave off on Sunday 
 evening next ; and when I shall have placed the whole 
 of this subject before the public, the proper and highly 
 necessary preparation will have been made for the 
 rational discussion of it. 
 
 Up to the present period the world has been kept so 
 ignorant of this subject, on a right knowledge of which 
 the happiness of mankind mainly depends, and all were 
 made so grossly irrational respecting it, that it was as 
 
28 
 
 useless to address the public, to attempt to enlighten it 
 on this subject, as to speak to the most insane or mad 
 of the inmates of Bedlam, upon the subject matter 
 which was the origin of their disease and madness. 
 
LECTURE FOUETH. 
 
 In my last lecture I stated, that as the subject of 
 marriage is one of the most vital importance to the 
 permanent well-being of society, I should resume it in 
 my next lecture; and I now proceed to fulfil this 
 promise. 
 
 It has been stated, in previous lectures, that the 
 marriages of the priesthood of the world were the most 
 injurious in their consequences to the husband, to the 
 wife, to the children of both sexes of all ages, to society, 
 and to human nature. 
 
 Already we have hastily sketched a few, and but a 
 very few, of the injurious influences which this artificial 
 and unnatural state of society inflicts upon the husband 
 and wife individually. We will now consider, in like 
 manner, some of the innumerable evils which these 
 permanent single-family unions inflict upon the children 
 of both sexes of all ages. 
 
 These unions are, in the first place, one of the chief 
 causes of the great inequalities in the condition and 
 wealth of individuals; and all who have studied the 
 unavoidable influences of the extreme of wealth and 
 poverty, upon any population, are aware that ignorance 
 and slavery must be the general lot of extreme poverty, 
 and that tyranny, injustice, and presumption must be 
 the general characteristic of the possessors of great 
 wealth. Most true is the saying, that " It is easier 
 for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than 
 for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven;" 
 or, in other words, riches blind the judgment, and 
 give a false direction to all the best feelings of human 
 nature. 
 
 c 2 
 
30 
 
 The rich man lives upon^ and wastes^ extravagantly^ 
 the labour of others; while no man has a just right to 
 the labour of any other man, without giving equal labour 
 or value in exchange for it. This is a principle of such 
 vital importance to the permanent well-being, well- 
 doing, and happiness of mankind, that it is now high 
 time the world generally should be enabled thoroughly 
 to understand it, and to trace its practical influences, as 
 they affect all ranks and conditions of men, through 
 every stage of society. 
 
 But these most interesting developments relative to 
 the efi'ects of the inequality of property we shall leave 
 to future Lectures, when they will come in their due 
 and proj^er course ; all we shall now say on this subject 
 is, that after the most calm and deliberate consideration 
 of the proceedings of human aff'airs, as now conducted, 
 by all gradations, in all the countries we have had an 
 opportunity of visiting; we are obliged to come to, or, 
 more correctly speaking, to receive, the conviction, that 
 no society can be just, honest, or virtuous, that admits 
 of great inequalities of wealth, of condition, or of educa- 
 tion. And that any individual, be he who he may, 
 who is in the possession of great riches, in a country 
 in which numbers of his industrious fellow-men have 
 been reduced to a state of wretched poverty, and whose 
 children, in consequence, are brought up in ignorance 
 and vice, necessarily leading to the misery of the 
 individuals, and to the general disorder of society ; that 
 that rich man is an •''enormous evil to his country 
 and to the world; and that, while he retains those 
 riches unemployed for the general benefit, it is 
 
 UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE THAT HE CAN BE A GOOD OR A 
 JUST MAN. 
 
 Now the artificial union of the sexes as devised by 
 the priesthood, requiring single-family arrangements, 
 and generating single-family interests, is directly cal- 
 culated to lay the foundation of this injurious inequality 
 throughout society, and perpetually to increase it. 
 
 Some of these unions do not produce any children, 
 others produce one or two only, while some of them 
 produce many. All circumstances being supposed to 
 be the same with these parties at their marriage; and 
 
31 
 
 the management of their domestic affairs, and of their 
 business, profession, or pursuits in life being equal; the 
 parties who have no children will become annually 
 more and more wealthy than those who have large 
 families or a numerous offspring ; those with one or two 
 children, will annually become less wealthy than the 
 first, and more wealthy than the last. And the last 
 will, in the lower walks of life, sink into poverty, and 
 often into the extreme of vice and misery. 
 
 The same gradations of wealth take place in the 
 middle and upper classes, and the increasing presumption 
 of these who are rising into more wealth, and the 
 growth of envy in those who are declining into less 
 wealth, and especially into poverty, are the natural 
 fruits of these unwise and unjust proceedings; — unwise, 
 because any general measures which have a tendency 
 to increase artificially the inequalities of society are 
 injurious to the whole population, and destructive of 
 the best feelings of human nature, as well as being 
 obstacles in the way of attaining the best state of 
 human existence ; — unjust, because in these unions we 
 have supposed all the parties to have been equally 
 industrious, clever, and well-conducted; yet without 
 any other qualification than incapacity to procreate or 
 bear children, the barren pairs are rewarded with little 
 care and much wealth ; while the prolific pairs are bur- 
 dened with an excess of parental care and trouble, and 
 are further punished by annually increasing the in- 
 equality of condition between them and the barren 
 pairs. 
 
 It is not supposed, at this enlightened period, as it is 
 called, that any one will attribute merit to barrenness, 
 and demerit to men and women for being prolific, 
 except my friend, Mr. Malthus, and his ardent, but 
 inexperienced disciples; inexperienced in all the great 
 principles of man's nature and of human society, or 
 they would long since have abandoned notions which 
 are in direct opposition to common sense and the every- 
 day practice of every class of producers in town and 
 country; notions which have so confounded and per- 
 plexed the mind of political economists, so called, that 
 they cannot perceive any of the common transactions 
 
32 
 
 of human life in their natural and ordinary course, or 
 understand the necessary consequences to which they 
 lead. 
 
 Even our talented late Lord Chancellor has been so 
 bewildered by these unnatural and impracticable 
 theories of Mr. Malthus, that, when in office, with the 
 greatest desire, no doubt, to benefit mankind, he could 
 conceive no better method to have them well educated 
 and employed, as all ought and now easily might be, 
 than through the workhouses of his Poor Law Act, — a 
 measure that will prove the greatest mistake that a 
 talented well-intentioned political economist could have 
 imagined, with a view to relieve society from poverty 
 and vice. 
 
 But these unions of the sexes, devised by the priests, 
 still further tend to increase the inequality of wealth in 
 society, by creating motives for wealth to unite in 
 marriage with wealth; and for wealth thus to become 
 the general bond of union between the sexes, instead of 
 affection and suitability of the physical and mental 
 qualities of the parties. These artificial unions are also 
 the least likely to improve the organization or natural 
 constitution of the children at birth ; and all know how 
 important it is to have the best materials to commence 
 with, when we desire to form a superior character for 
 mankind. 
 
 It has been discovered that it is practicable materially 
 to change and improve the organization of many animals 
 for particular purposes. The subject is so well under- 
 stood that it is known by some men almost as a science ; 
 so accurately can they attain the points and qualities of 
 the animal formation, which they desire to obtain. 
 Now, it is much more important to the well-being and 
 happiness of man that the human organization should 
 be advanced and essentially improved, than that the 
 organization of any of the inferior animals should be 
 thus made more perfect. The improvements of the 
 organization of man, however, have been neglected, 
 and must be neglected, as long as the marriages devised 
 Iby the priests and sanctioned by governments as a 
 divine institution, and conducted on the principle of 
 individual competition for individual wealth, shall 
 
33 
 
 remain the law of the land. While this irrational 
 and truly impious practice shall be the law, and sanc- 
 tioned by the public opinion of the most civilized, or 
 rather, least barbarous states, the original constitu- 
 tion or organization of human nature will remain 
 not only unimproved, but it must be annually deterio- 
 rated. 
 
 The effects of wealth, luxury, and marriages of ambi- 
 tion, upon the upper, and of the manufacturing system 
 upon the lower orders, are now rapidly reducing the 
 superior powers and qualities of the human organization 
 in this country to a very low and inferior standard ; and 
 should these pernicious measures be permitted to con- 
 tinue, this inferior standard must, in every generation, 
 yet become more and more defective physically, intel- 
 lectually, and morally. 
 
 Thus do these marriages of the priesthood tend to 
 injure all children at their birth, and to give society, 
 which is the chief instrument in the forming of every 
 individual character, an inferior material to work upon, 
 and it is thus compelled to commence its most important 
 occupation and chief business of life under great dis- 
 advantages ; and instead of having a sound healthy sub- 
 ject, physical, intellectual, and moral, or a good material 
 to work upon, it receives from the deteriorated, unna- 
 tural, and immoral parents, an infant organization, 
 defective and diseased to a considerable extent in all its 
 powers, bodily and mental. 
 
 In the next place, the children are grossly injured by 
 coming into the world either in poverty or in a state of 
 affluence, the result of individual competition, and de- 
 rived from a system of gross injustice to the industrious 
 portion of society. They are thus of necessity trained 
 from the hour of their birth to become vicious and 
 ignorant of themselves, of their fellows, and of human 
 nature generally. They are unavoidably trained to 
 acquire all the peculiar vices of poverty or of competi- 
 tive riches, both of which are grievous and enormous 
 evils ; and necessarily, in different ways, deprive man of 
 the health and enjoyment which all ought to possess, 
 and which, in a state of society devised and governed 
 by common sense, or a comparatively low degree of 
 
34 
 
 correct knowledge, all might be made to possess. 
 
 But should this inferior-organized being come into the 
 world in what is called the middle walk in life, it is 
 trained by its also trained-to-be irrational parents in 
 another set of vices, equally injurious to itself and to 
 society. It is not trained immediately to have the 
 notions and feelings of a mere slave, to be obedient to 
 the whims, caprices, and gross tyranny and injustice of 
 an extravagant tyrant who revels in the wealth which 
 he did not create, but which he most unjustly exacts 
 from the over-exerted labour of the industrious poor, 
 and of the helpless against wealth and power. No : the 
 infant born in the middle ranks of life is not directly 
 trained to be the one or the other of these deformities 
 of human nature ; but it is carefully educated in a system 
 of the most ignorant and vile hypocrisy, which effectu- 
 ally destroys or perverts all the natural, good, and 
 superior qualities of human nature, and admirably fits 
 it, as it may rise or fall in the scale of society, to become 
 the abject slave of the wealthy, or the oppressor of the 
 poor and helpless. But should it remain through life 
 within the usual range of the middle ranks, it is formed 
 by the tuition and example of its parents, and those 
 around it of the same class, to acquire the double extent 
 of deception and of pious ignorance, to become either 
 the slave of those above it in rank and wealth, or the 
 petty tyrant of those unfortunates who may be below it 
 in these respects. 
 
 That there are partial exceptions in all the different 
 ranks of life is true, but they are few, and of small 
 extent in their deviations from these general results ; 
 not more, certainly than to prove the almost universal 
 results which have been stated. 
 
 Under these artificial marriages of the priesthood, and 
 the governments, rendering the single-family arrange- 
 ments a necessary appendage to them, the children in 
 every walk of life are thus of necessity trained to become 
 what the world calls fools or knaves ; the duped or the 
 dupes. But, in fact, they are all trained by means 
 of these unnatural unions of the sexes, and all the 
 artificial arrrangements requisite to render them at all 
 bearable or suffered by mankind, to be dupes, from the 
 
35 
 
 highest to the lowest, of a grossly erroneous system. 
 And whether trained by their condition at birth to 
 become slaves or tyrants, or to be prepared to become 
 either as circumstances may afterwards decide, not one 
 child of the human race can, under the old immoral 
 system, be trained physically, intellectually, or morally, 
 as it ought to be ; nor can any one of ihem be placed 
 within those arrangements which may now be easily 
 formed, to insure it the full enjoyment that those extra- 
 ordinary powers, faculties, and qualities, are capable of 
 being trained to receive by all the human race. 
 
 But it is now asked very confidently by those who 
 have been trained from their birth to become ignorant 
 and prejudiced upon every subject connected with their 
 daily well-being and permanent happiness, " Are not 
 the parents of children the most fitting and the most 
 competent by nature to bring up, train^ and educate 
 their own children?" 
 
 The true reply to this question of ignorance of human 
 nature, and of inexperience in the general affairs and 
 proceedings of mankind, is, that the facts which now 
 ofi*er themselves to our notice over the world, as well as 
 the details of all past history, demonstrate that the im- 
 mediate parents of children are generally the least com- 
 petent, from their ignorance of human nature, and from 
 their excess of animal affection for their offspring, to 
 well and properly form the character of their own chil- 
 dren. Nor, if the parents were 7iot so greatly deficient 
 in these respects, are the external circumstances within 
 any of the single-family arrangements well calculated, 
 or at all properly disposed, to promote a right training 
 and good education of all children. 
 
 This subject, by far the most important to every indi- 
 vidual of the human race, is perhaps less understood at 
 this moment in the British Empire, among all classes, 
 than it has long been among the superior tribes of North 
 American Indians, who understand far better how to 
 form a superior Indian character for the life which these 
 tribes lead, than the parents, teachers, or professors of 
 education know how to form a superior character for 
 what is so ignorantly denominated civilized life. 
 
 Until nations shall understand the true principles and 
 
Q6 
 
 right application of them to practice, relative to the 
 formation of the character which ought to be formed for 
 man at maturity, all the religions, laws, and learning 
 hitherto known in the world, will be of no avail in 
 making known the means by which the adult man and 
 woman can be formed into intelligent, good, rational, 
 and happy beings. 
 
 But the single-family arrangements are hostile to 
 cultivation in children of any of the superior and 
 ennobling qualities of human nature. They are trained 
 by them to acquire all the most mean and ignorant 
 selfish feelings that can be generated in the human 
 character. The children within those dens of selfishness 
 and hypocrisy are taught to consider their own indivi- 
 dual family their own world, and that it is the duty and 
 interest of all within that little orb to do whatever they 
 can to promote the advantages of all the legitimate 
 members of it. With these persons, it is my house, iny 
 wife, my estate, my children, or my husband ; our estate, 
 and our children ; or my brothers, my sisters ; and our 
 house and property. This family party is trained to 
 consider it quite right, and a superior mode of acting, 
 for each member of it to seek, by all fair means, as 
 almost any means, except direct robbery, are termed, 
 to increase the wealth, honour, and privileges of the 
 family, and every individual member of it. 
 
 Now, all other families are so placed and taught that 
 they also feel a similar desire to promote, by the same 
 fair means, as they are called, the interest of every 
 individual relative within their family circle. 
 
 And thus is every family made a little exclusive 
 world seeking its own advantage, regardless of, and to a 
 great extent in direct opposition to, all other families, 
 having the same objects in view ; and, consequently, 
 there is a more or less direct competition between all 
 families. 
 
 In this warfare for family advantages, all the inferior 
 qualities, feelings and passions, which can be implanted in 
 human nature, are cultivated with the greatest care and 
 assiduity, and under such terms that the grossest ignorance 
 is called high intelligence, and the worst vices are digni - 
 iied with the terms of superior virtues. But deep hypo - 
 
37 
 
 crisy and all-pervading deception are the general vices 
 which are fostered vrith the greatest attention and 
 perseverance, under the names of prudence and discre- 
 tion, by which they are to hide from all other families 
 what the individuals really think and feel ; or, in the 
 language of plain truth, what by their nature, in the 
 circumstances in which they are placed, they are com - 
 pelled to think and feel. 
 
 How absurd then was the assertion of our ancestors 
 that they intended to establish a state of society in 
 which each individual should love his neighbour as 
 himself ! Why, my friends, every measure they have 
 adopted has had a directly contrary effect. No 
 arrangements could be better calculated to produce 
 division and disunion in society than those now 
 esteemed as of the greatest perfection. 
 
 In this manner, all the cunning deception and 
 stratagem of a covert warfare are kept continually alive 
 among these contending families, each one endeavouring, 
 by all fair means within its power and control, to 
 obtain advantages over all the others. And this con- 
 duct is pursued and ardenlly encouraged in public and 
 in private instruction, we must suppose, that each may 
 be taught " to love his neighbour as himself," and to 
 bring about that, hitherto, in vain, ever-looked-for 
 state of society, when " peace and good-will shall 
 universally prevail." 
 
 To bring about these divine results, this happy and 
 natural state of human existence, by the present single- 
 family arrangements, created in consequence of the 
 marriages devised by the priesthood, is just as probable 
 as that an infant could drain the seas with a sieve. 
 
 The whole of these single-family proceedings, from 
 their commencement to their dissolution by the death 
 of the parent, are one continued compound of absurdity, 
 folly, and wickedness, daily added to wickedness, 
 absurdity, and folly. But, at the death of the head of 
 these families, the property possessed by them at that 
 period is to be divided in some manner among the 
 children, most generally according to the will of the 
 parents ; the children know this, when there is property, 
 from an early age ; and, in consequence, they are not 
 
 D 
 
38 
 
 only opposers and covert enemies to other families 
 contending with them for advantages of one kind or 
 another, but the children of the same family are thus 
 most unwisely made the rivals of each other for their 
 parents' affections, and, in consequence, they often 
 oppose each other with as much acrimony and virulence 
 as they are taught to exhibit in their contests with the 
 members of rival families. 
 
 Then, follow these children of the marriages of the 
 priesthood, and of the consequent single-family arrange- 
 ments, when they attend the reading of the will of 
 their parents. Look then into their hearts; analyze 
 their thoughts and feelings of and for each other, and 
 say, whether in the great majority of cases, instead of 
 disinterested brotherly and" sisterly affection being 
 permanently enthroned within them, — the feelings of 
 envy and jealousy and the god Mammon, do not reign 
 triumphant. It is not at all surprising that these latter 
 results should prevail, — for the whole of the existing 
 arrangements of society are admirably adapted to pro- 
 duce them, and most especially those which necessarily 
 emanate from the marriages devised by the priests, and 
 the consequent singly-family arrangements founded on 
 individual opposing interest. 
 
LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 I have in my previous lectures stated a few of the 
 innumerable evils which the artificial marriages, or un- 
 natural unions of the sexes, formed by the priesthoods 
 of the world, inflict upon the husband, wife, and children 
 of these marriages. 
 
 I have now to explain the effects of these unnatural 
 unions upon society. 
 
 Inasmuch as men and women are continually taught 
 that these marriages constitute a necessary and virtuous 
 bond of society, and that it is a duty of high importance 
 for each pair sincerely to love each other until death, 
 and that it is a crime not thus to love each other, the 
 husband and wife are at their marriage put within new 
 arrangement of external circumstances, daily influencing 
 them to become bad, wicked, or irrational members of 
 society. 
 
 The party thus put into matrimonial bondage, having 
 been taught that they must love one another and not 
 love others in a similar manner, and taught also that 
 they can love or hate at their pleasure, are compelled, 
 they know not how or why, to become daily more 
 artificial in their conduct to each other, and to society. 
 
 Usually from the day of marriage they commence 
 a regular practice of hiding a certain number of their 
 thoughts and feelings from each other, which nature 
 and education compel them to have for each other ; and 
 the number of thoughts and feelings thus withheld often 
 gradually increase, until husband and wife know very 
 little indeed of the real thoughts and feelings which 
 they entertain for each other, or for many of their 
 friends and acquaintances. By this artificial bondage 
 nature is thwarted in her righteous course ; and, in con- 
 sequence, the intercourse between the married pairs, 
 and their intercourse with other married pairs within 
 
40 
 
 their visiting circle, is usually one of deception, cunning', 
 and counteraction of each other's happiness. 
 
 Instead of the intercourse of these parties being the 
 honest genuine expression of the thoughts and feelings 
 which nature compels every individual, by the law of 
 their organization, to have indej)endent of their will ; 
 the speech, look, and action, are generally studied, to 
 prevent many of the parties knowing or forming any 
 correct conception of what those thoughts and feelings 
 really are. The conversation of a party of married 
 persons is not the natural language of rational beings, 
 but a conventional language, meaning little or nothing-, 
 for passing a few hours in each others' society in the 
 most insiped, heartless, and unsatisfactory manner, 
 except to alford the opportunity, when these married 
 pairs return home, to have some new conversation 
 relative to criticisms on the habits, manners, looks, 
 dress, or language of those whom they met and left as 
 friends and neighbours. 
 
 Thus do these marriages of the priests, or the notions 
 on which they are formed, tend essentially to introduce 
 falsehood, cunning, and deception upon a most exten- 
 sive scale, into all circles of married persons, and 
 gradually to form the character of each of the men and 
 women to be a comj)ound of artifice and heartlessness. 
 
 " But," say the advocates for the permanency of 
 these unnatural unions, "were it not for our marriage 
 laws, there would be no security for chastity among 
 women; the bonds of society would be broken; the 
 children would be uncared for ; prostitution would be 
 general, and a promiscuous intercourse would exist be- 
 tween the sexes ; men would continually quarrel about 
 the women, and utter confusion would pervade society." 
 
 This is the present language and conviction of the 
 so-called civilized world ; but both are the result solely 
 of the grossest ignorance and prejudice. They are an 
 additional proof, if proof were wanting, that man is 
 yet a mere irrational animal, without sufficient intelli- 
 gence to discover what manner of being he is ; that 
 he has been for centuries, nay, for thousands of years, 
 taught from his infancy to call virtue, vice; vice, 
 virtue; good, evil; and evil, good. 
 
41 
 
 The most advanced of the human race have been care- 
 fully trained to consider the priestly marriage-bond the 
 bond of virtue, — the safeguard of chastity, — and the 
 only security for the well-being and happiness of 
 children; while a correct knowledge of the first 
 elements of our nature, and of the nature of society, 
 will demonstrate, from the never changing laws of 
 human nature, that these artificial marriages and real 
 virtue can never exist in the same society ; and that 
 such marriages are alone the real cause of prostitution, 
 and of all the crimes and miseries with which it this 
 day afilicts the best portion of the sons and daughters 
 of man. 
 
 The marriages of the law and gospels united, or those 
 of the law alone, where they obtain, and create the 
 necessity for single-family arrangements and interests^ 
 drive pure and genuine chastity far from the abodes of 
 men. This virtue is far better known and practised 
 among all other tribes of animals, who are content, in 
 this essential part of their nature, as well as in every 
 other instinct, to be governed by the laws of their 
 respective natures : while man, boasting of his reason, 
 deems himself wiser than the power that gave him all 
 his faculties and sympathies, and ignorant of them, he 
 presumes to disobey, and unnaturally to counteract 
 them. 
 
 And to insure the chastity of mankind, the whole of 
 society is put into the most absurd and artificial condi- 
 tion, both of body and mind, by which the sound health 
 of mind and body is destroyed, and men and women 
 are forced to become diseased, and filled with every 
 species of deception. 
 
 To carry on the farce of these priestly marriages, and 
 the notions of the spurious chastity which the priests or 
 other ignorant persons have introduced into the human 
 mind, children of both sexes, who have no notions but 
 those which are natural and innocent with respect to 
 their own persons or the persons of others, have to be 
 tutored from their infancy to become as they grow up, 
 much more ignorant of their own nature than all 
 animals are of their respective natures, and, in conse- 
 quence, to form the most incorrect conceptions relative 
 1)2 
 
42 
 
 to the whole business of life, and especially in all their 
 intercourse with the sex different to their own. 
 
 This trained ignorance of their own nature is the 
 foundation of all the artificial feelings and deceptions 
 which ultimately take place between the two sexes. 
 Young persons are filled with a false shame relative to 
 the best and most valuable sympathies of their nature, 
 and respecting which each sex is continually deceiving 
 the other. 
 
 Upon that subject, on which the plain and simple 
 truth, without any disguise whatever, would be of the 
 most essential importance in promoting and securing 
 the happiness of both sexes, men and women are now 
 compelled by the education forced upon them by 
 society, to resort to every kind of deception to prevent 
 the truth being known ; instead of young persons being 
 taught from their infancy a knowledge of the simple 
 elements of their nature, and to know that the affection, 
 sympathies, or feelings which they entertain for others 
 are the natural result of the qualities, sympathies, and 
 feelings, of those parties acting upon them, and that the 
 feelings thus produced in them are as innocent as any 
 of those feelings created in them from seeing, hearing, 
 tasting, smelling, or feeling any objects in nature ; and 
 that there is the same necessity for speaking the truth 
 relative to the former as to the latter. 
 
 A far greater benefit would accrue to society from the 
 exact truth being told in all simplicity relative to the 
 impressions made upon us by all whom we saw or with 
 whom we conversed, than by expressing the feelings 
 produced in us by the objects presented to any of our 
 external senses. 
 
 Were we taught common sense from our infancy, 
 instead of folly and deception, we should know that 
 one of the strongest desires of human nature is the love 
 of the approbation of the world, but especially of those 
 with whom we live in daily intercourse; and that the 
 most powerful incentive to the acquisition of every good 
 and superior quality, would be to learn from our fellows, 
 in our hourly intercourse with them, what are the exact 
 impressions which the qualities we possess make upon 
 every male and female of our acquaintance. It would 
 
43 
 
 be the most powerful circumstance that could be 
 brought to act upon human nature to insure, in a short 
 period, the greatest improvement among all classes in 
 every country. 
 
 And until all the absurd notions relative to the neces- 
 sity for falsifying our feelings to those of our own, or of 
 the other sex, shall be altogether abandoned as the pre- 
 judice of ignorance, it will be vain to expect wisdom or 
 virtue, or even common sense, to be found among man- 
 kind. 
 
 To make the human race rational, it must be sur- 
 rounded with those external circumstances which shall 
 enable it, with the most strict propriety, to speak the 
 truth only on every subject. 
 
 Men are now prevented by the most puerile notions, 
 from speaking the truth, and are compelled, contrary to 
 their highest and best interest, to talk continually the 
 language of falsehood : while falsehood is always inju- 
 rious, and truth is always highly beneficial for all the 
 permanent interests of mankind. 
 
 Who then will be the first to break through this 
 bondage of falsehood, everlastingly producing sin and 
 misery ? 
 
 Having already ofi'ended the world to the extent 
 which I have done, in declaring amidst assembled mul- 
 titudes, truths the most opposed to the obvious prejudices 
 of ignorant man ; must I ofi'end yet more, and publicly 
 announce other strongly off'ensive truths to the artifici- 
 ally made minds of the present generation ? 
 
 As others dare not^ or will not thus offend ; and as all 
 shrink from doing that which must be done before man 
 can be made rational and happy, let the task be 
 MINE ! — It shall he achieved ; and man shall be 
 regenerated and born again. He shall no longer be 
 compelled to see as through a glass darkly, but he shall 
 be made to see and know all things necessary to his 
 emancipation from sin and misery without fear, veil, or 
 mystery. 
 
 Then I now tell you, and through you, the whole of 
 the human race, that man and woman have been made 
 perfect ; that each part of them is an essential part of 
 their existence ; that nature never intended that they 
 
44 
 
 should remain always ignorant of each other ; or that 
 secresy, or mystery, of any kind, should permanently 
 exist between the two sexes : that the time is arrived 
 when whatever secresy and mystery have been engen- 
 dered between the sexes, through ignorance of their real 
 nature, should now terminate for ever ; and that arrange- 
 ments should be formed, as speedily as possible, to 
 enable them to return, in all their ideas and feelings, to 
 the innocency and simplicity of their original condition, 
 in these respects, before the priesthood of the world 
 introduced their ignorant mysteries, which created the 
 real fall of man. 
 
 It was the introduction of these priestly mysteries 
 relative to the nature of man and woman, that introduc- 
 ed a spurious shame and falsehood into the world, and 
 by degrees removed truth from the intercourse between 
 male and female, and which now renders the return to 
 truth, in all the simplicity of our nature, so dangerous 
 and difficult to effect. 
 
 The human race, combining both sexes, has been 
 made perfect in its organization for what nature intend- 
 ed it should be. The male and female, form, together, 
 human nature ; separate and apart from each other they 
 are but half of it. Both ought, from infancy, to be 
 instructed in an accurate knowledge of themselves, as 
 the ground-work necessary to form them to become ra- 
 tional beings. Nature made no one part or division of 
 human nature to be esteemed more sacred or secret than 
 another ; nor did it intend that any portion of the human 
 frame should be ever considered more or less excellent 
 than another ; or that any division of it should be made 
 by artifice and priestly contrivance to excite any but 
 the most innocent feelings necessary for the health and 
 happiness of every individual of the species. The fall 
 of man from innocency and from the plain and direct 
 road to intelligence and happiness occurred when the 
 priesthoods of the world induced some of our ignorant 
 ancestors to feel ashamed of any part of their nature. 
 That this feeling is altogether an artificial and false 
 shame may be ascertained by observing how difficult it 
 is to impress the necessity for it upon all children, and 
 to notice the different habits respecting it which obtain 
 
45 
 
 among various nations and tribes, and how much the 
 people of our country contemn the notions of others 
 upon the practices which, in these respects, are national 
 in various districts of the world. 
 
 Before we can have the slightest chance of making 
 mankind really innocent, virtuous and happy, these 
 false notions, generating the most corrupt and injurious 
 feelings, must be overcome, and men and women in all 
 the nations of the world, must be made to know them- 
 selves, to accurately understand in all simplicity what 
 manner of beings they are, and then it will be utterly 
 impossible that they should acquire feelings of false 
 shame relative to any part of their own nature. 
 
 And will this change from gross ignorance to real 
 knowledge, respecting ourselves and human nature, 
 destroy true delicacy of feeling in man and woman, for 
 themselves and for each other ? 
 
 It is those only who have been made grossly irration- 
 al, that imagine this false shame is necessary to create 
 true delicacy of feeling, or to insure a virtuous or healthy 
 and happy intercourse between the sexes. 
 
 But why do I bring this subject now before the pub- 
 lic ? Because I know that, until it shall be properly 
 understood, not one step can be taken to lay a solid and 
 permanent foundation for a rational and happy state of 
 human existence. The previous measure must be to 
 remove every vestige of falsehood and deception in the 
 training of the human race, and the false notions which 
 the artificial marriages of the priests have introduced 
 into the world relative to sexual feelings. These errors 
 are now, and will remain (until they shall be removed 
 by some great efiTort of moral courage,) insurmountable 
 obstacles to the progress of virtue and happiness, and 
 an utter bar to that state of innocency in which it is 
 narrated that our first parents lived before they fell 
 into a corrupt and immoral mode of life. 
 
 As long as a ny false notions relative to sexual differ- 
 ences between the sexes shall be allowed to remain to 
 influence the feelings unnaturally, or to support institu- 
 tions founded to create and perpetuate the notions of 
 those differences, men and women must continue to be 
 the artificial beings which these errors and institutions 
 
46 
 
 have made them ; and as long as these false impressions 
 shall be permitted to remain, it will be vain to attempt 
 to form any association of men and women, who could 
 think, feel, or act rationally, or in any manner to insure 
 a continuance of a life that could be called with truth, 
 a virtuous and happy condition of society. 
 
LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 Mr. Owen began his lecture by observing, that he had 
 lately, in several lectures, introduced the subject of 
 marriage, that the friends of the rational system might 
 knoTv how to proceed when they were prepared to adopt 
 practical arrangements to carry out his principles. 
 As long, said he, as the present inferior circumstances 
 are allowed to exist around man, he must continue the 
 grossly ignorant and irrational animal he now is ; and 
 until he becomes sensible of the causes of the evils which 
 surround him, he can never successfully attempt to 
 escape from them. I continue, therefore, the subject of 
 marriage ; for until this is fully understood, it will be 
 quite useless to commence any efficient plans to benefit 
 mankind. 
 
 The mass of the people in all countries receive, with- 
 out thought or reflection, the impression made upon them 
 by their predecessors, relative to the notions, forms, 
 and ceremonies long established among them ; and never 
 inquire into the origin of them, or examine their con- 
 sistency with existing facts, to ascertain their truth and 
 wisdom. 
 
 In this loose and vague manner the people of the pre- 
 sent generation have received the forms and ceremonies 
 long established among their predecessors. And among 
 other vague notions, the laws and customs of marriage, 
 and of married life, have been handed down and receiv- 
 ed implicitly, without consideration of their origin, or 
 reflection as to their immense influence in forming the 
 character of male and female, and deciding and control- 
 ling the general arrangements of society, and, of course, 
 the happiness or misery of the human race. 
 
 Our ancestors, no doubt, intended their priestly mar- 
 riages for the general benefit of the population of their 
 respective countries. But when they devised them, and 
 
48 
 
 established their rites and ceremonies, they were igno- 
 rant of the laws of their own nature, and inexperienced 
 in the knowledge of all that was necessary to produce 
 and maintain a wise, rational, or happy state of society. 
 They were altogether ignorant of the facts requisite to 
 enable them to conceive the arrangements which could 
 alone, by being in accordance with the nature of man, 
 create and secure these grand results for the human 
 race. They did not know that human feelings were 
 not the creation of voluntary power in man ; and thus 
 they erred, most egregiously, at the very outset of all 
 their devices for forming the character and governing 
 human beings, to enable them to attain the great objects 
 of human existence, that is, excellence of individual 
 character, and general social enjoyment. 
 
 Our ancestors, therefore, instead of forming their in- 
 stitutions and plans of government in accordance with 
 the laws of human nature and to be consistent with 
 general well-known facts, have formed them, from the 
 beginning, on imaginary notions, conceived from the 
 vague unexamined impressions of the first general ap- 
 pearances of the various objects around them. And 
 this they did because they could do no better ; they 
 were without the knowledge requisite to carry them 
 beyond the infant world of wonder and of the most wild 
 and random conjectures. 
 
 It was in this manner, when the imaginations of men 
 ranged unchecked by a knowledge of accurately-defined 
 facts, into the wide field of fancy and conjecture, and 
 began to try their infant experiments on human legisla- 
 tion, that priestly marriages were conceived and devised, 
 and a spurious chastity in consequence made a virtue of 
 the highest order among women, while it has been 
 scarcely admitted as a virtue among men. 
 
 Never did man make so great a mistake, as to substi- 
 tute this spurious chastity and virtue of human law for 
 nature's law of chastity, and of real virtue. By this er- 
 ror the characters of men and women and children have 
 been mystified to themselves, degraded in their own esti- 
 mation, made unnatural in their general intercourse, and 
 artificial to the greatest possible extent. It has given a 
 wrong direction to the feelings, thoughts, and actions of 
 
49 
 
 all of human kind, and compelled them to become the 
 most deceptions of the whole animal creation. It has 
 created and extended the vices and miseries of prostitu- 
 tion, or the total want of real chastity, over the earth ; 
 and filled it with physical and mental diseases of the most 
 cruel, degrading, and melancholy character; and deprived 
 the human race of a superior virtue, which would have 
 secured more peace of mind, more health, more benevo- 
 lent feeling, and more innocent enjoyment than any of 
 the virtues at present known or acknowledged as such 
 by any portion of mankind. 
 
 It is said that the chastity of woman could not be 
 secured without the legal bondage of marriage. It may 
 with much greater truth be said, that it never can be 
 secured with the legal bondage of marriage. Has this 
 bondage hitherto secured it ? Was there ever a period 
 in the history of man when the vilest prostitution was so 
 universal over the world as at present ? And is there a 
 single vice in the whole catalogue of crimes which so 
 degrades the human character, or inflicts the same extent 
 of misery on its votaries, and upon society in general, 
 as prostitution ? No : but the miseries engendered by 
 prostitution, and suffered by individuals and their fami- 
 lies, friends, and connections, are generally hidden from 
 public gaze and inspection, and are covered by the dark- 
 ness of night, or concealed in dens of wretchedness. 
 No security for the chastity of woman ! What blas- 
 phemy against nature, v/hich has provided the most 
 ample security in the innocent affections of the female 
 and in the cultiv^ated feelings of the male, whenever 
 ignorant inexperienced man shall permit these virtues 
 their free and natural course of action. 
 
 The pure and genuine chastity of nature is to have 
 connection only with affection ; and prostitution arises 
 only when connection is induced or forced without af- 
 fection ; and it is always induced by artificial causes, or 
 forced by some necessity of law or custom, when it takes 
 place without affection. And now all married pairs, 
 with a very few exceptions, are living in a state of the 
 most degrading prostitution, enforced upon them by the 
 human laws of marriage. Pure, genuine, unadulterated 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 chastity will be known only when men and women 
 shall form their unions through the sympathies of un- 
 biassed affection, and when those feelings, given to us 
 by our nature for our happiness, shall bo openly and 
 undisguisedly expressed in all the simplicity and inno- 
 cency of truth, that all may know them, and, knowing 
 them, that none may interfere, 
 
 This is the only mode by which the chastity of wo- 
 man can be insured ; for if men are not chaste, how is 
 it possible for woman to be so ? But, it is said, without 
 legal or artificial marriages, the bonds of society would 
 be broken, and utter confusion would pervade society. 
 
 So ignorant are the human race even now upon this 
 subject, and so j)rejudiced are the minds of all by ancient 
 customs, they cannot discover that there is no bond of 
 society existing to be broken ; that there is no order or 
 harmony in society to be thrown into confusion. 
 
 Society is now, everywhere, a chaos of the most con- 
 flicting feelings, sentiments, and interests. It consists 
 only of an ignorant, mistaken self or individual interest, 
 opposed to the general interest of the whole of the hu- 
 man race. This strange association is, now, the only 
 bond, or thread of the weakest texture, which feebly 
 holds society together ; and the sooner that this slight 
 binding shall be broken assunder, the better it will be 
 for mankind. For society will then be dissol/ed into 
 its original elements, and may be easily united upon 
 the laws of nature, instead of the laws of man, and be 
 effectually cemented by the grand law of general, in- 
 stead of private, interest ; and this change will promote 
 the happiness of every individual of the human race. 
 But, it is also said, that the children would be uncared 
 for, unless their immediate parents were compelled, by 
 the marriage laws, to provide and take care for them. 
 
 This supposition is another error arising from the pre- 
 sent infant state of the human mind. Children have 
 never yet been well educated by parents in their single- 
 family arrangements ; nor is it possible that children 
 should ever have a superior character formed by such 
 parties under such arrangements. 
 
 A child is the most valuable product nature can give 
 
51 
 
 to man. When its natural capacities shall bo known 
 and wisely appreciated, it will be discovered that 
 society may train it to become, at maturity, a being of 
 incalculable worth, capable of returning to society 
 many hundred-fold the capital expended, and labour 
 bestowed, in nursing and rearing it to the attainment 
 of its full powers ; that it might be made to acquire a 
 very superior character, capable of giving and receiving 
 the highest degree of pleasure and enjoyment, and of 
 adding to the general stock of the wealth and valuable 
 possessions of the world. This result, however, cannot 
 be eflfected by the immediate parents of the children ; 
 society alone can insure these blessings to mankind ; 
 and the first indication of Governments becoming ra- 
 tional will be, when they shall be discovered to be 
 earnestly and sincerely engaged in devising a sound 
 practical national education for the children of all 
 their subjects; an education in which physical and 
 mental employment of real utility and value to man- 
 kind, must, of necessity, become an essential part. 
 Whatever may be the intentions of Tories, Whigs, or 
 Radicals, of the religious or the irreligious members 
 of the new House of Commons, if they do not bring 
 forward this subject on the only solid foundation on 
 which it can be placed, that is, to form a superior rati- 
 onal character for each individual, believe not in their 
 wisdom or practical knowledge for legislators. Be 
 assured they are mere talking members, without 
 the requisite qualifications to lay the foundation on 
 which to make useful laws or regulations for the 
 government of the British Empire; and more espe- 
 cially to make them, at this important period, in the 
 emergency of human affairs, when the nations of the 
 earth are looking to the parliament and people of this 
 country for a great and good example, an example, too, 
 which all nations and people might with safety adopt, 
 to insure, in peace, their future progress in all kinds 
 of improvement, physical, mental, and moral; that 
 their progressive prosperity and happiness might be 
 rendered certain, without creating the envy or jealousy 
 of any other portion of the human race> 
 
 e2 
 
52 
 
 The artificial marriages of the priests, therefore, are 
 not only of no value, now, relative to the care and 
 culture of children, but, in this respect, they are a 
 positive nuisance, maintaining and enforcing a con- 
 tinuance of highly unfavourable circumstances around 
 children in all the gradations of society, whatever may 
 be the occupation, profession, or rank of the parents. 
 
 But, it is said, that without these marriages, pros- 
 titution would become general, and a promiscuous 
 intercourse would exist between the sexes. 
 
 It has been already stated, that prostitution exists at 
 this moment to the greatest extent ; that its results are 
 the most degrading and lamentable to the human race, 
 physically, intellectually, and morally; and that the 
 misery produced by it is most extensive and appalling. 
 
 Were it solely to put an end to this daily increasing 
 enormous evil, artificial marriages, which are the solo 
 cause of this crime, ought now to be made to cease ; 
 for as long as they shall be suffered, much less main- 
 tained and enforced by the law and the church, they 
 will inevitably engender this most vicious, and, by its 
 consequences, melancholy derangement of the happiness 
 of human life. 
 
 The poor, helpless, unpitied victims of this unnatural 
 state of human feelings and affections, are the most 
 unjustly and cruelly used of any portion of the popu- 
 lation of the world; although it is most probable that 
 generally they are capable of being trained and placed 
 by society, rightly constituted, to contribute most 
 largely and most innocently to the physical, mental, 
 and moral happiness of the species. Oh ! that men 
 could see and feel the enormity of this evil, and compel 
 the legislators, of what is falsely named the civilized 
 world, to turn their attention to the atrocity of the 
 laws, which, for man's unhallowed, low, and temporary 
 gratification, dooms the finest portion of the human 
 race to the most acute, cutting, and desperate desola- 
 tion ; lacerating the best feelings of our nature, and 
 sinking them into utter despair ! 
 
 Upon this part of the subject volumes might and 
 ought to be written, to arouse every latent sense of 
 
53 
 
 stern justice and common equity ; if feelings of mercy, 
 commiseration, and generosity are dead in man, to 
 stimulate liim to a prompt, decisive, right course of 
 action. But the great, and formidable, and, said to be, 
 irresistible argument in favour of the continuance of 
 these artificial marriages is, that w^ithout them, there 
 would be a promiscuous intercourse between the sexes. 
 
 Now, this argument I mean to meet in my next 
 lecture openly, fully, and fairly, as it ought to be met, 
 for the satisfaction of the public. For the principles of 
 the New Moral World shall be without spot or blemish; 
 they shall be consistent throughout, and no error shall 
 be found in them. 
 
 My friends, I have opened this subject, and proceeded 
 in part to explain some of its evils as they exist in the 
 old immoral world. I have no doubt these lectures con- 
 found and perplex the minds of many of my hearers. 
 Wait, however, till the whole subject be fairly before 
 you, and then you will be able to see the difference 
 between the old and the new systems. Many of my 
 friends are alarmed at my opening this subject at the 
 present time, as they also were at the course I pursued 
 in 1817. They did not see my object then, any more 
 than they do now. I then threw away from myself 
 more solid popularity than was perhaps ever possessed 
 by any other individual. But what is popularity to 
 me ? If I had allowed popularity to affect me, I should 
 have done scarcely any thing that I have. I am now 
 sixty- three years of age ; and as in the course of nature 
 I cannot remain long with you, I am anxious to push 
 forward measures, in the best manner that my ex- 
 perience suggests, to lay a foundation for proceeding, 
 with advantage to all parties, to show what our prin - 
 ciples can efiect in a new state of society, for securing 
 the happiness of the whole human race. 
 
LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 I resume the subject of marriage because it is the 
 source of more demoralization, crime, and misery, than 
 any other single cause, with the exception of religion 
 and private property ; and these three together form the 
 great trinity of causes of crime and immorality among 
 mankind. I resume the subject also because it is the 
 most unpopular, and the most difficult to meet in public ; 
 and because it stands prominently in the way, at the 
 very threshold, of every real improvement in the general 
 condition of the human race. 
 
 While the errors which have been impressed on the 
 public mind relative to artificial marriages and the in- 
 tercourse of the sexes shall be suffered to remain, it is 
 utterly impossible that man or woman can feel, think, 
 or act as rational beings. The natural strength of their 
 character, physical, intellectual, and moral, is destroyed 
 by the absurd notions and feelings which they are com- 
 pelled to receive respecting their sexual natures from 
 early childhood, and by the false training which, for 
 this period, is forced upon both sexes. That which 
 nature made the very simplicity of innocency, and the 
 foundation for a refined and superior character, the 
 priesthood has made the means by which to introduce 
 an artificial weakness of body and mind, false shame, 
 loathsome disease, with crime and misery, to an incal- 
 culable extent. 
 
 And when the priesthood had produced these lament- 
 able results throughout human society, it became neces- 
 sary that the whole arrangements of public and private 
 afi'airs should be made in accordance with these weak- 
 nesses and errors ; and, in consequence, a combination 
 of artificial thoughts, feelings, and actions has been en- 
 gendered, and, from age to age, multiplied to such an 
 
55 
 
 extent, that, at this moment, the human race, viewed 
 with the eye of sober reason, has attained to a con- 
 dition of absurdity and folly that we shall seek for, in 
 vain, among any other tribes of animals. 
 
 Were it not that we are accustomed, and thereby re- 
 conciled, to what is around us, and to the habits and 
 practices of our friends, companions, and other persons 
 within the circle of our experience, we should be im- 
 pressed, in the most forcible manner, with the strange, 
 inconsistent, and most extraordinary proceedings of the 
 inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland. It is a sub- 
 ject of great doubt whether there is any other congrega- 
 ted mass of human beings, any other nation, tribe, or 
 people, termed civilized, barbarian, or savage, which at 
 this day exhibits such gross incongruities, grave absur- 
 dities, and unjust and cruel conduct, as is now to be 
 seen in the general conduct of the population of these 
 two Islands, and to be seen too in all their various gra- 
 dations, from the pauper expiring from famine, to the 
 sovereign surrounded by his motley courtiers and fan- 
 tastic puerile paraphernalia. 
 
 Nothing short of the effect of habit upon the human 
 organization could close our perceptions to the extent of 
 the gross folly, and utter irrationality of the people and 
 government of this country. 
 
 We will endeavour to exhibit a mirror of truth, 
 which will reflect, at least, some part of the strange in- 
 congruities and cruelties of their character and conduct. 
 
 The government and people generally now profess 
 that their object is to insure to themselves and others 
 the greatest extent of the most permanent happiness. 
 
 And to effect this object, they teach that all should 
 worship, in all sincerity, an infinitely wise, powerful, 
 and good Being, who can do all things, and who, above 
 all things, desires the happiness of his creatures. 
 
 They endeavour also to train their children to love 
 this Being, and, as far as possible, to imitate his wis- 
 dom and goodness, and especially to love their fellow- 
 creatures whom this all-wise Being has made, and who, 
 they say, is the common parent of all of them, without 
 exception. 
 
56 
 
 This is the professed object of the people and govern- 
 ment of the British empire at this day. And, to accom- 
 plish these results, their practice is the most extraor- 
 dinary, and certainly the most extravagantly insane, 
 that the human mind can imagine 1st. They teach in 
 words, that all must love their neighbour as themselves; 
 and, to effect this object, they devise arrangements and 
 adopt measures which render it impossible that any 
 one can acquire this feeling ; arrangements and mea- 
 sures which, of necessity, train and force all to oppose, 
 dislike, and hate, and many to murder, one another. 
 And these feelings are engendered, not for the real 
 benefit of a single individual of the human race, but to 
 the lasting injury of all ; and the conduct thus produced 
 is in direct opposition to all the religious views which 
 are daily taught to the peoj^le, 
 
 2nd. They teach, in words, that they should express 
 the truth only, upon all occasions ; while they adopt prac- 
 tices which induce each other to speak a language gen- 
 erally of gross falsehood, with scarcely any genuine 
 truth mixed with it. 
 
 3rd. They teach, in words, that they should be honest 
 in all their dealings and transactions with each other 
 and all mankind; while, in deeds, they continually 
 attempt to obtain adA^antages over all, and their thoughts 
 are chiefly occupied in devising schemes for promoting 
 their own individual interest in opposition to the interest 
 of those immediately around them, or of others more 
 remote. 
 
 4th. They teach, in words, that all should obtain 
 equal justice ; Avhile the rich make laws and regulations 
 which render it impossible that the poor should obtain 
 justice in oj^position to the man of wealth. 
 
 5th. They teach, in words, that heaven is to be 
 desired above all things on earth ; that it is impossible 
 for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven ; 
 and yet teachers and all, are daily exerting their best 
 energies to obtain riches. 
 
 6th. They teach, in words, that idleness is a crime ; 
 and yet all are endeavouring to attain a state to enable 
 them, and their children after them, Uirough endless 
 
57 
 
 generations, to live continually in idleness upon the 
 over-exerted industry of others. 
 
 7th. All are taught and trained to acquire the desire 
 to become rich ; while the far greater part are actively, 
 but most blindly, engaged in measures which, to an 
 incalculable extent, prevent the increase of the most 
 valuable wealth, which, by the adoption of rational 
 measures, might easily be made far more than sufficient 
 to satisfy the utmost craving of all, even with riches 
 exceeding their powers to enjoy them. 
 
 8th. They teach, in words, the principles and spirit 
 of peace and good-will to mankind ; while they prac- 
 tice openly, or covertly, all means to create disunion, 
 unkind feelings, and often war, on the most extensive 
 scale. 
 
 9th. They teach, in words, that wisdom and know- 
 ledge are most desirable for all ; while those who thus 
 teach, and who could materially assist to extend wisdom 
 and knowledge to the whole people, are indirectly 
 using all their influence and power to prevent the 
 spread of these invaluable acquisitions. 
 
 10th. They teach, in words, temperance ; while those 
 who have the power, adopt the most effective indirect 
 measures to insure the continuance and increase of 
 gross intemperance among the mass of the people. 
 
 11th. They teach, in words, the duty and advantage 
 of union among all ; while, in practice, they adopt the 
 most certain measures to disunite, and to keep disunited, 
 the whole of the human race. 
 
 12th. They teach, in words, the great advantage of 
 forming a superior good character for all individuals ; 
 while they actively and perseveringly pursue the most 
 direct measures to force all to acquire an inferior and 
 immoral character. 
 
 18th. They teach, in words, the high morality of all 
 women being chaste ; while they adopt all the most 
 artificial and unnatural methods to force men and 
 women to become prostitutes. 
 
 14th. They teach, in words, that above all tilings 
 they should have pure and genuine charity for each 
 other; while they have adopted every conceivable 
 
58 
 
 notion and measure to render it impracticable that 
 they can entertain one particle of real charity for each 
 other, or practice it in any part of their conduct. 
 
 And, lastly, the men, women, and children of the 
 British islands are, at this day, with more means at 
 their disposal to effect the most extensive benefits to 
 mankind, than any congregated mass of human beings 
 ever possessed, " doing what they ought not to do^ and 
 leaving undone all they ought to do" for their own 
 well-being and happiness. But there is no limit to the 
 gross incongruities in the British isles. And it is under 
 this complication of irrationality that these pretenders 
 to virtue and right conduct say, that " without the 
 artificial marriages of the priesthood, prostitution would 
 be general, and a promiscuous intercourse would exist 
 between the sexes ; men would continually quarrel 
 about the women, and utter confusion would pervade 
 society." 
 
 Now, the plain matter of fact is, that prostitution is 
 become general in married as well as single life ; men 
 do continually quarrel about the women ; a promiscuous 
 intercourse does exist, and utter confusion pervades 
 society. 
 
 Our object is to prepare the way to bring these evils 
 and disorders in society to an end, and to introduce 
 measures to terminate them forever; and, as a first and 
 most necessary step, to abolish over the earth the arti- 
 ficial marriages of the old immoral world. 
 
 We ask the men and women who have a knowledge 
 of society as it now exists in practice, if the marriages 
 of civilized nations, as they are most ignorantly termed, 
 are calculated to produce real chastity between the 
 sexes, or truth in their communications with each other? 
 We fearlessly answer for them, no ! for chastity and 
 truth never can exist under such an unnatural arrange- 
 ment. The unavoidable results of this complicated 
 artifice of the priesthood are, an almost total want of 
 real chastity, a general, vile, conc^led, promiscuous 
 intercourse of the most disastrous and degrading cha- 
 racter ; and, in addition, a general language and conduct 
 of insincerity and deception among married and single, 
 
59 
 
 young and old. These are the present 2vise practices of 
 the old immoral world, which no one must presume to 
 condemn or attempt to change ! There is not an honest 
 and intelligent man or woman, who is acquainted with 
 the general practices of society, who is not conscious of 
 the accuracy of this statement, and who would not 
 confirm it openly if they dare speak their thoughts and 
 feelings freely and honestly, as will be done when men 
 and women shall be permitted to be trained to be 
 rational beings. 
 
 TVe ask, what has nature intended the intercourse 
 between the sexes to be, natural or artificial ? We 
 enquire again, whether nature or man, ignorant as he 
 has hitherto been of his nature, is the most likely to 
 direct aright, and most beneficially for the objects in- 
 tended by nature, the intercourse between the sexes ? 
 Does nature, for her wise purposes, intend that this in- 
 tercourse should be restricted through life by the arti- 
 ficial union of one of each sex, as man, in some 
 countries, has vainly endeavoured to decree? or between 
 one male and several females, restricted by the law to 
 that male, for life, as man has decided shall be the 
 practice in other countries ? or that it would be more 
 in accordance with common sense, and the most delicate 
 and virtuous course, 'for nature herself to direct her 
 own proceedings and decide upon her own operation ? 
 
 Is there any sexual crime or prostitution known 
 among any other tribe of animals ? Do they act wisely 
 or viciously in their sexual intercourse ? Is there more 
 virtue among any race of animals in eating, drinking, 
 and sleeping, than in continuing, by the same natural 
 laws, the existence of their species ? Does nature regu- 
 late this latter propensity in animals, as wisely as the 
 former ? Is it not probable that nature, if not inter- 
 fered with by ignorant presumptuous man, would regulate 
 and direct this propensity in the human race, as wisely 
 for their good, as she regulates and directs it for all other 
 races of animals ^jBfe^ho made the intercourse of the 
 sexes in opposition nature, among the human race, a 
 virtue ? Who made this intercourse in accordance with 
 nature, a vice ? Was it God, or the Devil ; nature, or 
 
GO 
 
 the priest ? Is the intercourse of the sexes, devised, and 
 now maintained hy the priesthood, a virtue or a vice ? 
 Is the intercourse of the sexes, as ordained and directed 
 by nature a virtue or a vice ? 
 
 Let those who have knowledge and experience of the 
 world, and who dare be honest, in opposition to gross 
 ignorance and vulgar prejudice, now answer these 
 questions. 
 
 But such is the debasement of the human intellect, 
 such the enslavement of the natural feelings to the fear 
 of the power of the priesthood, that to these most im- 
 portant questions the tongue of man must be mute ; 
 and whatever may be the response in the heart of the 
 learned or the ignorant, the sovereign, or the beggar, 
 all, all must restrain its utterance to the world, in defer- 
 ence to the priestly power which for so many centuries 
 has ruled the destinies of man, making him an ignorant 
 miserable bigot, when he might so easily be made an 
 intelligent, rational, and happy being. 
 
 If the degenerated sons of man are thus sunk below 
 the condition of the brute creation, who fear not, at all 
 times, to express their feelings, the sacred feelings of 
 nature in them as they are also in man, we will now 
 relieve the human race from their mental bondage; and, 
 thus relieving them, we shall emancipate them from sin 
 and misery. 
 
 We shall thus regenerate them and again make them 
 the sons ol God or nature, willing to adopt, and in future 
 to abide by, the divine love of their parent, and to reject 
 for ever the ignorant and wicked laws of the priesthood, 
 or of the devil. 
 
 Behold! the period is arrived when one man, at least, 
 dare publish the truth to the world ; and this is a sure 
 and certain sign that the time drawetli nigh when the 
 mind of man shall be born again, and when truth, 
 peace, and love'^shall reign for evermore. 
 
 My friends, I have asked some questions which ought 
 now, for the benefit of the humaApfje, to be answered 
 simply and plainly. Who can viswer them? Who 
 dare answer them publicly ? I have put them before 
 3'-ou now ; think of the answers which ought to bo 
 
61 
 
 given to them. Next Sunday I will answer them my- 
 self, and we shall then see if our answers coincide. I 
 shall then consider whether we are acting upon nature's 
 or upon man's decrees, and what nature Avould produce 
 if left to herself. Whether would nature's or man's 
 decrees be the best to act upon? Many individuals 
 have told me that they are afraid the minds of their 
 friends are not yet prepared for the subject of marriage; 
 but I must place it fairly before the world, I have 
 opened the subject, and must continue it until I have 
 rendered it as familiar to my hearers as it is to myself. 
 
LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 In my last discourse I liavo asked several questions 
 neccssarj to bo answered, relative to the natural state 
 of man and woman, and also respecting their present 
 artificial condition. And these questions were pur- 
 posely asked, because they must be openly and honestly 
 answered to the world, before the human race can stand 
 any chance of being emancipated from ignorance, sin, 
 and misery. 
 
 When these questions were asked I well knew there 
 were none to answer them. But I have told you that 
 the veil of mysteries is about to be rent asunder, and 
 that you shall no longer see as through a glass darkly, 
 but that your minds shall be born again, and that you 
 shall see face to face, and know each other, even as you 
 are known, or as you know yourselves. 
 
 The subjects to which these questions refer, are said, 
 by the priests, to be too sacred for man's investigation; 
 he must receive their dogmas implicitly as divine truths, 
 too sacred to be doubted by mortals. Now it is 
 deserving of everlasting remembrance, that what the 
 nations of the earth have been taught by their priests to 
 believe to be divine truths, too sacred for other mortals 
 to examine, or to doubt, have been diabolical falsehoods, 
 which were so contrary to known facts and common 
 sense, that it became necessary to fence them round 
 with the mysteries of their invented divinities, to pre- 
 vent the grossness of their deception becoming glaring- 
 ly evident through the increasing knowledge of the 
 multitude. Therefore, in future, for divine truths read 
 priestly falsehoods and gross and injurious deceptions. 
 
 It has been in this manner that the priests have con- 
 trived to call their marriages, which they have devised, 
 a divine ordinance, and that all the ignorant mysticism 
 
.63 
 
 between tlie sexes has been concocted and maintained 
 for so many generations, even until many of the priest.' 
 themselves really believe most conscientiously in the 
 divinity of their own absurdities. 
 
 We must now unmask the ignorance and deception 
 of all these proceedings; for in our New Moral World 
 there must not be ignorance or deception of any kind, 
 which our present knowledge of facts will enable us to 
 remove ; but especially there must be no avoidable 
 mystery relative to the nature of man and woman, or 
 to the right foundation on which to erect the new state 
 of society, which is to give to human nature a new 
 character and a new existence. For now man is indeed 
 to be regenerated and born again, and raised to a life 
 of intelligence and happiness, that is, to the innocency 
 of paradise, united with the intelligence of all pa.st 
 experience. 
 
 And in this new world, to free it from sin and the 
 cause of sin, there will be no marriages of the priest, or 
 giving in marriage. 
 
 The reasons for this new condition of human life will 
 he obvious when we shall answer the questions which 
 were asked in our last discourse ; and to this task we 
 now proceed. 
 
 The first question asked was, " Has Nature intended 
 the intercourse between the sexes to be natural or ' 
 artificial ?" 
 
 The priests have made it artificial ; and the priests 
 rule and controul all things in all the so-called civilized 
 nations of the earth. They have devised the marriage 
 ceremonies of the various nations^ and established the 
 laws of marriage for all people. These proceedings 
 they contrived and adopted when their power over the 
 minds of the multitude was unlimited and uncontrolled ; 
 when they directed the actions of kings and princes 
 more despotically than kings and princes can now com- 
 mand the services of ordinary men. 
 
 In the plenitude of their ignorant despotism, the 
 priests, disregarding all Nature's divine and sacred 
 laws, or being ignorant of them, substituted their own 
 imaginations, called them divine inspirations, and then 
 f2 
 
64 
 
 compelled the spell-bound fanatic to adopt them without 
 investigation, as being too sacred for human reason, and, 
 therefore, to be implicitly believed by faith alone, which 
 they assert is superior to reason or sound common 
 sense. 
 
 But the power of the priest is passing away ; man is 
 beginning to investigate the causes of the elFects which 
 now exist around him ; he is approaching the confines 
 of the rational period of his existence ; he doubts the 
 knowledge of the priesthood, and he doubts the sincerity 
 of many of them. He is preparing himself to enquire, 
 without superstitious fear or dread, into the origin of 
 their authority, and into the wisdom of the laws and 
 institutions which they have induced the world to 
 receive from them, and especially into those laws, 
 regulations, and institutions, relative to the intercourse 
 of the sexes. 
 
 Having examined this subject to its foundation, as 
 far as facts yet ascertained by man admit, we do not 
 hesitate to say that the priests of the world, when they 
 devised the various laws of marriage in different 
 countries, were either totally ignorant of their own 
 nature, and of human nature generally, or that they 
 were hypocrites, and devised laws and ceremonies to 
 keep the multitude in ignorance and in subjection to 
 them. But whether they have acted from ignorance or 
 through design, they have instituted the most immoral 
 laws, leading to the most immoral, unhealthy, and 
 miserable practices throughout society ; instead of 
 abiding by Nature's laws, which would have led to the 
 most moral, healthy, and happy practices. 
 
 The artificial laws of the priesthood for regulating, 
 by man's ignorance, the intercourse of the sexes, have 
 at once destroyed truth among mankind, and made it 
 unavoidable that falsehood should have uncontrolled 
 dominion as long as those laws shall be allowed to 
 remain to direct the conduct of the sexes, and as long 
 as the priests possess the power to deceive mankind by 
 the presumed sanctity and sacredness of their divine 
 character. 
 
 It is now evident, from the crime and misery whick 
 
65 
 
 tlic unnatural laws of marriage, forced upon society by 
 the priesthood, haA^c produced, and p.re at this hour 
 producing, that Nature has ever intended that th(3 
 intercourse of the sexes shall not ue artificial, but 
 natural ; and that future generations shall bring forth 
 superior natural children, in place of the inferior artifi- 
 cial children which the priests have caused to be brought 
 among all the civilized nations of the earth ; and, in 
 consequence, the race is rapidly declining in natural 
 powers. The answer, therefore, to the question, " Has* 
 Nature intended the intercourse between the sexes to be 
 natural or artificial V is, that nature intends it shall be 
 natural, as soon as man shall be trained to become 
 rational. 
 
 The next question was, " Whether Nature or man, 
 ignorant as he has hitherto been of his nature, is the 
 most likely to direct the intercourse of the sexes aright, 
 and most beneficially for the objects ultimately intended 
 by Nature, which are, evidently, the attainment of 
 excellence and happiness among the v/hole family of 
 mankind ?" 
 
 Man, as is proved by his every-day practice, has 
 never yet knov>m the laws of his ovv^n organization : he 
 has been kept totally ignorant of himself ; and he has 
 been living in a state of mental and moral blindness. 
 His language, manners, and customs prove that he has 
 totally mistaken the fact relative to the powers and 
 capacities of his natural constitution, and that, in 
 consequence, previous to this period, he has been 
 incompetent to examine and comprehend the laws of 
 his nature to a sufficient extent to enable him to apply 
 them to practice in the daily business and affairs of life. 
 
 Nature, when left to herself, as is seen throughout 
 the whole of the animal creation, directs every faculty 
 and power of each creature wisely for the apparent 
 objects to be attained by its peculiar nature ; and, no 
 doubt, she would direct man with still more wisdom, 
 for her wise purposes, if from some cause or other, yet 
 to be discovered, man did not interpose his inexperience 
 to thwart her righteous course and his own permanent 
 happiness. The present extraordinary excitement 
 
66 
 
 among the human race in the four quarters of the worhl 
 is an indication that Nature is actively at work to 
 overcome this ignorance, error, or defect in man, to 
 teach him how to avoid the evils which he has hitherto 
 experienced, and to secure the good and attain the 
 happiness which his nature is so admirably fitted to 
 enjoy. We are, therefore, compelled to conclude, that 
 Nature can, and will, direct the intercourse between 
 the sexes far more wisely to secure the permanent good 
 and happiness of the human race, than man can ever 
 comprehend while he remains so ignorant of the laws of 
 his own nature, as he has proved himself to be by his 
 past history, and is, even at the present period. 
 
 The next question in rotation is, " Does nature, for 
 her wise purposes, intend that the intercourse between 
 the sexes should be restricted, through life, by the arti- 
 ficial union of one of each sex, as man in some countries, 
 has vainly endeavoured to decree ? or, between one 
 male and several females, restricted by human laws to 
 that male for his life, as is now the custom over a large 
 portion of the earth? or, that it would be more in 
 accordance with common sense, and also the most deli- 
 cate and virtuous course to adopt, for Nature herself 
 to direct her own proceedings, and decide upon her 
 own operations ?" 
 
 Now we have had great experience of the two first 
 artificial customs, and probably the population of the 
 world is at present divided nearly equally between these 
 two very opposite practices ; and yet both modes are 
 said, by their respective priests, to be of God's appoint- 
 ment. Whether they have been introduced by a good 
 or malignant spirit, by wisdom or ignorance, they have 
 served to give man, during many generations, a know- 
 ledge, through dear-bought experience, of the eS'ects of 
 both of these artificial unions of the sexes. And cer- 
 tainly they have proved to be, to an enormous extent, 
 vicious and unfavourable circumstances, which have 
 tended more to weaken and degrade human nature than 
 any other artificial institution invented by man. 
 
 The human law which binds one man to the same 
 woman, and the woman to the man through life, whether 
 
67 
 
 or not they can retain an affection for each other, has 
 produced more hatred, and destroyed more love be- 
 tween these parties than would otherwise have taken 
 place, probably many thousand-fold. It has produced 
 a general practice of the most gross as well as refined 
 falsehood, and the deepest deception between these 
 parties, and to the public. It has given rise to the 
 most extensive jealousy and revenge, and severed those, 
 for ever, from each other, who were compelled, by their 
 natures, to entertain the strongest and most sincere 
 mutual affection, competent by their union to create as 
 much happiness as their forced separation produced 
 misery. This permanent artificial union of a single 
 pair for life has forced a system of promiscuous inter- 
 course, in those countries in which this law prevails, 
 most degrading and injurious to the physical, intel- 
 lectual, and moral character and conduct of both sexes ; 
 and thereby produced an extent of injustice, cruelty, 
 and misery, especially to the female, beyond the power 
 of any written statement or mere wordy document to 
 enable the present race of man to comprehend. 
 
 In fact, this forced continued union of a single pair 
 of human beings through life, with or without affection, 
 as it may happen to be, is calculated, in all its conse- 
 quences, to the old, young, and middle-aged, to create 
 an extensive ramification of the most immoral external 
 circumstances. And through the natural effect of these 
 vicious institutions of the priesthood, acting and re-act- 
 ing continually upon human nature, they are also 
 calculated, as well as if they were devised for the pur- 
 pose, to constitute a weak, artificial, heartless, miserable 
 condition of human society. This Christian custom 
 cannot, therefore, be intended to be the practice of the 
 human race when they shall acquire sufficient experi- 
 ence to become rational creatures. 
 
 Then the Eastern legal custom of one man having 
 permission to have as many wives as he can maintain, 
 although, perhaps, less injurious in some respects than 
 the customs of Christians, and especially as it materially 
 diminishes promiscuous intercourse, is, nevertheless, a 
 most unfortunate device for mankind. It tends power- 
 
68 
 
 I'liUy to make men and women weak, jealous, irrational 
 beings. It destroys the confidence of man in woman, 
 and woman in man ; and makes woman a mere slave to 
 man's sexual propensity; it tends to perpetuate woman 
 in a state of mental childhood: it destroys the confi- 
 dence of man in man relative to his converse with 
 women, and creates an ignorant and most anti-social 
 state of society, and retards the free communication of 
 mind with mind v>^ithout injurious artificial restraints ; 
 and it makes man, and a few v/omcn united with him, 
 and their immediate offspring, isolated beings, knowing 
 and caring little for the progress of useful science, or of 
 the great truths relative to human nature; through 
 which knowledge, alone, man can discover the only 
 road to a superior mode of existence, and to permanent 
 happiness. 
 
 Wo, therefore, pronounce that neither of these modes 
 of restricting the intercourse betvreen the sexes, v/ill 
 ever produce a virtuous, intelligent, rational, or happy 
 state of human society ; and that it will be more in 
 accordance with common sense and with virtue, for 
 Nature, when man and woman shall be trained to be 
 rational creatures, to direct her own proceedings, and to 
 decide upon her own operations. But before this very 
 superior state of existence can be obtained, new general 
 external arrangements must be introduced, of a very 
 different character to those which now exist throughout 
 society, or have yet been devised, or, to our knov.dedge, 
 ever been imagined, by ignorant, inexperienced, irra- 
 tional man. 
 
 Our next question was, " Is there any sexual crime, 
 or prostitution known, or imagined by them to exist, 
 among any tribe or species of animals, except man ?" 
 We reply, we know of no other animals who fancy 
 there is any crime or vice whatever in continuing their 
 species as their nature directs, or which do not follow 
 the instinct of their nature, and no evil ensues. Do 
 they thus act wisely or viciously in their sexual inter- 
 course ? Most wisely; and if they were to act otherwise, 
 their conduct would soon become as unwise, and as 
 vicious, and immoral, as the past and present conduct of 
 the human race has been. 
 
69 
 
 The next question that follows, is thus stated : " Is 
 there more virtue among any race of animals, in eating, 
 drinkittg, and sleeping, according to the laws or propen- 
 sities of their nature, than there is in continuing, by the 
 same natural laws, the existence of their species?" We 
 fearlessly say, no; there is quite as much common sense 
 and rationality in the one case as in the other ; they 
 have all the same origin and character, and will for ever 
 remain the same in character, whatever name or term 
 the fancy of men, in their ignorance, may presump- 
 tuously give them. 
 
 The succeeding question is, " Does nature regulate 
 the law or propensity for continuing the species in ani- 
 mals as wisely as she regulates the laws or propensities 
 for eating, drinking, or sleeping ?" We are convinced 
 that Nature is as perfect in the one as in the other : 
 nor can we believe, with the knowledge of facts now 
 known to the world, that any reasonable being will ever 
 entertain a doubt upon the subject. Why, therefore, do 
 not the priests, as they presume to controul and regu- 
 late Nature in 07ie of her wonderful operations, make 
 their own artificial laws in opposition to Nature for all 
 other feelings and senses which man professes, and de- 
 cide upon one general law or rule, by which every 
 individual shall eat, drink, and sleep, as respects 
 quantity, quality, time, &c. ? for there is quite as much 
 wisdom in, and necessity for, the one as for the other. 
 Let the priesthood answer this statement when they 
 shall have reflected upon it. 
 
 We proceed to the next question, as it is intimately 
 connected with the preceding. It is as follows : " Is 
 it not probable that Nature, if not interfered with or 
 interrupted in her course by man in his present ignorant 
 state, would regulate and direct the sexual intercourse 
 of the human race as wisely for their good as she 
 regulates and directs it for the benefit of all other races 
 of animals ?" 
 
 Upon this question we conclude, that no one, with 
 common understanding, can have any doubt. The 
 chief of animals would not, it is presumed, be left, in 
 this important part of its nature, more uncared for and 
 
70 
 
 less protected than the inferior tribes. On the contrary, 
 is it not reasonable to suppose that Nature would guide 
 her chief work upon earth, in this essential parWof the 
 economy of its life, as much more perfectly as she has 
 provided for all its other wants, and make it contribute, 
 like all its other propensities, to the health and happi- 
 ness of the species? Yet, in defiance of this most 
 natural conclusion, the priesthood, in its ignorance, has 
 made this propensity, which is necessary to our exist- 
 ence, health, and happiness, the source of disease and 
 wretchedness. When man shall be permitted to attend 
 to, and be governed by, the innocent laws of his nature 
 — and all Nature's laws are innocent — he will discover 
 how egregiously he has erred in this respect, and how 
 much misery he has by that error inflicted, for so many 
 ages, on the whole of his species. He will also discover 
 that he has taken the greatest and most unnatural pains 
 to render the finer and more delicate sympathies of our 
 nature, the source of the most extended mental and 
 physical diseases, and of the most acute and heart- 
 breaking wretchedness ; when, on the contrary, if these 
 prime sources of man's most valuable enjoyments had 
 been judiciously cultivated and wisely directed, they 
 would, long ere this, have made him a very superior 
 and happy being ; a being filled with charity, benevo- 
 lence, and aff*ection for all of his species, and in secure 
 possession of the highest enjoyments. 
 
 When man shall be placed within those external 
 circumstances, practical arrangements, and wise insti- 
 tutions which are in accordance with human nature, 
 and which can alone train him to become rational, and 
 enable him to know what real virtue and happiness are, 
 then will Nature not be interrupted in her wise course 
 by man's inexperience and his consequent presumption, 
 and the intercourse of the sexes will be solely under 
 the guidance of Nature, and not of the priests' irrational 
 devices and laws. And who can doubt that Nature 
 will regulate and direct this propensity, which she has 
 formed in man, as wisely for his happiness, immediate 
 and remote, as she has ever regulated and directed the 
 same kind of propensity also of her own creation, for 
 that of all other races of animals ? 
 
71 
 
 The remaining most interesting questions we must 
 now leave to be answered in our next discourse. These 
 answers, with the consideration of the effects which the 
 artificial marriages devised by the priests have upon 
 human nature, will terminate our discourses on the 
 effects of the artificial unions of the sexes under the 
 institutions of the old immoral world. 
 
 When we shall have explained, in future lectures, the 
 direful effects on human nature of the other two great 
 sources of crime and misery in the old immoral world, 
 viz, private property, and what the priesthood has here- 
 tofore called religion, we shall be prepared to lay the 
 foundation and to build up the New Moral World; and 
 then the minds of our hearers and readers will be some- 
 what better prepared than they are now to understand 
 what out to be, and what will be, the new position of 
 man and woman in their rational state of existence ; and 
 they will also acquire some faint impressioas of the great 
 and glorious change which is about to take place in the 
 condition of the human race in every part of the globe 
 in which man can be found. 
 
 You are perhaps aware, my friends, that the subject 
 of the marriages of the world, as devised by the priest- 
 hood, is one of the most unpopular and difficult to treat 
 properly. The disciples of the new system themselves 
 are, many of them, alarmed at its open discussion at the 
 present time. They supposed we had sufficiently 
 shocked the prejudices of the world in openly denounc- 
 ing all other parts of the old immoral system ; but were 
 not aware that all the truth which we have previously 
 spoken, is of little or no practical value without our 
 entering fully and freely into the subject of marriage. 
 There are many parties in the country waiting anxiously 
 for our commencing operations ; but it would be quite 
 useless for us to begin, until the subject of marriage, 
 private property, and religion be properly understood 
 by those about to enter upon a rational state of society. 
 Many persons conceive that nothing can be easier than 
 to establish a community, and to carry the system into 
 practice : but no community has yet been begun which 
 did not consist of married couples. I have known from 
 
72 
 
 the first that no such practice could succeed, as the 
 interest of private families is quite opposed to that of a 
 number of equally free and intelligent individuals. 
 Before such a community as I advocate can take place, 
 our minds must be born again, and we must be possessed 
 of a very different knowledge from that which we now 
 have. The truths I have presented to you appear 
 startling only when seen at a distance, and when they 
 are new to the mind ; as they become familiar, it will 
 then be perceived that they are the farthest removed 
 from morality, and that the only right course is to adopt 
 the conduct now recommended; for it is truth only, 
 unmixed with error or mystery, that can ever produce 
 a virtuous state of society. 
 
LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 We have now to continue the subject of marriage 
 from the point at which we left off on Sunday evening 
 last. Of all the great and interesting subjects now 
 before the public, not one appears to be so little under- 
 stood in its extensive relations and consequences, 
 throughout society, as marriage. No persons, perhaps, 
 are aware of the totally different character which this 
 single institution has given to the human race, from 
 that which it would have acquired provided the associa- 
 tion of the sexes had been in accordance with the 
 natural laws of our organization ; for in that case, the 
 other great arrangements of human life would have 
 been made consistent with it. 
 
 The institution of marriage has forced the populations 
 of all countries to adopt a system of exclusion and 
 mystery in all their domestic arrangements, and has 
 made it unavoidable that they should acquire the most 
 injurious habits of falsehood, secrecy, and deception in 
 their general conduct to each other, and to the world at 
 large. This institution has also rendered it a matter of 
 necessity that the most extravagant and injurious ex- 
 ternal circumstances should be formed for the accom- 
 modation of each married pair and their offspring ; and 
 it has inflicted, morally, and physically, the direst 
 calamities upon the human race. As men have never 
 yet been taught to reflect and reason rationally, or 
 universally, all their thoughts have been confined to 
 considerations of self, sect, or party, and the great in- 
 terests of the human race have been altogether neg- 
 lected. The far greater advantages to be derived by 
 every one from the adoption of unexclusive general 
 principles in practice, are yet a dead letter with all who 
 have been trained to acquire only individualizing feel- 
 ings, notions, and interests ; a^nd ^11 have been so 
 trained. While these feelings, notions, and intereeifc* 
 
 G 
 
74 
 
 shall be inculcated, enforced, and induced, by the tempta- 
 tion of present gain, and the promise of future ever- 
 lasting rewards, the race of man must remain ignorant 
 and immoral ; and confusion and misery, both public 
 and private, will continue, as heretofore, to prevade all 
 the nations of the earth. But we must proceed to un- 
 ravel more of the principal causes of these evils, by 
 replying to the remaining questions which were asked 
 in our last discourse but one, and which were left un- 
 answered in the discourse which we delivered here on 
 Sunday evening last. 
 
 The questions to be answered in regular succession 
 are the following : — " Who made the intercourse of 
 the sexes in opposition to Nature, among the human 
 race, a virtue ?" or, in other words, " who made the 
 observance of the laws of man, which are in opposition 
 to the laws of Nature, a virtue ; and the observance 
 of the laws of Nature, which are in opposition to the 
 laws of man, a vice ? Was it God or the devil, Nature 
 or the priest V 
 
 Now these are questions of vital interest to the 
 human race, for upon the truth of the reply to them, 
 depends the possibility or practicability of giving a 
 progressive happiness to all of human kind. If it be 
 indeed virtue to oppose Nature, and vice to act in ac- 
 cordance with it, then is man doomed for ever to be a 
 miserable being. We greatly rejoice to know that he 
 has not been doomed always to remain in this wretched 
 condition ; although he has, to this period, been made 
 by the priesthood so ignorant of himself and of human 
 nature generally, that he has been forced by them, and 
 by the other governors and directors of society, to re- 
 frain from the study of human nature, in some cases 
 under the penalty of death, and at least of destitution. 
 And thus, instead of pursuing this study, the only vnse 
 practice that man can adopt, he has been compelled to 
 waste his most valuable powers apd energies in the 
 wilds of an over-excited imagination, and to occupy 
 himself in the pursuit of mysticisms which none can 
 explain, or of useless baubles, or for the attainment of 
 silly additional names, called honours, and of privileges 
 
 I 
 
75 
 
 highly injurious to the best and permanent interests of 
 mankind. Our greatest men, so called, are at this mo- 
 ment, thus uselessly or mischievously occupied ; or they 
 are engaged in a desperate political warfare, to ascer- 
 tain which of two or three most ignorant parties shall 
 obtain the power of the state : and to obtain this power, 
 too, solely to enable tl\e victorious idle or injuriously- 
 occupied rich, the more effectually and safely to maltreat 
 and oppress the industrious poor, by every kind of un- 
 just device ; for their contests, when stripped of all 
 mystery and verbiage, are commenced and continued 
 for no other purpose than for one section of those rich 
 parties to gain greater facilities to effect these diabolical 
 objects for the benefit of themselves, to the exclusion 
 of others. Now the marriages devised by the church 
 and law tend greatly to enable the priests and the rich 
 to trample upon right and justice, and to set the most 
 palpable and everlasting truths at open defiance. And 
 to make a colourable pretence for these marriages, the 
 priests and the rich and powerful, who deemed it to be 
 for their interests thus to impose upon mankind, united 
 to contrive an artificial conduct for the industrious and 
 poor, and to call that conduct by high-sounding names, 
 and especially to call it mrtuous. And thus, and thus 
 only was the chastity of the priests and lawyers first 
 made a virtue ; and as these parties found the deception 
 take with the multitude, and as the trick was a great 
 gain to them, they have adopted most effectual measures 
 to extend and continue the error and its evils through 
 the succeeding generations, even to the present hour. 
 
 The priest's and the rich man's laws of chastity are 
 very different to Nature's laws of chastity ; and it be- 
 comes now of the highest importance to the men and 
 women of all the nations in the world to understand 
 the difference between real chastity, or the chastity of 
 Nature^ and the spurious chastity of the church and 
 law. This difference should be made as obvious to the 
 multitude as it has ever been to the select cunning few 
 among those who have hitherto governed mankind. ^ 
 
 The chastity of Nature then, or real charity — that 
 chastity which alone is virtuous— consists in the inter- 
 
76 
 
 course of the sexes when there is a pure and genuine 
 sympathy or sincere affection between the parties; when 
 the physical, intellectual, and moral feelings of the one 
 are in perfect accordance with those of the other; when, 
 in fact, their natures are so happily blended, that to- 
 gether they form but one harmonious whole, and be- 
 come, when thus united in heart and soul, or body and 
 mind, one being, whose feelings and interests are iden- 
 tified, and who are thus made capable of enjoining these 
 sympathies and afiections so long as Nature has designed 
 them to remain, and thus to experience the full happi- 
 ness of their nature, or of a virtuous mode of existence. 
 But as these sympathies and affections are the pro- 
 ductions of Nature, and not of the individuals whose 
 constitution Nature has formed, there will be no 
 secrecy respecting them, but the same open frankness 
 will take place in explaining and expressing them as 
 now exists in relating the impressions made upon any 
 of our other senses ; for these sympathies have a right 
 to be called a sense as much as our faculties of seeing, 
 hearing, &c., have to be denominated senses. Our 
 sympathies of affection for the other sex are as natural 
 and as innocent as any one of our other natural feelings. 
 
 Now the chastity made a virtue by the church and 
 law is of a very different character. Regardless of 
 Nature, priests and lawyers deemed it wise and practi- 
 cable to bind affection by the restraints of ecclesiastical 
 and civil laws, and by ceremonies, and an artificial 
 public opinion, created by their influence, in opposition 
 to Nature ; and they decreed it to be chaste for men 
 and women to be united, and to remain united by their 
 bonds, when no natural sympathy or affection existed 
 between the parties, or even when their natures forced 
 them to feel a strong repulsive^ instead of an attractive 
 propensity for each other. 
 
 Thus they made their chastity to consist in a man 
 and woman, by law, cohabiting together for life, whether 
 they had a natural affection for each other or not. And 
 when the parties were compelled, by their natural feel- 
 ings, to entertain a great dislike, or even hatred of each 
 other, and were thus made most miserable by their un- 
 
77 
 
 natural union, the priests called it chastity and a car- 
 dinal virtue for them thus to cohabit together, and 
 destroy, for the gratification of the priests, the whole 
 happiness of their lives. 
 
 Thus have men and women been duped to lead a life 
 of open opposition to each other's feelings, or of con- 
 summate hypocrisy, that they might be called by the 
 priests, solely for their (the priests') gain, chaste and 
 virtuous, when, in fact, they have been living a life of 
 prostitution and vice. There surely never has been a 
 more bare-faced deception than this ever practised upon 
 mankind, to rob them, by law, of their kindest and 
 best sympathies, and of the most delightful feelings of 
 their nature ; of those feelings, which, when thwarted 
 or repressed, so often produce mental derangement or 
 severe bodily disease, creating the most heartbreaking 
 sufferings and miseries, and too frequently premature 
 death in the prime and pride of life. 
 
 But these afflictions, severe as they are, are yet, per- 
 haps, less to be deplored than the crimes and wretched- 
 ness which this spurious chastity of the priests has en- 
 gendered by introducing and maintaining a permanent 
 sacrifice of the person, for mere mercenary considera- 
 tions, when the affections are not interested; for a 
 general promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is a 
 natural consequence. How could it be expected to be 
 otherwise, when no sympathy of the feelings or natural 
 affections existed between the parties ? Thus have the 
 priests, by making a spurious chastity a virtue, in op- 
 position to Nature, filled the world with mercenary 
 marriages, and with an endless catalogue of crimes and 
 miseries ; and thus they keep the human race in a low 
 and degraded state, from which they cannot advance 
 until they relinquish the marriages and chastity of the 
 priests, and place men and women in their natural and 
 rational position. 
 
 But this change, so necessary to all human improve- 
 ment, cannot be effected until other great changes shall 
 be made at the same time in other parts of the present 
 system ; in fact, not until this old immoral world shall 
 be effectually regenerated by the abolition of the false 
 
 g2 
 
78 
 
 religions, and of all the evils of private property, by 
 the introduction of arrangements to establish a rational 
 state of society, or, the new moral world. For the 
 present laws of marriage are so intimately blended with 
 the existing systems of religion and property, all of 
 them being founded on the same false notions, that when 
 one shall be destroyed the others shall perish also. 
 
 Nor can the virtue of real chastity be introduced 
 under the present system of falsehood and deception. 
 This virtue can only be known in a world of innocency 
 and truth ; qualities which the present world laugh at, 
 and condemn as being impossible to exist in their state 
 of society. In this conclusion the inhabitants of the 
 old immoral world are correct, for innocency and truth 
 have nothing to do in all their present proceedings. 
 As real chastity cannot exist except in a society in 
 which truth alone is the converse of all its members, 
 and as truth cannot be the converse of the public in this 
 old immoral world, it is in vain to except the introduc- 
 tion of real chastity into general society until the old 
 immoral world shall be changed for the new moral 
 world. 
 
 These discourses on the marriages of the priests, are 
 to prepare the way for this great change in the condition 
 of mankind ; and when we shall have explained the 
 necessity for abolishing the whole system of private 
 property, and all the old mysteries which the priesthood 
 of the world has called religion, but which have been 
 only an obstacle in all countries to the introduction of 
 truth and virtue ; we will then explain the principles on 
 which to found the true association of the sexes to pro- 
 duce health, real chastity, and happiness, and make the 
 association of the sexes what Nature evidently intended, 
 a great good, instead of, as at present, a great evil. 
 
 There is one more lecture remaining to conclude this 
 subject, which I will deliver next Sunday. I will then 
 proceed to the examination of the subjects of private 
 property and religion ; for these three are so connected 
 with each other that all the evils of society may be 
 traced to them. 
 
LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 We have now to enquire what effect the marriages 
 devised by the priesthood, have had upon human nature: 
 and this will for the present finish our course of lectures 
 on these artificial marriages. 
 
 Human nature, as presented to man at the birth of 
 each infant for man's own direct influence to be applied 
 to it, is perhaps, the most delightful compound of physi- 
 cal, intellectual, and moral powers to be acted upon, to 
 produce the highest degree of intelligence, goodness, and 
 happiness, that the human mind is capable of compre- 
 hending. 
 
 We are not in possession of facts to enable us to say 
 that these natural powers of human nature are, in any 
 of their compounds, different now from what they were 
 at any former period of man's existence. On the con- 
 trary, ancient history and representation of human beings 
 leads us to conclude that the infant man is no way 
 superior now to what he has ever been. But it is 
 necessary to inquire why human nature, which has ever 
 been capable of being trained to acquire so much phy- 
 sical, intellectual, and moral excellence, should have 
 remained in the degraded condition in which we now 
 find it in Great Britain and in other nations, deemed 
 the most advanced in learning and civilization ? 
 
 Why are such multitudes of the most useful parts of 
 the population at this moment, suffering all the evils of 
 neglect in the cultivation of these invaluable powers ? 
 Why are ignorance, poverty, and wretchedness, with 
 every bad and irrational feeling, allowed to grow up 
 with and pervade the character of so very large a por- 
 tion of the human race ? And why are all thus made 
 far more inferior, and less happy, than any human being 
 ought now to be ? 
 
 The true reply to these questions, vitally important 
 
80 
 
 for man to know, is only now, for the first time perhaps 
 in the history of the human race, to bo honestly obtained. 
 
 The answer to these questions is, that these evils have 
 been so long experienced, and are now endured, because 
 man has been so formed as to be influenced in the in- 
 fancy of his powers, most strongly by the first impres- 
 sions made on his several senses, and because imaginary 
 notions have been, and are, thus clearly impressed upon 
 him, made to precede a knowledge of facts, accurate 
 observation, reflection, and comparison ; and thus, for a 
 season, the imagination of the human race has maintained 
 the mastery over the judgement, and in consequence, 
 the imaginary notions of man have to the present period, 
 governed and directed the conduct of all individuals and 
 of all associations of men. And hence the evils which 
 have been and are now suffered, more or less, by all 
 mankind. 
 
 The laws for human nature, for what reason no man 
 yet knows, have been until this period, hidden from 
 man ; the cause of this, the discovery of new facts may 
 perhaps, as science advances, disclose. We may then 
 learn why the artificial or imaginative laws of man have 
 preceded, for so many ages, an accurate useful know- 
 ledge of the laws of Nature ; why man's imaginative laws 
 in opposition to Nature's laws, produce so much error, 
 evil, and misery; and why we now perceive that Nature's 
 laws are capable of giving so much truth and good, or 
 happiness to the human race, unalloyed with misery. 
 
 The discovery of Nature's laws in this our day, renders 
 it a moral, or rather an irresistible obligation upon us 
 to exert ourselves to the utmost to effect this great, 
 and glorious, and happy change in the life, conduct, and 
 condition of man ; that ignorance, poverty, and distress 
 of body and mind may cease, and be no more experienced 
 by future generations, but that they may attain that 
 new life, so long promised, when charity, peace and good- 
 will shall pervade the minds of all people in all lands, 
 and when the knowledge of truth, or of Nature, or of 
 God, which ever term may be most acceptable to each 
 individual, shall extend over and cover the earth, as the 
 waters cover the sea. 
 
81 
 
 The period when this great change shall take place 
 is now near at hand. The excitement and distress of 
 all nations proclaim its approach ; it is coming upon us 
 from above and below, and from all sides, as an irre- 
 sistible torrent, to sweep away from the earth all the 
 laws, ceremonies, customs, and irrational arrangements 
 of man which have produced this old immoral world, to 
 make room for the laws of Nature, on which to found 
 the new moral world, with laws, customs, and arrange- 
 ments, all in perfect accordance with Nature's laws. 
 
 The imaginative laws of the marriages of the priest- 
 hood must be among the first to be abolished, by reason 
 of their extended injurious influence upon human nature, 
 poisoning all the sources of the most valuable qualities 
 which Nature has given to infant man. These mar- 
 riages have dried up the fountain of truth in human 
 nature ; they perpetually insinuate that man can love 
 and hate at his pleasure, and that to be virtuous he 
 must love according to the dictates of the laws and 
 ceremonies devised by the priesthood, that he must 
 hdte according to the same dictation, and that if he does 
 not thus love and hate, he is vicious, and he will be 
 eternally punished in another world ; and*as this eter- 
 nal infliction will not be sufiering sufficient for his dis- 
 obedience to the laws of the priests, he must, also, be 
 grievously punished by human laws, and by public 
 opinion created by the priests and those leagued with 
 them ; leagued to enforce those laws, through this life, 
 it might be supposed, as a necessary and just prepara- 
 tion to fit them for the torments of the damned for 
 ever. 
 
 Could any proceeding be more grosely cruel and un- 
 just, or have a worse influence upon human nature than 
 this ? The combination of error engendered by such a 
 mass of absurdities, being continually enforced upon 
 the young and weak imaginations of men, could not 
 fail to produce the most severe conflict of fears for 
 their temporal and eternal happiness ; while the irre- 
 sistible laws of their nature compelled them to love 
 that which was the most agreeable, and to dislike that 
 which was the most disagreeable to their nature ; and 
 
82 
 
 these again, both as to persons and things, being often 
 in direct violation of the dogmas of the priesthood, it 
 ought not now to surprise us that all of the human race 
 were forced to become irrational, and many insane or 
 mad. 
 
 It is well known to those who superintend in lunatic 
 asylums, that the disappointment of the affections is one 
 * main cause of lunacy ; and experienced medical practi- 
 tioners know, that both body and mind are liable to the 
 most painful, acute, and dangerous disorders from this 
 cause. So much so, indeed, that the most observant 
 and intellectual of them know, that until this unnatural 
 condition of human society shall be changed, they can- 
 not expect to find " a sound mind in a sound body" 
 among any portion of the human race. 
 
 While men and women trained and educated as they 
 have hitherto been in the old immoral world, shall be 
 compelled, by the laws of man and the ceremonies and 
 opinions of the priests, to live day and night together 
 for their lives, after Nature has caused their love for 
 each other to cease, it cannot be supposed that either 
 the men and women themselves, their children, or the 
 public, or htlman nature itself, as exhibited in their 
 persons, can be otherwise than in an irrational and de- 
 graded state of body and mind, or be better prepared 
 for all manner of vagaries in their conduct, or can be 
 put into a condition more likely to commit those actions, 
 which now continually disturb the peace, the comfort, 
 or the happiness of each other. 
 
 The strange notions engendered by the doctrines of 
 the priests, on which they have founded their marriage 
 rites and ceremonies, are, of themselves, sufficient to 
 reduce human nature far below the condition of the 
 superior tribes of animals when permitted by man to 
 enjoy their natural course of life. The animals in that 
 state fulfil the intention of their creation by acting in 
 accordance with the laws of their respective natures ; 
 and those laws insure to them health and content, which 
 to them is happiness. But man, forced out of his 
 nature by the imaginative laws of the priests, has his 
 health of body and mind diminished and disordered, 
 
83 
 
 his nature tnost ignorantly, unjustly, and unwisely 
 thwarted ; and it is impossible that as long as he re- 
 mains in this condition he can be content, or know 
 w^hat manner of being he is, or why he is so much 
 . more miserable than other animals, when they are 
 governed solely by the laws of their nature. 
 
 The artificial laws of the priesthood have not only 
 thus generally deteriorated and disordered human nature, 
 but they have forced man to build up an entire artificial 
 state of society, and to make all the arrangements for 
 conducting and carrying on the business of domestic and 
 public life in accordance with those foolish laws of their 
 imagination, in opposition to Nature's wise and benefi- 
 cial laws. 
 
 In consequence, the whole arrangements now existing 
 over the world for educating children ; for forming their 
 characters as men and women ; for providing for the 
 physical wants of mankind ; for acquiring new know- 
 ledge ; and for uniting the human race in an interest 
 beneficial to the whole, are in the greatest possible dis- 
 order and confusion. They have, in fact, more of the 
 character of insanity, with the view to the attainment 
 of the objects professed, than of any rational combination 
 of the materials and circumstances at our control to 
 obtain or secure the ends we seek, or the purposes which 
 we desire to accomplish. 
 
 In short, the baneful influence of the laws of the 
 mariages of the prieshood upon human nature, in tJie 
 aggregate, as it is seen in the conduct of men, women, 
 and children of every grade and class of society, is 
 evidently destructive of all that is truly entitled to the 
 character of rational or sane : and there can be no well- 
 founded expectation that any of the wise and profound, 
 as they are termed, of the political or commercial 
 changes proposed to diminish public and private misery, 
 can be of the least permanent benefit to mankind as 
 long as the imaginative and artificial laws, cererhonies, 
 customs, and public opinion invented and now main- 
 tained by the influence of the priests, shall be permitted 
 to govern, or to have any considerable operation in 
 directing the affairs of human life. And, consequently, 
 
84 
 
 the sooner the order of the priesthood shall be made to 
 cease over the world, the sooner will the human race 
 become prosperous and rational, or moral and happy. 
 
 We have now shown the certain and necessary effects 
 of the marriages devised and continued by the acquired 
 influence of a body of men called the priesthood, exist- 
 ing, with more or less power, in all so-called civilized 
 nations ; but which nations never can become really 
 civilized, as long as the order of the priesthood shall 
 exist with power to deceive the people, or disorder all 
 their intellectual and moral faculties. 
 
 We have, although very slightly and imperfectly, 
 traced the blighting effects of these marriages upon the 
 husband, and wife, and the children, upon society, and 
 upon human nature generally; and we have shown that 
 in each of these characters and divisions of humanity, 
 man has suffered and is now suffering the greatest evils, 
 and that he is at this moment deprived, by these insane 
 institutions, of the only means by which ho can reach 
 the highest excellence and the great extent of happiness 
 which his nature, governed by the laws of Nature, is 
 capable of attaining and enjoying. 
 
 Much, very much more may be said on this subject, 
 which is the most important at the present moment to 
 bring before the population of all countries. It is im- 
 portant on account of the wretched state of ignorance 
 and prejudice which exists respecting the origin and 
 consequences of these unnatural institutions, and of the 
 extended ramifications of misery which they are inflict- 
 ing upon all classes and conditions of men and women. 
 For these are kept much more in the dark now respect- 
 ing their own nature, and the right path to happiness, 
 than their ancestors were in the earliest stages of human 
 society. It may be reasonably doubted whether their 
 ignorance upon this subject, is not greater now than it 
 was at the earliest period of what the world calls civili- 
 zation. To put an end to those evils, the amount of 
 which is far beyond the present feeble powers of human 
 comprehension to estimate, all who have a sincere desire 
 to see man attain his proper station among organized 
 beings ; all who wish him to become a wise and good or 
 
85 
 
 a rational being ; all who feel an interest in seeing him 
 relieved from the degraded condition of prostituting his 
 high intellectual faculties to pander for the possession of 
 wealth which he did not assist to create ; and all who 
 would rejoice to see man no longer a mere slave to pro- 
 duce for others what he himself cannot enjoy, or to toil 
 four-fold, or rather ten-fold, more than is necessary 
 under wise arrangements, with the present surplus cap- 
 ital and powers of society, to saturate the world 
 with whatever is best for him to possess and use, or 
 enjoy ; these all ought now to unite their energies to 
 extend the light of this knowledge over every quarter of 
 the globe, to remove the gross mental darkness with 
 which all nations, tribes, and people have been so long 
 overwhelmed, and to prepare all men in all countries to 
 lend their immediate utmost aid to effect this great 
 salvation from ignorance, poverty, sin, and misery for 
 themselves and their posterity for ever. 
 
 H 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Tbe following extracts from Mr. Owen's writings, 
 place his views on tlie subject of Marriage and Divorce 
 in a clear and indisputable light ; and furnish a most 
 complete reply and refutation to the mis-statements 
 which have been so industriously circulated by means 
 of garbled and disconnected quotations from his various 
 publications, and by the most filthy and unfounded as- 
 sertions of parties either excessively ignorant of Mr. 
 Owen's real views, or determined, in defiance of mo- 
 rality and truth, to distort and misrepresent them. 
 They also prove beyond the possibility of doubt, the 
 total disregard of truth in those parties who have en- 
 deavoured to make it appear that Mr. Owen's denun- 
 ciations of the " Marriages of the Priesthood" " Indis- 
 soluble Marriage" " Marriages without affection" ^c, 
 were applied to all Marriage. 
 
 FIRST EXTRACT, 
 
 From Mr. Owens Si.v Manchester Lectures, delivered in 
 1837. Shewing that the proposed arragements of the 
 New State of Sqciety are formed with a view to pro- 
 mote the PERMANENCE of Marriage, the happi- 
 ness of the parties united, especially of the Female sex, 
 and the general good order and virtue of Society. 
 
 " Under this classification and consequent arrange- 
 ment of society, every individual will be trained and 
 educated, to have all his faculties and powers cultivated 
 in the most superior manner known ; cultivated too, 
 under a new combination of external objects, purposely 
 formed, to bring into constant exercise the best and 
 most lovely qualities only of human nature. Each one 
 will be thus -well educated, physically, intellectually, 
 and morally. Under this classification and consequent 
 arrangement of these associated families, wealth, unre- 
 strained in its production by any of the artificial ab- 
 
87 
 
 surdities now so common in all countries, will be most 
 easily produced in superfluity ; all will be secured in a 
 full supply of the best of it, for all purposes that may 
 be required. They will, therefore, all be equal in their 
 education and condition, and no artificial distinction, or 
 any distinction but that of age, will ever be known 
 among them. 
 
 " There will be then, no motive or inducement for 
 any parties to unite, except from pure affection arising 
 from the most unreserved knowledge of each other s cha- 
 racter, in all respects, as far as it can be known before 
 the union takes place. There will be no artificial ob- 
 stacles in the way of permanent happy unions of the 
 sexes ; for under the arrangements of this new state of 
 human existence, the affections will receive every aid 
 which can be devised to induce them to be permanent ; 
 and under these arrangements, there can be no doubt, 
 that, as the parties will be placed as far as possible in 
 the condition of lovers during their lives, the affections 
 will be far more durable, and produce far more pleasure 
 and enjoyment to the parties, and far less injury to so- 
 ciety, than has ever yet been experienced, under any of 
 the varied arrangements which have emanated from the 
 imagined free-will agency of the human race. 
 
 " If however, these superior arrangements to produce 
 happiness between the sexes, should fail in some partial 
 instances, which it is possible may yet occur, measures 
 will be introduced by which, without any severance of 
 friendship between the parties, a separation may be 
 made, the least injurious to them and the most beneficial 
 to the interests of society. 
 
 " No immorality can exceed that which is sure to 
 arise from society compelling individuals to live continu- 
 ally together, when they have been made, by the laws 
 of their nature, to lose their affections for each other, 
 and to entertain them for another object. How much 
 dreadful misery has been inflicted upon the human race, 
 through all past ages, from this single error ! How 
 much demoralization ! How many murders ! How 
 much secret unspeakable suffering, especially to the 
 female sex ! How many evils are experienced over the 
 
88 
 
 world, at this moment, arising from this single error of 
 the imaginary free-will system by which men have been 
 60 long, so ignorantly, and miserably governed ! 
 
 "This portion of the subject, to doit full justice, 
 would, alone, require a longer course than is now given 
 to the developemeut of the whole system under con- 
 sideration ; but this limited view must suffice at present, 
 for a sketch or outline of what is in contemplation."— 
 Pages, 76, 77. 
 
 SECOND EXTRACT, 
 
 From Mr. Owens Address, delivered at the Charlotte- 
 street Institution, London, iyi 1833. Shewing the object 
 of the proposed changes in the laws of Marriage and 
 Divorce ; and the regulations proposed. ( This is 
 divided into paragraphs, with headings, for the sake of 
 perspicuity.) 
 
 "Many persons grossly mistake our views on the 
 8u1)ject of the union of the sexes. Our object is to 
 remove the causes of the immense amount of sexual 
 crime and misery, and consequent physical and mental 
 disease which now exists. It is nature's laws, now 
 disregarded, which we desire to discover and implicitly 
 obey ; there being none other which can produce virtue 
 and happiness. In the present absence of real know- 
 ledge, derived from experience, and with the existing 
 irregular feelings of the population of the world, created 
 by a false education, we propose that the union and 
 disunion of the sexes should take place under the fol- 
 lowing regulations :— - 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Announcement. — " Persons having an affection for 
 each other, and being desirous of forming an union, 
 first announce such intention publicly in our Sunday 
 assemblies. 
 
 Preliminary Period. — "If the intention remain at 
 the end of three months, they make a second public 
 declaration. 
 
 Marriage. — " Which declarations being registered in 
 the books of the Society will constitute their marriage. 
 
89 
 
 OBJECT OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 " Marriages will be solely formed to promote the 
 happiness of the sexes ; and if this end be not obtained, 
 the object of the union is defeated. 
 
 DIVORCE. 
 
 FIRST. — AVHEN BOTH PARTIES DESIRE TO SEPARATE. 
 
 Announceynent. — " Should the parties, after the ter- 
 mination of twehe months^ at the soojiest^ discover that 
 their dispositions and habits are unsuited to each other, 
 and that there is little or no prospect of happiness 
 being derived from their union, they are to make a 
 public declaration as before, to that effect. 
 
 Preliminary Period. — " After which they return and 
 live together six months loyiger ; at the termination of 
 which, if they still find their qualities discordant, and 
 both parties unite in the declaration, they make a 
 second declaration. 
 
 Divorce. — " Both of which being duly registered and 
 witnessed, will constitute their legal separation. 
 
 SECOND. WHEN ONE ONLY DESIRES A SEPARATION. 
 
 Preliminary Period. — " Should one alone come for- 
 ward upon the last declaration, and the other object to 
 the separation, they would be required to live together 
 another six months., to try if their feelings and habits 
 could be made to accord, so as to promote happiness. 
 
 Divorce. — " But if at the end of the second six months^ 
 the objecting party shall remain of the same mind, the 
 separation is then to be final. 
 
 POSITION OF THE PARTIES AFTER DIVORCE. 
 
 "The parties may, without diminution of public 
 opinion, form new unions more suited to their dispo- 
 sitions. 
 
 PROVISION FOR THE CHILDREN. 
 
 "As all the children of the new world will be trained 
 and educated under the superintendence and care of the 
 Society, the separation of the parents will not produce 
 any change in the condition of the rising generation. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 " Under these arrangements, we have no doubt, a 
 much more virtuous and happy state of society will be 
 
90 
 
 enjoyed than any which has existed at any time in any 
 part of the world." 
 
 THIRD EXTRACT. 
 
 From Mr. Owens Address, April 29, 1839. f see ^^New 
 Moral World" page 443. J Shewing that it is not 
 contemplated that marriage should ever he annulled. 
 
 "My present impressions are, that for ever there 
 must be rationally devised Marriage and Divorce, im- 
 proved as society advances in knowledge and goodness." 
 
 FOURTH EXTRACT. 
 
 From Mr. Owens Preface to his Manifesto, 1 840. On the 
 present Laws of Marriage and Divorce in England. 
 
 " Since the publication of my views upon the old 
 system of 'Marriage by the priesthood,' the form of 
 Marriage, by the new Marriage Act, has been made 
 exactly to meet my ideas and wishes ; and all that I 
 now desire is to see another law enacted, by which 
 Divorces, under wise arrangements, and on principles of 
 common sense, may be obtained equally for rich and 
 poor ; to remove the chief cause of so much existing 
 deception, prostitution, promiscuous intercourse, and 
 crime, and the dreadful evils which necessarily flow 
 from them to both sexes, but especially to the poor un- 
 protected part of the female sex, whose extremity of 
 suffering is so much hidden from the world. And this 
 change in the law of Divorce is all that is now required 
 to enable me, legally and immediately, to introduce to 
 the world the most splendid practical arrangements, 
 easy of introduction, for the emancipation of man from 
 ignorance, poverty, division, and crime, that have ever 
 yet been conceived, even in the most fervid and san- 
 guine imaginations of poets, philosophers, and reform- 
 ers, of past and present time." 
 
91 
 
 THE RATIONAL RELIGION. 
 
 The Principles and Practice of the Rational Religion, 
 as developed and promulgated hy Robert Owen. 
 
 That all facts yet known to man indicate that there is 
 an external or an internal Cause of all existences, by the 
 factof their existence; that this all-pervading Cause of mo- 
 tion and change in the universe is that Incomprehensible 
 Power which the nations of the world have called God, Je- 
 hovah, Lord, &c. : — but that the facts are yet unknown to 
 man which define what that Incomprehensible Power is. 
 11. 
 
 That it is a law of nature obvious to our senses, that 
 tl>e internal or external character of all that have life 
 upon the earth, is formed for them and not hg them ; 
 that, in accordance with this law, the internal and 
 external character of man is formed for him and not hg 
 him ; and therefore he cannot have merit or demerit, or 
 deserve praise or blame, or reward or punishment. 
 III. 
 
 That the knowledge of this fact, with its all-important 
 consequences, will necessarily create in every one a 
 new, sublime, and pure spirit of charity for the convic- 
 tions, feelings, and conduct of the human race, and 
 dispose them to be kind to all that has life — seeing that 
 this varied life is formed by the same Incomprehensible 
 Pov/er that has created human nature, and given man 
 his peculiar faculties. 
 
 IV. 
 
 That it is man's highest interest to acquire an accurate 
 knowledge of those circumstances which produce evil 
 to the human race, and of those which produce good ; 
 and to exert all his powers to remove the former from 
 society, and to create around it the latter only. 
 V. 
 
 That this invaluable practical knowledge can be 
 acquired solely through an extensive search after truth, 
 by an accurate, patient, and unprejudiced enquiry into 
 facts, as developed bv Nature. 
 
 VI. 
 
 That man can never attain to a state of superior and 
 
92 
 
 permanent happiness, until ho shall be surrounded by 
 those external circumstances which will train him, from 
 birth, to feel pure charity and sincere affection towards 
 the whole of his species, — to speak the truth only, on 
 all occasions, — and to regard with a merciful and kind 
 disposition all that has life. 
 
 VII. 
 
 That such superior knowledge and feelings can never 
 be given to man under those institutions of society which 
 have been founded on the mistaken supposition that 
 man forms his feelings and convictions by his will^ and, 
 therefore, has merit or demerit, or deserves praise or 
 blame, or reward or punishment for them. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 That under institutions formed in accordance with 
 the Rational System of Society, tliis superior knowledge 
 and these superior dispositions may be given to the 
 whole of the human race without chance of failure, 
 except in cases of organic disease. 
 
 IX. 
 
 That in consequence of this superior knowledge, and 
 these superior dispositions, the contemplation of Nature 
 will create in every mind, feelings of high adoration, too 
 sublime and pure to be expressed in forms or words, for 
 that Incomprehensible Power which acts in and through 
 all Nature, everlastingly composing, decomposing, and 
 recomposing the material of the universe, producing the 
 endless variety of life, of mind, and of organized form. 
 X. 
 
 That the Practice of the Rational Religion will 
 therefore consist in promoting, to the utmost of our 
 power, the well-being and happiness of every man, 
 woman, and child, without regard to their sect, party, 
 country, or colour ; and its Worship, in those inexpres- 
 sible feelings of wonder, admiration, and delight, which, 
 when man is surrounded by superior circumstances only, 
 will naturally arise from the contemplation of the 
 Infinity of Space, of the Eternity of Duration, of the 
 Order of the Universe, and of that Incomprehensible 
 Power, by which the atom is moved, and the aggregate 
 of Nature is governed. 
 
 Joshua Hobison, Printer, 5, Market Street Briggatc, Leeds. 
 
. Conjectures on Theology by the Bational 
 ligionists. 
 
 We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough 
 to make us love one another." — Dean Sivift. 
 
 " I am more assured that love is of God than that any opinion 
 whatever is so." — Rev. J. Wesleifs Journal, May, 1745. 
 
 "The enemies oipure re%w72 have defiled revelation, each on 
 his own peculiar principles ; but friends and enemies have concurred 
 in dishonouring it by one common principle held occasionally by alt 
 in their turns, — the anti-christain doctrine of persecution and intoler- 
 ance.'''' — Bishop Warburton's Works, Vol. X. page 969. 
 7. Outline of the Rational System of Society. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION and LAWS of the UNIVERSAL 
 COMMUNITY SOCIETY of RATIONAL RELIGIONISTS, 
 as revised by Congress, held in Birmingham, May, 1839, and 
 e-nrolled under the Acts, 10 Geo. IV. cap. 56, and 4 and 5 Will. 
 IV. c. 40. Established May 1, 1835, under the Narres of the 
 " Association of all Classes of all Nations,^' and the " National 
 Community Friendly Society;" vs^ith Supplement of alterations 
 made at Leeds, May, 1840. Price Siocpence. 
 
 OUTLINE of the RATIONAL SYSTEM of SOCIETY ; 
 on Demonstrable Facts, developing the Constitution and 
 )i Human Nature ; being the only effectual Remedy for the 
 iperienced by the population of the w^orld, and the imme- 
 loption of w^hieh would tranquilise the present agitated state 
 ity, and relieve it from moral and physical evil, by removing 
 ises that produce them. By Robert Owen. Price Three 
 e. 
 
 ^EMENT submitted to the MARQUIS of NORMANBY 
 the Principles and Objects of the Society, by the Branch 
 the Society. Price Two-pence. 
 
 [RESS, containing the DECLARATION of PRINCI- 
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 .B. The above works develope the nature of the Society, 
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 BOOK of the NEW MORAL WORLD. By Robert 
 Containing an exposition of the Rational System of 
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