202 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



tions signs that there has been suffering among their 

 young people on this account." ^ The same writer 

 reports a significant speech delivered by Father 

 Noyes at a meeting of the community held for the 

 purpose of censuring the backsliding of a member. 

 " Our brother," said Noyes, " has fallen under the too 

 common temptation of selfish love, and a desire to 

 wait upon and cultivate an exclusive intimacy with 

 the woman who is to bear a child through him. This 

 is an insidious temptation very apt to attack people 

 under such circumstances, but it must nevertheless 

 be struggled against." ^ Father Noyes was mistaken 

 in supposing that his theories of marriage could be 

 successfully enforced by argument. A preference 

 for free love on the part of both sexes could only 

 be established by heredity — " fixed," that is to say, 

 in the course of many generations — and when this 

 result had been achieved by artificial means, the 

 community left to its own devices would slowly re- 

 vert to monogamy, which is obviously intended to be 

 the ultimate condition of the race, or an important 

 factor, at all events, in psychological evolution. 



^ Nordlioff s Communistic Societies in the United States, 



» Jbid. 



