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FUEE LO^E 
 
 OR, A PHILOSOPHICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE 
 
 NON-EXCLUSIVE NATUBI3 
 
 OF.'. ,', 
 
 CONNUBIAL LOVE, 
 
 A REVIEW OF THE EXCLUSIVE FEATURE OF THE FOWLERS, 
 
 ADIN BALLOU, H. C. WRIGHT, AND ANDREW 
 
 JACKSON DAVIS ON MARRIAGE. 
 
 BY AUSTIN KENT. 
 
 HOPKINTON. N. T. 
 .PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1867. 
 
tA 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congreas, in the year 1?57, by 
 
 AUSTIN KENT, 
 
 In the Clerk'a Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 
 Southern District of Ohio. 
 
 CORRECTION. 
 
 48th page, 15 lines from bottom insert is l)et\^ 
 vharity and not. 
 
 70th page, 7 line.i from top, for practical read/r 
 tionah 
 
 75th page, middle, for nominal read harmonial. 
 
 88th page, 2d line from bottom, insert icitli Mn j 
 I tween which and is. 
 
 136th page, 11 lines from top, for carelessly 1>. 
 causelessly. 
 
 Other less errors omitted. 
 
 t 
 
P»REinA.OE. 
 
 We have meant to make the title of our book so 
 plain that no thoroughly conservative mind could 
 mistake — and so waste his money in purchasing it. 
 We have given much of the last twenty years of 
 our life and time to the world, ** without money and 
 without price ;" and if we should find it necessary, 
 or for any reason think it best to let our httle work 
 partly bear the expense of its own publication, we 
 wish no one to be deceived in getting it. We have 
 BO thought of any material remuneration for our 
 own labors. Reader, this is very radical ; — and we 
 confess to a choice not to be the first to wake any 
 who, with all the influences of the nineteenth century 
 about them, are yet soundly asleep upon the lap of 
 the past. We do not wish such to be too suddenly 
 brought into travailing pains for their own spiritual 
 and mental birth to the future — even though we 
 know these must sooner or later come. Some milder 
 and more gradual dose might be better as a first 
 stimulant. We took our pen mainly for the benefit 
 of reformers, and for those whom nature has given 
 
 iVTiM7iG 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 some ability to be such. These are more than 
 welcome — we invite them to read us critically 
 
 The subject of Love and Marriage will ever be one 
 of vast importance to our race : we can hardly 
 conceive it possible to rate it too highly. Between 
 1837 and 1840 Theophilus R. Gates published a 
 series of radical tracts, called the ** Battle Axe.'* 
 This stirred the waters of orthodoxy. In these, he 
 inserted a letter from John H. Noyes, which de- 
 clares, that, in a state of heavenly holiness on earth, 
 *' Every dish is free to every guest." The context 
 put his meaning beyond question. All of this, then, 
 amounted to but little more than prophecy. 
 
 In 1849, Mr. Noyes came out with a full expo- 
 sition and defence of his principles in his *' Bible 
 Argument." This was an able, but small, work on 
 Free Love for all saved and redeemed humanity. 
 
 Not far from this time — we simply write the date 
 from memory — the Fowlers (L. N. and 0. S.) wrote 
 each a book on ** Marriage.'' They taught that love 
 was marriage, but confined it to dual order — to pairs. 
 On the whole, these last books were elevating in 
 their tendency among the mass of minds 
 
 In 1850, Henry James wrote to good effect in his 
 ** Moralism and Christianity.'* 
 
 In J 852, Dr. Lazarus published '* Love vs. Mar- 
 riage." This book was of the Fourier cast ; and, for 
 the time, was ** written without gloves." It was a 
 most lovely and lovable book, but not so argumen- 
 
PREFACE. y 
 
 tative as some which have succeeded it. It must 
 have put many minds into a right train of thought. 
 
 In 1853, Horace Greeley published, in the 
 ** Tribune/* a part of a discussion between Henry 
 James, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and himself. The 
 whole came out afterwards in a tract, by Mr. An- 
 drews. This must have been deeply interesting to 
 minds on all sides of the questions. 
 
 In 1854, Henry C. Wright and Dr. Nichols 
 each published a fair sized book on *' Marriage." 
 
 The present year, we have Andrew Jackson Davis 
 on the same subject. We have long had the writings 
 of Fourier, Owen, and others on the Affections, 
 
 We consider all of these books most valuable. 
 None of them are superfluous. We think Mr. 
 Wright elevates connubial love as high as it can be 
 elevated in exclusive dual marriage. He teaches 
 that love is marriage, and sticks by nature, as he 
 understands it. 
 
 Dr. Nichols (his wife wrote a portion of the 
 book) takes nature for his guide, but denies its 
 exclusiveness. His book is very instructive ; and 
 favors the Free Love doctrine. Mr. Davis, in the 
 main, teaches the philosophy of marriage with great 
 clearness and beauty, but contends that connubial 
 love is monogamic in its highest manifestations. 
 Before closing our book, I intend to review this 
 exclusive phase in Mr. Wright and Mr. Davis, so I 
 will not add more here. Several of these last books 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 liave seemed to come almost simultaneously. It has 
 multiplied the number of readers, on the subject of 
 which they treat, tenfold ; and yet it has, compara- 
 tively, but just begun to agitate the public mind. It 
 is now destined to be thoroughly discussed. The fire 
 IS already kindled which will bring to the judg- 
 ment the traditions, with the imperfect institutions, 
 of the past, and burn up the *' hay, wood, and stub- 
 ble" which are found in them. On the whole, I 
 am not sorry that these late authors took, in the 
 main, the several and diverse positions which they 
 did. We are in an age of active thought, and truth 
 is more deeply planted in the understandings and 
 hearts of men by this friendly opposition and 
 discussion. Truth is always safe in such discussions. 
 So far as we hold opinions not based in truth, these 
 may and will suffer a loss in such a mental refiner, 
 — but absolute truth never can. When we get an 
 article of great utility, we are apt to feel a sort of 
 wonder how we could so long do without it. So 
 I felt on reading most of these late works on 
 marriage. Yet probably the world was not prepared 
 for them before. I will add — to my mind, they all 
 seem to have come in about the right order. 
 
 We repeat — none of these are superfluous. The 
 isubject is not yet exhausted. We hold the pen to 
 add another book to the list, — and we promise the 
 reader, that ours shall not be superfluous. We do 
 cot promise that it shall be agreeable to his mental 
 
PREFACE. tI! 
 
 taste, — unless his taste Las been harmoniously 
 adjusted to some of the most radical in the past. 
 We come in defence of Free Love. We do this, 
 because we are sure we find it in nature, in its most 
 exalted and harmonious manifestations. 
 
 On the subject of morals and marriage, there has 
 been a great advance in a short space of time. I 
 refer more specially to reformers. A little time ago, 
 '* Moses '' was the standard. Outward and legal 
 marriages were first, — love and harmony were 
 secondary. Then obedience to simple legal morality 
 was virtuous. Now all this has changed. Among all 
 of these writers, except Mr. Noyes and Mr. Gates, 
 nature is the standard. Nature is the Infallible and 
 Inspired Book ; and its normal promptings are the 
 law of virtue and of morals. Mr. Noyes defends 
 his positions both from nature, and the spiritual and 
 higher teachings of the New Testament. Here, 
 then, there is no controversy among these radical, 
 reformatory writers, as to what is the standard of 
 truth, or as to where the law of marriage is to be 
 found ; none as to the propriety of, or chastity in, 
 obeying these laws. These writers do differ as to 
 the proper reading of nature's laws. Fourier, 
 Owen, the Fowlers, James, Lazarus, Nichols, 
 Andrews, Wright, and Davis, agree that true love 
 is marriage. The Fowlers, Wright, and Davis 
 contend that connubial love, in its highest develop* 
 ment, is exclusively dual. Here the latter agree, 
 
riH PREFACE. 
 
 though in other respects, of much less importance, 
 they differ widely. Fourier, Owen, Noyes, An- 
 drews, and Nichols, deny the evidence of the 
 exclusive nature of this love, and teach more or less 
 the modern doctrines of Free Love. These last 
 differ on other points among themselves. 
 
 I am happy to find the controversy so much 
 shortened in space — in extent of range. We all 
 teach that the laws of mind are our guide ; and 
 that these laws must be absolutely free. In this 
 sense, we all contend aUke for Free Love. We agree 
 that healthy affinities and attractions must reign 
 supreme. But Mr. Wright, and some others, tell us 
 that this healthy attraction will, and must, in its 
 nature, be always exclusive. I hear some, on the 
 other hand, say to Mr. Wright and his friends, — 
 ** Hands and opinions off ! Allow us the freedom 
 to settle the nature of our own attractions. Admit- 
 ting you may know what is most healthy, elevating, 
 and pure for yourself — do not measure all men and 
 all women by your owrn affectional stature ! '* I say 
 to Mr. Wright, if you see a law of mind as mind — 
 or the highest law of mind as such, — it is not 
 impertinent for you to speak out that law. We 
 think we know and see some of the unalterable laws 
 of mind, and we claim the right to so far expose 
 and defend these laws. If others differ from us, 
 we not only leave them free to live their views of 
 truth, but we respect them in it. All of us, it is 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 probable, are as yet comparatively in but the ** abbs *' 
 of mental Philosophy. I will never attempt to live 
 any law farther than I think I see it. Reader, we 
 are very near Mr. W.*s opposite. We believe that 
 though men differ much — very much, none, in 
 entire freedom, and uninfluenced in the past and 
 present by other minds or institutions in the bond- 
 age of the past or present, — would ever be 
 absolutely exclusive in any of the manifestations of 
 connubial love. This is our position, and our 
 extreme — if it be an extreme. We all agree in the 
 positive nature and force of these laws of mind. 
 Some of us believe these laws can be demonstrated* 
 Mr. Wright finds this connubial love to be ** a law of 
 attraction superior to our wills, and which we have 
 no power to create or destroy." Again he says : 
 ** Our souls, I believe, are substance, as truly as 
 are air, light, electricity, and magnetism. The 
 same law of creation governs souls that governs all 
 other material bodies." Mr. Davis fully harmonizes 
 with all of this. I am most thankful for all of 
 this agreement to shorten the labor of future 
 discussions. 
 
 The Book of the Law, and the power and binding 
 nature of the law, is equally settled. I here record 
 my gratitude to all of those writers who have done 
 much to elevate marriage over the power of my- 
 thology and legal bondage, though they are our 
 opponents as to the main doctrine of our book. They 
 
X' PREFACE. 
 
 have each written up to the mental and moral 
 elevation of their own understandings. We shall 
 write our highest perceptions of truth. The devel- 
 oping mind of the future will better understand all of 
 us; and better see our faults. They will do us all 
 iustice. For though, ** round and round we go, 
 truth will at last come uppermost.'' Witli the 
 fullest and most entire assurance, I commit my 
 radical book to present and coming humanity. 
 
 Austin Kent. 
 Hopkintoii, 
 
 St. Lawrence Co. N. Y, 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 Preface ill 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Introduction 13 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 Definition of Words and Phrases. — Statement of our 
 
 Position — The Argument Commenced 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Argument Continued 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Fowlers — The Argument from Analogy 34 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Mr. Ballou — An Explanation — Part of his Reply in my 
 Rejoinder 41 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Mr. Ballou Continued — His Book 58 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Mr. Henry C. Wright — A Review — " What is Marriage ? " 74 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Review of Mr. Wright continued 98 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Andrew Jackson Davis — General Remarks— Quotations 
 
 from his Book 109 
 
 Appendix , 135 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 As mucli as our age professes to be in favor of 
 free discussion, we find a large class, even among 
 partial reformers, who can hardly look at and read 
 dispassionately, — or have any patience with an argu- 
 ment in favor of freedom in love, from a harrowing: 
 fear of the real or imaginary consequences of the 
 immediate possible success and spread of such views. 
 Some of these, though of "little faith,** are honest 
 hearted in these fears. Such minds will say to us 
 — " If it were true that freedom in love, and the 
 modern principles of Free Love, would one day in 
 the future of human progression be safe, and be the 
 order of sexual harmony, is it wise to promulgate 
 these sentiments now, when the race is yet so 
 awfully perverted, and often make even truth a 
 ' ' Saviour of death ? ' ' These taay add, — * ' admitting 
 entire freedom, and a ' variety ' is consistant with 
 a perfect state of Society, do not men yet Deed 
 restraining in some things which in themselves 
 would be right ? Did not the learned and wise Paul 
 Bee some things in the 'third heavens' of the 
 2 13 
 
A 4 FREE LOVE. 
 
 future glory of tne church on earth, which he did 
 not consider it ^ expedient/ or * lawful for him to 
 utter ? ' And did not a greater than Paul withhold 
 even from his well beloved disciples, that which he 
 well knew they could not as yet bear ?" We may 
 furthur be reminded of the case of our modern In- 
 spired writer, A. J. Davis, in still postponing his re- 
 ply to the question, " What and Where is God ! " in 
 view of the present state of the public mind. 
 
 Reader, we admit, understand, and appreciate this 
 respectable weight of testimony. Nature and th« 
 Bible both reveal truth little by little, and hold a 
 ** veil " over the rest for the time. Nothing can be 
 plainer than this fact. But, in reply, we will pre- 
 sent another phase of the subject, equally plain and 
 undeniable. Jesus, Paul, and every Reformer be- 
 fore and since their day, have taught truths in ad- 
 vance of their respective ages. Such truths have 
 always more or less been used to promote bad ends. 
 We think no sudden and great change, which, on 
 the whole, was of much utility, ever came in our 
 world, without bringing with it its immediate pres- 
 ent evils for a time. This is often true of scientific 
 as well as moral changes. An increase of suffering 
 is often the first effect of important and useful in- 
 ventions. I will refer to the first effect upon th« 
 poor on the introduction of factories and sewing 
 machines. Society is of very large dimensions, and 
 complex in its parts, and it is not an easy matter 
 
INTRODUCTION. i'S 
 
 to re-adjust it after a great change. This is true of 
 every phase of it. In my opinion, man can never be 
 freed, mentally ancf^morally, without an increase of 
 immediate suffering. Yet man never can be saved 
 without such freedom. All must learn more or less 
 by experience, — and, in this experience, be *'made 
 perfect through suffering." It is naturally impos- 
 sible for a child to develop into entire manhood or 
 womanhood, without freedom. They must be 
 trusted to go alone, and **at their own cost." 
 Abolishing the law of imprisonment for debt, in our 
 state, caused more or less immediate embarassment 
 to both the rich and the poor. It has now greatly 
 benefited all classes. It also removed a hinderence 
 to the development of mind in moral honesty. 
 That "the law makes nothing perfect" — is a truth 
 found any where, or -in any Book. Many of the 
 books to which we have alluded in our Preface — 
 even such as simply teach that love is marriage, — 
 we believe, will not at first serve to lessen human 
 suffering, in their love relations, but add to it. If 
 we are correct in this — we only state it as our opin- 
 ion — the same may be more true of ours. We 
 flatter no man. Yet all of these books, with ours, 
 will only hasten a crisis, through which the world 
 must pass. There is no affectional salvation — no 
 real or perfect manhood, this side of it. The most 
 inveterate and deepest seated disease of civilization 
 must be probed. The lance will be painful. The 
 
16 FREE LOVE. 
 
 whole body will feel the shock. But it must come ! ! 
 I have not one doubt but that it will end in greater 
 health to the Patient. It will promote real purity 
 and chastity — and so an increase of peace, and a 
 more perfect harmony. Woman can never rise to 
 her entire womanhood without it. 
 
 The question as to the time when a higher truth 
 shall be published, is one of expediency. It is 
 important, but not of the first importance. Honest 
 and good men may differ in relation to it. The 
 most true friends of Free Love have differed here. 
 We should seek to be guided by a wise and holy 
 expediency. But no mind is prepared to judge 
 correctly upon it, till he is at least thoroughly awake 
 to a true sense of the terrible and wide -spread 
 bondage and suffering in our present state of society. 
 Its wrongs are as high as heaven and as deep as hell. 
 Whoever sees this, will feel the need of some radical 
 change for the better. The real conservative would 
 never change. The Reformer alone must look, 
 judge, and act. I was born through a long line of 
 orthodox ancestry of New England Congregational- 
 ism; and trained, ** in the way I should go,'' to an 
 orthodox religion ; and was once in the orthodox 
 ministry. It has taken me a long time to lay off 
 the unreal of the past. Long after I became estab- 
 lished in my present views of Free Love, I could 
 sympathize with Mr. Greeley and Mr. Ballon, in a 
 dread to see these principles spread among the 
 
INTRODUCTION. if 
 
 masses. But since I have laid off many of my con- 
 servative views, my faith in humanity has greatly 
 increased. My confidence in the power and safety 
 of truth has alike increased. 
 
 We add further — the friends of Free Love are not 
 alone responsible for the general spread of the more 
 radical phases of these principles. The history of 
 the past plainly shows that our opponents would 
 never let us alone. Mr. Noyes was not allowed to 
 rest in peace, in the retirement of his own private or 
 select friends, and his own society. So it has ever 
 been with myself. But so far from regretting the 
 influence which has been brought to bear upon us, 
 we are, at least, most grateful to a kind and wise 
 Providence for in this way freeing us from the 
 lingering remains of what we now believe was a 
 false conservatism. 
 
 But, reader, the time has come when there is a 
 necessity for every phase of this question to be 
 thoroughly discussed. It is fairly up before the 
 public mind. All sides have been broached, and 
 more or less defended. Mind cannot be staid till it 
 is fully canvassed. Men do not now, as in the past, 
 follow simple instinct, or unenligTiferied passion or 
 love. They demand mental instruction, and they 
 will have it. They ask for something more than 
 surface teachers, and human opinions. They ask 
 for philosophy, and they will have it. " The sup- 
 ply will be equal to the demand." The true mind 
 2* 
 
18 FREE LOVE. 
 
 desires to see every possible objection urged against 
 his most cherished positions. When these fail to 
 stand the ordeal of any amount of the most searching 
 criticism, he has no longer any confidence in, or 
 respect for them. However sure he may be that he 
 has the truth, he is more sure of the real power of 
 truthy and of its entire ability to sustain itself. Such 
 a mind knows, too, that truth is advanced by re- 
 pulsion as well as by attraction ; that every active 
 mind puts it forward, whether in love with, or in 
 opposition to it. If he stands in the latter relation 
 to it, he is a repelling power. We only mean, while 
 man is on the plane of haired — hatred will work 
 utility in his progress. As God lives, this must he 
 true. When will men more generally arrive at a 
 proper confidence in the power of truth, and of 
 God ? Till this subject — marriage — is thoroughly 
 handled on loth sides, man's faith can not be deeply 
 laid. Every effort of a true mind will lay the truth 
 more and more fully upon the eternal rock of ages 
 — nature. We always hail with pleasure the promise 
 of any able and fair writer to review and criticise 
 our most cherished faith. We never fail to buy 
 such books. If our opponents have like confidence 
 in truth, and feel as we do, that any agitation must 
 advance it, they will cordially welcome our effort, 
 and thank us for it, as we do them for theirs. 
 
 In our age, active minds have little time to parley 
 with moral and mental cowards. We welcome the 
 
DEFINITION OP WORDS AND PHRASES. 19 
 
 coming war — the "bloodless war/' which we have 
 long seen gathering. We shall pray for, work for, 
 and welcome the crisis, and glory in the assurance 
 that it will end in good. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DEFINITION OF WORDS AND PHRASES STATEMENT OF 
 
 OUR POSITION THE ARGUMENT COMMENCED. 
 
 Before introducing the reader to our argumenta- 
 tive letters, we shall first define some of the more 
 important terms which we shall be likely to use, 
 and so make our exact moral whereabouts more 
 clearly understood. By connubial love, I mean a 
 normal development of the sexual attraction of our 
 nature, in all of its phases. By denying its exclu- 
 siveness, I deny that, in such a harmonious devel- 
 opment, it will be absolutely confined, in any form 
 of its manifestations, to one of the opposite sex. 
 
 When we write non-exclusive, we mean not 
 absolutely exclusive — no more. By promiscioua, 
 we sometimes mean no more than the opposite of 
 entire exclusiveness : the context will show when 
 it means more. We do not teach an entire non-ex- 
 clusiveness, or, what is the same, an absolute 
 promiscuity. To us, this is equally absurd with 
 
$0 yREB LOVE. 
 
 entire exclusiveness. Yarious shades of preference 
 are natural and so proper. Different minds differ as 
 to their leanings towards entire exclusiveness, or its 
 opposite — absolute promiscuity. This is more or 
 less true on every plane of sexual or connubial 
 love. What we declare to be true of this love is 
 true of every other love. No man or woman is 
 absolutely promiscuous in their social or adhesive 
 attractions. Nor is any one absolutely dual and 
 exclusive. The reader will find the same law to 
 prevail, with various modifications, through all the 
 lower and all the higher loves. Benevolence, the 
 crowning faculty, and the personification of our 
 moral manhood, has its shades of variation. The 
 Great Teacher, though the highest pattern of 
 universal charity and benevolence, showed much 
 partiality, preference for the "brethren;** and he 
 had his "beloved disciple*' among the twelve of the 
 more choice of these. His moral teachings are very 
 emphatic, and often repeated, in enjoining this 
 special regard for our brethren. Paul bade us ** do 
 good to all men, but especially to the household of 
 faith.** In this, Jesus and Paul acted and taught in 
 harmony with the laws of mind. But enough, I am 
 understood. Truth impells us to regard all accord- 
 ing to their real value, and our ability to appreciate 
 it. The former would be a true estimate, the latter 
 is as near as we can practically reach it. Because 
 truth may require me to lay down my life for ono 
 
DEFINITION OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 21 
 
 man, it may not for another. Of course, in choosing 
 a partner in marriage, we should not be governed in 
 our selection by an estimate of the real worth of 
 the person, but of his or her relative worth and 
 fitness for such a relation to us. I write thus full on 
 some of these points, to make clear what I consider 
 some of the true principles of mental philosophy, 
 and so to prepare the way for my mental argument. 
 I have been full, at the expense of some repetition, to 
 save the reader, if possible, from the misconceptions 
 which experience has shown me too often pursue 
 such an expose as this, on so radical a theme. 
 
 In what I have written, the reader will perceive 
 tliat I have not, and he may be assured that I shall 
 not, undertake to oppose the doctrine of a special 
 and *'ideal mate," when, and so far as it is not carried 
 to absolute and entire exclusiveness, in any phase 
 of its amative monopolies. In other words, and 
 more correctly, I shall only review and oppose the 
 entire, exclusive feature of the system of dual mating. 
 
 Further explanation : — In the main, I approve of 
 the ** spirit and nature'* of what Swedenborg, the 
 Fowlers, Wright, and others of their like, call 
 connubial love ; but I deny that such disinterested- 
 ness, such purity, such oneness of soul, such moral 
 elevation and chastity in sexual love, is exclusive, or 
 confined to one. When these men write directly of 
 pure and elevating love, in opposition to impurity 
 and a predominance of self in love, or "lust," I 
 
22 FREE LOVE. 
 
 Jiarmonize with them. When they say ttat such 
 iove as they have described, cannot seek a variety, 
 in entire health, I deny it. When they write upon 
 fthe nature and spirit of lust and its effects, I har- 
 monize with them. But when they say that all 
 attraction towards a variety, is of such a nature, I 
 deny it. I think I must be understood by all who 
 have carefully read their books. This, too, is very 
 important to a clear understanding. I positivly 
 deny that these writers are my opponents, as to what 
 really constitutes a pure and elevating love and 
 attraction, or an impure and debasing one. We all 
 admit that man may lust after one or many. I insist 
 tliat he may love one and many. I write to prove 
 my last position, and to disprove its opposite. 
 
 Our first and main argument will be presented in 
 tbree letters, the substance of which were written 
 in 1853, and published in the fall and winter of 
 1854-5, in the "Practical Christian.'' We shall 
 ^mit nothing in these letters which we consider 
 essential to our present purpose. 
 
 the argument. 
 Friend Ballou : — 
 
 I thankfully accept your hospitality in allowing 
 me a place in your paper, to express my dissent from 
 your views on the subject of Free Love, and to record 
 my reasons for that dissent. 
 
 Free Love and Marriage are fast becoming (he 
 question of the age. All classes will soon see tbia 
 feet, whatever view they mav take of it in other 
 
THE ARGUMENT. %^ 
 
 respects. It has been about the last to ask, and will 
 perhaps be the last to receive, a full and fair hearing. 
 It will have it soon in the Press and in the Lecture - 
 room. Since I suggested, (last fall,) the propriety 
 of a discussion with yourself, it has been brought 
 before the public, and called forth more attention 
 than for years previous. I refer mainly to the two 
 books written — one by Mr. Wright, and the other 
 by Dr. Nichols and his wife — which have been 
 extensively advertised, and more generally read than 
 anything before this. I might add, the introduction 
 and agitation of it through some few spiritual medi- 
 ums. Mr. Wright and Dr. Nichols harmonize on 
 many points ; on others they are diametrically 
 opposed. I am glad to find that some few letters 
 which I wrote last fall (with the intention of send- 
 ing them sooner to your paper) are confined entirely 
 to this main difference, and as appropriate as I 
 could now write. It will be remembered, those 
 books were not then published. I am glad of the 
 delay in my letters, as many more minds will be 
 prepared for them. I will take the liberty especially 
 to ask those who have read those books, to read my 
 letters ; I have many years since taken my position, 
 and I really believe I can demonstrate its truth. I 
 wish to come to the vital question, and make my 
 exposition and discussion as short as possible and do 
 the subject justice. I have no health, ability, or 
 desire to hold a long controversy, and yet I esteem 
 it a great privilege to record what seems essential, 
 and to commit myself to the age in defence of what 
 to me is the most absolute truth — and the most 
 elevated. I have such confidence in the power of 
 truth and such faith in the real good arising from 
 free discussion, that I prefer to do this in the im- 
 
r 
 
 24 frep: love, 
 
 mediate presence of an opponent Ike mj friend 
 Ballon. 
 
 The question which I propose to discuss is — • 
 Does Sexual Chastity confine every man and every 
 woman to the ''pairing*' order, or to be exclusively 
 dual in the ultimates of love ? Does normal and 
 pure love require this ? Or, still more abridged, and 
 just as well understood as now explained — Should 
 marriage ahoays he exclusive and dual?'* 
 
 I take the negative of the last question as now 
 stated. Before proceeding to the argument, let me 
 remind the reader that I came first to my present 
 views of the subject from a careful study of the great 
 "fundamental doctrine '* of the Christ, as found in 
 the sum of all revealed commands. — In his love 
 doctrines — (See Matt. xxii. 37 — 40.) Secondly, I 
 found the same in studying the laws of the mind and 
 the nature of love, as read in the mind. My own 
 choice seems to incline me to make the last first, and 
 the first last ; so I will first argue from the mind. 
 In the argument, I intend to show, to a mental and 
 moral demonstration, that normal and truthful love 
 cannot be exclusive or dual. I shall then draw tlie 
 inference as one self-evident, that the ultimates of 
 love should harmonize with, and fairly represent 
 their source. That the outward manifestations of 
 love should truly represent its inward life and attrac- 
 tions. By normal and truthful love, I mean, when 
 the mind is perfectly balanced, and the mental in 
 freedom of wisdom controls the affeetional — or at 
 least the affeetional is properly balanced by and 
 harmonizes with the mental. I trust this careful- 
 ness in explanation will save much misunderstanding 
 and much repetition in the future. 
 
 I say, then, in reasoning from the laws of mind. 
 
THE ARGUMENT. 25^^ 
 
 I cannot find truth at the bottom of the common 
 Marriage doctrine. For convenience, let me speak 
 as if personal — as I develop in my sentiments and 
 faculties, I find myself possessed of love — an attrac- 
 tion to and affinity for other persons. I find the 
 nature and intensity of this love or affinity to de- 
 pend upon two thing's — two persons — myself and 
 the object loved. I am, in the sense in which I am ' 
 speaking, comparatively a fixed fact in always loving 
 and having an affinity for certain attributes of other 
 human beings. I love mentality. Some minds 
 more than others, because their mentality is more 
 in harmony with the particular development of 
 mine — but I can love no one mind exclusively. For 
 every other person shares in a degree in the same 
 faculties. If I love mind, to love one mind exclu- 
 sively from another is impossible. All mind is 
 more or less alike. As minds vary, my love may 
 vary. Absolute, exclusive love, in this case, if it were 
 possible, would be a natural, more properly an 
 unnatural, Msehood. Truth, or the nature of the 
 mind requires me to love every like attribute of mind 
 with like lovey and the intensity should be governed 
 by the size of the attribute, and my ability to appre- 
 ciate it. This would be truth for me. 
 
 I love morality, spirituality and religion — here too 
 the same law prevails. I am bound to be impartial 
 in my love up to my ability. Truthfulness, as well 
 as the nature of the mind, forbids that I should 
 concentrate entirely and exclusively upon any one 
 moralist, spiritualist, or religionist. Nature did not 
 make me sectarian. At least I cannot be when I 
 am finished and perfected. Again I say here, I can- 
 not love all alike — all are not alike — nor can I per- 
 fectly appreciate all. Yet 1 cannot love with a rational, 
 3 
 
26 FREE LOVE. 
 
 truthful love the same moral or religious attrihule, 
 found in the same quantity, more in one than, in another. 
 It would be unnatural and fiilse. I have adhesive- 
 ness, so I love all persons socially — all, male and 
 female — but here I cannot love all alike, and yet I 
 must from necessity love all like attributes alike. 
 Truth requires impartiality. I cannot be exclusive, 
 since all have like social attributes. 
 
 I have araativeness, so I love woman — possibly 
 I may love her, in this sense, exclusively from man; 
 she is possessed of something different from man 
 mentally, spiritually and physically. But I cannot 
 love any one woman exclusively from any other 
 woman. I love all women as such — not alike in 
 mental, spiritual or physical sexuality ; far from it ; 
 nor can 1 be exclusive and concentrate my affections, 
 except I do violence, first to my reason, and then to 
 my affections. My love may vary towards different 
 women, as they vary in their mental, spiritual, 
 religious, social and physical womanhood, and as I 
 have more or less ability to appreciate them, or as 
 they are more or less in harmony with either or all 
 these points with my own particular taste ; but I 
 cannot love one in the many exclusively from her 
 sisters. My ojpjponents harmonize with me^ in precept 
 at least, in relation to all these manfestations of love, 
 except the physical. They will commend this gen- 
 eral and universal state of the affections, and condemn 
 partiality and exclusiveness. But when the whole 
 man develops into harmony with itself, and with 
 every other man and every other woman — when 
 the same universal law is allowed to prevail through 
 all the affections, they are shocked with the impro- 
 priety ; and yet it is as unnatural to exclusively 
 concentrate the love of the physical as it is that of 
 
THE ARGUMENT. 27 
 
 any other part of the mind. In this our attractions 
 vary, but I insist, it is a natural impossibility to 
 make them exclusive. We must first annihilate or 
 uncreate what God has created. In this sen.se man 
 is attracted to woman as such, and the same of wo- 
 man to man. This love for the physical of the 
 opposite sex, and attraction to it, is alike universal 
 in its nature with every other love. As all my pre- 
 vious arguments to sustain the necessary univer- 
 sality of love, apply equally here, I will not repeat 
 them. There are laws to govern mind, as absolute 
 as those to govern matter. The forest tree can be 
 bent by some material cause ; so can the affections, 
 by a power of mind or will ; but the crooked tree, 
 or the contracted and warped affections, are excep- 
 tional and less harmonious. I find no marriage in 
 nature, as the law of marriage has ever been taught 
 us. I do find the marriage of man to woman. " They 
 twain make one flesh,*' says Nature, in all her 
 teaching on this subject. The Good Book, in its 
 higher meaning, responds to Nature's lessons. JSTo 
 truth can be more clearly taught. Without this 
 oneness, this union, either man or woman is but a 
 fraction — a most unnatural fraction. This must 
 always be true — in the next world as well as in this — 
 unless we are to be partially annihilated to fit us for 
 an entrance there. This to us is the extreme of 
 folly. So our reason in this harmonizes with the 
 Revelations of Swedenborg and the Spirits. 
 
 I agree with Mr. Ballou and others, that without 
 marriage, the material union of the sexes is more or 
 less adulterous; that conjugal, or, as Swedenborg 
 would write it, **conjugial love," is essential to the 
 purity of such relations. I accept of the latter's 
 description of this love, of its nature, but I deny 
 
FREE LOVE. 
 
 that such love is confined to the one — or necessarilj 
 exclusive. I believe a well developed man may and 
 should love woman in general, so far as she is the 
 woman of creation, and upright and lovely, (and he 
 could not truthfully love the one without this,) more 
 purely, more justly, more disinterestedly and more 
 conjugally than the most devoted dual lover often 
 feels. I accept of the Love Doctrines of marriage 
 from my inmost soul, having known, and knowing 
 them, but I deny that they are exclusive. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 the argument continued. 
 
 Friend Ballou : 
 
 I proceed in my reasoning from the nature of 
 the mind. I may^and am required to love a man 
 **as myself," with the same kind of love. I may 
 love another man more or less than myself, in 
 degree, according to what he is. If he is on tbo 
 whole not so good a man, I should not love 
 him as much ; for I am not required to be partial 
 either way. Nature hioios no false humility or 
 false modestyy hut only truth. If he is better than 
 myself, and I have the ability to know and appre- 
 ciate goodness beyond my absolute goodness, then 
 I may, and normal and well-developed mind requires 
 and prompts me to, love and regard him better than 
 myself. Tliis is possible and natural ; it is truth. 
 Any state but this is so far falsehood. But if I 
 
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 29 
 
 have not the ability to know and measure his good- 
 ness, beyond my own goodness, then 1 can not love 
 him better than myself. My standard of love, in 
 either or any case, is never absolute truth for ano- 
 ther, but simply obeying the command of nature 
 to me. Another should vary in accordance with his 
 ability, God does not require any two men to love 
 Him alike in degree. Each is to love with his whole 
 heart, and mind, etc. That is, up to this capacity. 
 The same law prevails as to my love for woman; 
 and more. I should not only love her as myself, but 
 differently y perhaps exclusively from myself ; and if 
 I may not, as a general rule, love her better pr more 
 than myself, I have a greater ability to be useful to 
 her than to myself, and in this I promote my own 
 greatest felicity. I may love some one man more 
 than any other man, but I should not, I can not love 
 him exclusively from every other man : so of woman. I 
 may love some one man religiously or socially more 
 than any other man in the same sense : so of woman. 
 It is naturally possible, (but perhaps never a truth 
 as a fact in Providence,) for me to love some one 
 man more, mentally, religiously and socially, than 
 any other man, hut never to love any of these parts 
 exclusively from the same parts in other men : so 
 of woman. We some times, as a fact, love some one 
 woman mentally or socially, or amatively, more than 
 any other woman in the same sense ; and were it 
 ever a fact, as it can be conceived naturally possible 
 to be, for us to love one woman in all these parti- 
 culars more than any other, it would be unnatural 
 and impossible to love such a person exclusively 
 from her sisters, — from others of her sex. We can 
 not do it in either or all of these phases of love. 
 Then where in nature is exclusive marriage ? No- 
 3* 
 
10 FREE LOVE. 
 
 where ! I think I am understood here, and invite 
 the closest scrutiny. All of these loves for man or 
 woman, and in man and woman, may be in a very 
 perverted and impure state ; or they may all be the 
 most pure and chaste. My religious love may be 
 religious selfishness and sectarianism. My sexual 
 love may be the greater love for sexual self, or what 
 is the same thing, lust. My affinities, from the 
 highest to the lowest, may be all adultery in some 
 of its definitions, But the form or order of their 
 manifestations does not necessarily indicate their 
 purity or impurity. Normal love is pure and chaste 
 in its origin, in its living action, and as much so in 
 all its ultimates. And the ultimates of love should 
 correctl}^ represent their cause. If love cannot be 
 exclusive in the mind, it should not be held to be in 
 its manifestations — in its consummations. The out- 
 going or ultimates of love should image forth its 
 interior life. The reader will observe that in these 
 letters, thus far, I have aimed to prove — 
 
 1 . IMiat our lore for others cannot he exclusive on 
 any one point towards any one person. 
 
 2. I draw the inference, as a self-evident propo- 
 sition, and as one which I believe is universally 
 admitted, — that the manifestation of love should be 
 a true image of itself. This will be the case, when 
 nature is left entirely and absolutely free. 
 
 Does the fact of experience ^ or the consciousness 
 of the mind sustain our position ? Many desire to 
 receive this exclusive love, and the lowest of the 
 race, who regard love in any proper way, are the 
 most tenacious in this desire. Such persons are 
 nearly equally jealous of all the love of a mate — 
 religious and mental as well as sexual. But these 
 persons are not as ready to return this exclusive 
 
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 81 
 
 love. Many of these neither see the necessity nor 
 feel the propriety of confining their affections, except 
 as they find it enjoined and enforced in the law of 
 marriage, and in the public sentiment which marriage 
 has created. With these the demand is unjust, 
 and selfish, and proves them in a state of disease 
 of the affections ; at least they are unbalanced and 
 inharmonious. Many others — the number is more 
 than is generally supposed — ask no exclusive love. 
 They desire none. These, in the average, have a 
 more elevated phrenological development than the first 
 class named. I leave room in this statement for the 
 many exceptions. Some of these last would suffer as 
 much with a mate who should be disposed to bestow 
 all her life on him, as the man of the opposite desire 
 would with one w^ho withheld it. Let elevated hu- 
 manity judge which is the more noble and truthful 
 state of mind. I add, man is conscious of the same 
 ability to be attracted to the opposite sex in general, 
 as much in physical amativeness, as in the menUil 
 and spiritual. He has the power in a great degree 
 to concentrate all the affections. So he has the 
 power, in nearly or quite the same degree, to confine 
 or direct all. If he be well balanced or well disci- 
 plined, he may suspend, indefinitely, all amative 
 desire or attraction towards any woman — his own 
 wife not excepted. This is possible for some minds, 
 placed in almost any conceivable circumstances, and 
 without all the safeguards of the Shakers. But all 
 this is not normal, or natural. It is not truthful or 
 commendable. I repeat ; in a normal state of the 
 affections, we are conscious of their universality j and 
 not of i\i^\x entire exclusivcness in any one particular. 
 Our ability to control, confine or suspend their 
 inward or outward action towards the many, or the 
 
32 FREE LOVE. 
 
 one, does not stifle, or silence the voice of this 
 consciousness. 
 
 I most respectfully invite the friends of exclusive 
 marriage, who believe that the mind is God's Book, 
 and that its healthy attractions are his laws, to 
 carefully observe the main arguments in the two 
 preceding letters, and to bear with what may seem 
 to them, too much repitition. My proposition stands 
 in the gap between all contending parties. It is the 
 main hinge on which this great question turns. I 
 am not touching the doctrine of expediency for dis- 
 eased man, or giving any counsel concerning him. 
 The latter is an after and side question. I aim to go 
 back of all disease, or "misdirection,*' and forward 
 to the full health of progression and final manhood. 
 It is not a question of lust, but of Love — of normal 
 attraction. It is of vast importance, and cannot be 
 longer evaded. I will not detain the reader, by 
 going too much into side issues. I must be full here, 
 even at the expense of some repetition. I must leave 
 no possible chance for misconception. It will only 
 protract the discussion, which is sure to come ; and 
 I have suffered too much from misconception already. 
 
 We shall, then, press the inquiry upon the mind of 
 the candid reader. Is love on any one point abso- 
 lutely exclusive ? Is it so in amativeness ? Is it 
 more so in amativeness than in adhesiveness ? — or in 
 any diflferent sense ? If our opponent says yes, and 
 ^he must ; will he give us fiilly and clearly his phil- 
 
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. 33 
 
 osophy — his mind argument ? We have said no, and 
 we believe we have demonstrated our reply. We 
 court honest and manly criticism ; no other. We 
 aver that we are not seeking personal victory, — but 
 truth. — We do not know how to argue with any 
 man to prove that two and two make four ; we place 
 it before the man. of figures, and we think he cannot 
 help seeing it. So, we believe, we have placed the 
 laws of the mind, before the reader's mental vision, 
 and we think he cannot help seeing them. We think 
 he cannot help seeing, that minds alike will at- 
 tract ALIKE ; — and that 50 far as minds are alikcy 
 they will attract alike. That this must be true of 
 mind as mind, and so true of all its parts. (We have 
 not argued in the preceding letters, by the analogy, 
 that because one faculty of the brain was non-exclu. 
 sive, so another must be. We left that for a cominar 
 letter.) So, as all minds are more or less alike, — 
 and as each faculty in one mind is some hke the 
 same faculty in another mind, there can be no en- 
 tire exclusiveness: — and as each and every man, and 
 each and every woman, are more like every other 
 man and every other woman, than they are unlike 
 them, a general attraction, union, and love, must 
 be the rule, in a healthy state of the race. ** Repul- 
 sion ''(or hatred) is a negative; — it represents 
 less attraction. It is a lesser power in mind — is 
 the exception, — and follows the same law with love, 
 as to its non-exclusiA^eness. 
 
34 FREE LOVE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FOWLERS THE ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 
 
 Should the Marriage of the sexes be exclusive and 
 dual? 
 
 So far as I know, the Fowlers, of New York, have 
 done more, for the last fifteen years, to support ex- 
 clusive and dual marria^ey than any or all writers in 
 the same time. They profess to find it in the mind, 
 as they read the science of phrenology. That 
 science is now popular, and they are among its first 
 expounders. There is no way that I can better 
 communicate my own views, so far as I wish todoi^ 
 connected with this science, than by giving their 
 views, and presenting my own in contrast. Let me 
 premise. If phrenology teaches exclusive and 
 dual marriage, it is safe. The friends of Free Love 
 will find themselves in an unequal warfare. Such 
 of my readers as are any way solicitous for morals, 
 and harmonize with the Fowlers, and the present 
 laws of civilization, may rest in the most perfect 
 safety. The writer of these letters will surrender 
 when he finds that the true readings of phrenology 
 are against him. By this statement he implies no 
 present doubt on the subject. 
 
 The Fowlers divide the human mind into about 
 forty faculties. They subdivide these into as many 
 more. "Amativeness,*' or sexual love, they divide 
 into the "upper and lower,'* or the "spiritual, 
 mental, and physical.'* They do and do not exclu- 
 pWely marry the spiritual and mental of amativeness. 
 Mr. 0. S. Fowler, in his work on "Love and 
 
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 36 
 
 Parentage/* very plainly, to my mind, teaches the 
 entire concentration of all sexual life or love on one, 
 in perpetuity and without interruption or deviation 
 through natural life. Again, he and his brother do 
 not teach this. They do not marry, or exclusively 
 cofifine the '* spiritual and mental ** of sexual love — 
 of amativeness. In their delineations of character, 
 they always speak of love for woman in general, 
 with a sort of approbation ; and they never pass a 
 great man, in whom this sentiment is prominent, 
 without noticing it to his credit. So of all other 
 Phrenological writers. In this, these men harmonize 
 exactly with the oge, and with all good writers on man. 
 They are most " orthodox/' Mr. Wright, in his 
 late work on Marriage, leaves out so much of sexual 
 love from the exclusive yoke. He says, ** the at- 
 traction of men and women to each other, as such, 
 has its privileges, and its fixed, just laws to govern 
 it.'' This general regard for woman, as such, is 
 sexual, and doubtless what Mr. 0. S. Fowler calls the 
 spiritual and mental of amativeness. This, then, I 
 think, civilization doQ3 not intend to marry in her 
 exclusive dual bonds. The feelings of many hus- 
 bands and wives among us are much disturbed by 
 this general freedom in a partner, and with such, if 
 liberty is taken, it causes jealousies and complain- 
 ings, but public opinion, instead of condemning such 
 freedom as licentious, where it is not carried too 
 far, or beyond a common degree of spiritual and 
 mental amativeness, takes the side of liberty, and 
 condemns the complaining party. The lattfer are 
 considered narrow minded and selfish. It^is plain, 
 then, that the Fowlers, — society in general, — ^and 
 even the Shakers, allow more or less freedom to a 
 portion of amativeness, None of these attempt to 
 
3^ FREE LOVE. 
 
 entirely confine or suppress the general plane and 
 actions of its higher manifestations. Even the Head 
 Shaker must have his spiritual female mate. Now 
 for the contrast. I do not separate the faculties, 
 and free a part, and confine a part. I do not separate 
 the sentiment — amativeness — and free a part and 
 confine a part. I free the whole. The whole man 
 and the whole woman. I demand more plain and 
 philosophical reasons for such an inconsistency. I 
 deny that there are any rational and substantial rea- 
 sons for this to govern a normal mind. Society does not 
 exclusively marry the greater part of its sexual love. 
 I would not so marry any part of it. Civilization 
 has advanced one step from certain heathen nations 
 who consider it a crime for their women to be exposed 
 to the general gaze, and freed a portion of this part 
 of the brain. I and my Free Love brethren, would 
 free the remainder, and we are as sure that we shall 
 be approved by the future, as we are that civilization 
 is justified in her advances thus far. I repeat the 
 contrast in various forms to get the consistency, or 
 inconsistency, before the mind of the reader. To 
 me this comparison is the strongest of arguments. 
 The Fowlers, and our dual marriage friends, do not 
 marry in their exclusiveness any one of these forty 
 faculties of the mind. They do marry in this man- 
 ner, one-third of one of the forty, and no more. All 
 this general freedom to them is chaste and ]pure. I 
 do not thus marry that fractional part of one. Rea- 
 der, mark the contrast,Cnd the astounding oflPense. 
 We are told that the effect of freedom, in all the 
 former, is good and elevating, while in the latter it 
 is most injurious and debasing. What but depravity 
 ever first taught such distinctions and such philoso- 
 phy? '* To the pure all things are pure.'* The 
 
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 37 
 
 freedom of the entire man is pure and elevating. To 
 the impure all things are impure and debasing. To 
 such all freedom is evil so far as they are impure. 
 A pure and holy emotion is pure and holy, whether 
 it concentrates on one object, or many. An impure 
 emotion, or passion, is impure, whether in confine- 
 ment or freedom. All free ninety -nine ^^arU of the 
 human hraln, I moke it one hundredj and leave the 
 man a wiit. I am told that ninety-nine parts of the 
 affections can choose a variety in purity, and with 
 propriety, but that the very fact of this hundreth 
 part so choosing, is proof positive, in the nature of 
 the case, that it is impure and lustful. I deny this 
 out and out, in the name of all consistency, and 
 common sense. I admit that those who are attracted 
 by lust to the one, may be the more so to the many 
 -—but those who have attained to connubial love to 
 the one, may attain to and possess it to more. 
 There is nothing in the nature of this, more than in 
 all other loves, which is exclusive. But Mr. Fowler 
 supposes he has found this very marriage in the 
 brain. He calls it "love of one only." ''Duality 
 in Marriage." I positively deny that there is any 
 such faculty in the human brain. There may be a 
 sentiment in the lower part of the brain, designed 
 to concentrate and intensify all the lower sentiments, 
 but not one anything like his readings, or deserving 
 the name which he gives it ; nothing can be more 
 unnatural and unphilosophical. Mr. Fowler locates 
 this supposed sentiment by the side of amativeness, 
 and appoints it to hold an entire and exclusive con- 
 trol over the lower part, or ** physical," of amative- 
 ness, and no more. He never gives it any other 
 office. He could not do this consistently without 
 changing its name, and all his past remarks upon it. 
 4 
 
38 FREE LOVE. 
 
 Even in the strongest concentrated loves between 
 persons of the same sex — ^as between David and 
 Jonathan, ** whose love passed thao of woman*' — 
 or between two females, he never refers to this sen- 
 timent, but places such concentrated loves, if their 
 love is so strong that its rupture ends in death to 
 one of the parties, under the head of adhesiveness. 
 The bare statement of this sufficiently shows its 
 absurdity. Never was science more plainly brought 
 down to meet the prejudices of a still undeveloped 
 age. If adhesiveness can be so concentrated without 
 the aid of a particular sentiment for that end, ama- 
 tiveness can be more so, as there is one more faculty 
 in its formation and concentration. 
 
 Mr. Fowler never makes any allusion to his ex- 
 clusive marrying sentiments, except connected with 
 amativeness — then it must be sexual, and a part of 
 amativeness. This he does not intend to teach. 
 
 Again, my objection to this exclusive mar- 
 riage doctrine, whether it be found in Mr. 
 Fowler's readings of Phrenology, or in the moral 
 teachings of the Practical Christian, is, that it gives 
 a lower law — the lowest of this lower law, admit- 
 ting the existence of such a law — absolute and entire 
 control over a higher law. All will tell us, Mr. F. 
 and the P. C. not excepted, that the higher senti- 
 ments of the brain should be uppermost, control the 
 entire man, and that all lower sentiments should 
 harmonize with the higher. This doctrine makes 
 the lower, on this point, govern, and requires the 
 higher to harmonize with it. Here is one of our 
 main objections to it. If there is an exclusive 
 tendency (I do not admit it) in the lower senti- 
 ments, the higher all prompt to universality — and the 
 more, as they are more fully developed. I admit, there 
 
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 3t 
 
 is strictly no lower law, when every lower sentiment 
 of the brain really harmonizes with the higher. 
 They are sanctified by them, and are most exalted. 
 But this is just in proportion as they are submissive 
 to, and governed by, the higher. When they assume 
 to reign over the higher, they become debased. We 
 and our opponents agree in one thmg — that man in 
 the past, either from his fall or "misdirection," or 
 from his yet youthful and undeveloped state — has 
 been governed by his lower sentiments and propen- 
 sities ; and we are agreed in general, that this should 
 not, and will not, always be so. Exclusive dual 
 marriage is a great improvement, from the entire 
 absence of all real marriage. So it is, on the whole, 
 from a state of polygamy. So is American slavery 
 a better state of society, than a worse, which has 
 existed in the past, when there was no motive — not 
 even a selfish one, as in slavery — for the stronger 
 to protect the weaker ; and so stronger tribes and 
 nations, would destroy and completely exterminate 
 other weaker tribes and nations. But none of these 
 states of society are in harmony with man's higher 
 sentiments. We may leave all unwept for a better 
 —not for a worse. To go below exclusive marriage 
 is worse ; to go above such marriage is better. So 
 it is better to emancipate the slave, where the peo- 
 ple will not fall back to a worse state of society. 
 The Jews had a sort of slavery, — but I think their 
 extermination of the Canaanites was worse. So we 
 in a little more slow, and possibly on the whole, in 
 a more mild way, exterminate the Indians, or 
 original Americans. I expect to see the race rise 
 above both Slavery and Marriao-e as it now exists. 
 
 Reader, you now have my argument from analogy. 
 
40 FREE LOVE. 
 
 I argue, that as every other faculty of the brain — 
 and two-thirds of the one under discussion, — is non- 
 exclusive ; the presumpsion is that the other third is 
 non-exclusive also. And I confess I cannot see it 
 possible for any mind to reply directly to this by 
 sound argument, and without sophistry or evasive- 
 ness. I believe any mind might as well deny and 
 attempt to disprove a truth in mathematics. Under 
 the circumstances, it justly rests upon the friends of 
 exclusive marriage, to prove their exception, or give 
 it up — we demand this of them. Age will not 
 longer protect any Institution. 
 
 Again, — should or should not the higher senti- 
 ments control the whole man, in each and every act, 
 in harmony with their non-exclusive laws ? — Are 
 not the physical rights of amativeness, as well as 
 the social, mental, and spiritual, of real utility? Are 
 not the former a real good — a valuable power ? And 
 so should not this be as such, at the command of 
 our higher manhood — Justice and Benevolence ? 
 My questions are fully and plainly put, with the 
 desire that the enlightened reader may understand 
 their import. No real or imaginary fears of evil, 
 which it may be tliought will follow these principles, 
 will be a fair reply to them. The slave-holder is 
 full of these, and of such arguments, in defense of 
 his social system. Will the friends of exclusive 
 marriage, ape the former in his fears, and in his 
 replies ? So far many of them have done this — and 
 
AN EPXLANATION. 41 
 
 ONLY this. In this, we hope for a reform among 
 reformers. We hope for something better ; for a 
 more fair, condid, direct and rational reply — or none. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MR. BALLOU AN EXPLANATION — PART OF HIS REPLY 
 
 IN MY REJOINDER. 
 
 In my discussion with Mr. Ballon, 1 was to write 
 a series of letters in defense of Free Love. Mr. Bal- 
 lou was to reply, — I to rejoin, — and he was to follow 
 and close. I wrote five letters, (the last two on the 
 Bible — not here inserted). Mr. B. replied, as was 
 expected. I rejoined at some length in four letters. 
 Mr. B. replied to my first rejoinder, and then in a 
 closing letter. 
 
 I have no thought of giving any thing like a full 
 view of that discussion, on either side. But as I 
 wish to review Mr. Ballou, as well as some others, 
 I will simply insert that part of my rejoinder which 
 contains the substance of his main argument on the 
 mind, against my letters on the mind. I will then 
 look into Mr. B.'s Book — " Christian Socialism,'' — 
 and see what we can find there directly related to 
 our proposition. 
 
 In justice to Mr. Ballou, I would remark — He 
 4* 
 
42 FREE LOVE. 
 
 professed to understand me, in my first two letters, 
 to reason from "analogy,'' and replied accord- 
 ingly, to destroy that analogy. I did intend to 
 reason from analogy in my third, so I accepted his 
 imderstanding* of me, — ^adopted the analogy, and 
 replied to it as mine. I shall insert but a portion 
 of my second and third letters in rejoinder. 
 
 Mr. Ballou's argument against mine, begins, 
 *• Sexual love, as involving sexual coition, is radically 
 an instinctive animal appetite. Man has it in com-* 
 mon with the whole animal kingdom. — It is not of 
 the nature of Benevolence, or Friendship, or any 
 other truly spiritual love. As an animal propensity, 
 it craves mainly its own gratification, just like the 
 propensity for food, sleep, etc. It does not go abroad 
 seeking opportunities to confer blessings on friend 
 or foe. This propensity, then, is primarily and 
 essentially animal. It has its use and place. With- 
 in its own proper limits it may be gratified innocent- 
 ly. Allowed to break bounds, it becomes criminal 
 and pestilent. This is the truth of the case. Is it 
 so with the spiritual loves ? with love to God, to 
 virtue, and our neighbor ? Not at all. Away, then, 
 with all false analogies ; arguments founded on such 
 analogies are utterly flillacious and worthless." 
 
 We agree with Mr. Ballou that when this propen- 
 sity '-'breaks bounds,'' it is very evil — but not more 
 so than higher propensities and sentiments. But let 
 us keep to the point. What are its hoimds? We 
 have proved them non-exclusive, and we are now to 
 answer Mr. Ballou's arofuments ao-ainst us. What 
 are these arguments? This coitionary propensity, 
 he tells us, is ''radically an animal appetite," the 
 
AN EXPLANATION. 43 
 
 same as in all animals, or " in common with other 
 animals." As such it " craves mainly its own 
 gratification/' like the desire for food, etc. It does 
 not go abroad seeking to perform deeds of charity 
 and kindness. Still it may be allowed a narrow 
 sphere of action ** innocently,'* and safely, — not so 
 with the higher sentiments. The reader can judge 
 whether I have done him justice in this abridgment. 
 I may mistake his meaning. I hope, for the honor 
 of humanity, that I do mistake it. For if this, as I 
 read it, is considered "innocent" in dual marriage, 
 we have fairly come to the main stone which too 
 often paves the hell of misdirected minds in our 
 exclusive marriages. Is it considered innocent 
 for married pairs to acton this matter, '^ mainly^* 
 from the cravings of, and to satisfy, mere animal and 
 fleshly gratification ? This may be proper for a 
 beast, for aught I know, but is it for a man ? Reader, 
 I may not understand Mr. Ballou ; but if he does 
 not mean just this — what can be the force of this 
 argument? He certainly seems to excommunicate 
 this part of the brain from the rest in a most won- 
 derful manner. He "puts it away" "with a ven- 
 geance." If I understand him, I should call such 
 a state of the sexual aflfections, lust — not love. 
 What is man ? Are not the higher sentiments so to 
 control the whole, as to humanize them, and raise 
 all parts practically above the beast? Is not the 
 man to sanctify the animal, in every fibre of his na- 
 ture, and in every act of that nature ? So we read 
 humanity — so we read the man. Nothing short of 
 this is man. Is any part of the man to be set apart 
 from — so put away from, — the real man, or whole 
 man, and placed under laws inharmonious with his 
 leading manhood ? So long as this is done, this 
 
.44 FREE LOVE. 
 
 part will remain an enemy to, and often successfully 
 reio'n over the best interests of that hio:her man- 
 hood. There is one partially redeeming suggestion 
 in Mr. Baliou's argument. He compares the desire 
 for coition with the desire for food, sleep, etc. Its 
 comparison with that for food is in part truthful, and 
 with that for sleep is, at least, very innocent. But 
 let us attend to the consistency or inconsistency 
 with himself and the good Book which he rever- 
 ences, in this comparison, while he so degrades it. 
 The Book enjoins upon man — not the beast — " to eat 
 and drink to God's glory. *' •" Whether therefore ye 
 eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory 
 of God.** This command is to the man, to control 
 all his propensities and their uses, in harmony with 
 Charity and the Higher Law. But where is Mr. 
 Baliou's consistency with himself? If Mr. B. will 
 admit the same non -exclusive action, as being the 
 law of the mind, and so proper in this propensity 
 that he allows in alimentiveness and every other 
 lower propensity, I will at once lay down my pen ; 
 or seek an opponent. That moment we are one. 
 Mr. Ballou knows this. 
 
 If he will allow Benevolence and Justice to con- 
 trol, and call to their aid the eMire use of this 
 faculty, as he does allow them to control, and so call 
 to their aid every other faculty of the man, every 
 other sentiment and propensity of the man, I can 
 write no more, we are one. This would be an entire 
 surrender to the whole meaning of all my previous 
 arguments. I would rejoice over his conversion. 
 But no ; he does not mean this. Then what does 
 he mean ? What ! Let him throw no random shot,s 
 at this with a mere fowling piece ; but make himself 
 consistent with himself, and it possible with any 
 
AN EXPLANATION. 46 
 
 rational and pliilosophical interpretation of the 
 mind. 
 
 But coitronary desire, when it "breaks bounds/* 
 is " criminal and pestilent, which is not the case 
 with the spiritual loves." So argues our friend, and 
 seems virtually to chailange a reply. It shall be 
 coming. It is more true of the spiritual love. There 
 ' is no faculty or part of a faculty in God's creation of 
 jmind, that works evil in a strictly healthy stale, 
 and within its own proper bounds. Sexual love 
 does not, in or out of legal marriage. In an un- 
 healthy state, and out of these bounds, all sentiments, 
 and all propensities work more or less evil — and are 
 more or less ** criminal and pestilent.'' The higher 
 sentiments have power in man to be more so than the 
 lower. So says nature. So says experience. So 
 says the Good Book. My friend asks, "Is it so with 
 the spiritual?" Most certainly. Nothing can be 
 more true. All the human blood shed upon heathen 
 altars, to appease the wrath of imaginary gods, has 
 been controlled by these faculties in both a diseased 
 state, and widely out of their true bounds. All 
 religious wars have been largely supplied from this 
 spiritual fountain of man's mind. This has been the 
 foundation of the Inquisition and all kindred institu- 
 tions. The Catholics believed it to be their business 
 to defend religion in this way. In this the religious 
 faculties were shockingly diseased, and were quite 
 out of their proper bounds, even if they had been 
 in health. So in all Protestant persecutions. All 
 of these were often as truly acting from the spiritual 
 or religious faculties of the mind, ia their professed 
 zeal for morals and religion, as is the lustful husband 
 acting from amativeness, when gratifying himself 
 at the expense of another, under tho cloak of connu- 
 
46 FREE LOVE. 
 
 bial love. These spiritual whoredoms, we say, are 
 as truly the fruits of diseased spiritualism, as are 
 the oft repeated sexual rapes, in or out of dual mar- 
 riage, the results of diseased amativeness. These 
 religious men believed they were acting from love 
 to virtue and the neighbor, and they were doing so 
 in about the same sense, and in no other, that these 
 sexual "criminal and pestilent" acts are from real 
 connubial love. I am understood an t challenge a 
 reply. Because one sentiment of the mind is differ- 
 ent in its nature from, and perhaps vastly higher 
 than another, it does not follow that such sentiments 
 are not alike non-exclusive. I have ** shown that 
 coitionary sexual love '' is equally non-exclusive in 
 its nature, as " piety, benevolence and friendship," 
 and that all of these loves are pure and chaste in a 
 healthy and normal state, and that in an abnormal 
 and perverted state, all are " criminal and pestilent." 
 Who will assume to pronounce God's works in na- 
 ture, or the fruits of his cleansing grace, " common 
 and unclean ? " 
 
 Mr. Ballou " contends that all coitionary sexual, 
 love, out of true dual wedlock, is, per se, adulterous." 
 I believe he has not argued directly to prove this 
 proposition. He has argued against analogies which 
 he supposed were designed to disprove it. We 
 should like to read an argument upon the nature of 
 the mind — for the mind is God's Book — directly/ to 
 prove that all such acts were adultery. That an act 
 that would be pure and chaste in dual order, and 
 which act, out of that order, would be impure and 
 unchaste. Can he not make plain the nature of the 
 change which such act would undergo in this 
 change of circumstances ? Will Mr. Ballou give us 
 a specimen of his mental logic, in an argument to 
 
AN EXPLANATION. 47 
 
 prove tliat all deviation from the dual order is, per se, 
 adulterous? We wait for it. 
 
 If a man varies from one, or dual marriage, while 
 his one mate lives to her exclusive pledge, bis act is, 
 per se, adulterous. But if she commit adultery, then 
 he may get a divorce from her and seek another. 
 jHe may now innocently embrace another in purity. 
 |If this one proves untrue, *' he may proceed as before 
 j — all in chastity" — and so on indefinitely. He 
 jreally enjoys a variety through the infidelity of his 
 irepeated selections. But his motives are good, and 
 Iso his act, in its change, is not adultery, per se. 
 I This is civilization, and the extreme doctrine of dual 
 imarriage. Mr. Greeley, and perhaps Mr. Ballou, 
 ! would bolt from this to them apparent looseness in 
 morals, were it not for their great reverence for the 
 Christ. In civilization, death — and many of these 
 jare the slow murders of lust — has and does often 
 jfree men to a great amount of variety in amativeness ; 
 jbut this, too, is not, per se, adultery. Though it be 
 I the tenth wife, it is dual wedlock still. But if a man 
 j but thrice in a lifetime idtimate his love, and does 
 I this in harmony with the Higher Law of Free Love, 
 jhe is, per se, an adulterer. This is a monster of 
 I inconsistency. And we have a right to look for its 
 i retraction, or its overwhelming proof, if such a 
 thing were possible. In such a case the proof 
 should come from a source which cannot mislead or 
 be misunderstood, to command respect. If Mr. 
 Ballou does not admit that the motive sanctifies the 
 act in this succession of wives, by what law does 
 he justify these as pure, and condemn a less variety 
 under the head of Free Love ? We press this call. 
 He has multiplied his statements that the coitionary 
 act is only lawful and pure in dual marriage, but he 
 
48 FREE LOVE. 
 
 has not attempted to give any proof of tliis except by 
 separating amativeness from the man, and degrading 
 it to the animal. This manner of handling it, if it 
 were proper, proves nothing as to the order of its 
 manifestations, as to duality or promiscuity. 
 
 In the following we come more fully to Mr. Ballou's 
 reply to ours, No. two. " Mr. Kent continues to con- 
 found things and terms which ought to be discrimina- 
 ted, as radically dissimilar. I cannot consent to it. He 
 makes no distinction between veneration and benev- 
 olence. He talks of loving a person's mentality, 
 spirituality, and morality just as if tiiis were loving 
 the individual being.'* Really, reader, Mr. Ballou 
 is too profound for me here. I did suppose that 
 loving all the parts or attributes of a being was loving 
 the individual being. But let us attend to him. 
 " But, admiring, venerating and delighting in these 
 is wholly different from loving the individual being, 
 in the sense of the second commandment." The 
 idea is good and truthful after all. It amounts to 
 this, Benevolence or Charity not like any other 
 faculty in the human brain, as to the object or motive 
 of its desire or love ; and that the second command 
 refers directly to this as being the highest moral 
 sentiment of the man. All good and truthful. We 
 have not hinted one word to the contrary. There 
 are no two sentiments of the brain that are alike iu 
 this sense. They are every one unlike another. 
 
 Again. — "Other loves [than benevolence] are 
 more or less limited and exclusive" — he names 
 *' Alimentiveness, Acquisitiveness," etc., etc. I 
 deny the truth of this, in the sense in which I have 
 argued for the non-exclusiveness of amativeness. 
 In that sense they are non-exclusive. Benevolence 
 is the feeling of mercy and goodness towards every 
 
AN EXPLANATION. 49 
 
 >bject which is capable of receiving such goodness, 
 and being benefited by it. It is exclusive to such 
 :objects or to such being, So alimentiveness gives 
 a taste for suitable food, no more. In a healthy state 
 (suitable food is the object it desires and takes pleasure 
 lin. It may vary its amount of delight in these 
 jvarious articles ; but it can never delight in the 
 rtaste of one article, in exclusion from, or more or less 
 ■than in another article, which is exactly like the fii-st ; 
 nor can the eater be benefited by the one and 
 injured by the other. This is impossible. The 
 rSame course of reasoning holds good towards every 
 jlother faculty. So I forbear. I pronounce his 
 [statement untrue, if he means it in the sense in 
 jwhich I have argued the opposite iu all my letters. 
 
 We come now to the argument in Mr. Bailouts 
 reply to our letter on the Fowlers. He states that 
 [** Amativeness in man has two radical character- 
 listic manifestations, — a sensual and a spiritual." 
 I That the *' sensual manifestation is rightful and 
 jinnocent only in true dual marriage;'' *'but that its 
 imental and spiritual manifestation, besides having 
 one sacred connubial center, has various legitimate 
 concentric spheres.'* To prove the above proposi- 
 tion, viz : That sensual Amativeness is not " co- 
 extensive with its spiritual," and that the former 
 manifestation can be '* rightful and innocent only in 
 dual marriage,'' he proceeds, as in a former letter, 
 to divorce a fractional part of amativeness, and to 
 put it on the plane with the animal. I give his 
 words : ** Amativeness, as to its lower develop- 
 ments and sensual manifestations, is properly an 
 animal propensity. Man has it in common with all 
 the lower animals. Amativeness, in its highest 
 5 
 
SQi FREE LOVE. 
 
 developments and manifestations, is proper to man 
 as a spiritual and moral intelligence. The animals 
 are incapable of spiritual amativeness. The more 
 animal-humans are capable of it only in a low 
 degree, and many have scarcely a conception of it, 
 much less a decent appreciation. It is plain, then, 
 that sensual amativeness exists and ultimates itself 
 without spiritual amativeness, as in beasts and very 
 sensual humans.'* Really, if these statements are 
 true, some persons, who are in the form of men. are 
 not, correctly speaking, men. Either they were 
 never finished, or they have become so diseased 
 that their manhood is dead and gone. Nothing but 
 the beast-man remains to animate the material form. 
 The breath of God, which was to stamp his image, 
 is gone. But what has this essence of lust to do 
 with the doctrines of Free Love ? Must we come 
 to this for our analogies and arguments ? Shall in- 
 humans and beasts be summoned upon the stand to 
 settle the higher law of progressed and healthy 
 humanity ? We are convinced that Mr. Ballou is 
 serious in this kind of analogy, and we submit to 
 follow. Such reasoning as this has been so far his 
 first and main argument. We have replied to it 
 part, when found in a former letter. We will e 
 deavor to do it justice here. First, then, we consent, 
 for the sake of the argument, to the putting awa}'' of 
 sensual amativeness. (To do which we believe to 
 be a natural impossibility ; and if it were possible, in 
 man, it would be ' adultery, per se/) What does Mr. 
 Ballou gain in this argument ? He separates the 
 lower of amativeness from, the higher, and puts it 
 under laws inharmonious with the higher, because 
 the former is animal. If this were proper, it might 
 in part destroy my argument from analogy, but it 
 
I 
 
 AN EXPLANATION. 51 
 
 ould prove nothing against my doctrine, and 
 iiothing in favor of his. Let us see where his 
 malogy, in comparing man on this point with the 
 )east, will carry him. However distasteful this may 
 )e to us, or to the more refined feelings of the 
 *eader, it seems to be necessary, and so we hope it 
 nay prove profitable. We consent then, Mr. BaUou, 
 ;o go with you into the field of animal life. We are 
 i^ound to look into the nature and order of the love 
 relations of animal ; to look into the laws of their 
 ,toarriage. We find here, if we take the whole 
 1 ["ange, that variety is the rule of love, and at the 
 ; baost a partial duality is the exception. God has so 
 , jbreated, and we will not arraign his wisdom. Rea- 
 , ler, we are now in the presence of beasts and birds, 
 —•life that walks, and life that flies. There is no 
 iidultery here. If any man think evil, the evil is in 
 himself. These, God's creatures, are right. We find 
 imativeness an upper and leading faculty, all right 
 'or beasts. So its action is right for beasts. Not 
 50 in man. In him it is behind and below in 
 pie brain, and so should not lead and control. 
 Then is the analogy we are pursuing truth- 
 ■ul ? We think not. But we are pledged to 
 bllow it to the bottom of our friend's argument. We 
 3ress the inquiry, then, upon our friend. Are the 
 ove ultimations of animals generally exclusive and 
 lual ? We expect a catagorical reply and its proo'*. 
 3ur opponent, we hope, will be consistent with his 
 mimal analogies. Again, are these ultimations of 
 ove or passion less elevated and less proper, when 
 hej are in the order of variety, and so in harmony 
 mth what seems to be the rule of their natures, 
 ihan when they manifest themselves in a partially, 
 md perhaps sometimes entirely in an exclusively 
 
62 FREE LOVE. 
 
 dual order, and so in harmony with what seems t 
 be at least the law of exception, even among animals 
 Our friend has insisted on taking us to the animal t 
 settle the laws for man — and we now wish to hay 
 full justice done to his arguments, so we urge thesj 
 questions upon him. If we draw any inference 
 from the animal analogy, it is that man will com pre 
 hend all orders, or every variety of order, unless h 
 has outgrown the exceptional law of animals. ^ 
 a fact, man in his nature does comprehend the entii 
 natures of all below him. So says science. Hi 
 analogy, carried out, if it were truthful, would favc 
 our views vastly more than his. But we have n( 
 felt the need of such aid. It is the love relations q 
 man which we wish to elevate and harmonize, an 
 we think this should be settled solely by the laws o 
 man's mind. Any truthful appeal to the analogy 
 the law of animal creation, can never favor exclusiv 
 dual marriage, but its opposite. We pledge ou 
 selves to sustain this proposition when it is furthe 
 called for. I return now to say to the reader, th^ 
 this whole argument of two radical and diveri^ 
 manifestations of amativeness in man, is unphilc 
 sophical and absurd. If such a separation wei; 
 possible, it would leave the man in a perverted an* 
 abnormal state. But it is not true that any ma 
 ever ultimates love entirely disconnected with ii 
 spiritual element. I will demonstrate this statemeni 
 If God had made this possible — the race in h< 
 propagations might so retrograde as to become beasts, 
 or something like them, and so on still lower. In 
 this case there would be an absolute law of 
 retrogression, instead of a law of progression in 
 man. The offspring of such coition could not be* 
 human ; as like will beget its like. Does the reader 
 
 tsTi 
 
AX EXPLANATION. 53 
 
 ask for more ? We are most glad to know, for the 
 hopes of humanity, that such a separation of a 
 faculty, or of the faculties, is impossible, and so the 
 idea is most absurd. We proceed in our quotations : 
 '' Sexual coition is the natural, universal, uniform 
 and inevitable ultimate of sensul amativeness." 
 **But how is it with spiritual amativeness ? It may 
 descend into, blend with, and santify sensual Ama- 
 tiveness as in the case of the true dual marriage. 
 But sexual coition is not its own proper and inevi- 
 table ultimate." We wait almost impatiently for 
 proof that this spiritual love may not sanctify the 
 non-exclusive manifestations of this sexual love. In 
 every reply Mr. Ballou assumes the only point to be 
 proved on his part. We tell the reader that this 
 higher lore will more fully sanctify the lower, when 
 the lower acts behind and in harmony with the laws 
 of the higher, and we argue directly to prove it. 
 We let the lower strengthen the higher, and receive 
 its blessing by its absolute submission to the laws 
 of the higher, and not the higher come down to 
 bless the flesh, by submissionn and conformity to the 
 lower law, or to the supposed lower law. We now 
 come to deny our brother's main proposition in the 
 quotation. We contend that coition is a natural 
 ultimate of spiritual love. That the leading attribute 
 of conjugal love, in a healthy state, is spiritual ; 
 that it is non-exclusive, and that it is naturally 
 coitionary in its ultimates. Sensual love is some- 
 times and in some cases partially satisfied by various 
 little love manifestations short of coition. It often 
 is comparatively so, without any material manifesta- 
 tions. It is in youth. So spiritual love is often 
 comparatively satisfied without the act of coition. 
 But no sexual love in any of its phases can be full 
 6* 
 
64 FREE LOVE. 
 
 and complete without its coitionary ultimate. Witb 
 out this it never attains to its hight, perfection ani 
 entireness. Mr. Ballou represents the spiritual at 
 descending to bless and sanctify the sensual in duall 
 marriage. Will he deny that the spiritual love is atl 
 home in, and is a leading attribute in the conjugal ?l 
 Will he deny that spiritual love is its very essencol 
 and inner hfe ? His language plainly conveys thisl 
 idea ; that it is not. This is a vital point. We j 
 hope our friend and the reader will bear with the! 
 closeness with which we pursue this subject, if \t\ 
 does occupy some space. We have meant to so J 
 write our proposition for this discussion that we and 
 our opponent should be obliged to grapple with the 
 very heart of the whole controversy, with the age, 
 and with reformers, touching this subject of sub- 
 jects — marriage. We must not pass it superficially. 
 We certainly understand our opponent to deny the 
 vital and essential relations of spiritual amative- 
 ness, in constituting the leading substance of coition- 
 ary and so connubial love. I think he does not 
 harmonize on this with the Fowlers ; with Sweden- 
 borg he does not, and many others of his dual order, 
 but much nearer with the Shakers. I^o matter. 
 What is truth ? With us, connubiality is not 
 synonymous with sensuality. We promise thfe 
 reader that when we are converted to this doctrine, 
 we shall join the Shakers, at once, on this subject. 
 But in the name of humanity, we protest against the 
 whole of it. Coition, for its most material object — 
 the procreation of offspring — should be, in its 
 leading substance and features, spiritual. As man 
 is a unit, and as he is more spiritual than animal or 
 sensual, so in his act to beget his like, it should be 
 more spiritual than sensual. I speak of the true 
 
AN EXPLANATION. 66 
 
 man, and I still insist on the analogy, that the lower 
 man should keep behind, and harmonize with, the 
 higher. If Mr. Ballou still insists that my human 
 analogy is false ; can he not give us a better substi- 
 tute in disproving it than his analogy of man and 
 animals in common ? We have read his replies with 
 our utmost care, and read them asrain and ap-ain, 
 and we affirm that there is not one word of direct 
 argument to prove the impropriety of a variety in 
 connubial love. He repeats the statements of his 
 belief that coitionary love should only be in true dual 
 marriage ; and tries to destroy my analogy by intro- 
 ducing another. But were I to admit the force of 
 his animal analogy, and every word of real argu- 
 ment in his letters, even then he has not taken the 
 first step to prove his proposition, and his exclusively 
 dual order. Where is the proof of his *' adultery, 
 ]per se,''' in a variety in love ultimates? Not a line 
 can I find. In behalf of the friends of Free Love, 
 whose doctrine and practice he has formerly declared 
 to be the foulest of the foul, and adultery by itself, 
 I ask him to prove his position in season for a reply 
 before this discussion closes. In view of his past 
 relations to this subject, and of his present position, 
 as an opponent of Frfee Love, it is not enough that 
 he satisfy himself in simply replying to my argu- 
 ments. The discussion was proposed as a mutual 
 ajQfair, between friends, to promote the cause of truth, 
 each of us believing, as I trust, that truth would be 
 elicited by it, whether our opinions were all saved 
 or not. By proof I mean more especially direct 
 argument from the laws of mind, not mere inferences 
 from history. I have not ti'oubled the reader with 
 the foul history of dual marriage, as a presumptive 
 argument for the trial of Free Love. 
 
56 FREE LOVE. 
 
 Because all of the higher and spiritual faculties 
 are more or less non-exclusive, and in that sense 
 universal in their nature, it does not follow as a 
 practical fact that they should ultimate themselves 
 to the same extent. This is naturally impossible. I 
 love all the human brotherhood, non-exclusively, as 
 I have used this latter word in this discussion, yet I 
 pass multitudes with a bare recognition. I carry out 
 no particular acts of kindness, or *' special and kind 
 attentions.'* It is not necessary or called for. So 
 a man may love woman as such, with a true 
 universal, or non-exclusive connubial love, and 
 it be impossible and undesirable to so universally 
 consummate this love ; while absolute exclusiveness 
 would be unnatural in either case — in any of the 
 loves. There are mental laws and circumstances 
 which should harmoniously settle each man*s ac- 
 tual and more intimate associates, in his acts of 
 social enjoyment, or acts of charitable utility. And 
 yet he is not absolutely exclusive in any or all of 
 these faculties. The well-developed mind is never 
 universal or absolutely exclusive as to his associates 
 in relation to the human brotherhood — or in any of 
 the social or love relation. These remarks have had 
 reference to some part of Mr. Bailouts reply, which 
 I thought it not necessary to quote. 
 
 By the better laws of civihzation, with woman in 
 general, I may bow the knee before God in social 
 prayer in freedom ; I may enjoy mental repasts with 
 her in freedom. Benevolence may give to her the 
 fruits of acquisitiveness in freedom; charity and 
 justice may call to their aid all the power and utility 
 in destructiveness and combativeness for the protec- 
 tion and defense of all women in freedom ; I may 
 gratuitously supply the wants of inhabit! veness and 
 
AN EPXLANATION. 67 
 
 alimentiveness in her in freedom ; I may give tlie ad- 
 hesive kiss to all in freedom ; I may supply any child 
 from my paternal fount in freedom : I may supply 
 my own paternal desire by the caressing or adoption 
 of any child in freedom. What may we not do and 
 enjoy innocently in freedom, by the laws of the 
 Fowlers, Mr. Ballou and civilization? Every thing 
 except a fractional part of a sentiment called ama- 
 tiveness, all else is non-exclusive, or absolutely free 
 in a healthy state, or under the control of the higher 
 man. For every other freedom is allowed to be 
 health, and health is allowed to be freedom. For 
 every other absolute exclusiveness is considered a 
 disease. For this fraction of the brain, anything but 
 entire exclusiveness is disease, per se. This fraction 
 is cut off from its other and higher half, and held in 
 bonds as a criminal. *'It has been a criminal.** 
 Well, why not put the whole man in bonds ? Every 
 faculty, and every part of a faculty, has been wo- 
 fully criminal. Why not rush back to slavery and 
 the dark ages for our laws of safety ? ** All men, 
 except those who govern the rest, are, per se, dan- 
 gerous in freedom !'* It requires strong proof to 
 sustain such monstrous inconsistency. The past, with 
 her pall of blackness still hanging over her, cannot 
 prove it. The future will laugh at it with pity and 
 astonishment. 
 
58 TREK LOVB. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MR. BALLOU CONTINUED. HIS BOOK. 
 
 Mr. Ballou asks, in our discussion, what " need " 
 there is of Free Love, — ^and what " good *' will come 
 of it ? Even admitting my mind argument, of the 
 non-exclusive nature of the connubial attraction, 
 he virtually asks what utility will come of such free^ 
 dom. Others, who read us, will ask the same question. 
 'We reply — the normal action of every faculty and 
 -every law of mind, is always of utility. A similar 
 -"need*' exits, and a similar "good*' will follow the 
 .freeing of this, which results from the free action 
 ■ of every other faculty. Such freedom is always 
 . strengthenings refining ^ and elevating. It is so, and 
 -will be so on this, in its temperate, healthy, and free 
 •action. The diseased action of any faculty may 
 bring untold evil. One man, or one woman, may 
 ilive alone — a hermit. So one man and one wo- 
 man may live in entire isolation from all other 
 society ; but such dual hermitage is not natural. It 
 more or less starves all the human faculties. That 
 state of mind which, from choice, selects such a 
 situation, is sickly and contracted. No man and 
 woman can progress, and elevate themselves, as 
 easily, and as fully, in such disconnection from all 
 i others. A varietv in the action of every feature of 
 
MR. BALLOU. 69 
 
 connubial love, is refining and elevating. Love 
 always elevates and refines. Of course, a variety in 
 this should be governed by the most exalted wis- 
 dom. So should the action, and the variety in 
 adhesiveness. When, and so far as, the latter is not, 
 it dissipates and debases. Each faculty has its 
 proper laws, and its ^'natural restraints y'^ but not to 
 absolute exclusiveness. Some minds, in a healthy 
 state, require more society than others. I will be 
 understood, if I have to write " line upon line — 
 precept upon precept." We insist that, as our 
 philosophy deals alike with every faculty, and is in 
 harmony with itself, while that of our opponents 
 does not — and is not, — it is for those who make the 
 exceptloriy to prove their exception. And we urge — 
 we entreat the friends of exclusive marriage, to 
 deal less with uncertain consequences^ and more 
 with God's eternal laws of order," as read in the 
 philosophy of mind. We here say — once, and we 
 hope, for all, — we do not consider mere inferences 
 from history, especially any history which we can 
 obtain, as direct argument, or as sufficient to meet 
 and refute the settled or sure princples of mind. 
 
 One more allusion to the discussion, and we pass 
 to Mr. Bailouts book. We record a noticable coin- 
 cidence. While Mr. B. was laboring to destroy our 
 analogy between the human faculties, by comparing 
 the act of coition in man " with animals in com- 
 mon,*' his friend Hewitt was arguing in his (Mr. 
 
60 FREE LOVE. 
 
 Hewitt's) paper, in opposition to certain supposed or 
 real Free Love defenders, — that because animals 
 were promiscuous, it was no evidence that man 
 should be. Not one word does Mr. H. write directly 
 to prove his own dual order. (On what grounds 
 shall this always be taken for granted ?) A Lady 
 steps in here, and intimates, if man was like the 
 animals, there would be no good objection to a 
 "variety.'' Our unknown fair one, (she does not 
 favor us with her name) writes, — "Remove the 
 restraints of reason and conscience imposed by love, 
 and there is no reason why animal passion should 
 not claim a variety." To us this is an entire nega- 
 tion of Mr. Ballou's analogy, — and yet he becomes her 
 very ready endorser. (See P. Christian, Dec. 30, 
 1854.) So does Mr. Wright. Where shall we find 
 our opponents in relation to this animal argument? 
 We hope their whereabouts will be better settled on 
 so important a point, before we have occasion to 
 print another edition of our book. It will so much 
 shorten our labor. We did not allude to the animal^ 
 except in reply to Mr. Ballou. We did not consider 
 it necessary in a discussion about man. Still it was 
 not improper. We ask our opponents then what 
 position the animal is to hold in the future of this 
 controversy. We choose at present io follow. It is 
 not fair that the same opponent should hang on to 
 these opposite horns at the same time, or change as 
 seeming necessity requires. 
 
MR. BALLOU. ^I 
 
 Reader, in making the use wliich I have of tlie 
 discussion, — I have taken the utmost care not to do 
 Mr. Ballou any injustice, and if, in any thing, or in 
 any statement, he thinks I am incoorrect, I ask 
 him to point it out to me, and I will explain or I'c- 
 tract, as the truth may require. Though "\ve are 
 wide apart as professed reformers, I am still his 
 personal friend, and I suppose him to be a friend to 
 me. We both deal sharply with what we conceive 
 to be the errors and faults of our friends. Mr. 
 Ballou had felt it to be his duty, as a leader and re- 
 former, (I consider him a law reformer), to arraign 
 and condemn all Free Love doctrines and practices. 
 This became more frequent and severe, in his paper. 
 I could and did sympathise with him in part, in re- 
 lation to some of the evils connected with Free Love, 
 as with dual marriage, in the present undeveloped 
 and perverted state of the race. But he made no 
 exception. He seemed to feel himJelf called in 
 conscience to do what he could to exterminate it, as 
 a whole, and in all of its parts. I visited him. We 
 spent hours in friendly, but in private discussion. 
 I asked hini, if ever he gave the subject a full and 
 fair hearing in his paper, as he had before this 
 given ever}^ other question of great interest, — to 
 discuss it with me. When he thought the time had 
 come, and was at leasure to do so, he accepted my 
 friendly challenge, and the discussion followed. 
 
 I fully admit there are many evils now connected 
 6 
 
a FREE LOVE. 
 
 with Free Love. Injustice is sometimes done under 
 its cloak. But I believe its friends will *• learn wis- 
 dom by the things which they suffer," and rise to a 
 greater and better harmony. I know some have so 
 riseii. So far, the various efforts at community 
 have caused great suffering and loss of property. 
 Perhaps some half a million has been expended, and 
 some over twenty societies failed, during the last 
 twenty years. And yet we think the effort has been 
 worth all it has cost. Free Love has not done as bad, 
 or been more a failure. Community and Free Love, 
 are both aUve and in good health in some places. 
 The real good in both will be saved, and rise. The 
 chaff should be blown away by the winnowing of 
 Providence. So let it be. We were some disap- 
 pointed in Mr. Ballou on the subject of our discus- 
 sion, after all, but it was not his fault. He had 
 always been a frank and open spoken man on all 
 subjects which he met. 
 
 But to his book. We did not allude to Mr. Ballou, 
 when speaking in our prefece of refiyrm writers on 
 marriage. We considered him, on this subject, and 
 many others, more nearly allied to the past. In most 
 of his writings he stereotypes to the teachings of 
 an age, almost two thousand years ago, and seldom 
 to the higher law and more spiritual truths of that. 
 Still farther back, he ** builds tabernacles to Moses 
 and Ellas,'* as well as to *' Christ." This he does 
 to the law phase of Christ's teachings. For Christ 
 
MR. BALLOU. 6$ 
 
 "was made unaer the law/* and spoke under it, and 
 in parables. He wore the ** veil/* as did Moses, to still 
 hide from the many the higher glories of the com- 
 ing gospel. He still preached law to the " lawless 
 and disobedient.** (I presume Mr. Ballou will con- 
 sider the above as a compliment to him. And it 
 real y stand so in the eyes of the majority.) But 
 we shall proceed to our views of his case, and his 
 course. He talks much in his book of going 
 back to "fundamental principles.** The real import 
 of this, to us, is simply his opinion as to the main 
 truths of the Bible. To me, he seems wholly in- 
 capable of going below and above all opinions, to 
 the absolute laws of mind ; incapable of going back 
 of all revealed religion, to the Author of it ; of sim- 
 ply reading nature in nature's book. He has been 
 called **' the logician.** He is comparativly logical 
 in discussing theology, so called, but never upon 
 the deep principles of philosophy. He is superficial, 
 and never at home, in the latter. On turning to the 
 pages of his book (see 361) on which he records 
 his objections to Free Love, I was disappointed. I 
 had forgotten that, after so fully denouncing our 
 views, he did not even write the first sentence of 
 argument to disprove them from the laws of mind. 
 If such is there, we have failed to see it. Such as 
 it is, I will give it a passing notice. And yet, I 
 should not, in my present book, if it had emanated 
 from an author of less note. 
 
64 FREE LOVE. 
 
 Mr. Ballou, 1, Gives his objections to Polygamy, 
 in which we are happy to agree with him. 
 
 ** 2, Promiscuity of intimate sexual communion is 
 revolting and degrading to pure minded loves. It 
 is unnatural. It comes from perverted amativeness, 
 despotism, artificial education, sophistication, or 
 arbitrary custom.*' * * * By *' promiscuity,** 
 Mr. B. means the least deviation from entire exclu- 
 siveness. More of the .same sort follows our quota- 
 tion. We simply reply to it all, there is not absolutely 
 and necessarily one word of truth in it. Lust is 
 ** revolting** always **toa pure minded Lover; — ** 
 Love never. We give assertion for assertion. 
 
 " 3, Sexual promiscuity inevitably tends to moral 
 and social disorder. It sophisticates, perverts and 
 demoralizes its practitioners. It stimulates and con- 
 firms the lust of variety.** * * * * 
 
 We are not required to do more than to pro- 
 nounce all this false. Mr. Ballou always and every- 
 where takes the whole point of difference between 
 him and the friends of Free Love for granted. 
 Namely : That the attraction for a variety is lust : 
 ** The lust of variety.'* Before this, he has taken 
 his position, and pronounced every such act of 
 variety "adultry, per se.'' Here, in the presence 
 of his book, I again challenge him or his friends, to 
 show the first line of his, of direct argument of any 
 kind, to prove his position ; or to show one sentence 
 where it is not taken for granted. He begs the 
 
MR. BALLOU. ^ 
 
 entire question. In view of his position in the age 
 as a professed reformer, and of his long and repeated 
 denunciation of our principles on this subject, we 
 have a right to ask and expect more. 
 
 He has written what he, and perhaps some of his 
 friends, may consider argument. In justice to him, 
 the reader should know that he has abundantly ap- 
 pealed to the feelings and instincts of men. To 
 what we shall call, to a greater or less extent, un^ 
 developed, sicMy, and perverted mind. He becomes 
 sponsor for this, and pronounces it pure. **The 
 natural instincts of true love are against it,'* — against 
 non-exclusiveness, or our freedom. He asserts that 
 this "instinct is not selfish, but implanted by God 
 to ensure moral and social order." We tell him 
 that a morbid sickly state of mind knows no abso- 
 lute "purity,** or an entirely normal development of 
 "love.** We admit that the undeveloped "instincts" 
 of a misguided amativeness, are sometimes against 
 our views. We find men on this, as he finds them 
 on war, and resistance of evil ; and he echoes back 
 to us on this all of their old arguments to him, in 
 defence of war, or an injurious resistance. They 
 tell him, the " instincts *' of man are against him, — 
 or are in favor of resisting to the death, when neces- 
 sary, an intruding enemy. That this instinct 
 of self-preservation, is "unselfish, and from God," 
 and shows his will as to the true manner of keeping 
 order." This injurious resistance is more often re- 
 6* 
 
I' 
 
 Q^ FREE LOVE. 
 
 sorted to in defence of Mr. B.'s exclusive " instinct' 
 in marriage, than any where else. We congratula 
 him in this case — the marriage question — on find- 
 ing himself with the majority, and entirely on the 
 2'>opular side. 
 
 But to his book — " amativeness, like all the pas- 
 sional appetites, has no inherent self-government." 
 True. * * * ''safety lies in subordinating am- 
 ativeness strictly to reason and the moral senti- 
 ments." True, it always is in a strictly healthy 
 mind ; — in a perfect development of connubial love. 
 Look at Mr. B.*s consistency ! He truthfully com- 
 pares amativeness to all the other "passional 
 appetites." His "reason and moral sentiments," 
 put every other "passion and appetite " w^zcfer non- 
 exclusive laws ; — and he would consider the man as 
 void of both " reason and moral sentiments," who 
 should think of doing otherwise. Then he places 
 amativeness, or a part of it, under entire exclusive 
 law. Reader, look at the depth and logic in this 1 
 It is " simply contemptible." An appeal to sickly 
 instinct is not sufficient to justify so irrational a 
 position. Eeason and a healthy instinct repudiates it 
 all. 
 
 Mr. Ballon goes on at some length, to give his 
 views of the terrible consequences, which, he thinks 
 must follow the spread of Free Love. As to this, 
 we know more about it than our friend. He ex- 
 communicates his sexual slaves, who rebel under 
 
MR. BALLOU. OT 
 
 the marriage yoke.''* We have long since freed 
 ours from that yoke. We know something of the 
 society of our modern anti-exclusive Jamaica's. *ff 
 Again — " 4, Sexual promiscuity must degrade and 
 oppress woman.'' Reader, in the book, there is 
 nearly two pages, following the above proposition, 
 of his sort of argument. Having settled it in his 
 own mind that all deviation from dual order is the 
 promptings of lust, he goes on to describe and dis- 
 cuss the sure consequences of an entire reign of 
 lust. Admitting his premises, his conclusions are 
 safe. If any reader has his book, he can turn to it. 
 (It is aside from the first intention of our book to 
 give all of these secondary, but still important 
 questions, a full place. Others have written upon 
 them better than we could do, and we must refer 
 the reader to them. We do not desire to supercede 
 any other publication which has gone before us. 
 We refer the reader to a Tract, containing a dis- 
 cussion between "Stephen P. Andrews, Henry 
 James, and Horace Greeley," and published by Mr. 
 Andrews ; and to letters since published in the 
 Tribune, and Mr. Andrew's reply in Nichols' Jour- 
 nal. Nowhere else can both sides be found better 
 handled. I ought to add — Mr. Nichols' book on 
 Marriage, replies at some length to such conserva- 
 tive objections as we find in Mr. Ballou's book. I 
 
 * I simply refer to an act of his society in dismissing a 
 member. 
 
IP FREE LOVE. 
 
 iwoula meet them with pleasure, in any paper open 
 <to me. But I am set against making my present 
 work too long. I confess it to be a book of " one 
 idea.*' But it is a central, a pivotal, idea — and 
 the one on which the main hinge of civilization 
 hangs. 
 
 Mr. Ballon does not diiSfer as much from us as at 
 first sight it would appear, in view of our contra- 
 dictions of him. He, in every line, is in truth, 
 writinof of diseased amativeness : — of what Mr. 
 Davis calls "Extremeism.'' He does not seem to 
 me to have the most distant conception of what I 
 call entire health. He always, or nearly always^ 
 degrades amativeness. We confess, in the past, it 
 has degraded itself. Still we write of a healthy 
 mind : — of a healthy attraction. We write of love, 
 not lust. Love is healthy, and is under the control 
 of the wisdom of reason, and the moral sentiments ; 
 and not under " carnality." The reign of sexual 
 selfishness, we do not call a healthy connubial love. 
 We deprecate the morbid and irregular action of any 
 faculty. Such fruits are often terrible. Too ter- 
 rible for human pen to describe. Mr. Ballou and 
 ourselves agree that as a matter of fact, amativeness, 
 as well as all other sentiments, have been, and still 
 are, more or less diseased. He leaves no room, ex* 
 cept through law, — the law of exclusive marriage — 
 for its coming health. If it were here our first 
 object to discuss the way of salvation for so sickly a 
 
MR. BALLOU. 9i 
 
 race, we, most certainly, should propose to mix a 
 little gospel freedom with our remedies. He insists 
 that any deviation from absolute exclusiveness will 
 increase the malady. And, like the Physician, who 
 should advise to the gratification of the craving of 
 a dispeptic stomach for its cure, he insists upon 
 compliance with what to us are the immoral 
 cravings of a worse than dispeptic " instinct," 
 as a means to its desired health. Perhaps even 
 lie does not mean all this. He may have little 
 hope of a coming cure ; and so labors more to 
 stay its further encroachments. In one point of 
 view he is consistent with himself. Though a non- 
 resistant, he believes in confining criminals, — ^dan- 
 gerous criminals. He finds amativeness to be such 
 a criminal. So it is at least wise to confine it to the 
 exclusive marriage yoke. I must confess to no little 
 sympathy with him in this, when, and so far as it is 
 thus ungovernable and dangerously criminal. I am 
 not disposed to quarrel with the past for her sexual 
 discipline. Not in the main, with the shakers. It 
 is even possible, that Jesus was right in favoring, — 
 in speaking favorably of a man's making himself a 
 literal " Eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake," 
 or the sake of purity, peace, and happiness. This, 
 was truly an unnatural remedy, to meet a very bad 
 and perhaps really an unnatural disease ; — and pos- 
 sibly better than the entire reign of lust. Perhaps 
 better than to commit, and be hung for rape. This 
 
70 FREE LOVE. 
 
 was literally removing, an ''offending" member. 
 I say then, in view of the terrible diseases of the 
 past, I will not judge the sufferer too harshly, for 
 her equally terrible remedies, though they may seem 
 to me unnatural and unphilosophical. They could 
 not do as we can do. I will respect Jesus in living 
 a practical life, like the sect of Esses of his day, — 
 and not marrying in any form ; — if, on the whole, he 
 considered it wise and best so to do. His life 
 lacked a wholeness andentirenessin development and 
 experience. But perhaps it was the best he could 
 then do. So we judge not the past. My great 
 objection to Mr. Ballou is, that he does not leave 
 room in his marriage teachings for man's progres- 
 sion and "restoration ;*' for all which is really his 
 present and coming health. Even if the exclusive 
 dual instinct in the marriages of civilization has, 
 on the whole, been the best for the plane of civiliza- 
 tion — of this we are not sure, and so do not judge, 
 that instinct is not adapted to, or suitable for the har- 
 mony of the future. It will fall before it. So, if Mr. 
 Ballou still feels it to be his duty to represent the 
 ** Moses '* of this age, and make laws, and write for 
 the confinement of the "animal*' — man, I would 
 fain persuade him to leave room in his faith, and in 
 his propositions, for me and my friends, to write in 
 defence of freedom for the God-man. God bless the 
 Moses of each a^e. But a double blessinor will ever 
 attend the Christ — and the Christs of each as-o. 
 
MR. BALLOF. ff 
 
 Ishmael should not war against Isaac, — nor should 
 Isaac be unjust to Ishmael ; — even though the one 
 does represent bondage, and the other freedom. 
 
 In short, Mr. B., on the subject of exclusive 
 marriage, writes as we might suppose any good con- 
 servative mind would have done, during the past 
 few hundred years. I suppose he, as well as we, 
 consider it safe to follow "fundamental principles," 
 or the " eternal laws of order," over all consequences. 
 We wish to call him back to the original — so far as 
 man is concerned — source of, and to the search for, 
 these laws. We say, then, if he will once more 
 take his pen, and attempt either or all of the fol- 
 lowing things : — 1st, To reply to my mind argu- 
 ment — of the non-exclusive nature of the attraction 
 of each and every part of the human brain, (as I 
 have made my meaning understood on that propo- 
 sition) ; or 2nd, If he should admit my first propo- 
 sition, show the higher or lower law in mind, which 
 should confine any part of it over its normal attrac- 
 tion ; or 3d, Give the mind law which proves his 
 position — that all variety is, '^per se, more or less 
 adulterous.'* I say, if Mr. B. will do either, or all 
 of the above, I will meet him to reply, or to sur- 
 render. Till then, I respectfully take leave of him. 
 It is high time the friends of exclusive marriage 
 were put directly upon the defence of their own 
 system. Though their possession has been long, 
 it has never been entirely "peaceable," but under 
 
72 FREE LOVE. 
 
 repeated protests. In every past age, it has been 
 more or less " in law." As a friend of Free Love, 
 we summon our opponents before the higher court of 
 mental philosophy. 
 
 The reader will bear with a little illustration of the 
 general tone and style of the conservative mind in 
 civilization towards the rising Free Love. It comes 
 in my '^Liberator,'* and is so short, and so much to 
 the point, I cannot resist the temptation to copy it. 
 
 " LIBERTY A UNIVERSAL CURSE." 
 
 Hear the language of the Richmond Enquirer : — 
 " Crime, f^imine, ignorance, anarchy, infidelity, and 
 revolution, stare the reader in the face on every page 
 of universal liberty. A single season of want in Ire- 
 land and Scotland will exhibit more human suffering 
 than a Mrs. Stowe could glean from the annals of 
 slavery through all time and through all countries. 
 The South owes it to herself to throw free society on 
 the defensive. Slave society is co-extensive with man 
 in time and space. It must be natural, or man must 
 be an unnatural being. It is recognized and author- 
 ized by the Bible, and was ordained of God. Free 
 society is a little experiment, a departure from nature, 
 that claims no Divine authority, and very little of 
 human authority. 
 
 ** We put the question to all abolitionists : What 
 have been the results of this little experiment ? It 
 is you who should defend yourselves — not us. 
 Human experience, and practice, and divine author- 
 ity are on our side. You must make out a strong 
 case, in order to justify the injustice of such author- 
 ities. Instead of southern men beinof called out to 
 
MR. BALLOU. 73 
 
 lecture in defence of slavery, northern men should 
 be invoked to defend their institutions." 
 
 Re.'illy, the application is so plain, that it hardly 
 needs any aid from us. The reader can only sub- 
 stitute /r^<? love in the place of "universal liberty;** 
 civilization for "south;'* love for "society;** the 
 marriage institution for " slave society ;*' free loveites 
 for "abolitionists,** etc. Please read our extract 
 again with the above substitutions, and we promise 
 \t will make a perfect fit for nearly every con- 
 servative writer against Free Love. 
 
 But we are among the impertinent and meddle- 
 some "abolitionists'* free loveites ; and deny all 
 exclusive titles to sex. We have returned, in our 
 book, the demand upon civilization, and called upon 
 her to defend herself against the coming light and 
 rights of Free Love. Her age is admitted, but her 
 character for peace and purity has not been the best, 
 and she must and will make room for a larger " ex- 
 periment** in sexual freedom. 
 7 
 
74 FREE LOVE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MR. HKNRY C. WRIGHT A REVIEW* " WHAT IS 
 
 MARRIAGE?" 
 
 I SHALL quote very little of Mr. Wright's reply to 
 the above question. It is not necessary. I repeat, 
 my book is not designed to be a substitute for any 
 which has preceded it. I take it for granted that 
 my readers have read these several books. Those 
 who have not, will not, of course, find my reference 
 to them of as much interest. Still, they will not 
 be lost to such. I cannot too strongly urge my 
 readers to read these books on Marriage, if they 
 have not. None can afford to do without them. 
 There is too much real value in them ; and of that 
 sort which is generally most needed. Mr. Wright's 
 book was written to elevate love and marriage, and 
 «o to elevate the offspring of marriage. It was 
 written for, and suited to, diseased and undevel- 
 oped humanity ; and nothing is more needed. 
 Comparatively, it was nobly executed. Mr. Wright 
 does seem to reach, to some extent, the true 
 features of connubial love. He reaches what I will 
 call the first germ, or the childhood of marriage. 
 This is much in advance of the large class for whom 
 he wrote ; and perhaps all they could bear. With 
 
 * See part II. Letter 2, of his book. 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. TS 
 
 nearly every feature of his love -marriage, except its 
 exclusiveness, I can harmoinze. But in most every 
 line, he seems to suppose this exclusive feature to 
 be inseparable from the very nature of such love. 
 He does not see that his real connubial love can be 
 enlarged till it bursts its exclusive shell, and so be 
 enhanced, purified and ennobled. He says, virtually, 
 "Here unto have we come,'* and then like all con- 
 servatives in the past, he adds his " no farther shalt 
 thou go.** Yet we have no doubt his book will do 
 more to spread the principles of free love, than any 
 other book written, except that of Dr. Nichols and 
 wife. Perhaps we ought also to except Mr. Davis, 
 though the latter is alike exclusive in his nominal 
 marriage. The reader will understand, that these 
 men are not responsible for this opinion of ours. 
 They, Mr. Wright and Mr. Davis, have certainly 
 done what they could to confine marriage to pairs. 
 But they elevate love and free it from law. Their 
 exceptional doctrines will prove weak. We know 
 something of the eflfect of such free and elevating 
 truths as those books contain. 
 
 But, "What is marriage ? " Mr. Wright's " defi- 
 nition of wife,*' is, "the incarnation of God to her 
 husband. The great Invisible and Intangible made 
 visible and tangible in the deepest and most intense 
 and potent living relation. I speak calmly, knowing 
 the full import of the words I use. No phrase so 
 
76 FREE LOVE. 
 
 fully expresses what thou art to me as this : Th© 
 incarnation of God." 
 
 The reader should know that Mr. Wright con- 
 veys his sentiments in a series of letters, representing 
 a male and a female — a man and his wife — com* 
 municatinof each to the other his and her views and 
 feelings as to the marriage relation. 
 
 The language of the above quotation is very 
 strong, but I have no controversy with what I 
 believe to be its meaning. 
 
 " Worship is a necessity of my being. I must 
 worship sometlvng; so must every man and every 
 woman. My soul cannot stoop to worship times 
 and places, stations and titles. I see no God in 
 them. They are all the works of men's hands. But 
 I worship thee, without one shrinking doubt as to 
 my right to do so, or as to whether God will accept 
 this devotion to the embodiment of my highest con- 
 ception of his attributes, as being paid to him.** 
 
 All this is very strong ; but I only object to it 
 from its exclusive concentration of worship upon 
 one. Let such a soul enlarge till it knows and 
 enjoys a more expansive w^orship. I should not 
 have supposed so large a soul as Mr. Wright's could 
 have penned so narrow and confined a sphere of 
 worship. However, it is only carrying the worship 
 which nearly all christians have concentrated upon 
 the head of Jesus, into exclusive and dual marriagfe, 
 
 " In thee, God is manifest in the flesh.'* Brother 
 
 i 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 77 
 
 Wright, we worship many Christs and many wo- 
 men ; — ^all Saviours and all women ; and we do not 
 dispute that all real women are Saviours, and are 
 Gods ** manifest in the flesh/' So are real men. 
 Then do not confine an enlarged soul — one that has 
 outgrown the shackels of sectarianism and exclu- 
 fiiveness, to worship one individual object, and upon 
 one individual altar, to the exclusion of all others. 
 But we are thankful for even this progress from the 
 past. Man, in a low and undeveloped state, has al- 
 ways held low views of woman, and of the objects 
 of her creation, as made for the gr^ification of his 
 lower nature. The change is refreshing. Man has 
 held woman below himself. Even the wise Paul — 
 wise for his day, — tells us ** the woman was made 
 for the man, not the man for the woman.'* Nothing 
 can be more false to nature than the last clause, 
 which we have emphasized. We almost wonder 
 that such a mind could not sooner break from such 
 debasing traditions. But such views are passing 
 away. Woman is becoming man's equal — verily 
 his object of worship. If the conservative reader is 
 offended with my friend and myself on this, can he 
 not pardon something for the ultra effects of reac- 
 tion. The man has always been worshiped more 
 or less by the woman, and he has loved to have 
 it so. I differ from Mr. Wright in that. I would 
 not worship one woman in exclusion from all others. 
 And I confess to finding it agreeable to receive 
 7* 
 
78 ? FREK LOVB. 
 
 worship from more than one. Nor do I desire 
 to receive this worship from even the one, in ex- 
 clusion from all other men. The expansion of 
 heart and mind, which would lead the woman of 
 my preference to love and worship other men, 
 equally deserving with myself, with the same kind 
 of love and worship, only endears her to me. I'or 
 they, too, are a part of me, they are my brethren, 
 and " all flesh is one flesh.'' My benevolence and 
 adhesiveness are the greater, and the higher, and so 
 control and baptise in their fount my entire con- 
 nubial love. I do not allow even here the higher 
 sentiments to be absorbed in, and controlled by, the 
 lowest of the lower. Mr. Wright, deepen and en- 
 large the spirit of your theology in human brother- 
 hood. To me, this exclusive spirit and worship is 
 insipid and childish. In connubial manhood, truth, 
 even in a mate, is both desirable and lovely ; and 
 truth is just. Justice can never be absolutely ex- 
 clusive. 
 
 More from Mr. Wright- ** A masculine soul 
 
 and a feminine soul in marriage, are absorbed each 
 into the other. The essence of each enters into the 
 other ; permeates, fills and thrills it, leaving to nei- 
 ther a separate existence. Thought responds to 
 thought, will to will, heart to heart. * * * * 
 The entrance of two souls, each into the other, thus 
 making of two one perfect being — this is marriage, 
 as my heart defines it. * * * * I cannot feel 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 7^ 
 
 that I have an existence apart from thee. Without 
 thee I can do nothing. I am nothing. In thee I 
 lire, move, and have my being. To dwell in thee in 
 to dwell in love, in God. I have no hopes, no long- 
 ings, no aspirations, no life, apart from thee.*' 
 
 Really, a woman is the whole saviour of mr 
 friend's theology for a man — and a man is the 
 whole saviour for a woman. More : — She is thi* 
 whole of society, to her husband, which he can 
 possibly desire or receive. Each is entirely *' ab- 
 sorbed '* by the other. But we think we under- 
 stand Mr. Wright, through these long expression* 
 of love, and we do not like to clip his wings of 
 connubial affection. We are entirely in love with 
 the real substance of the union here described. We 
 only wish to enlarge it. We would not care if — 
 oh how glorious it would be — if, in the progress of 
 the race, the time should come, when all men feel to 
 all women, and all women feel to all men, like this. 
 This would be heaven, verily. Methinks I should 
 like to live in such a day. No, I am not yet pure 
 and expanded in soul enough for that. But, surely, 
 love would then " work no evil to his neighbor,'' or 
 to his neighbor's wife. I promised not to quot«? 
 much from this chapter, as it was not directly con- 
 nected with our difference. But its real meaning 
 was too rich. I could not pass it. Yet I tell th« 
 reader the book is full of more like it, and as good. 
 I rejoice to know that when men attain to such 
 
CO FREE LOVE 
 
 views as this book contains, they will not stop here. 
 When man has really advanced to such love as this 
 for the one, he will go on till he reaches it to the 
 many ; and the harmony and consequent happiness 
 will be just so much greater. Then, "every old man 
 I meet will be my father, — every old woman, my 
 mother ; every young man I meet will be my bro- 
 ther, and every young woman will be my sister — if 
 need be, my wife. All children will love me, and I 
 will love and embrace them. They will be mine." 
 How glorious that day ! A day so long prayed for 
 by all the pious of earth. In this heaven, there 
 will be no exclusive marriage, or giving in mar- 
 riiige. But we shall all be as the real and higher 
 angels. We say, let that day come ! let it come ! 
 though it should over turn and over turn, — purify 
 and sanctify, — sift and burn, in a preceding judg- 
 ment, and bury in one common grave of the past, 
 all sectarinism and all exclusive marriage, and land 
 our race in one ocean of love and union ! Let all 
 jealously and hate go to its own place ! All this 
 will do no harm, but untold good. We confess to 
 some little dread — (for others, not for ourselves, 
 we think we have Hved passed it) — of the coming 
 storm on this subject, when, and as we know our 
 prayers, and the prayer of Mr. Wright, for the 
 spirit of his prayer is like ours, it will be answered. 
 We do not dread, but glory in the moral calm which 
 will succeed it. Then will the *• will of God be 
 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. t% 
 
 done upon earth, as it is done in heaven/* We shall 
 be as the angels. We have no doubt but exclusive 
 marriage prevails to some extent, in the lower 
 spheres. But we do not call these angels of heaven. 
 " The husband is the ideal actualized. No other 
 man is like him, or ever can be. He is stronger, 
 nobler, truer, more tender, more perfectly adapted to 
 the wife's delicate intuitions than any or all other 
 men.'* ** Nobler, truer.'* Should marriage make a 
 fool of a woman ? Shall she believe what may be 
 a falsehood ? This is contending for perpetuity of 
 a disease, which is now altogether too prevalent. 
 But if every word of Mr. Wright's statement was 
 true, it does not prove his entire exclusive feature in 
 marriage. There is no evidence of the absolute 
 trutli of most of it. This entire monopoly of sex- 
 ual love over all other loves, is untruthful and 
 sickly. Mr. Wright, in his book, truthfully defines 
 connubial love to be sexual love, and yet he every 
 where seems to give this lower faculty power to 
 monopolize and control all above it. He exalts it 
 at the expense of all above it. In a truthful bar- 
 mony, it should be below other loves, and never act 
 at the expense of any. Instead of harmonizing this 
 with other loves in the bi^ain, each in their true or- 
 der, he attempts, virtually, in all his writings on the 
 subject, to concentrate all other loves in this. To us 
 this is abnormal, and we never call such a state of 
 mind healthy, or the true connubial love. It is but 
 
82 PRKK LOVE. 
 
 fractionally so. Mr. Wright, in this way, lowers 
 manhood and womanhood. Still, as he marries th« 
 faculties of the mind, though it bo unnatural mar- 
 riage, placing the lower above the higher, it is much 
 better, and in advance of the past. 
 
 We nearly harmonize with Mr. Wright in th« 
 ** perpetuity of love,*' except that we go further, 
 and would not, in any way, hint that it was possible 
 for death to make any change with it. Perhaps we 
 do not differ much with him in his exception, — that 
 an unequal development after marriage might end, 
 at least, in a (partial) divorce. We believe this 
 often comes, in marriage entered into on some of the 
 lower planes. Mr. Davis believes in nature's divorce, 
 as well as in nature's marriage. Mr. Wright rep» 
 resents the husband as saying to his mate, " Thou 
 eans't not continue to love me if I become unlov- 
 able." This is good philosophy. No more can a 
 normal mind help loving all which is to it lovable. 
 
 We come now to the direct issue between us and 
 Mr. Wright. In the question which he puts : — 
 
 **IS EXCLUSIVENKSS A FIXED LaW OF MaRRIAGE ? " 
 
 We have said no — Mr. W. says yes. ( See Letter 
 lY. page 125.) 
 
 "VARIETY IN LOVE, OR POLIGAMY," 
 
 **ISrina,'* (the name of Mr. W.'s ideal lady re* 
 spondent,) "it is settled between us that our onenese 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 69 
 
 will be eternal, if our present desires and vrants are 
 truly answered ; also, that the perpetuity of our 
 oneness depends on our knowledge of and fidelity 
 to the natural laws by which marriage is desio-ned to 
 be regulated. The question arises — " Is exclusive- 
 ness a fixed law of mind ? I ask not should either 
 marry after the death of the other.'' This loosnesa 
 in relation to a surviving partner, after the death of 
 his or her mate, is entirely inconsistent with his 
 whole defence of exclusive marriage. By his phil- 
 osophy, any such marriage could be nothing but 
 adultery. It is not necessarily a crime to die before 
 one's mate — and so love, which we both contend is 
 naturally eternal, cannot be sundered by death. 
 But to numberless inconsistencies is every man 
 driven, who engages in the defence of error. 
 
 *^But can woman be the wife of more than one 
 man ? and can the relation of husband be truly sus- 
 tained to more than one woman, at the same time ? 
 To this my heart and my head give a negative an- 
 svrer. Keason and affection assure me that polygamy 
 is unnatural, and therefore wrong." 
 
 We shall make no entire defence of polygamy. 
 On the whole, it is more unnatural than exclusive 
 dual marriage. It is all one sided and unjust. Ex- 
 clusive dual marriage aims to monopolize the entire 
 heart of one. Polygamy does the same by more than 
 one — perhaps many. Of course I cannot approve 
 of the exclusive and monopolizing phase of it. 
 
84 FREE LOVB 
 
 When there are more females than males, so fur ae 
 provision for these is concerned, it is better than 
 our present civilization. But mixing up polygamy 
 with "a variety in love," as Mr. W. has done, is very 
 illogical and improper. It does not belong with the 
 latter. We believe Mr. Wright knows this, but w« 
 leave it with the reader to judge of the motives 
 which prompted to this course. 
 
 *'What says the heart? Is there a husband 
 whose love is concentrated on one woman as a wife, 
 who can willingly allow another man to be to his 
 wife w^hat he is ? He loves her — her alone — above 
 all others, and he earnestly desires that she should 
 return his aflPection.'* 
 
 Really, if he concentrates his love on her alone, at 
 her call, it is but just that she should do the same 
 by him. If he simply loves her above all others, it 
 is just that she should do the same by him. We 
 gay, let the friends of exclusive marriage be just, 
 w^iile they choose, and are in that order. When 
 they can endure it no longer, let them relax their 
 demand first. **Be just if the heavens fall," and 
 then they will not fall. 
 
 ** The very fact that another can claim her interest 
 or win her affections, enough to make marriage 
 attractive, strikes a death-blow to a true lover's 
 peace. It is equally true of w^oman. Hence the 
 origin of that expression of feeling commonly called 
 jealousy." 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 86 
 
 Mr. W. here seems again to mix up polygamy 
 with the doctrine of a "variety/' We have (lis* 
 missed his polygamy. 
 
 If Mr. W. means, in the above, to teach, that the 
 exclusive feeling is hurt by a lack of exclusive feel- 
 ing in a mate, we admit it. But we still deny that 
 such an exclusive feeling is *'true love'* in its 
 fulness. It is fractional and abnormal; and its 
 action causes the "jealousies'* to which Mr. VV. is 
 disposed to be merciful. He should be. But a 
 normal action of Free Love never produces these 
 jealousies in normal and healthy minds. The 
 reader will permit me here to record a somewhat 
 singular, and yet not very uncommon anomaly. Mr, 
 Wriofht has lono* been accustomed to find himself in 
 a very lean minority on nearly every subject which 
 he introduces. I speak it to his credit. He has 
 seldom found men's feelings and instincts with his 
 own, and with what he considered to be the truth. 
 This has been true in his position on war and its 
 opposite — non-resistance, slavery, woman's rights, 
 and woman's sphere, sectarianism, etc. Here, on 
 exclusive marriage, in which the race are as corrupt 
 as on any other subject, his first and last, and his 
 only arguments are no arguments, but appeals to 
 the feelings and instincts, and even 'jealousies' of 
 men in general. Such appeals are not better here 
 than elsewhere. We should go back of "misdi- 
 rected" feeling to the laws of mind, to right up an 
 8 
 
86 FREE LOVE. 
 
 already careening ship. Is this all that Mr. W. can 
 produce in defense of his dual marriages ? Is it 
 his best kind of proof? We were not required to 
 do more than by our counter testimony pronounce 
 it untrue, and pass it. We have and mean to follow 
 him, and reply to such as we find. On every other 
 subject, he pronounces men selfish and perverted. 
 Here he is disposed to tread with care over the com- 
 plainings of an unnatural demand, or to allow and 
 defend its morbid claim. 
 
 "Ifwe are true to ourselves and to each other, 
 neither can outgrow the other. I can never seek an 
 enlargement of soul that cannot be shared by thee. 
 The fixed object of our lives must be to perfect the 
 harmony between us.'* 
 
 All good, except a little savoring of law. But 
 this is good instruction for those for whom he wrote. 
 The well developed and healthy will do right spon- 
 taneously, from the right in them. With these, love 
 and harmony will always take care of themselves. 
 True love will live by its own inherent nature. 
 
 " In every step of my course, the wife of my soul 
 must stand by my side. I can desire no honor, no 
 station, no heaven apart from thee. If thou art 
 delayed I must be delayed with thee. We are one 
 in love, in will, in purpose, in destiny. Be it ours to 
 eternize this oneness. We will stand, go back, or 
 forvard, together.*' 
 
 Mr. Wright, probably, does not mean to " stand " 
 
MR. IIENRT C. WRIGHT. 0f* 
 
 from progression, or to go back into evils. What a 
 glorious time it will be when the race — every man 
 and every woman — shall be deluged in such a spirit 
 of love and oneness, each to the other, and all to 
 all ; when every man shall love his neighbor as 
 himself, and his neighbor's wife as his own wife. 
 
 ** With this fulness of satisfaction in thee, how 
 can I desire another as a wife ? There is no room 
 for another in my nature ; it finds in thee all I can 
 receive from any woman in marriage, and it repels 
 the thought of any other in this relation. The ex- 
 istence of the desire for a second person in the 
 marriage union, while the first one lives, proves that 
 the first relation has ceased, if it ever existed. It 
 seems to me that marriage-love is, in its very 
 essence, exclusive." 
 
 "While the first one lives.'* This looseness is 
 unpardonable. It destroys all force in much of his 
 previous argument. He has said that ** true love " 
 was in its nature "eternal," as well as monogamic ; 
 that death would not weaken it. He and we believe 
 that none of us will ever die in any sense which 
 affects love. Then why does he repeat such lan- 
 fiTia^e as the above. If Mr. W. has his true mate, 
 and by some accident he falls first, will he feel it 
 any more right for her to be joined to " another as 
 a husband ? " Will it appear any more " pure and 
 chaste" to him ? It is impossible for her to love 
 the last, or cease to love Mr. W. He is no less 
 
88 FREE LOVE. 
 
 "loveable,** and has committed no offense. Mr. 
 Wright, give up the defense of exclusive monogamio 
 relation, or come up to the courage to be more 
 consistent, and manfully stand your ground. 
 
 When I adopt Mr. Wright's views, I tell the 
 reader, I will carry them out consistently. I will 
 never wink at adulteries with a second mate, after 
 the departure of the true and eternal mate. 
 
 I think Mr. Wright must have intended the first 
 part of our last quotation as an argument. The last 
 sentence but one is a mere statement of his opinion. 
 His closing inference has no relation to the argument. 
 His implied argument is a "fullness of satisfaction" 
 in the one ; **no room for another.'* We quote him, 
 farther : 
 
 '* Men and women have a nature that can be shared 
 by every other man and woman in the ties of friend- 
 ship, in perfect accordance with the law that binds 
 men and women together, as such. But in marriage, 
 this general tendency of each to the opposite sex, 
 concentrates itself in one, and therefore excludes all 
 others from the privileges and endearments of mar- 
 riage. The glory of marriage is its exclusiveness 
 The soul, conscious of refinement, purity and dig- 
 nity, will shrink from sharing the relation with moro^ 
 than one.'* 
 
 Mr. Wright here frees every part of the mind, 
 except the connubial — which is a part of the sexual. 
 And yet, with all the importance which he attaches 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 89 
 
 to tliis subject, he is perfectly indefinite. In a 
 general manner, he states a distinction, but in no 
 way does he ever define the line of demarkation. No 
 other faculty should be concentrated. Connubial love 
 should always be on one, '' therefore it excludes all 
 others." It is impossible for Mr. Wright to define this 
 unreal, untrue, and indefinable distinction. But the 
 argument continues the same, a ** fulness,'* or "no 
 room'* for more. Eeally, we do not see the special 
 ** glory ** in exclusiveness for such a reason. If this 
 is not intended to be the argument, then there is 
 none ; it is all mere testimony — mere opinion. He 
 always assumes the superior "refinement, purity, 
 and dignity *' of this exclusiveness. We will accept 
 of this when he has proved that it is in harmony 
 with the laws of mind. Its purity will then be 
 self-evident. 
 
 But let us attend to the argument; — "no room 
 for another.** When any thing is full it can contain 
 no more. In the same sense in which one object 
 fills any thing, it cannot hold more. This is not 
 bad philosophy. We believe in a law of mind, with 
 more or less power to control the action of mind ; 
 that is, in a degree of what we shall call " free 
 agency.*' That a man has some power to "keep *' 
 or give " the doors of his heart to her that lieth in 
 his bosom.'* We have said the man could not be in 
 a normal state, absolutely exclusive in his affections 
 on any thing ; and that if he could, it would be false. 
 8* 
 
90 PRBE LOVE. 
 
 That if a man was in love with one woman, he would 
 love another woman who was like her, or so far ae 
 she was like the first. But we also said, a well 
 developed mind had more or less power to control 
 the action of his love or life, in confining, concen- 
 trating or diflfusing. We know of no man who 
 carries his belief, in this power, farther than we. 
 This, the reader must have observed in our main 
 argument, as we there stated it plainly. Perhaps 
 Mr. Wright denies the natural power in mind to 
 control, one way or the other, the concentrations of 
 love. We some thhik he does. If so, in this he ie 
 again inconsistent with himself, as he fully teaches 
 free agency, in its preservation or destruction. In 
 our last extract from him, and in all of them, h« 
 represents his male lover as having concentrated th« 
 entire life, action or flow of his connubial love on 
 one woman, and of having exclusively monopolized 
 her entire connubial soul. So he has a *' fulness of 
 satisfaction in'' her. So there is "no room for 
 another.** So he is spending all he has. and receiv- 
 ing all he can contain. Should we admit this stat« 
 entirely possible — admit the fact and the philosophy 
 ' — there is no shadow of proof here that this is the 
 most healthy, normal, refined, purified and elevated 
 state of connubial love. 
 
 Mr. Wright's book is a real emanation from his 
 own soul. We believe him honest in his testimony, 
 «id do not dispute its correctness, only as we deny 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 91 
 
 \he entire distinction which he makes between that 
 sexual love which he allows between all men and all 
 women, and that which he confines to the one. 
 Sexual love is one. It has, like other loves, a variety 
 of manifestations, but all are governed by the same 
 law. In its higher manifestations, Mr. W. but par- 
 tially confines it, but partially concentrates it. In its 
 lower action, he entirely confines and concentrates it 
 This, reader, is all there is to his unde finable distinction. 
 Adhesiveness may be concentrated. It was so 
 between "David and Jonathan." Their lov« 
 "passed the love of woman," in general. The wri- 
 ter has know^n this concentration upon two of his 
 own sex. An inequality of subsequent development 
 has given us a natural divorce. We think, in an 
 improved state of society, there will be more adhe- 
 sive love, but less exclusive concentration. There 
 is no mystery about connubial love. It is s'mply 
 the development of sex to manhood and womanhood 
 in a true harmony with all of the loves above it. So it 
 must be of tremendous power, whether in concen- 
 tration, or a partial diffusion. If adhesiveness 
 between the same sex can be, sometimes, stronger 
 than death, what must be the power of love, when 
 another faculty, another strand of great strength is 
 added to the cord, as it is between those of opposite 
 «exes. Added to this, the entire power of the tre- 
 menduous and despotic institution of civilized mar- 
 riage, goes to concentrate and dualize the lore between 
 
92 FREE LOVE. 
 
 the sexes. In civilization, all are shut up to this 
 exclusive dualism under pain of entire sexual star- 
 vation, or loss of caste and character. Law is 
 perpetually invoked to protect and enforce it. If 
 any of the fair sex, who are not allowed to institute 
 means to provide even for their own acknowledged 
 rights in her exclusive law marriages — and so fail 
 to obtain them — are at last impelled, from whatever 
 motives, to seek and partially obtain those rights out 
 of her order and her law, they are pursued by a 
 spirit of persecution which has more than the cru- 
 elties of direct murder in it. It lingeringly torments 
 without freeing its victim. Though these sometimes 
 soon find freedom in death. But we tell the friends 
 of exclusive marriage, the day of her damning in- 
 justice and cruelty is passing away. Mr. Wright 
 is not responsible for all this. He is in part, 
 as the reader will see by our further quota- 
 tions. He slanderously condemns all love out of 
 exclusive dual order, but does not hold any to the 
 forms of outward law. The day is not far distant 
 when the race will look back upon our law, in the 
 place of love, to marry and to keep together married 
 pairs, with as much wonder and contempt, as we 
 now look upon the past hanging of witches. The 
 requirement of obedience on the part of the woman 
 will then appear alike ridiculous and inhuman. They 
 will exclaim, " What ! keep men and women in love, in 
 married relations, by law ? *' They will read that this 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 93 
 
 was then (now) thought necessary for the protection 
 and safety of society 1 They will in their imperti- 
 nence, ask how could society be in fear of love ? 
 History will explain it all. 
 
 Before proceeding to further quotations, the reader 
 will bear with a further illustration of our last. 
 
 A man enters an orchard of delicious fruit. Some 
 particular tree attracts his attention above all others. 
 He enters beneath its boughs, and supplies his ali- 
 mentiveness to a surfeit, and from time to time 
 continues to do so. He continues to feel a ** ful- 
 ness," and has "no room*-* for more. He casts a 
 general and even appreciative look at other trees, 
 but he desires none of their fruit. In this state, his 
 stomach "repels'' the thought of eating from them. 
 Very likely ! But does this prove that he has a taste 
 — a lore for the fruit of that tree only ? And who 
 will assert that he acts wiser, and more in harmony 
 with even his nature, or health of his stomach, than 
 the man who, though he may have some preference 
 for some tree or trees of the orchard, more than for 
 all, still, to some extent, supplies his equally normal 
 appetite from several ? 
 
 "Much is said about a variety in love. It is said 
 that the passional nature of man needs a fuller satis- 
 faction than a single object can afford ; that some 
 men must suffer unless they live with more than 
 one woman as a wife. But the history of polygamy > 
 under whatever name, and by whatever and by whom- 
 
"94 FREE LOVB. 
 
 •soever sanctioned, demonstrates that it is unnatural, 
 'isince its consequences are evil, and only evil. It 
 Tenders men imbecile, in body and soul, and tendi 
 to a disproportion of the sexes. Woman can never 
 attain nor keep her true position in a state of polyg- 
 amy. The only marriage which commends itself to 
 'the instinct, the reason and the heart is exclusive, 
 and therefore, this alone will elevate and purify mam 
 .and woman.'* 
 
 It is plain to us that Mr. Wright intends still te 
 -confound Free Love with Polygamy. This is gross 
 •glander of the former. Mr. Wright's marriage lies 
 between Free Love and polygamy. Free Love frees 
 ;all women. Polygamy is exclusive marriage extend- 
 ed from one to many. We are sure that Mr. Wright 
 must see this. We write more for the benefit of 
 woman than for man, as we believe woman suffers 
 more than man, whether she be bound to the man in 
 ^units, or by tens or by hundreds, as in the case of 
 'David and Solomon, and others. Polygamy is not 
 better than dual marriage, but worse, only wher« 
 there is a redundance of females. So far "its conse- 
 quences" are not entirely evil. 
 
 We have no particular sympathy for the plea for a 
 "variety," in our last quotation. At the best it is 
 «n unjust remedy for diseased and undeveloped mind. 
 "Such is not the argument of Free Love. But as 
 4}ad as we think this argument, we do not see how 
 ^civilized marriages can, with sober face, oppose it. 
 
MR. HENRY C. WRIGHT. 9f 
 
 Let us look at their system as it stands in opposition 
 to it. It may not be unprofitable. What then is the 
 fact as to present society ? In the marriage bed, 
 there are not less than thirty thousand females sa- 
 crificed annually in the United States, upon the altar 
 of Inst, or intemperate amativeness. (No enlight- 
 ened physician will dispute the entire truthfulness 
 of this statement. If any should, we covet the 
 privilege of discussing it with him, in any place 
 which can be opened to us.) Added to the above, 
 are a large class in our cities who go in the same 
 way — if possible worse, out of law — in spite of law- 
 While this is being enacted on one side, on the other 
 side, there are an equal number of both sexes, dying 
 annually of sexual starvation, from necessary ama- 
 tive fasting, and from the " solitary vice " which 
 eometimes follows such a life of entire and unnatural 
 abstinence. Many dare not take the step in mar- 
 •riage, knowing there is no reprieve — no mercy, if 
 it should prove unfortunate, short of death, or 
 adultery — so called — and consequent loss of charac- 
 ter. Such, at least, often delay long, and so there 
 are many in single fractional life, when they most 
 need their just rights in love. In this we refer more 
 to females. Males are vastly more addictc'd lo 
 "solitary vice." A physician who has just pub- 
 lished a book on the " Physiology of Marriage," 
 testifies that this vice ia on the increase, and that it 
 Is worse for the race than " fornification." 
 
96 FREE LOVE. 
 
 Civilization has never yet dreamed — aloud, at 
 least — of any thing like a successful remedy for all, 
 or for any of these evils, and yet she is in convul- 
 sions of fear, if any man proposes a radical change, 
 lest she should be plunged into something worse. 
 Our friend Ballou is always in this state of mind. 
 So is Mr. Greeley. We do not wonder at this. We 
 sympathise with them to some extent. We have 
 not referred to the real character of civilization, to 
 reproach her, for she is our mother. But we insist, 
 if she truly sees her disease, and knows of no 
 available remedy, she should be more lenient with 
 her children, who may think they have found, and 
 are determined to apply one. Still her very disease 
 creates her fear, but we cannot consult it. We have 
 sounded the thing till we are sure there is no saviour 
 in civilization for civilization. She has tried law 
 and bonds. We leave her to try it still. We shall 
 try gospel and freedom. 
 
 We respect the motives of some who oppose Free 
 Love. Still a very large class of those who make 
 the greatest opposition act from unworthy motives 
 — from an unwillingness to give up their household 
 gods. These prefer the law, as they are afraid to 
 trust their sexual interests in a state of absolute 
 freedom of woman. These are ** wiser than the 
 children of seemingly more li^^ht," and see and 
 know that the real principles of Free Love will 
 bring no gratification to their abnormal flesh. Wo- 
 
MR. IIEKRY C. WRIGHT. JT 
 
 man will not then be compelled to meet and surfeit 
 the demand of lust, at the cost of life, as she now is. 
 We do not intend to fully discuss, or reply to all the 
 fears of the ill consequences of our views. We think 
 we say enough to help every enlightened reader out of 
 his fears. We give him the key. If that does not 
 suffice, we must again refer him to Messrs. Noys, 
 Andrews, and Nichols. 
 
 Reader, we did not take our pen with a first de- 
 sire to hasten the downfall of the institution of 
 exclusive marriage, even in its lowest and law phases, 
 much less in its highest spiritual developments. We 
 are not conscious of harboring any ill will towards 
 it. We have felt the power of its persecuting arm, 
 but we have long since out-rode its iron sway, and 
 thoroughly forgiven it. We judge co man for his 
 connubial order. We encroach upon no man*s mar- 
 riage rights, nor will we suffer another to judge, or 
 trespass upon our freedom. To our own master we 
 stand or fall. We go at our own cost, and we al- 
 low all others to do the same. We respect every 
 man in living to his clearest and highest light, be 
 that light more or less. We feel but little more 
 than sympathy for the many monsters of amative 
 perversion among our own sex. Wc wish them no 
 harm — but much good. 
 
 We did take the pen to illustrate and defend the 
 principles of freedom in love, in and for those who 
 choose it, and to weaken the despotic power and per- 
 secuting spirit of the marriage institution. 
 
9Z FREE LOVE. 
 
 CAAPTER YIII. 
 
 REVIEW OF MR. WRIGHT CONTINUED. 
 
 We return to Mr. Wright's book. " The ideal of 
 love and marriage, in every young heart, is with one, 
 never with more than one. Social discord and wron<r 
 may introduce other notions, but I understand a 
 deep signification in the old story that for Adam 
 there was but one Eve created.*' 
 
 Whether the statement be true or false, that the 
 first development of any young mind towards con- 
 nubial love is to one, is comparatively of no im- 
 portance. The mind, in developing to any new 
 thought or feeling towards woman, may generally 
 be so enlarged, while it is on some person in whom 
 there is some thing to create, or call forth such 
 thoughts and feelings. Besides, by precept and ex- 
 ample, every person from his earliest thoughts of 
 marriage love, is made to understand that his only 
 chance of honorable participation, is with one, and 
 only one. However general his entire love may be, 
 he knows well, as he develops to the normal desires 
 and calls of manhood, that he must remain in his 
 fractional state, or more or less call in his scattering 
 and free loves, and Concentrate them on one. And 
 he certainly may as well do this, for if he long de- 
 lays, all corresponding loves, one after another, 
 will be leaving him from a like necessity on the part 
 
REVIEW OF MR. WRIGHT. 99 
 
 of others. Exclusive marriage, by her process of 
 sexual draining, absorbs to itself almost the entire 
 love atmosphere, and so leaves all who from neces- 
 sity or otherwise remain out of her bonds, in a state 
 of double starvation. In this way she has had 
 power to compel compliance to her rule and order. 
 
 In our day, it is wiser for most men and women 
 to submit, or choose what to them may be the least 
 of two evils. But who, from all of these causes, 
 knows the power of mind over mind, in the dual- 
 izing and concentrations of love or the power of 
 habit in leading to it ? Mr. Wright would appreciate 
 the full force of all these influences if brought to 
 bear on his side of the controversy. 
 
 Mr. Wright is the last man whom we should have 
 supposed would have referred for his support, to 
 the mythological ** story *' of Adam and Eve. We 
 are glad of it. A little while ago, it was a first ar- 
 gument in the minds of nine-tenths of the sticklers 
 for dual marria^^e. Admitting this "story** taught 
 just what Mr. W. wishes to draw from it, it is going 
 back six thousand years for the testimony of men as 
 to marriage. What would any reformer think of a 
 man who should go back so far to settle the order 
 of society in other reepects ? Mr. W. would pro- 
 nounce such a man beside himself. He knows very 
 well what he would think, if I were to cite him 
 back to feudalism, back to savagism, for arguments 
 to defend any moral question ! Mr. W. so we think 
 
100 FREE LOYE. 
 
 of you in this case ! Even this would be less than 
 halfway back to his supposed dual pair. Truth is 
 never so straightened for foreign aid. 
 
 But admitting every word of Genesis to be a 
 literal and truthful revelation from God, it does not 
 help the friends of exclusive marriage. Every ar- 
 gument which Mr. Wright could bring from it, 
 would be equally good in favor of an entire dual 
 hermitage. Adam was as fully shut up by that 
 dual Providence of his creation, to one woman so- 
 cially, adhesively, as he was connubially. So of 
 Eve to Adam. Each were shut up to one person. 
 How long will real reformers — for in some respects 
 Mr. W. is one — make it necessary for us to waste 
 ink, pen, and time, in reply to such shallow and so- 
 phistical inferences as this ? Can not so a^ed an 
 institution do better than referr us to its gray hairs 
 to command our respect ? We tell the reader that 
 Mr. Wright will never allude, in this manner, to 
 **Adam and Eve,*' in a public discussion with an 
 opponent of good common sense. He is too wise 
 and too shrewd to risk himself in such a position. 
 
 * * * "Is the marriage tie capable of exten- 
 sion ? If a man finds in half a dozen women equally 
 powerful attractions to marriage ; if each exercises 
 an equally deep, vitalising, elevating influence on his 
 life ; if the union with each one would be enough 
 to bless his life, were all the others exterminated, 
 then he has a right, if all equally desire it, to be the 
 
f > 
 
 REVIEW OF MR. WRIGHT. 101- 
 
 husband of them all! Ba^/ what -does experience 
 prove in this matter ? The case is not even sappos- 
 able. It is absurd in the statement." 
 
 Mr. Wright here fairly puts the question. **l3 
 the marriage tie, (connubial love,) capable of exten- 
 sion V* But his reply to it here is superficial, and 
 to us it seems evasive. Again, we say, admitting 
 every word of his answer to his own question, it 
 does not prove anything in support of his exclusive 
 marriage. If true, it reveals an undeveloped state of 
 mind. Let those who covet a state of mind which 
 would be entirely satisfied with the one, **were all 
 the others exterminated," pray for it. We respect- 
 fully dissent from such a sentiment, and from such 
 an experience. We ask no alliance to one who is 
 capable of being so filled by and absorbed in us. 
 We leave with Mr. Wright the entire glory, chas- 
 tity and purity of such marriages. Our oppo- 
 nents need never be jealous of us. We have no 
 attractions towards so confined an atmosphere. 
 
 It is not true that a man may not feel an equally 
 stronff connubial recjard for more than one. It is 
 not uncommon for some of the most spiritually devel- 
 oped minds, to find it diflScult to select between two 
 or more. The idea is entirely possible in nature. 
 But the mandates of society must be obeyed — the 
 selection must be made. One may be received ; the 
 other must be cast oflf. Mr. Wright, to do justice 
 to his side of the subject, should give his philosoph- 
 9* 
 
102 FREE LOVE. 
 
 ical leasonsfcr confiRii7g amativeness and not ad- 
 hesiveness, as both may and do generally have their 
 preferences. 
 
 " The sentiment of love finds satisfaction in one 
 object. The passional element, which borrows the 
 holy name of love, may crave a wider range. Whea 
 men say they need a variety, they say, in other 
 words, that in them, the passion has the ascendency 
 over the sentiment. The man in whom the need 
 exists, should not take the high social rank implied 
 by the desire for true marriage, but descend to that 
 level in creation wherein criminal passion makes no 
 distinction in its objects, and finds equal satisfaction 
 in them all. Men who advocate a "variety," know 
 that true, pure marriage-love cannot be felt to more 
 than one ; but they wish to find, in their various 
 attractions to woman, a sanction for what were other- 
 wise unqualified brutality.'* 
 
 Reader, I almost owe an apology for the above 
 extract. I thought it expedient. I have extolled 
 Mr. Wright's book as a whole. In a few words, I 
 will do justice to this phase of it. On coming to a 
 close, on this subject, Mr. Wright attempts to fill 
 up what has been wanting in sound, direct, and per- 
 tinent argument, by open-mouthed and foul slander 
 of his opponents. In the unlimited and universal 
 manner in which he has penned and left the above, 
 it becomes aggravated falsehood. He, at least, ought 
 to have ** known " this. If any reader, who knovrs 
 
REVIEW OF MR. WRIGHT. 103 
 
 something of the amount of falsehood in it, can give 
 him even the apology of ignorance, he is bound in 
 charity to do so. We confess to finding it difficult for 
 us to do this. Again I say, I covet not that part of the 
 head or heart which can so ''descend to the level '* 
 of a lower manhood. His putting such slander into 
 the mouth of his ideal lady, is not very tasteful ; 
 (so it stands in his book.) We will not give what 
 would be a just retort, lest we seem to follow his 
 example. The reader of his book will find some 
 more like our last quotation, but we pass it. Had it 
 emanated from a lower mind, and been disconnected 
 with so much which was really good, I should not 
 have thought of noticing it. Such slander will 
 always injure the cause which it indirectly aims to 
 upbuild ; so we can afford to let it pass back to its 
 own side of the house. 
 
 If the only possible condition of connubial purity 
 and chastity is with one, and that the one eternal 
 mate, as Mr. W. teaches, the world is necessarily in 
 a deplorable condition, for it is naturally impossible 
 for any man or any woman to be sure of finding and 
 knowing that one, till far advanced in life. No per- 
 son can know their mate till, or any farther than, 
 they know themselves. A man cannot know his 
 own nature and power faster than it develops in 
 him. This, at the best, is only little by little ; or 
 gradually. Towards woman, he first develops to an 
 all-absorbing love for the feminine. This may be to 
 
104 FREE LOVE. 
 
 some particular woman, in whom ihe feminine ele- 
 ment manifests itself most in accordance with his 
 ideal of woman. Perhaps his own spiritual and in- 
 tellectual powers are yet comparatively in embryo ; 
 80 these are secondary in their influence upon him. 
 He marries on this plane of his development, and 
 experiences great felicity and harmony. He feels 
 his cup comparatively full, and "no room for more." 
 So does his chosen one. In a little time, each begin 
 to come forth in the more important features of their 
 religious character. We will suppose this to be 
 between twenty-five and thirty. Here they are not 
 organized alike, and so, from necessity, they grow 
 apart : no fault of theirs. One is conservative, the 
 other reformatory. One looks religiously back, the 
 other forward. We say, this is no fault of theirs. 
 Again, from thirty to forty, each begins to really 
 know his or her intellectual power. Here too they 
 go apart. One has less, the other more : no fault of 
 theirs. They still love ; and perhaps have no less 
 love, but one's cup is not now full, and they have 
 not entire harmony. Perhaps one is now far from 
 the equal of the other. Each may suffer more or 
 less from this inequality. Neither complains of the 
 other. We write here what we have more than once 
 seen as an actual fact, and what we should have ex- 
 perienced in our person, if Providence had not in 
 the first instance saved us from the act of actual 
 marriage. Still we insist that marriage, in the case 
 
REVIEW OF MR. WRIGHT. 106 
 
 described above, is not false, or against nature. Such 
 a marriage is, so far as it goes, in harmony with 
 nature, and is chaste, on its own plane. Yet such a 
 couple could not live eternally in a first relation, 
 each to the other. Nature leaves room for, as well 
 as works her changes in such cases of unequal 
 growth. She gives various degrees of divorce, but 
 not always absolute and entire. She also has her 
 degrees in marriage. And so far as any one keeps 
 in harmony with her varied promptings, all is well. 
 There need be, and there will be, no collisions. 
 
 Adhesiveness has her degrees of concentration, 
 and her like changes. We are sure Mr. W. cannot 
 fairly do away with the force of these suggestions. 
 Mr. Davis agrees with us, in the main, as to the 
 past. 
 
 I think Mr. Wright encourages sudden and vehe- 
 ment love attractions, by the power which he gives 
 it over the entire mental and moral manhood. He 
 represents its action as uncontrollable, and hardly 
 leaves room for the real power of our free agency. 
 But whatever maybe the amount of truth iti his 
 statements, I must caution the inexperienced mind 
 against an unnatural and sudden flow of abnormal 
 attraction. We often see this rush of amative ness, 
 in its reactions from the equally unnatural restraints 
 of law and bondage. I do not so much condemn as 
 deplore it. Though, under the circumstances, it is 
 not strange, its consequences are often very unfortu- 
 
106 FREE LOVE. 
 
 nate. Some very strong love attractions are far 
 from being healthy. Reason should never fail to 
 guide wisely and safely the souPs ship of love. Let 
 me illustrate. A physician of the very first emi- 
 nence, related to me the following case which came 
 pnder his observation. "A man of refinement and 
 standing in society, suddenly found himself *in 
 love ' with a lady of equal refinement. The lady 
 reciprocated his attachment, and they were soon, as 
 is common in such cases, absorbed in this over-pow- 
 ering love.*' (Mr. Wright's book would most 
 certainly justify its extreme power.) ** The man 
 had a wife. But she was a real believer in the 
 doctrine of Move over law,' and in 'obeying the 
 latest connubial affinity.' She did not wish to hinder 
 the testing of her husband's latest love, if the thing 
 could be managed wisely in view of the tongues of 
 out-siders. The man moved with his law wife, and 
 his lady love to a place where they could manage 
 their love relations, unharmed by society around 
 them. In less than two months, this all-controlling 
 love began to relax. It reacted to indiflferenco, 
 coldness, and a slight disgust, on both sides. All 
 extreme regard ceased. Of course, they were new 
 in an awkward dilemma. But we must leave thorn 
 here." After relating, in substance, the above, the 
 Doctor said to me, *' What do you think of it ? " I 
 I said, ** I think it a case of partial disease of the 
 affections. It was an amative fever." " That is it," 
 
REVIEW OF MR. WRIGHT. 10*7 
 
 said he. *' It begins, comes to its crisis, and ends in 
 reaction, like disease. *' 
 
 When the system loses its equilibrium, when the 
 blood rushes unnaturally from one part of the body 
 to another, from head to heart, or from heart to head, 
 wo all consider it more or less disease. It is a real 
 derangement of the physical man. So when nearly 
 the whole life and action of our entire loves, social, 
 moral, and intellectual, concentrate upon the con- 
 nubial or amative, the affectional equilibrium is 
 lost. The mind is unbalanced, and is incapable of 
 judging or acting wisely. This is abnormal. Re- 
 vivals almost always partake of the same religious 
 disease, or abnormalism. We fully admit, that even 
 this, in religion, or in connubial love, is sometimes 
 better than stagnation — than moral and sexual 
 death. But life and love are much better than 
 either. 
 
 I have no doubt, but such cases of unbalanced 
 love, as I have related above, will vastly increase 
 for some years to come. The law bonds upon love 
 are to be taken off; and men are not yet sufficiently 
 developed, and wise in experience, to use their free- 
 dom without much wrong and suffering. But 
 liberty will work its own cure. We rejoice in the 
 assurance of a still larger amount of returning 
 health. Men and women are too deeply involved in 
 what Mr. Davis calls " extremism and inversionism," 
 to regain their health, without a season of these 
 
W8 FREE LOVE. 
 
 alternate chills and fever. These sudden and exci- 
 ted developments of love are called ** falling in 
 love." It often is *' falling in love.'' It is better, 
 in every step of our progress, to rise in love. 
 
 A leading feature in Mr. Wright and Mr. Ballou 
 is an expression of abhorrence of any deviation from 
 one in love; or of not receiving the entire love and 
 worship of the mate. This sort of, to us, sickly 
 sentiment, always occupies more space than any sort 
 of argument. While we have the most entire 
 respect for those who, for good reasons, live to their 
 exclusive bonds ; we have none for this narrow and 
 belittleing feeling which these writers so boastingly 
 hold in the fore-ground. 
 
 Mr. Wright urges the necessity of striving, by 
 careful cultivation, to perpetuate love. This is good 
 instruction to the undeveloped, for whom he wrote. 
 But those who are actually developed to their higher 
 plane of connubial love, have nothing to watch or 
 to strive for. Such love, in entire spontaneity, will 
 protect itself. All on that plane are beyond any 
 possible thought of jealousy, distrust, or fear, as to 
 the present integrity, or as to the future, of a mate. 
 
 Marriage makes one of two, and one of many. 
 So much so, that either fraction in the one will as 
 8oon be jealous of him or herself, as to have the 
 same feeling towards any other person in the unit, 
 ** Perfect love casts out all fear ^' and restless anxi-^ 
 eties. Each loves the other, through and through^ 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. f/^ 
 
 as him or herself. Yet in this state, each person 
 in the two, or in the many, lives his or her entire 
 individuality. No one is owned by or owns another. 
 Each is his and her own ; and each knows how to 
 live his individuality, so as not to harm another. 
 Dear reader, all of this is possible. Perhaps not 
 possible for children, but possible for real adults. 
 There is a lack of spontaneity in Mr. Wright*s love 
 marriages. So does each lose much in individuality. 
 But more of this when we come to Mr. Davis. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS GENERAL REMARKS QUO- 
 TATIONS FROM HIS BOOK. 
 
 A. J. Davis, as a Clairvoyant Medium, is the 
 miracle of the age. We think him, in some sense, 
 justly entitled to the appellation of "head," as a 
 teacher of the Harmonial Philosophy. We say, as 
 a teacher, for, with Paul, we make a distinction be- 
 tween a teacher and a father, and we do not consider 
 him the laiter. The mass of spiritualism which has 
 since flooded us with its intellectual and moral bles- 
 sings, and also with its fanaticisms, has produced 
 nothing like him, as a whole. Several minds in this 
 and in the other sphere, have successfully criticised 
 10 
 
Va FREE LOVE. Wli'A 
 
 some parts of his works. Many of his moral writ- 
 ings are hke prophecy, far in advance of his own 
 actual moral elevation. Perhaps this is true, in 
 a degree, of all reformers. Mr. Davis, as a teacher, 
 occupies a field of vast extent, and of overwhelming 
 importance. Through him, wisdom is uttering her 
 voice to the sons of men. He now writes directly 
 to, and for, a large class of minds. Many of these 
 minds, though of reformatory blood, are not yet past 
 the star-light of harmonial truth. If there was a 
 Divine wisdom in the thing signified, by the **vail** 
 over the face of Moses, when giving the Law to the 
 Jews, — and I believe there was, — a like wisdom, for 
 like reasons, may hide from our seer and teacher 
 some of the higher freedom of the more glorious 
 future, by its spiritual veil. Mr. Davis, evidently to i 
 us, does "not see to the end** of some of the law" 
 phases, which still linger in the infancy of his har- 
 monial philosophy. As a believer in a wise and holy 
 expediency, we cannot complain of Mr. D.*s spirits 
 teachers for this ; — and they may be alike untaught, . 
 We in no way find fault with the Providence. Even 
 the ancient Jesus found it necessary to leave the 
 world without revealing all of his highest percep- 
 tions of truth to his dearest and best beloved disci- 
 ples ; — much less to the world in general. They — 
 the disciples, — could *^not bear it.'* Moses, Jesus, ^ 
 and every reformer since, were likely to be the best' 
 judges, each for himself in this matter. We only 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. Ill 
 
 wish to see all highly inspired minds so write as 
 not to cross the track of the future, and come direct- 
 ly in collision with it. But we wave this desire or 
 seeming objection. 
 
 We love Mr. Davis. Fromapartial diversity in our 
 mental "temperament ;" he is not our first mascu- 
 line mental love. But no other man living ever in- 
 structed us as much as he. We have been taught 
 much higher moral or spiritual truths by another. 
 We reverence A. J. Davis as a teacher. 
 
 We now approach no written testimony with more 
 reverence than we do his. We love and respect his 
 guiding angels. But God has created in all of us 
 our own separate individuality. He will never re- 
 call it ; — I speak reverently. Nor should we ever 
 yield the first iota of it to any being below Him. 
 When Mr. Davis writes to my understanding, new 
 and important truths, I most thankfully receive 
 them. When he, or any other mind, writes what I 
 cannot understand, I leave it, but with care not to 
 oppose it. But when he opposes what I know to be 
 truth, I have no fear to review and criticise him. 
 The reader will bear with my confidence. Such 
 an assurance is not necessarily dogmatism. Every 
 man knows some things. I, too, am a medium of 
 over twenty year's steady growth ; and not only 
 write in harmony with a legion of angels, but I 
 write what I am identified with, by having traveled 
 all tlie way to it. I am responsible to the world for 
 
112 FRKE LOVE. 
 
 my book ; yet I have leave of my guiding angels to 
 invite Mr. Davis and his guiding angels to a full 
 discussion of the point of difference between us, in 
 the presence of the men of earth, and the men of 
 the spheres. 1, and we, most respectfully challenge 
 him and them to the discussion. And we add, if 
 this challenge shall be taken no notice of, without 
 other reasons, we shall not accuse these opponents of 
 cowardice, or of other unworthy motives. We take 
 our position in this, but judge no other man's or an- 
 gePs duty or privilege. 
 
 Mr. Davis' book on Marriage has instructed us. 
 He goes deeper into the philosophy of mind, and is 
 much more liberal, on the whole, than Mr. Wrio-ht. 
 It no less elevates love. Mr. Wright's book was 
 comparatively more from his heart. Mr. Davis' was 
 more from his head, — but from the upper [\T\di wisdom 
 part of it. In Mr. Davis, there is little less in 
 amount or volume of the magnetism of love, and 
 vastly more in wisdom — in higher truth. Mr. Davis 
 has his '' seven phases of marriage," and contends for 
 the naturalness of these various forms — bigamy, 
 polygamy, and omnigamy, — on the several lower 
 planes of the mind ; and so he is almost entirely free 
 from the bigotry and intolerance of the past and 
 present. Such a spirit in a writer on so sensitive a 
 theme, is most lovely, and entirely beyond this age, 
 Mr. Davis testifies that on the harmonial plane, 
 monogamy, or one man with one woman, is the only 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS, ll^ 
 
 possible marriage. In his reply to Dr. Nichols he 
 argues against a "variety." He repeats his " ever- 
 lasting gratitude to Mr. Wright for the exclusive 
 feature of his book ; and, like him, confounds ancient 
 and modern polygamy with modern Free Love. He 
 entirely ignores the true and elevating principles of 
 the latter, and associates it, sometimes with partly 
 the same form, and sometimes with the monopoly of 
 polygamy, which is a different form, but always with 
 the undeveloped and sexual relations of the long 
 past, or of the far back to a rude age. Whether 
 this is from the deepest ignorance of the whole sub- 
 ject or otherwise, I leave for the reader to judge. 
 Mr. Davis knows that the monogaraic, as well as 
 the omnigamic form extend back alike into the past. 
 And the "pot" of the past cannot successfully slan- 
 der the '* kettle " of the same past, in relation to its 
 color. We have never charged exclusive dual mar- 
 riage, as such, of sensualism ; nor will our opponents 
 successfully fasten the latter to the car of Free 
 Love, as such. The effort is most inglorious. I 
 did not expect it from Mr. Davis. The most char- 
 itable conclnsion possible to put upon all this is, 
 that it is the fruit of ignorance. We have felt no 
 disposition to summon up the dead past to directly 
 help our cause, or to wound our opponents ; though 
 we might have just as truthfully done so. All forms 
 of love have been more or less drunk with sensual- 
 ism in the past. Mr. Davis tells us this was more 
 10* 
 
114 FREE LOVE. "^^^^ 
 
 natural in the infancy of the race. So I believe, 
 Mr. Wright goes back six thousand years to find a 
 pair to support his dual order. Mr. Davis would 
 send Free Love back to degrade it. (I do not say 
 this was his motive.) I am talking it for granted, 
 that the reader has seen Mr. Davis' book. We shall 
 be to it soon. Gentlemen, we decline the journey 
 for either object. We disapproved of this in Mr. 
 Wright; and we have no need to go back for our 
 support. Mind is with us, and we can read it, but if 
 Free Love has so great an antiquity as Mr. D. gives 
 it, we respectfully ask all who have a peculiar re- 
 spect for ancient institutions, to let this have its. 
 proper weight in our favor. This is entirely fair. We 
 prophecy that the time is not far distant when such 
 men as Mr. Davis and Mr. Wright will be compelled 
 to see a distinction between our philosophy of sex- 
 ual freedom, and that of the past or present sensual 
 freedom, — or more correctly, sensual bondage, — as 
 we see and confess the vast distance between their 
 exclusive marriage, and the general marriage of the 
 present, and nearly the entire past. We do them 
 justice, as they do not us. 
 
 The reader will find our first extract on page 297 
 of Mr. Davis' book. We think this the most 
 appropriate, and the nearest related to our subject 
 and argument of anything in the book. 
 
 "I have shown," says Mr. Davis, "that man's 
 love-department is divided into six separate actuating 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. ^^ 
 
 life-principles, each having its own independent 
 mode of being and doing. Each has an attraction 
 of its own, and therefore seeks a separate gratification* 
 From these six loves there emanates six atmospheres. 
 Each atmosphere is composed of differently shaped 
 atoms, having, consequently, different affinities and 
 manifestations. But the six emanations, neverthe- 
 less, commingle and blend into one atmosphere, 
 which then environs the individual as the air sur- 
 rounds the earth. 
 
 " This aromal sphere of the soul is what sensitive 
 natures feel on the approach of different persons; 
 realising an attraction or repulsion — being affected 
 pleas iirably or otherwise, without perceiving a 
 palpable cause. This atmosphere is what a dog 
 smells in his master's path. 
 
 '* Each love has also a different-coZorec? atmosphere ; 
 this fact in connection with the diflferent shaped 
 atoms, constitutes and makes the individuality. 
 
 " And each love gravitates to its kind. The parti- 
 cles composing self-love are angular ; hence you can 
 feel the nettles of selfishness. Parental love is 
 composed of more spherical atoms ; hence children 
 and horses, cats and dogs, feel the presence of its 
 atmosphere. Animals are readily domesticated 
 under the influence of this love. 
 
 "Strangers can feel the aroma of fraternal love; 
 its atmosphere is finer and its particles more smooth 
 and penetrative. 
 
116 FREE LOVE. 
 
 "And you can feel, in certain persons, the charac- 
 ter of the conjugal love ; whether it be on the 
 subordinate scale, or elevated to the higher phases. 
 Its particles are gross or refined in shape and color 
 in accord with its intrinsic growth. Self-love is, in 
 everything, a bigamist ; it invariably asks for two , 
 pieces, a common expression of selfishness. 
 
 " Parental love is a. polygarnist ; it calls for plurality 
 of pets or productions. Its attractions lean towards 
 many children ; and embraces many even more 
 rapturously than one. If children are not desired 
 by all, it is mainly owing to external circumstances. 
 
 ** Fraternal, filial and universal loves are by nature 
 omnigamic in their affinities. They love a countless 
 variety of objects and subjects. In their rapturous 
 and ever-widening sympathies, they encircle millions 
 at once. It will be a glorious era, and exceedingly 
 peaceful, when these 'Moves** can have a practical 
 development. 
 
 ** But conjugal love, the marriage principle, when 
 in its juvenile or adolescent stages, includes all the 
 preceeding forms ; it is a bigamist, a polygamist, an 
 omnigamistj and is unsteady ; but with maturity 
 and with civility of development comes the power to 
 love but ONE counterpart. And when thus developed, 
 the atoms of conjugal love are spirally shaped ; the 
 female interlocking with the male atmosphere ; each 
 flowing into the other's being." 
 
 The above, we understand to be Mr. Davis* clair- 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 117 
 
 voyant testimony. To us, it contains some of the 
 deepest and most clear mental philosophy which we 
 have ever seen in print; and also some which we 
 think complex, uncertain and erroneous. The entire 
 distinctness and individuality of each faculty, and 
 also their union and harmony, the various shaped 
 and colored atmospheres, all commends itself to our 
 understanding. All of this is very beautiful. It is 
 a real jewel. That these loves in their individuality^ 
 are one a '* bigamist,*' one a "polygamist,** and 
 three "omnigamist,** while the sixth, the sexual, 
 passes through, in its growth, all of these phases, 
 up to, or down to the monogamist, is more doubtful. 
 We do not like to take the room to give our entire 
 objections to some part of it. Why could he not 
 have informed us whether any other faculty changes 
 its form in progression ? This is left entirely in the 
 dark for so important a subject. But the question 
 is, what are they, each and all, when acting in the 
 highest state of union and harmony ? For they are 
 one, as well as many. Conjugal love grows and 
 develops to the "power to love but one counterpart/* 
 **And when thus developed, the atoms of this 
 "love are spirally shaped." 
 
 Now this is a tremenduous proposition. This is 
 the hinge on which civilization turns. It should not 
 have been passed so slightly — no argument — no 
 proof — but testimony only. We have testified that 
 this love will develop to an ability to love mcrre 
 
118 . . FREE LOVE. 
 
 than one, and we have argued to prove it. But we 
 are glad of so much from Mr. Davis. It seems that 
 sexual love has been right in the past, in its free 
 loves. It was acting to its nature. Children should 
 not act like men. This is quite a step gained. 
 
 Progression generally brings enlargement and an 
 increase of power. But we find connubial love con- 
 tracting in progression, decreasing in breadth and 
 extent of power, as it advances. How remarkable 
 that every man, as he attempts to defend exclusive 
 marriage, reverses the order of every natural lawf 
 and never gives a substantial reason for so doing. 
 They seldom give us any reason. Mr. Davis, do 
 other loves change their form by progression ? If 
 so, in what direction ? Do they contract and cen» 
 tralise, or do they expand and enlarge ? We are 
 inquirers and learners. As Mr. D. said nothing of 
 their change, we will conclude they do not : we 
 mean, of course, in form of manifestation. We have 
 no evidence of this change in amativeness, in its 
 separate individuality. We admit, that as progres- 
 sion brings a relative change between it and other 
 faculties, so its action may to the same extent 
 change. Admitting the "shape*' of the connubial 
 atmosphere does change, how does this hinder its 
 fitting all alike progressed opposites? Does Mr. D. 
 mean to teach us that this atmosphere is so concen- 
 trated upon, so confined to, the one, that it has no 
 power to get a release, and so stray elsewhere. We 
 
ANDREW JACKSOil DAVIS. 119 
 
 do not believe in any permanent release or suspension. 
 But we insist, that "to divide is not to take away." 
 We do not withdraw our adhesive love from one in 
 order to love another. No more do we the connu- 
 bial. Mr. Davis, like others of his faith, does not 
 marry, exclusively marry, all of the connubial 
 atmosphere. He allows some part of it to act in 
 harmony with the laws of the higher loves — with 
 the "universal loves. '* As a comparatively high 
 mental philosopher, we call him back to this subject. 
 His work is hardly begun. He is bound, on every 
 principle of justice, to give us at least some clue to 
 tlie law which separates this faculty, and frees a part 
 and confines a part. Show us why some part, (we 
 do not know what part — the distinction is his, and 
 his friends, not ours,) can be non-exclusive, and 
 other parts cannot be. As he has failed to give us 
 any clue to this, we go in search of proof, but we 
 fail to find it. If we take the outer man as an index 
 of the inner, we are not relieved. We see nothing 
 more incompatible in this sense with the omnigamic 
 form in coitionary love, than in any other, any 
 higher. Mr. D. would and does virtually admit 
 this. We insist, then, that we have a right to call 
 for proof. 
 
 At first, our opponents, like Mr. Ballou, contended 
 that always and everywhere, every act of vari- 
 ety was, per se, "more or less adulterous.*' Long 
 since many of these have arrived nearly to Mr. D.*8 
 
120 TREE LOVE, HAHX 
 
 position, that various orders might have been right 
 in the past, and possibly to some extent in the 
 present. But these now contend lustily that " any 
 how, they know the exclusively dual is the highest^ 
 and the final of connubial love/' On the whole,, 
 this is a real gain in the right direction. We took 
 our pen to rout them from this last stand point, 
 and we are sanguine of final success. Here is their 
 last breast- w:ork, and here will come the death-strug- 
 gle of exclusiveness. Mr. Davis, a noble and an hon- 
 orable leader, has taken his position in this gap. 
 We liope and believe he will never surrender this 
 post, while he has any philosophical ammunition left 
 to defend it. We court ihe discussion of this last 
 question. What is the highest order of connubial 
 love ? This book contains our argumentative reply 
 to the question. Will our opponents give us as 
 thorough and as direct a defence of their position, if. 
 the thing is possible. 
 
 Mr. Davis defines marriage to be " the union of 
 the essence of two atoms.'' We add, the union of 
 two or more atoms. There is a duality in marriage ; 
 it is between the two sides — the male and the female 
 atmospheres. I have no doubt but that Mr. D. sees 
 this duality. He sees a healthful harmony in the 
 Joining ojf the two — a man and a woman. We see 
 a still greater harmony in th« marriage of many. 
 
 Even much of the higher harmony of marriage, 
 which he does teach, or foretell, he carries to tha> 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. Hi 
 
 other sphere for its practical realization. Yet all of 
 it, and more will be experienced here, and on this 
 earth. Like Paul in his "third heavens," and 
 Swede nborg in his ** celestial spheres,*' he sees things 
 there, which are but clairvoyant views of things to 
 come, and to be enjoyed here. He sets untruthful 
 bounds to the present, and coming attainments on 
 our earth. 
 
 "Repulsion," I believe, is considered by Mr. D., 
 as a negative J or a less attraction, and designed to 
 regulate the various degrees of attraction. At least, 
 this is our view. And should we admit that those 
 on a widely different plane may never be so far at- 
 tracted to each other, as to desire and normally enjoy 
 all of the rights of connubial love, it is still true 
 that those on the same plane, and of " like temper- 
 ment," may. Such cannot in freedom, be entirely 
 exclusive. That which joins them to one, will join 
 to all on the same plain, and of the same " tempera- 
 ment." The ability to appreciate the one, gives the 
 ability to appreciate all others on the same plain and 
 of the same temperament. 
 
 Mr. Davis teaches us that the best we can do at 
 present, in seeking a connubial mate, is, if possible, 
 to reach the *• spiritual plane," and see that the 
 "central temperaments" meet in harmony. Then 
 by effort, and a careful culture, all others, or any 
 less degree of repulsion, can be brought into sub- 
 mission, and perhaps at last into love, and so render 
 U 
 
122 .>IVy FREE LOVE. (aVik 
 
 the union eternal. If these repulsions are healthy 
 and normal, this course, so far destroys spontainety ; 
 and, like Mr. Wright, he, in this manner, detracts 
 from individuality, for the sake of unity. If these 
 repulsions are unhealthy, we give the same advice, 
 and add more to it. We advise all to at least overcome 
 these little repulsions, so far as they are abnormal, 
 between all on the same plane. But never, in any 
 case, or for any reason, to suppress or oppress a 
 healthy repulsion. Free Love neither requires nor 
 allows any such sacrifice. It leaves unabridged the 
 most perfect spontaniety and individuality. The 
 centrifugal force is as important as the centripetal, 
 and we would leave all natural forces alike free in 
 matter or in mind. 
 
 Yet we insist even here, that as benevolence can 
 do every other act of utility in harmony with its 
 general law of justice and mercy, over these lesser 
 repulsions, without harming them, so the same is 
 true, to some extent, on this subject. There are 
 various good motives which may wisely lead to the 
 ultimates of love. A degree of need, mutual and 
 normal enjoyment, and the creation of offspring, are 
 among them. In the first and second cases, at least, 
 if the two do not mix atmospheres any farther than 
 they harmonize, no harm is done. This is sometimes 
 possible. Not always. As I shall not take the room 
 to prove this last proposition, the reader can take or 
 leave it as it seems to be truth or otherwise to him. 
 
 II 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 123 
 
 I am sure Mr. Davis will not tell us that God 
 ever made two persons of the opposite sex, who were 
 entire attraction, and no repulsion. Then nature 
 never perfectly married two. But nature may, and 
 probably does, create a perfect fitness for each and 
 for all in the race ; then why not let each find that 
 supply in the race ? Why try to improve upon his 
 works ? Why not allow a perfect spontaniety, and 
 not warp each individuality for the sake of unity ? 
 Why not allow the race to progress to a higher and 
 more perfect harmony, in a perfect spontaniety? 
 Why marry any man, real man, harmonial man, one 
 iota beyond his normal and spontaneous attractions ? 
 Why labor to assimilate the one to the other more 
 than is strictly natural ? Let each and every person 
 differ from me eternally, so far as they were made to 
 difi'er. Universal love will harmonize and supply 
 all. I shall find every phase of marriage somewhere, 
 and every mental, moral and material want supplied. 
 I have no right to ask or expect a perfect ** rest *' in 
 any one woman, but I have such a right in the race 
 — in woman. So I give myself to woman. If I 
 find much more **rest" in some one woman, than in 
 any other — and this is natural — I may and should 
 take and enjoy it. 
 
 On page 411, Mr. Davis comes directly to the 
 question of a "variety'' in love. But he does this 
 in reply to Dr. Nichols. For two reasons, I think 
 it unnecessary for me to quote much, or write much 
 in reviewinor it. 
 
-fiM -^ ' FREE LOVE. 
 
 First, I see from ''Nichols' Journal" of last month, 
 that the Dr. has replied to him in a later edition of 
 his work on marriage. Second, Mr. Davis resolves 
 the question of a variety in love, into the question 
 of the "fickleness, unsteadiness," or otherwise, of 
 love. On this, I certainly have no controversy with 
 Mr. Davis. I doubt whether Dr. Nichols has. We 
 all admit that love, in an undeveloped state, is some 
 times fickle. I am sure it will not be so in true 
 harmony. Mark, I only contend that we may love 
 more than one. I think I do not favor divorce, in 
 the present state of the world, as much as Mr. Davis 
 or Mr. Wright. They allow a variety by a succes- 
 sion of persons ; I more by a succession of acts, but 
 without "putting away." I do not like "putting 
 away." It often partakes of a much greater degree 
 of injustice than entire exclusiveness. Nature does 
 not often, after forming or permitting so entire a 
 union, absolutely and entirely put away. As a fact, 
 I never advised the separation of man and wife. 
 Perhaps, in a few cases, more wisdom might have 
 lead me to do this. On the whole, I do not gener- 
 ally approve of too violently disturbing past and 
 present relations, to get to the better which we may 
 justly hold in promise. Sometimes it may be wise. 
 Mr. Davis asks : " Does not every well developed, 
 person obey the law of harmony ? What is harmony 
 but the unity of variety — that is the centralization 
 of diversity? " I only reply, a variety in harmony, 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 125 
 
 is consistent with the action of every love of the 
 mind. Connubial love "centralises** on woman. 
 He adds ; " Every love, as I have hitherto affirmed, is 
 monogamio : 1 speak now of the regulated soul. 
 When the soul finds that occupation which meets its 
 attractions, it does not wish to be divorced therefrom, 
 but steadily loves and labors onward." I fully agree 
 with this sentiment, as I understand him here in 
 the use of the word "monogamic.*' In my reply 
 to Mr. Ballou, I said that every faculty was, in one 
 sense, confined to one desire — one object. But man, 
 in this "regulated'* state, finds this one desire — one 
 object, met in many persons. Even benevolence has 
 but one desire — it desires but one object ; still it 
 takes a universe to supply material for its grat- 
 ification. 
 
 " Alimentiveness " has but *^ one desire,*' but it 
 takes a variety of articles, and a variety of diverse 
 mixtures to fully supply it. ** But presently comes 
 a fatigue, a thought of monotony, a longing for 
 novelty,'* in exclusive monogamic marriage. " Well, 
 have true lovers no other resources ? Let me think. 
 * * •* * Society is accessible— friends are to 
 be visited and entertained, the imperative demands 
 of the remaining five affections are to be considered, 
 and to all these varieties may be added an endless 
 programme of pleasurable efforts and realizable 
 aspirations for the world*s advancement.** 
 
 Mr. Davis has here totally annihilated his entire 
 11* 
 
126 FREE LOVB. 
 
 argument, if he meant it as an argument, from the 
 monogamic nature of all the loves. Because, if that 
 monogamic law confines connubial love to one 
 person, it alike confines every love to one person. 
 So all of this "society," and these many *' friends,'* 
 are licentious. That law, so carried out, would take 
 all, like the mythological Adam and Eve, into a dual 
 hermitage. 
 
 Mr. Davis expresses his opinion of our views 
 somewhat freely, but we pass it. *' Can there be 
 freedom in error ? " No, never. " The truth shall 
 make you free.'' Yes, always. But we ask out 
 opponent, what is truth ? Where is the truth on 
 this subject ? and we take our present leave of his 
 slight argument, (we are not sure that he really 
 meant it as an argument,) by inviting him back to 
 the subject. 
 
 Mr. Davis refers to the testimony of Swedenborg, 
 as to the dual marriages of heaven ; and relates a 
 particular case of great glory, resplendent beauty, 
 and comparative loveliness. Probably no testimony 
 from the other spheres has gone past this. Jesus 
 testified beyond it, but from what evidence, we do 
 not know. In the nuptial pair which Swedenborg 
 describes, much of their beauty, to him, was from 
 their beautiful clothing. He writes much of tlw) 
 coverings, or apparel of angels, as well as of their 
 marriages, and yet he barely drops the testimony, that 
 ** the innermost angels, go naked." (I quote from 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. ]Wt 
 
 memory.) I testify that there is no exclusive mar- 
 riage or clothing in the higher or real heavens. All 
 exclusiveness, and all veils are there taken away, 
 Nature is too pure and too beautiful to need, or be 
 marred, by covering. But we should have supposed 
 that even if they were naked, they might have ap- 
 peared in clothing to his sight. It would have been 
 wise. Still we have no doubt but exclusive marriaore 
 
 o 
 
 and clothing may be common in Paradise, Purgatory 
 and the Hells. I presume Swedenborg saw that 
 loving couple, in what I should call Paradise — or' 
 some of the lower heavens. Paul saw, in vision, 
 to the "third heavens,** but he thought it not ex- 
 pedient then to tell us what he saw there. The 
 customs of heaven and of earth, on the same moral 
 plane, will be nearly alike. 
 
 But there is another interesting view of this case, 
 which may be suggested, as it is so appropriate a 
 reply to Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis tells us in his book, 
 that it was "visions of the vulvar female extremist" 
 which " supplied Swedenborg with material for his 
 infernal spheres." We saw, twelve years ago, that 
 the great seer's description of the ** celestial angels*' 
 of heaven, was nothing more than a truthful view 
 of some of the celestial angels of our sphere. It 
 did not exceed the truth of the moral or spiritual 
 elevation of some minds of our mundane world. 
 And we then thought it more than probable that he 
 was only relating "visions *' of the future elevation of 
 
128 FREE LOVE. 
 
 progressed humanity on our globe. With this view, 
 his relations of the glorious nuptials of heaven 
 might have been simply a just tribute of prophesy 
 of Mr. Wright's and Mr. Davis' Love marriage, and 
 possibly the identical image of ** Ernest and Nina'* 
 in our friend Wright's mind. But we have no need 
 to resort to such an exposition, believing, as we do, 
 that what exists here exists there. 
 
 Mr. Davis sees and foretells a coming war — ** a 
 bloodless war," on the subject of marriage : and yet 
 in his position, he seems compelled to entirely ignore 
 one of the first, if not the first, great and honorable 
 champions in this war, John H. Noyes. We tell Mr. 
 Davis, the hardest battle will come when and where 
 men are required to relinquish their monopolizing 
 grasp upon woman. When the man feels that the 
 last vestige of what has more or less strengthened 
 his ownership of sex, is giving way before the firea 
 of coming truth, then and there we shall see a sen- 
 sation which has not been equaled in modern times. 
 Man, in the past, has rested upon deeds and marriage 
 certificates for the protection of his lands and sexual 
 claims. Our reformatory opponents require him to 
 yield the certificate and some times to consent to a 
 change of possession. This, as Mr. Davis foresees, 
 he will oppose. But we shall only see the full 
 strength of his opposition, when the demand comes 
 home to him to unconditionally and forever yield 
 his entire personal and exclusive grasp upon each 
 
 1 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 129 
 
 and every womaa ; resting each year, month, day, 
 hour, minute, of his coming future, upon his own 
 inherent lovliness to attract and supply his coming 
 wants. This is a condition which undeveloped mind 
 is far from coveting ; but is ever ready to seek to 
 avoid. Our non-exclusive principle, added to our 
 entire and absolute freedom of woman, is what will 
 ** lay the axe into the root of the tree." If the past 
 teaches us any lesson — and we think it does — it is 
 that as man has progressed, this man-power over 
 woman, with its monopoly of exclusive ownership, 
 has become less and less. Polygamy is a sort of 
 wholesale and one-sided sexual monopoly. Mono- 
 gamy is an improvement in the right direction. Its 
 monopolies are less, and it is more just to man and 
 more reciprocal ; yet it is far from being entirely 
 just, even on its own principles, to woman. The 
 rich and the powerful have receded from many to 
 one ; so far as they have lived to their covenant. 
 Marriage, in her present injustice y is old in years, 
 and strong in power. She seems to sit in compara- 
 tive ease, and in her slumbers, as did slavery a few 
 years since. But she sits upon a volcano of smoth- 
 ered and crushed affections, which will in a coming 
 hour, break her slumbers and arouse her from her 
 lethargy. The fires of a true and burning Love wil^ 
 yet burn up and consume, as they are fanned by the 
 perpetual gales of truth, her exclusive and selfish con- 
 nubiality. Their powers are at work, and nothing 
 
13<X FREE LOVE. 
 
 can stay them. Everything will forward and hasten 
 it. The more narrow minded and seiually selfish 
 have always felt it keenly that they were not 
 (permitted to carry their exclusive system into heav- 
 '-en ; but the prophesy of their religion had taught 
 :them not to hope for this. But when these lower 
 minds — I speak what I know — see that another 
 jprophesy in the same book is to hare a fulfilment — 
 ; that the will of Grod is to be done on esrth as it is 
 done in heaven — as the higher angels do it — they 
 will howl in their misery. Such minds do not, and 
 can not at once enjoy the free spirit of angels. We 
 should be glad of the assurance that the coming war 
 would be entirely *' bloodless.'' Still we have no 
 fear persmially. ISTor have we a thought of living to 
 • see the full consummation of all of which we speak* 
 Progress i« slow at the best ; and doubtless it is well 
 that it is 'SO, on the whole. We tell the, as yet, un- 
 developed world, there is to be a mighty change, 
 N^ow selfishness is the rule in everything. Benevo- 
 lence is the exception. Progress will change all 
 this. Benevolence will one day be the rule, 
 AND SELFISHNESS THE EXCEPTION. When man 
 '. has fairly grown to his manhood, he will be 
 nothing lower than this. The marriages of Mr. 
 Wright 'and Mr. Davis are glorious, compared to the 
 past, for they really and truly elevate love to the 
 lower phases, or to the germ of spiritual and harmo* 
 mial connubiality. But we prophesy that even these, 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 131 
 
 in the future, will have comparatively *'na glory, '* 
 by reason of the glory which will then so far exceed 
 them. The fruition of a ripe, manly and womanly 
 love will then comprehend and absorb all of the 
 good in all below it ; then, in connubial love, benev- 
 olence will be the rule, and selfishness will be the 
 exception. I glory in the hope and assurance of 
 such a day ; and in living to hasten it. The forma- 
 tion of man's brain promises all of this, and it will 
 not lie. Mental philosophy never lies. Progression 
 will redeem its every pledge. Nothing is more 
 sure. We come back to that " war " — as we hope 
 "bloodless war." We agree with our opponents 
 that it is coming. We, in entire respect and friend- 
 ship, yet solemnly, put the question — when that 
 war fairly comes, in all its intensity, and aims its 
 most deadly blows against our n on -exclusive prin- 
 ciples, where will Mr. Wright and Mr. Davis be 
 found ? That hour will try the souls of reformers. 
 We, in the commencement of this mental, and 
 more than mental, stir, stand in defence of all, or 
 nearly all, in which these opponents have parted from 
 the principles of the past. Where will they be when 
 the crisis more fully reaaches our camp ? I must 
 repeat my interrogatory — will they then be found, 
 on the whole, for, or against us ? We aver that we 
 are not anxious for ourselves, or for the cause which 
 we identify, as to the practical answer which the 
 future may give to these questions. Each in his 
 
132 FREE LOVE. 
 
 book, has classed us with the enemy. Will these 
 men ever retract that folly ? Double folly to the 
 real cause which they seek to promote ! I will not 
 speak for Mr. Wright, but I think Mr. Davis, if he 
 does not then directly favor free love, will be a men- 
 tal and moral non-resistant towards it, and treat it 
 with entire respect. We hope not to be disappoint- 
 ed. More, we hope he will yet rejoice, and feel 
 "everlasting thanks'* to a higher power, in the fi- 
 nal fulness, as well as in the infancy, of his Har- 
 monial philosophy. 
 
 We and our opponents alike contend for the ab- 
 solute freedom of woman. This is well. Then it 
 is right that she should be ** allowed to choose the 
 father of her children, ^^ We here tell our oppo- 
 nants if she, in freedom, shall continue to do this, 
 in strict harmony with their dual doctrines, we 
 will never reproach or condemn her for it. Are 
 they ready to meet us here, if in such freedom, she 
 shall, to any extent, act in harmony with our views? 
 We have a right, and do demand as much as this 
 of them. We ask Mr. Wright in the name of ev- 
 ery principle of justice and consistency, after having 
 so nobly defended the rights of woman, to take off 
 and keep off his hands from all women, and from 
 man also. I honor the man or woman who, from 
 an honest faith, or belief, lives to his or her dual 
 pledge. I have no heart in me to reproach or 
 slander such. We ask, and demand of our oppo- 
 
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 133 
 
 nents, who talk freedom, to feel and act freedom — 
 allow freedom. 
 
 If we fail to make them understand our mental 
 philosophy, we will then meet, and appeal to them 
 to let tooman h^free; and we covenant with them to 
 keep hands off — judgments and reproaches off — and 
 we will abide by her practical decision. We can 
 join issue here, if they and we really mean the/ree- 
 iom of woman. This is a good and fair test. We 
 shall write our book as they have theirs, and then 
 wait with entire trust to the developments of the fu- 
 ture. Woman will have her freedom. Truth will 
 ^ow and prosper, and that shall be our final arbiter. 
 12 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 While we have been writing our book, New York 
 city has been all astir with a volcano of Free Love. 
 No not that : It was a volcano of exclusive mar- 
 riage, touched off by a free love match. (See city 
 papers about the 20th of October.) The Tribune 
 reissued its bulls and pledged itself anew to the de- 
 fence of the family. Other editors — from the great- 
 er to the less, even to the remote towns — caught the 
 spirit of the times, and were on the alert ; and alike 
 renewed their vows of watchful care and kind re- 
 gards to their old mistress. Seriously — what has 
 happened to cause this alarm in the marriage insti- 
 tution ? Has free love encroached upon her just 
 and established rights ? Has she clandestinely 
 entered the sexual plantations of her neighbor, and 
 enticed away his body slave-mate ? No ! There is 
 no evidence of that. Has she taken the liberty to 
 regulate her own domestic concerns to her own taste, 
 regardless of what might be the incidental effect 
 upon her old neighbor ? We think not even that. 
 She has spoken her mind of exclusive marriage, and 
 recommended free love ! She has talked about the 
 
 135 
 
i 
 
 136 APPENDIX. 
 
 marriage institution. It will not do. Something 
 must be done. The power of the law must be in- 
 voked ► She must send the noble Brisbane to hei 
 city dungeon for a night, as a token of what shei 
 can and will do, if her wishes are not regarded! 
 Shame on such despotism and cowardly persecution 
 in Protestantism ! Shame on such inhumanity in 
 the light of this*age ! 
 
 When an institution of so great age, and being _ 
 such an overwhelming majority, is so easily an& 
 carelessly set in such excited and angry motion, ii 
 is moral proof equal to a mathamatical demonstration 
 of her inherent weakness, and of her consciousnesi 
 of it. It must be rotten at heart, and without a s 
 foundation. Like slavery, it quakes when touch' 
 Yea, when even looked at ! Mr. Greeley, Mr. BalL 
 and others, would know how to appreciate such rJi 
 flections as these, if connected with any subject noo 
 in harmony with their faith. Our opponents see thu 
 full force of them, when they relate to slavery. Gen 
 tlemen, consistency is a jewel. If I were to fine 
 such a sensation on my side of the house, from com 
 parativly so small a cause, even though our belovec 
 is hardly through her teens, I should recommen( 
 its friends to look again, and overhaul the whol 
 concern, to lay a deeper foundation for their super 
 structure. Mr. Greeley believes in the entire safet] 
 of truth in free discussion, when it relates to thi 
 institutions of his remote neighbors, but does h* 
 
APPENDIX. 137 
 
 really dare to trust it and himself here ? Has he 
 no fear of the consequences here ? From his course 
 with Mr. Andrews, and since, we think he has. Still, 
 as he believes in a true expediency, he may have 
 thought the people would not yet bear it. Perhaps 
 not. We do not complain of him, but we do thank 
 him for what he has ventured in this hne. 
 
 I have not done with Mr. Greeley, I wish to re- 
 cord my sincere gratitude to him for the good he has 
 done to the cause which I advocate, as also to every 
 other radical reform, in preparing the way for it and 
 them by his general efforts on the side of free discus- 
 sion. Whatever may be his future course, I promise 
 never to forget his past services. He has made his 
 impress on the age, in favor of a degree of freedom. 
 Like the colter to the plow, he has cut the sod. 
 True, in all this he has never meant to advance free 
 love ; and as this child is being born, he would 
 gladly slay it. He has just renewed his pledge to 
 always pursue it, and if possible exterminate it. (I 
 suppose the late pledge in the Tribune to be his. 
 At least he stands in that position ) To the cause 
 of the most radical reform, Mr. Greeley's name has 
 been John (the baptist,) now it is Herod. Christ 
 has come and John is no more needed. We think 
 Herod is ; but we have np fear that he can do his 
 successor any real harm. We most sincerly pray 
 that he may not do by what has been the John 
 in himself, as the Herod of old did with the 
 12* 
 
138 APPENDIX. 
 
 baptist.'* As one who still loves liim we have 
 feared this. 
 
 Mr. Greeley is still really devoted to the spread 
 and advancement of free love ; never before half as 
 much so as now. He has taken his position behind, 
 in the rear of it, and by his opposition he will bringrj 
 the whole power of his tremenduous battery to drive^j 
 it forward. The cause has able leaders enough, J 
 and Mr. Greeley has taken the best possible position 
 which he could take, and the only one which he is^ 
 now prepared to occupy. Here he will act with zeal. 
 Header, these were our reflections on reading the j 
 late pledge of perpetual opposition to our principles.! 
 in the Tribune. As I turned from my pen to that I 
 paper for relaxation, I was encouraged and strength- 
 ened by that promise to oppose. I do not beheve 
 that a truthful opposition will ever advance error. 
 But I do believe that an untruthful opposition will 
 always advance truth. 
 
 [The author would say to the reader that from 
 unavoidable hinderances, this small work has been 
 delayed over a year since it was ready for the press.] 
 
ETERNAL JUSTICE. 
 
 BY CHARLES MACKAY. 
 
 The man is thought a knave or fool. 
 
 Or bigot, plotting crime, 
 Who for advancement of his kind 
 
 Is wiser than his time. 
 For him the hemlock shall distill ; 
 
 For him the axe be bared ; 
 For him the gibbet shall be built ; 
 
 For him the stake prepared ; 
 Him shall the scorn and wrath of men 
 
 Puraue with deadly aim ; 
 And malice, envy, spite, and lies, 
 
 Shall desecrate his name. 
 But truth shall conquer at the last : 
 
 For round and round we run, 
 And ever the right comes uppermost, 
 
 And ever is justice done. 
 
 Pace through thy cell, old Socrates, 
 
 Cheerily to and fro ; 
 Trust to the impulse of thy soul. 
 
 And let the poison flow. 
 They may shatter to earth the lamp of clay 
 
 That holds the light divine, 
 But tliey cannot quench tlie fire of thought 
 
 By any such deadly wine ; 
 They cannot blot thy spoken words 
 
 From the memory of man, 
 By all the poison ever was bruised 
 
 Since Time his course began. 
 To-day abhorred, to-morrow adored. 
 
 So round and round we run, 
 And ever the truth comes uppermost. 
 
 And ever is justice done. 
 
 Plot in thy cave, gray anchorite. 
 
 Be wiser than thy peers ; 
 Augment the range of human power. 
 
 And trust to coming years. 
 They may call thee wizard and monk accursed. 
 
 And load thee with dispraise ; 
 
KO ETERNAL JtSTICB. 
 
 Thou wert born five hundred years too so 
 
 For the comfort of thy days. 
 But not too soon for human kind — 
 
 Time hatli reward in store ; 
 And the demons of our stories become 
 
 The saints that we adore. 
 The blind can see, the slave is lord ; 
 
 So round and round we run. 
 And ever the wrong is proved to be wrocg, 
 
 And ever justice is done. 
 
 Keep, Galileo, to thy thought, 
 
 And nerve thy soul to bear ; 
 They may gloat o'er the senseless words tbey wiiog 
 
 From trie pangs of thy despair ; 
 They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide 
 
 The sun's meridian glow ; 
 The heel of a priest may tread thee down. 
 
 And a tyrant work thee woe ; 
 But never a truth has been destroyed : 
 
 They may curse and call it crime ; 
 Pervert and betray, or slander and slay 
 
 Its teachers for a time. 
 But the sunshine aye will light the sky, 
 
 As round and round we run. 
 And truth shall ever come uppermost, 
 
 And justice shall be done. 
 
 And live there now such men as these — 
 
 With thoughts like the great of old ? 
 Many have died in their misrry, 
 
 And left their thought untold ; 
 And many live, and are ranked as mad. 
 
 And are placed in the cold world's ban. 
 For sending their bright, far-seeing souls 
 
 Three centuries in the van ; 
 They toil in penury and grief. 
 
 Unknown, if not maligned ; 
 Forlorn, forlorn, bearing the scorn 
 
 Of the meanest of mankind. 
 But yet the world goes round and round, 
 
 And the genial seasons run. 
 And ever the truth comes uppermoBt, 
 
 And ever is justice done. 
 
PAMPHLET B' 
 
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