it must be reiterated that our reasoning still leaves utopian marriage an institution with wide possibilities of variation. we have tried to give effect to the ideal of a virtual equality, an equality of spirit between men and women, and in doing so we have overridden the accepted opinion of the great majority of mankind. probably the first writer to do as much was plato. his argument in support of this innovation upon natural human feeling was thin enough — a mere analogy to illustrate the spirit of his propositions; it was his creative instinct that determined him. in the atmosphere of such speculations as this, plato looms very large indeed, and in view of what we owe to him, it seems reasonable that we should hesitate before dismissing as a thing prohibited and evil, a type of marriage that he made almost the central feature in the organisation of the ruling class, at least, of his ideal state. he was persuaded that the narrow monogamic family is apt to become illiberal and anti-social, to withdraw the imagination and energies of the citizen from the services of the community as a whole, and the roman catholic church has so far endorsed and substantiated his opinion as to forbid family relations to its priests and significant servants. he conceived of a poetic devotion to the public idea, a devotion of which the mind of aristotle, as his criticisms of plato show, was incapable, as a substitute for the warm and tender but illiberal emotions of the home. but while the church made the alternative to family ties celibacy [footnote: the warm imagination of campanella, that quaint calabrian monastic, fired by plato, reversed this aspect of the church.] and participation in an organisation, plato was far more in accordance with modern ideas in perceiving the disadvantage that would result from precluding the nobler types of character from offspring. he sought a way to achieve progeny, therefore, without the narrow concentration of the sympathies about the home, and he found it in a multiple marriage in which every member of the governing class was considered to be married to all the others. but the detailed operation of this system he put tentatively and very obscurely. his suggestions have the experimental inconsistency of an enquiring man. he left many things altogether open, and it is unfair to him to adopt aristotle’s forensic method and deal with his discussion as though it was a fully-worked-out project. it is clear that plato intended every member of his governing class to be so “changed at birth” as to leave paternity untraceable; mothers were not to know their children, nor children their parents, but there is nothing to forbid the supposition that he intended these people to select and adhere to congenial mates within the great family. aristotle’s assertion that the platonic republic left no scope for the virtue of continence shows that he had jumped to just the same conclusions a contemporary london errand boy, hovering a little shamefacedly over jowett in a public library, might be expected to reach.
aristotle obscures plato’s intention, it may be accidentally, by speaking of his marriage institution as a community of wives. when reading plato he could not or would not escape reading in his own conception of the natural ascendency of men, his idea of property in women and children. but as plato intended women to be conventionally equal to men, this phrase belies him altogether; community of husbands and wives would be truer to his proposal. aristotle condemns plato as roundly as any commercial room would condemn him to-day, and in much the same spirit; he asserts rather than proves that such a grouping is against the nature of man. he wanted to have women property just as he wanted to have slaves property, he did not care to ask why, and it distressed his conception of convenience extremely to imagine any other arrangement. it is no doubt true that the natural instinct of either sex is exclusive of participators in intimacy during a period of intimacy, but it was probably aristotle who gave plato an offensive interpretation in this matter. no one would freely submit to such a condition of affairs as multiple marriage carried out, in the spirit of the aristotelian interpretation, to an obscene completeness, but that is all the more reason why the modern utopia should not refuse a grouped marriage to three or more freely consenting persons. there is no sense in prohibiting institutions which no sane people could ever want to abuse. it is claimed — though the full facts are difficult to ascertain — that a group marriage of over two hundred persons was successfully organised by john humphrey noyes at oneida creek. [footnote: see john h. noyes’s history of american socialisms and his writings generally. the bare facts of this and the other american experiments are given, together with more recent matter, by morris hillquirt, in the history of socialism in the united states.] it is fairly certain in the latter case that there was no “promiscuity,” and that the members mated for variable periods, and often for life, within the group. the documents are reasonably clear upon that point. this oneida community was, in fact, a league of two hundred persons to regard their children as “common.” choice and preference were not abolished in the community, though in some cases they were set aside — just as they are by many parents under our present conditions. there seems to have been a premature attempt at “stirpiculture,” at what mr. francis galton now calls “eugenics,” in the mating of the members, and there was also a limitation of offspring. beyond these points the inner secrets of the community do not appear to be very profound; its atmosphere was almost commonplace, it was made up of very ordinary people. there is no doubt that it had a career of exceptional success throughout the whole lifetime of its founder, and it broke down with the advent of a new generation, with the onset of theological differences, and the loss of its guiding intelligence. the anglo-saxon spirit, it has been said by one of the ablest children of the experiment, is too individualistic for communism. it is possible to regard the temporary success of this complex family as a strange accident, as the wonderful exploit of what was certainly a very exceptional man. its final disintegration into frankly monogamic couples — it is still a prosperous business association — may be taken as an experimental verification of aristotle’s common-sense psychology, and was probably merely the public acknowledgment of conditions already practically established.
out of respect for plato we cannot ignore this possibility of multiple marriage altogether in our utopian theorising, but even if we leave this possibility open we are still bound to regard it as a thing so likely to be rare as not to come at all under our direct observation during our utopian journeyings. but in one sense, of course, in the sense that the state guarantees care and support for all properly born children, our entire utopia is to be regarded as a comprehensive marriage group. [footnote: the thelema of rabelais, with its principle of “fay ce que vouldras” within the limits of the order, is probably intended to suggest a platonic complex marriage after the fashion of our interpretation.]
it must be remembered that a modern utopia must differ from the utopias of any preceding age in being world-wide; it is not, therefore, to be the development of any special race or type of culture, as plato’s developed an athenian-spartan blend, or more, tudor england. the modern utopia is to be, before all things, synthetic. politically and socially, as linguistically, we must suppose it a synthesis; politically it will be a synthesis of once widely different forms of government; socially and morally, a synthesis of a great variety of domestic traditions and ethical habits. into the modern utopia there must have entered the mental tendencies and origins that give our own world the polygamy of the zulus and of utah, the polyandry of tibet, the latitudes of experiment permitted in the united states, and the divorceless wedlock of comte. the tendency of all synthetic processes in matters of law and custom is to reduce and simplify the compulsory canon, to admit alternatives and freedoms; what were laws before become traditions of feeling and style, and in no matter will this be more apparent than in questions affecting the relations of the sexes.
