Note 250-9 — Chapter II

Even Plato complains of the unnatural relations of the sexes to one another, and would instead have the unions of couples of short duration introduced, and complete community of children under the direction of the state. (De Rep., V.) The Stoic Chrysippos approves the procreation of children by parent and child, brother and sister. (Diog. Laert., VII. 188.) In the time of Epictetus (Fr. 53, ed. Duebner), the Roman women liked to read Plato's republic, because in his community of wives they found an excuse for their own course. The Anabaptists appealed to Christ's saying that he who would not lose what he loved could not be his disciple. Thus the women should sacrifice their honor and suffer shame for Christ's sake. Publicans and prostitutes were fitter for heaven than honorable wives, etc. (Hagen, Deutschlands Verhältnisse im Reformationszeitalter, III, 221.)

In our days, the theory inimical to the family is based rather on misconceived ideas of freedom and science. The Christian mortification of the flesh is, it is said, one-sidedness; and that the flesh no less than the spirit is of God. Hence it is that Saint Simonism would reconcile the two, and "emancipate" the flesh. (Enfantin, Economie politique, 2d ed., 1832.) Fourier, in his Harmonie, allows each woman to have one époux and two children by him; one géniteur and one child by him; one favori and as many amants with no legal rights as she wishes. His "harmonic" world he would protect against over-population by four organic measures: the régime gastrosophique, the object of which is by first-class food to oppose fecundity; la vigeur des femmes, because sickly women have most children; l'exercise intégral, since by the exercise of all the organs of the body the organs of generation are latest developed; lastly the mœurs phanérogames, the minuter description of which Fourier's disciples omitted in the later editions. (N. Monde, 377, ff.) Fourier was of opinion that only one-eighth of the mothers should be occupied with the bringing up of the children, and that a child's own parents were least adapted to bringing it up, as is proved by the natural aversion of the child to mind the advice or obey the injunctions of its own parents. (186 ff.) If all were left free to choose their employment, two-thirds of all men would devote themselves to the sciences, and one-third of all women; the fine arts would be cultivated by one-third of the men and two-thirds of the women. In agriculture, two-thirds of the men and one-third of the women would take to large farming, and to small farming one-third of the men and two-thirds of the women.

The Communistic Journal, L'Humanitaire, is in favor of a community of wives proper, while Cabet leaves the question an open one. Compare, besides, Godwin on Political Justice, 1793, VIII, ch. 8. In beautiful contrast to this are J. G. Fichte's (compare, supra, § 2) views on marriage and the family in the appendix to his Naturrecht, although he, too, would largely facilitate divorce.