A state so distant from present manners and opinions, and apparently so impossible, naturally gave rise to objections; and your brother put many shrewd and pertinent questions, which would have silenced a mind less informed and less comprehensive than that of our instructor.
At last a difficulty arose which to me wore a very serious form; and as what was said left a strong impression on my memory, I will relate that part of the conversation.

Observe, Louisa, that Clifton and Frank were the chief speakers. Your brother began.
I confess, sir, you have removed many apparently unconquerable difficulties: but I have a further objection which I think unanswerable.
What is it?
Neither man nor woman in such a state can have any thing peculiar: the whole must be for the use and benefit of the whole?
As generally as practice will admit: and how very general that may be, imperfect as its constitution was, Sparta remained during five hundred years a proof.
Then how will it be possible, when society shall be the general possessor, for any man to say—This is my servant?

He cannot: there will be no servants.
Well but—This is my child?
Neither can he do that: they will be the children of the state.
Indeed!—And what say you to—This is my wife?—Can appropriation more than for the minute the hour or the day exist? Or, among so disinterested a people, can a man say even of the woman he loves—She is mine?
[We paused—I own, Louisa, I found myself at a loss; but Frank soon gave a very satisfactory reply.]
You have started a question of infinite importance, which perhaps I am not fully prepared to answer. I doubt whether in that better state of human society, to which I look forward with such

ardent aspiration, the intercourse of the sexes will be altogether promiscuous and unrestrained; or whether they will admit of something that may be denominated marriage. The former may perhaps be the truth: but it is at least certain that in the sense in which we understand marriage and the affirmation—This is my wife—neither the institution nor the claim can in such a state, or indeed in justice exist. Of all the regulations which were ever suggested to the mistaken tyranny of selfishness, none perhaps to this day have surpassed the despotism of those which undertake to bind not only body to body but soul to soul, to all futurity, in despite of every possible change which our vices and our virtues might effect, or however numerous

the secret corporal or mental imperfections might prove which a more intimate acquaintance should bring to light!