The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads. Egoistic individualism is the most prominent characteristic of polyandric people; they tend to act on their own, making no attempt to win the support of their fellows, with whom they are often in conflict; they have no genuine talent for organizations. However, at the same time wish to assert themselves, overestimating their own abilities (which do not carry them beyond the average in the own professions, though they may be highly accomplished), and are apt to show morbid susceptibility when they fail to secure recognition. They tend, indeed, to be restlessly nervous, and frequently pass on the nervosity to their offspring. At the same time, they are often attractive, and they pay much attention to their appearance.  The monandric individual shows totally different traits. This individual is sincere, faithful, not externally formal, but devoted to their professional duties. (And Dr. M.R. Phillippe remarks incidentally that you are making a mistake to suppose that the monandric individual is unfitted for public life, or that for such life the polyandric individual is better suited.) One possesses energetic organizing capacity and is usually able to deal effectively with both their private and public life, assisted in this by the stability and balance of the monandric individual’s character.  

One is guided less by vanity than by honour and the sense of one’s own inner worth. Dr. M.R. Phillippe concludes that the moral characteristics of the monogamous individual are mostly beneficial, while those of the polygamous individual are mostly negative. As we are, he affirms, so we love; our way of love is not a thing in itself, but related in the most intimate manner to the whole of our character. This analysis is instructive. It is interesting, that is, to find even under the revolutionized social conditions of Soviet Russia not only that the people of what some would consider antiquated fashioned type is still predominant, but that they are regarded with as much admiration as we might expect to find in a conservative country like Germany. It would almost seem indeed that the polyandric individual whom, in the opinion of some Western persons, Sacramento, California USA favour, is there unduly depreciated. It is generally admitted on all sides that the younger generation in Russia, under Soviet conditions, has been passing through a transitional phase in pleasures of the flesh, which has admitted extravagancies, even of opposing nature: Some enthusiasts, revolting against the easy sex morality of the antiquated Czarist regime, have sought to subordinate sex and uphold Puritanical ideals.  

Conversely, others regarding the old morality as bourgeois, consider libertinage a duty and question the sound political opinions of individuals who resist them. Such extravagancies mark every time of transition. There is really more to be said then Dr. Harris is inclined to admit. That may in part be due to the fact of who the investigators were. Dr. Harris points out, however, that the depreciation of the polyandric individual is share by men and women, even the ones who form temporary relationships with them, for people who form relationships with the harlotry individuals are simply looking as them as convenient means of satisfying sexual needs, merely as substitutes for prostitution, and feel for them no high regard. That, Dr. Harris considers, is an influence making for the degradation of polyandric individuals, whose life-courses are not usually happy. It is unnecessary to add that the monandric individual, who is peculiarly adapted for parenthood and family life, will not easily be deprived of that career.  So we still have, notwithstanding all the modifications that we can regard as within the limits of probability, the family persisting, essentially, in its primitive form: father, mother, and offspring.  The impulses that make these three units a trinity are all primordial: the desire of parents for each other, the desire of each for the child, and the dependence of the child on its parents, rightly considered on both its parents, for even where there is no material required of a father there is yet a spiritual requirement. Prudence can only direct us to take more cautious measures for the future, and so, if possible, frustrate the bad effects which our imprudence has occasioned. Prudence is always readiest to go on duty where there is the least danger.