Besides, it will be impossible
to prevent some persons from suspecting that they are brothers and
sisters, fathers and mothers to each other; for, from the mutual
likeness there is between the sire and the offspring, they will
necessarily conclude in what relation they stand to each other, which
circumstance, we are informed by those writers who describe different
parts of the world, does sometimes happen; for in Upper Africa there
are wives in common who yet deliver their children to their respective
fathers, being guided by their likeness to them. There are also some
mares and cows which naturally bring forth their young so like the
male, that we can easily distinguish by which of them they were
impregnated: such was the mare called Just, in Pharsalia.
CHAPTER IV
Besides, those who contrive this plan of community cannot easily avoid
the following evils; namely, blows, murders involuntary or voluntary,
quarrels, and reproaches, all which it would be impious indeed to be
guilty of towards our fathers and mothers, or those who are nearly
related to us; though not to those who are not connected to us by any
tie of affinity: and certainly these mischiefs must necessarily happen
oftener amongst those who do not know how they are connected to each
other than those who do; and when they do happen, if it is among the
first of these, they admit of a legal expiation, but amongst the
latter that cannot be done. It is also absurd for those who promote a
community of children to forbid those who love each other from
indulging themselves in the last excesses of that passion, while they
do not restrain them from the passion itself, or those intercourses
which are of all things most improper, between a Father and a son, a
brother and a brother, and indeed the thing itself is most absurd.
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