The real source of the horror of incest in civilized communities was indicated more than two thousand years ago by Plato.

Medical writers bear witness to the wide prevalence of unnatural practices among children, even in good families, while in the slums of the large cities, where the families are herded like swine, there is a horrible indulgence in every kind of incest by adults as well as children.

He might as well forbid the reading of Genesis, because of the loves of Jacob and Rachael, the stories of Sichem and Dinah, Judah and Thamar; reject the Book of Numbers, for the fornications of the people of Israel with the Moabites; that of Judges for Samson and Dalilah's embracings; that of the Kings, for David and Bersheba's adulteries, the incest of Ammon and Thamar, Solomon's concubines, &c.

Even they dared not to affirm to the people of England, that a wife who had committed incest with her husband's brother, ought on her death to be buried in the same tomb with her fraticidal [Transcriber's note: sic] paramour, and that tomb to be annually worshipped by the youths and virgins of their country.