the whole, it is better than the alternative encouragement of immorality and illegitimacy.

(3) The community should exert its influence toward the remedying of the present anomalies and uncertainties by making both marriage laws and divorce laws more stringent, and uniform throughout the country. Statutes that will render impulsive marriage impossible, by requiring an interval to elapse after statement of intention to marry, and making a clean bill of health necessary; divorce laws that shall refuse to pander to caprice and willfulness, but shall make it easy, without scandal or needless publicity, to deliver a woman or a man from an intolerable and irremediable situation, and that shall not be appreciably more lenient in one State than in another, will go far toward curing contemporary evils. It may yet be that the Constitution will be so amended as to permit the National Government to control these matters and thus replace our present chaos with order.

Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. xxvI. Scharlieb and Silby, Youth and Sex. C. Read, Natural and Social Morals, chap. VII. Anon., Life, Love, and Light (Macmillan), pp. 84-96. R. C. Cabot, What Men Live By, chaps. xxiv-xxix. W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, chaps. XI, XII. C. F. Dole, Ethics of Progress, pt. VII, chap. III. Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce, The Spiritual Meaning of Marriage. N. Smyth, Christian Ethics, pp. 405–15. B. P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, pt. III, chaps. VIII, IX. W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life, chap. XIV. Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque. G. E. C. Gray, Husband and Wife. J. Riis, The Peril and Preservation of the Home. Thompson and Geddes, Problems of Sex. H. Münsterberg, "Sex-Education" (in Psychology and Social Sanity). H. G. Wells, "Divorce" (in Social Forces in England and America). C. J. Hawkins, Will the Home Survive? Biblical World, vol. 43, p. 33. International Journal of Ethics, vol. 17, p. 181.

For the data: United States Department of Commerce and Labor, Reports on Marriage and Divorce. Publications of the National League for the Protection of the Family (Secretary S. W. Dike, Auburndale, Massachusetts) and of the Society of Sanitary

and Moral Prophylaxis (105 West 40th Street, New York). Howard, Matrimonial Institutions. Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, chaps. VII, IX. Lestourneaux, Evolution of Marriage.

CHAPTER XVIII

FELLOWSHIP, LOYALTY, AND LUXURY

EVERY man has to solve the problem of how far he will live for his smaller, personal self, and how far for that larger self that includes the interests of others. The general principles involved we have discussed in chapter XI; we may now proceed to consider their application to the concrete situations in which we find ourselves.

What social relationships impose claims upon us?

(1) The relations of husband and wife and of parenthood are most sacred and exacting, because they are voluntarily assumed, and because the need and possibilities of help are here greatest. A man or woman may without odium remain free from these obligations; but once they have made the vows that initiate the dual life, once they have brought a helpless child into the world, neither may evade the consequent responsibilities. If undertaken at all, these duties must be conscientiously fulfilled; and whatever sacrifices are necessary must, as a matter of course, and ungrudgingly, be made.

(2) Next in inviolability to these claims are those of father and mother, brother and sister, and other near relatives. Involuntary as these relations are, the natural piety that accepts the burdens they entail must not be allowed to grow dim. Those nearest of kin are the natural supports and helpers of the weak and dependent; and though patience and resources be severely taxed, it is better to let blood ties continue to involve obligation than to permit the selfish

irresponsibility of a freer and more individualistic society. Much provocation can be borne by remembering "She is my mother"; "He is my brother"; after all, their interests are ours, and our lives are impoverished, as well as theirs, if we ignore them.

(3) The voluntary bonds of friendship entail somewhat vaguer obligations, since the closeness of the tie is not clearly fixed, as it is in the case of blood relationship. But "once a friend always a friend" is the true-hearted man's motto. "Assure thee," says one of Shakespeare's heroines, "if I do vow a friendship, I'll perform it to the last article." No one who has won another's friendship, and, however tacitly, pledged his own, is thenceforth free to ignore the bond. Here are for most men the happiest opportunities for fellowship, for inward growth, and for service; for if the love of wife surpasses that of friends, it is not only on account of the fascination of sex, but because marriage may be the supreme friendship. Emerson declared that "every man passes his life in the search after friendship"; and the greatest of Stevenson's three desiderata for happiness was "Ach, Du lieber Gott, friends!" Human beings, even when brought up in a similar environment, are so infinitely divergent in temperament and ideal, that the near of kin seldom meet a man's deepest needs, and he must wait and watch to find one here and there with whom he can clasp hands in real mutual comprehension and accord. Want of this spontaneous comradeship sadly limits a life; nothing pays more in joy than the circle of friends that a man can draw about him.

Nothing, likewise, is more morally stimulating. "What a friend thinks me to be, that must I be." This linking of our lives to others draws us out of ourselves, corrects our cramped and distorted vision, and reinforces our wavering aspirations. Hence those who are so critical and fastidious

as to make few friends ill serve their own interests. A certain heartiness and fearlessness of trust is necessary; reproaches and suspicions, accusations and demands for explanations, must not be indulged in, even if wrong is actually done. A presumption of good intentions must always be maintained, even if appearances are black. It is more shameful, as La Rochefoucauld said, to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him. Indeed, these deceptions and disillusions are oftenest the result of our own mistaken idealization; we must expect neither perfection nor those particular virtues in which we ourselves are especially punctilious, and undertake to love and cleave to a mortal, not an angel. Friendship requires not only that we lend a hand when help is needed; it implies patience and tact and the endeavor to understand. Through common experiences, repeated interchange of thought and observation, mutual enjoyment of beauty and fun, particularly in expressing common ideals and working together for common causes, there grows to maturity this wonderful relationship "the slowest fruit in the whole · garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen."

(4) Beyond the boundaries of blood and friendship lie a whole hierarchy of lesser relationships — to neighbors, to employees, to fellow townsmen, to human beings the world over. Mere proximity constitutes a claim that is not commonly acknowledged when distance interposes; most men would be mortally ashamed to let a next-door neighbor starve, although they may feel no call to lessen their luxuries when thousands, whom they could as easily succor, are perishing in the antipodes. And there is a measure of necessity in this; to burden our minds with the thought of the suffering in India, in Russia, in Japan, leads to a paralyzing sense of impotence. If we confine our thought to the dwellers on our street or in our town, it may not seem utterly hope