oond; the ease with which divorces are granted in some States seems to conservatives a scandal. Among the causes for this are the lessening of allegiance to religious authority, the loss of the older fears and restraints, the growing spirit of adventure and iconoclasm. With the breaking-up of traditions, the lure of freedom has been strong, especially upon the so-long-dominated and docile sex. Women are becoming better educated and asserting their rights everywhere; they are now able to earn their living in many independent ways, and are in a position to break loose; the era of the subjection of women is over, and it is natural that many, particularly of the idle and frivolous, should turn this new-won liberty into license.

But, indeed, human nature being as it is, there would inevitably arise, and have always arisen, many cases of strain and friction in marriage relations. As Chesterton says, a man and a woman are, in the nature of the case, incompatible; and that underlying incommensurability of viewpoint easily results in clash where a deep-rooted affection and a habit of self-control are absent. Innumerable couples have suffered and hated each other and made the best of it; nowadays they are deeming it better frankly to admit and end the discord. And the problem, Which solution is better? is by no means an easy one. We can but make here a few general suggestions.

(1) Divorce must certainly not be so easy as to encourage hasty and unconsidered marriage, or to turn this most sacred of relationships into a mere experimental and provisional alliance. "Trial marriage" is a palpably reprehensible scheme, involving an unwarrantable stimulus to the sex appetite; many men would enjoy taking one woman after another, until their passion in each case had exhausted its force with the lapse of novelty; women, who are not so naturally promiscuous, would suffer most. What would

become of the children is a question whose very posing condemns the proposal. But too lax a divorce law practically permits trial marriage; one or the other party may enter into the contract and pronounce the solemn vows without any intention of keeping them when it shall cease to be for his or her pleasure. Not in this way is to be got the real worth of marriage; the conscious and earnest effort, at least, must be to keep to it for life. An easy short cut to freedom would tempt too many from the harder but nobler way of compromise, conciliation, and self-subordination. If one is weak and erring, or petulant and unkind, the other must patiently and lovingly seek to help, to educate, to uplift; seventy times seven times is not too often for forgiveness; and many a marriage that seemed hopelessly wrecked has been saved by magnanimity and tactful affection. There is a fine disciplinary value in these forbearances, and much opportunity for spiritual growth in the persevering endeavor toward harmony and mutual understanding. Many a man and woman who might have been lost if divorced, has been saved for a better life by the unwillingness of wife or husband to desert under grievous provocation. There comes an ebb to most conjugal disputes; men and women grow wiser, and often gentler, with age; while there is any hope for readjustment and revival of love it is wrong to break marital vows. Many a divorce has been as hasty and ill-considered as the marriage it ended, and has left the couple in the end less happy and useful members of the community. Particularly when there are children should the parents sacrifice much for the sake of giving them a real home, with both mother- and father-love.

(2) Yet there are cases where love is hopelessly killed and harmony is impossible; cases where much suffering, and even moral degeneration, would result from continuance of the married life. Where a man transfers his love to another or

indulges in infidelity to his vows; where he crazes himself with liquor or some other narcotic, and will not give it up; where he treats his wife with cruelty or contempt, or through selfishness or laziness deserts or refuses to support her; where she refuses to perform her wifely duties, gives herself to other men, makes home intolerable for him in short, in any case where mutual loyalty and coöperation are hopeless of attainment, it is surely best that there should be separation. It does not make for the welfare of the children, or for the sanctity of marriage, that such wretched travesties of it should continue. Moreover, for eugenic reasons, we must urge the freeing of wives from husbands who have transmissible diseases, inheritable defects, or addiction to drugs. Nor should the fact of one mistake preclude the injured party from another opportunity for happiness and usefulness. Whether the guilty man or woman, the one wholly or chiefly to blame for the failure, should be permitted to remarry is another matter; but probably, on 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 as nearly uniform as possible throughout the country. The divorce law should avoid pandering to caprices and impulse by requiring a period to elapse between statement of desire for divorce and its granting. For ordinary cases a delay of a year when both parties desire the divorce, and of two years when only one party desires it, seems wise, not as a penalty for a past mistake, but to discourage fickleness, to put a brake upon rash marriages and rash annulments.

On the other hand, it should be possible for any man or woman to find deliverance from an intolerable and apparently irremediable situation without expense, publicity, or

any imputation of scandal. Divorce is always a sad matter, but it is on occasion as necessary as a surgical operation, and should be essentially a private arrangement. It is doubtful whether any moral end is served by requiring "grounds" for divorce to be shown as, proofs of infidelity, cruelty, or the like; most of these alleged reasons for divorce at present are false or exaggerated pretexts offered to satisfy the law. The fundamental ground for most divorces is that the couple have found that they cannot be happy, cannot be their best selves, together. There are many kinds of cruelty as disastrous to love as sexual dereliction or physical blows, many faults of temper or selfishness as hard to bear. After all, it is not the cause that matters, it is the effect; if one of the parties is made persistently and hopelessly unhappy by the union, relief, after an appropriate delay, should be granted. This is not to say that in all such cases the husband or wife should seek relief; often it is nobler, as we have said, to endure rather than to escape. But it is essentially a personal matter, with which the States should interfere as little as possible. Of course the children, if any, must be safeguarded by the law, as to care and support.

Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. xxvI. R. C. Cabot, What Men Live By, chaps. XXIV-XXIX. W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, chaps. XI, XII. Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce, The Spiritual Meaning of Marriage. B. P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, pt. II, chaps. VIII, IX. W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life, chap. XIV. R. L. Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque. J. Riis, The Peril and Preservation of the Home. H. G. Wells, "Divorce" (in Social Forces in England and America), What is Coming, VIII. C. J. Hawkins, Will the Home Survive? H. Spencer, Principles of Ethics, pt. III, chaps. vIII, IX. E. S. P. Haynes, Divorce as It Might Be. R. West, The World's Worst Failure. W. L. George, The Intelligence of Women, chaps. V-VII. Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight, chap. vi. Havelock Ellis, The Task of Social Hygiene, iv. Ellen Key, Love and Marriage.

For the data see United States Department of Commerce and Labor, Reports on Marriage and Divorce.

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