RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIAL SCIENCE 667 



"valent in a given society, are alone regarded as honorable and valid, 

 the children born in defiance of such ideals and social standards are 

 likely to be physically and morally neglected, and in the struggle 

 for existence are likely to succumb. But this is largely due to the 

 disgrace which their existence entails upon those responsible for it. 

 It is precisely because such temporary unions are irregular that they 

 carry down the unfortunates who are their fruit. In a community 

 like the Spartan, where what we should call illicit intercourse was 

 freely permitted and where the children, provided they were physic- 

 ally healthy, received the same care and attention as the offspring 

 of legal marriages, the same results would not follow. Nor can it be 

 maintained that the Spartan community, regarded from the point 

 of view of survival, ranks lower than other communities which have 

 adopted a standard more nearly like our own. 



The points thus far covered are these: (1) The test of survival 

 does not decide between what we should call the higher form of 

 marriage, monogamy, and what we should call the lower, polygamy. 

 (2) Where monogamy prevails, the advantage possessed by the off- 

 spring of legitimate unions as against the offspring of illegitimate 

 unions is due to the circumstance that in the former case the unions 

 are regular, and in the latter case they are irregular. The facts 

 do not prove that a system like the one contemplated in Plato's 

 Republic, if it could be made regular, would be less efficacious in 

 securing social survival. And in this connection let me point out 

 how important a factor in what is called social environment are the 

 ruling ideas dominant among a people, and how largely the survival 

 of individuals within a group or community is dependent on agree- 

 ment with the dominant ideas. Falling away from the ideal of 

 one's group, whether it be the ideal of Sparta, or the ideal of a primi- 

 tive horde, or the ideal of monogamy in an Anglo-Saxon community, 

 leads to self-disparagement, to relaxation of effort, to a diminution 

 of all the integrating forces of character, and, in consequence, to 

 destruction. To prove, therefore, that in a community whose ideal 

 is monogamic, persons who lead irregular lives, and the children of 

 such persons, tend to go to the wall, is not to prove that monogamy 

 itself is socially more preservative than other forms of marriage, 

 but is merely another illustration of the general rule that a house 

 psychologically divided against itself cannot stand; that members 

 of a community who are in extreme divergence from the ideals of 

 the community to which they belong cannot maintain themselves. 

 But if the standard were different, the result might be different. 



Again, it is said that the monogamic family is best fitted to survive 

 because it is best fitted to transmit to posterity a " sound physical 

 heredity and the results of the mental and moral civilization of the 

 past." Our deep ethical bias in favor of the monogamic family 



