64.4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the most rudimentary marriage, on to the highest types of sexual 

 nuion, those social laws which are the seed of governmental codes, and 

 without knowledge of which we can not understand those codes, deal 

 with woman in her wedded state. We find the position of the married 

 woman, as defined by these social laws, written and unwritten and, if 

 unwritten, quite as likely to be stringently enforced to furnish exam- 

 ples of every grade of condition, from the captured or purchased slave 

 to the comparatively equal partner. Moreover, we find the woman 

 sometimes in possession of the most personal freedom in the lowest 

 general social development. What law governs these widely diverg- 

 ing conditions ? 



The student of sociology must be convinced that the evolution of 

 the family determines, in its different stages, the differing position of 

 the married woma?i. 



For proof of this statement we have only to consider the following 

 facts : Progress from barbarism to civilization is marked by ever-in- 

 creasing political control, as opposed to accidental, shifting despotisms 

 of powerful individuals on the one side, and to purposeless anarchy 

 of the masses on the other. "Political control rests primarily on 

 distinct relationships of blood." For the structural cohesion of the 

 family, established by this definite blood-relationship, alone makes pos- 

 sible the structural cohesion of many families in the organism we call 

 society. The unity of the family, therefore, being the fundamental 

 condition of the unity of society, it is secured beyond peradventure by 

 successive changes which tend more and more to establish certainty 

 of descent, of preservation, and of care of offspring. Probably eveiy 

 form of relation between man and woman, from promiscuity to pure 

 monogamy, has been in existence at every stage of human develop- 

 ment. But the prevailing type of sexual union has differed at each of 

 these differing stages. How do we know which are the higher and 

 which are the lower of these types ? By the application of the simple 

 test-question, which the more perfectly secures that organization of 

 the family which is the primary necessity of the organization of the 

 state ? 



In the building up of the state, the primitive need is sufiicient power 

 and permanency of control to make law supreme over the individual 

 will. And where the personal wishes or rights, even of men, come in 

 conflict with this initial step toward social order, those personal wishes 

 and rights are ruthlessly sacrificed ; not because individual liberty is 

 ignored in the process of development, but rather because individual 

 liberty can only be permanently secured by making it second to social 

 order in sequence of evolution. On exactly the same principle, the 

 building up of the family, which precedes the establishment of politi- 

 cal order, must begin in the strong foundation-wall of family unity, 

 even although to that unity must be sacrificed the individual rights of 

 every member of the family except its acknowledged head. Hence we 



