DOMESTIC RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 519 



disapproval of those who many for money or position is expressed ; 

 and this, growing stronger, may be expected to purify the monogamic 

 union by making it in all cases real instead of being in some cases 

 nominal. 



As monogamy is likely to be raised in character by a ublic sen- 

 timent requiring that the legal bond shall not be entered into unless 

 it represents the natural bond, so, perhaps, it may be that mainte- 

 nance of the legal bond will come to be held improper if the natural 

 bond ceases. Already increased facilities for obtaining divorce point 

 to the probability that, whereas, in those early stages during which 

 permanent monogamy was being evolved, the union by law (originally 

 the act of purchase) was regarded as the essential part of marriage, and 

 the union by affection as non-essential, and whereas at present the 

 union by law is thought the more important and the union by affection 

 the less important, there will come a time when the union by affec- 

 tion will be held of primary moment and the union by law as of 

 secondary moment : whence reprobation of marital relations in which 

 the union by affection has dissolved. That this conclusion will seem 

 unacceptable to most is probable I may say, certain. In passing 

 judgment on any moditied arrangement suggested as likely to arise 

 hereafter, nearly all err by considering what wovdd be likely to result 

 from the supposed change, all other things remaining unchanged. 

 But other things must be assumed to have changed ji:)a?v! passu. 

 Those higher sentiments accompanying union of the sexes, which do 

 not exist among primitive men, and were less developed in early 

 European times than now (as is shown in the contrast between an- 

 cient and modern literatures), may be expected to develop still more 

 as decline of militancy and increase of industrialness foster altruism ; 

 for sympathy, which is the root of altruism, is a chief element in these 

 sentiments. Moreover, with an increase of altruism must go a de- 

 crease of domestic dissension. Whence, simultaneously, a strength- 

 ening of the moral bond and a weakening of the forces tending to 

 destroy it. So that the changes which may further facilitate divorce 

 under certain conditions are changes which will make those condi- 

 tions more and more rare. 



There may, too, be anticipated a strengthening of that ancillary 

 bond constituted by joint interest in children. In all societies this is 

 an important factor, and has sometimes great effect among even rude 

 peoples. Falkner remarks that although the Patagonian marriages 

 "are at will, yet when once the parties are agreed, and have children, 

 they seldom forsake each other, even in extreme old age." And this 

 factor must become more efficient in proportion as the solicitude for 

 children becomes greater and more prolonged, as we have seen that it 

 does with progressing civilization, and must continue to do. 



But leaving open the question what modifications of monogamy, 

 conducing to increase of real cohesion rather than nominal cohesion, 



