WHAT IS MARRIAGE 1 8 



stinctive; but they are none of them to be found 

 among primitive races, where the status of women is 

 extremely low. They are the outcome of social and 

 religious influences falling within the range of history. 

 It is certain that the important group of senti- 

 ments comprised under the term chivalry or platonic 

 gallantry, for example, was but little known to the 

 Greeks and Romans, and that it has in the main been 

 developed under the influence of the purity doctrines 

 of the Christian Church. By those doctrines, preached 

 for so many centuries, our moral nature has been 

 profoundly influenced. The modern European has 

 the chivalrous instinct bred in the marrow of his 

 bones, so much so that there are probably few roughs 

 in Christendom so abandoned as not to make way for 

 a lady on occasion — a mark of politeness unfamiliar 

 alike to the noble savage and the polished Oriental ; 

 and the growth of this feeling has had the immensely 

 important result of giving women a voice in the dis- 

 posal of their affections. If the establishment of 

 monogamous marriage did much for the welfare of 

 womankind, that curiously complex sentiment of 

 comparatively modern growth which demands that a 

 man shall woo his wife and neither buy nor capture 

 her has done still more. 



