214 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



of society, or in the past experience of the race, any 

 sufficient warrant for this view. The welfare of the 

 children, not the convenience of parents, is most likely 

 to determine the course of domestic evolution. Mainly 

 for the children's sake was the legal bond of wedlock 

 instituted ; for their sake it will probably be main- 

 tained, during the whole of that phase of human life, 

 at all events, with which we are acquainted. It is 

 true that the State is usurping parental functions with 

 regard to the education, the hours of labour of the 

 young, and like matters ; but the establishment of a 

 great State nursery, which would inevitably attend 

 the abolition of the legal responsibility of parents, 

 still lies far beyond the range of practical legislation. 

 However organised, it is doubtful whether a common 

 nursery would be a boon to its inmates. A common 

 nursery was one of the features of the free love 



to the probability that whereas, while permanent monogamy was 

 being evolved, the union by law (originally an act of purchase) was 

 regarded as an essential part of marriage, and the union by affection 

 non-essential, and whereas at present the union by law is thought 

 to be the more important, and the union by affection the less im- 

 portant, there will come a time when a union by affection will be 

 held to be of primary moment, and a union by law as of secondary 

 moment ; whence reprobation of marital relations in which the 

 union by affection has dissolved." — Herbert Spencer's rrinciples of 

 Sociology. 



