700 THE FAMILY 



in theological garb or forced under theological sanctions, however 

 opposed by reactionary dogma, public opinion has more and more 

 decidedly recognized the right of the temporal lawmaker in this 

 field. In the seventeenth century the New England Puritan gave 

 the state, in its assemblies and in its courts, complete jurisdiction in 

 questions of marriage and divorce, to the entire exclusion of the 

 ecclesiastical authority. For nearly three quarters of a century the 

 clergy were forbidden to solemnize wedlock, while at the same time 

 marriages were freely dissolved by the lay magistrate. Even the 

 Council of Trent, by adjusting the dogma regarding the minister of 

 the sacrament, had already left to Catholic states the way open for 

 the civil regulation of matrimony, a way on which France did not 

 hesitate to enter. Definitively the state seems to have gained control 

 of matrimonial administration. 



As a result in the United States, not less clearly than elsewhere in 

 countries of Western civilization, marriage and the family are emerg- 

 ing as purely social institutions. Liberated in large measure from 

 the cloud of medieval tradition, their problems are seen to be iden- 

 tical in kind with those which have everywhere concerned men and 

 women from the infancy of the human race. Biologically they are 

 indeed a necessary result of man's physical and psychic nature; 

 but institutionally they are something more. Modern jurisprudence 

 is a practical recognition of the fact that matrimonial forms and 

 family types are the products of human experience, of human habits, 

 and are, therefore, to be dealt with by society according to human 

 needs. 



The greatest fact in social history is the rise of the state; and 

 in the more vital or organic sense the state has never been so great 

 a social fact as at the present hour. Moreover its authority, its 

 functions, are every day expanding. The popularization of sov- 

 ereignty has but added to its power. With the rise of this mighty 

 institution all lower organisms have lost something or all of their 

 institutional character. In the culture-stage of civilization the 

 gentile organization is no more. The clan and the tribe have dis- 

 appeared. The function of the family as the social unit, as a cor- 

 poration held together by the blood-tie, has likewise vanished. In 

 a perfectly logical way, however paradoxical at first glance it may 

 seem, the social function of the individual has expanded with that 

 of the state. The process of socialization and the process of indi- 

 vidualization are correlative and mutually sustaining operations. 



Consequently out of the primary question of social control arises 

 the problem with which we are here chiefly concerned: the problem 

 of protecting the family against harm from the dual process of 

 disintegration just referred to. Already many changes of vast 

 sociological meaning have taken place, but the most vital char- 



