262 How Affected by Divorce. 



is a field vast enough for scientific cultivation. 

 And of late considerable progress has been made 

 in the investigation of the domestic life of primi 

 tive times. Much yet remains to be done in 

 comparing, arranging, and interpreting what 

 passes before our own eyes. It is a remark of 

 Burke s that the generality of people are fifty 

 years at least behindhand in their politics. And 

 of social phenomena, still more than of political, is 

 it true-that men are &quot; wise with but little reflec 

 tion &quot; in the understanding of all times but their 

 own. While we have been ransacking the past, 

 and forecasting the future, a change is actually 

 going on in the form of our own system of con 

 jugal relations, the significance of which seems 

 altogether to have escaped attention. The effect 

 of divorce, which has now been legalized in the 

 greater part of Europe and America, has been to 

 transform, within the area of its actual operation, 

 civilized marriage into a casual bond essentially 

 indistinguishable from that which formed the 

 basis of what Morgan has called the &quot; syndyas- 

 mian or pairing &quot; family the family of the Iro- 

 quois and other North American Indians. The 

 legal forms, the technical procedure, the solemn 

 plausibilities of the court, unessential and sub 

 sidiary as they really are, serve to hide from 



