The Evolution of Morality. 263 



us the essential object to which these are but 

 convenient instruments. The virtue, soul, and 

 essence of the whole business is the existence 

 among us of a family ethics admitting casual 

 unions and separations of the sexes with the same 

 facility and frequency, and with as little loss of 

 respectability, as is wont to obtain among savages 

 and barbarians. It would doubtless be considered 

 paradoxical to declare we had become converts 

 to Milton s theory of divorce. But, as a matter 

 of fact, we have, both in practice and in legisla 

 tion, gone considerably beyond it. Every day s 

 newspaper supplies fresh examples, and it would 

 be musty to cite the now obsolete scandal of last 

 week in the divorce-history of Rhode Island. 

 Blind to the havoc which divorce is making in 

 the old family system, we atone for our man 

 ners by embodying the principles of our fathers 

 in denunciation of the Mormons. Unfortunate 

 ly, this application of our retrospective wisdom 

 and orthodoxy serves only to distract attention 

 from the anomaly of our own practice, which 

 (if polygamy be the name for &quot; much-marriage &quot; 

 successively as well as synchronously) may be 

 justly described as essential polyandry and po- 



This change in the constitution of the civilized 



