XXI 



EVOLUTION AND MARRIAGE 



IF, as some of us believe, evolution is the guide 

 of life, it should not fail us in regard to problems 

 so grave as those suggested by the word marriage. 

 It should furnish us with some indication, for 

 instance, as to whether monogamy is a fetich, or 

 merely an ecclesiastical invention, destined to be 

 involved in that Gotterddmmerung to use Wagner's 

 term which is the distinctive mark of the age. 

 It is the purpose of this brief chapter to show 

 that evolution does not fail us here. 



For it is the grand lesson of evolution, in rela- 

 tion to all that is worthy, to show that it is a 

 product of nature and natural conditions. Thus 

 when the sanctions of the so-called supernatural 

 are found to be wanting in their title, evolution 

 steps in with its insistence upon the sanction of 

 the natural. It is so with marriage. 



Evolution teaches that the history of animal 

 life is continuous, and that man is neither more nor 

 less than what Shakespeare called him, the " par- 

 agon of animals." Ignoring the "supernatural," 

 then, and unready to deny that the good and the 

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