THE GRO^A^TH OF THE MARRIAGE 

 RELATION.* 



So FAR as our experience goes, the highest product of 

 evolution is the complicated social organism we know as a 

 nation or State, and marriage is the essential condition of 

 its existence. Not necessarily, however, such a form or 

 forms of the marriage relation as distinguish existing civil- 

 ized societies. History, past as well as contemporaneous, 

 informs us that the relation between the sexes implied in 

 the term " marriage " may take many phases. The prin- 

 ciples of Evolution require, however, that these various 

 forms of marriage shall not have originated spontaneously. 

 They are growths of the great world-tree, and, as twigs of 

 one of its highest branches, are organically connected with 

 each other. The branch itself was once only a twig on the 

 parent stem, and had its origin in a simple bud, the growth 

 of which if traced throughout will show the development 

 of the marriage relation under all its forms, and also of 

 society itself. 



These considerations show that we must not look to the 

 most civilized races of mankind for the earliest phase of 

 marriage. Among them we may expect to find this rela- 

 tion assume a form answering to the moral and intellectual 

 status they have reached in the course of their general 

 progress. Thus, among the Aryan peoples, or at least those 

 who have embraced Christianity, monogamy, or the perma- 

 nent marriage of one man to one woman, subject only to 

 the law of divorce, is universally recognized as the only 

 form which the marriage relation should be allowed to take. 

 The existence of systematic monogamy is treated as evi- 

 dence that any people among whom it is prevalent are far 

 advanced in general culture. When, therefore, we read 

 that "a man shall leave his father and mothei*, and shall 

 cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh," Ave know 

 that this rule cannot have been framed during the earliest 

 age of man's existence ; and we infer that it was the mar- 



* CopviiiGHT, 1890, by James H. West. 



