SECTION21.-PRECISE NA TURE OF PROBLEM TO BE INVESTIGA TED. 247 



enlightenment as has been indicated above is deemed by many 

 not only urgently desirable, but entirely satisfactory, in that 

 it is said to suffuse the hearts of the young with a feeling of 

 the nobility and sanctity of their body and of marriage. In- 

 cessant and mournful are therefore the complaints that parents 

 and teachers as a body cannot be induced to communicate this 

 life-giving information to their charges. 



Yet if reformers had not hastily rushed to deal with a fugitive 

 symptom, if they had definitely faced the problem as such, they 

 would have been spared mortification. They should have asked 

 themselves, What is the meaning of human marriage? and 

 should have sought a clear answer to this question before 

 thinking of remedies for one or another related social disease. 

 It would have then transpired that it is monstrous to imagine 

 that a study of the farm-yard, or of the fertilising process in 

 flowers and the like, should be conceived to be a fair and ade- 

 quate introduction to a true conception of marriage. Examining 

 a number of unions of the type which they could commend, 

 reformers might have deduced the subjoined conclusions, among 

 others: 



(1) Two human beings, man and woman, each of about the 

 age of twenty-five, after having felt for perhaps some years 

 that they appreciated, understood, and loved each other, agree 

 to marry and cohabit for the remainder of their lives as lovers 

 and comrades, and, if fortune does not frown, as parents. This 

 agreement they have socially ratified and sanctified by the law, 

 or by their religious organisation, or by both. 



(2) Since any children born to them should be as healthy as 

 possible, the parents should be fully developed physically. This 

 stage is reached about the age of twenty-five, and marriage 

 therefore should not be contracted before that period. 



(3) The child, when born, is altogether helpless, and therefore 

 to bring offspring into the world without taking care of it 

 after birth is to doom it to almost instant death. If marriage 

 involves, as a rule, the birth of children, the children thus born 

 demand parental devotion for a long period, perhaps even to 

 adulthood. 



(4) Moreover, whereas with animals the process of rearing 

 offspring is almost entirely a matter of physical care, with 

 human beings the substance of all moral and other inventions 

 and discoveries made during the history of the race has to be 

 transmitted by teaching to the offspring. This entails, therefore, 

 an incalculably great extension of the responsibilities of human 

 parents. Accordingly, there should be also a solid preparation 

 for marriage on other planes than the physical, if our specie- 

 historic heritage, which alone makes us truly and distinctively 

 human, is to be transmitted to the coming generation. This 

 preparation comprises a high development of the general intelli- 

 gence, the attainment of a lofty moral standard in conduct and 



