MORALITY 



serve to surround them with the magic of the mysterious and 

 exclude the penetration of reason. This is particularly true of 

 the sacrament that has had the greatest practical influence — 

 matrimony. 



In view of the extreme importance of the life of the 

 family as a foundation of social and civic life, it is ad- 

 visable to consider marriage from the biological point 

 of view, as an orderly method of reproduction. Here, 

 as in all other sociological and psychological questions, 

 we must be careful not to accept the present features of 

 civilized life as a general standard of judgment. We 

 have to take a comparative view of its various stages, 

 as we find them among barbarians and savages. When 

 we do this impartially, we see at once that reproduction, 

 as a purely physiological process having for its end the 

 maintenance of the species, takes place in just the same 

 way among uncultivated races as among the anthropoid 

 apes. We may even say that many of the higher ani- 

 mals, especially monogamous mammals and birds, have 

 reached a higher sta,ge than the lower savages ; the ten- 

 der relations of the t-vvo sexes towards each other, their 

 common care of their young, and their family life, have 

 led to the development of higher sexual and domestic 

 instincts, to which we may fitly ascribe a moral char- 

 acter. Wilhelm Bolsche has shown, in his Life of Love 

 in Nature, how a long series of remarkable customs has 

 been developed in the animal world by adaptation to 

 various fonns of reproduction. Westermarck has point- 

 ed out, in his History of Marriage, how the crude animal 

 forms of marriage current among savages have been 

 gradually elevated as we rise to higher races. As the 

 sensual pleasure of generation is combined with the 

 finer psychological feeling of sympathy and psychic at- 

 tachment, the latter gains constantly on the former, and 

 this refined love becomes one of the richest sources of 

 the higher spiritual functions, especially in art and po- 



427 



