THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



etry. Marriage itself, of course, remains a physiological 

 act, a wonder of life, with the organic sex impulse as its 

 chief foundation. As the conclusion of marriage repre- 

 sents one of the most important moments in human life, 

 we find it accompanied by symbolic ceremonies and 

 festive rites even among lower tribes. The immense 

 variety of marriage festivals shows how this important 

 act has appealed to the imagination. Priests quickly 

 recognized this, and decked out marriage with all kinds of 

 ceremonies and turned it to the advantage of their 

 Church. While the Catholic Church raised it to the 

 status of a sacrament and ascribed to it an "indelible" 

 character, it declared that it was indissoluble when 

 performed according to ecclesiastical- rite. This un- 

 wholesome influence of Romanism, this dependence of 

 matrimony on religious mysteries, and ceremonies, and 

 difficulty of obtaining divorce, etc., still continue in our 

 day. It is only a short time since the German Reichstag, 

 under the influence of the Centre [Catholic] party, added 

 laws to its civic code which increase instead of lessening 

 the difficulty of obtaining divorce. Reason demands 

 the liberation of marriage from ecclesiastical pressure. 

 It demands that matrimony be grounded on mutual 

 love, esteem, and devotion, and that it at the same 

 time be counted a social contract, and be' protected, as 

 civil marriage, by proper legislation. But when the 

 contracting parties find (as so often happens) that they 

 have mistaken each other's character, and that they do 

 not suit each other, they should be free to dissolve the 

 bond. The pressure which comes of marriage being re- 

 garded as a sacrament, and which prevents the dissolu- 

 tion of unhappy marriages, is merely a source of vice 

 and crime. 



We find in many other features of our social life, 

 besides marriage, a contradiction between the demands 

 of reason and the traditional usages which modern civ- 



428 



