In the future educational program sex questions must hold an honorable place. Progress in this direction may be slow, because of the false shame, the prurient delicacy, now widely prevalent touching everything connected with the sexual life. Nor is it a light matter to brave orthodox sentiment in this regard. It is not always safe for the teacher, even in institutions deeming themselves modern, to deal frankly with the organic facts which are of vital concern to the human race. The folly of parents in leaving their children in ignorance of the laws of sex is notorious. Yet how much safer than ignorance is knowledge as a shield for innocence. The daughter will face the vicissitudes of life more securely if she has been told of the destiny that awaits her as wife and mother; if she has been warned of the snares with which lust has beset the path of womanhood. The son is likely to live a nobler life if he has learned to repudiate the dual standard of sexual morality which a spurious philosophy has set up; if he understands that "instincts" may be safely controlled; if he has been warned that selfish excesses within or without the marriage bond must be dearly paid for by the coming generations. Indeed, it is of the greatest moment to society that the young should be trained in the general laws of heredity. Everywhere men and women are marrying in utter contempt of the warnings of science. Domestic animals are literally better bred than human beings. Through ignorance and defiance of the rules of health, we are destroying our physical constitutions. Under the plea of "romantic love" we blindly yield to sexual attractions in choosing our mates, selfishly ignoring the welfare of the race. Is there not a higher ideal of conjugal choice? Experience shows that in wedlock natural and sexual selection should play a smaller and artificial selection a larger rôle.[844] The safety of the social body requires that a check be put upon the propagation of the unfit. Here the state has a function to perform. In the future much more than now, let us hope, the marriage of persons mentally delinquent or tainted by hereditary disease or crime will be legally restrained. Yet law can do relatively little. A reform of this kind must of necessity depend mainly upon a better educated popular sentiment; upon a higher altruism which shall be capable of present sacrifice for the permanent good of the race. "When human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under the control of instinct the world will have a more enduring type of family life than exists at present. This can only be accomplished by the development of controlling ideals which are supported not only by reason and intelligence but by ethical impulse and religious motive. This larger altruism which protects the permanent interests of the future against the more temporary values of the present must be of the heart as much as of the head.... In the mating of men and women, money, social position, worldly expediency, the conventional and fictitious values so influential in these days, will count for much less, while organic health and efficiency, character, unselfish devotion to high ideals, to the great world interests will count for far more. In this obedience to ideals so farsighted, romantic love will not be lost in any way, as some seem to fear. Men and women will not choose one another in cold blood simply because intelligence and reason point the way, but human sentiment and every romantic quality will be enhanced when permanent and future interests are furthered by a saner and finer human choice."[845]
There is then no need to despair of the future. It is vain to turn back the hand on the dial. The problem of individual liberty has become the problem of social liberty. Individualization for the sake of socialization must continue its beneficent work. There must be growth, constant readjustment. Marriage will in truth be holy if it rests on the free trothplight of equals whose love is deep enough to embrace a rational regard for the rights of posterity. The home will not have less sanctity when through it flows the stream of the larger human life. The family will, indeed, survive; but it will be a family of a higher type. Its evolution is not yet complete. Coercive ties will still further yield to voluntary spiritual ties; for individual liberty appears to be the essential condition of social progress.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Apparently no successful attempt has ever been made to prepare a complete and systematic bibliography of matrimonial institutions. Indeed, to do so would be a formidable undertaking; but that such a book would be of vast service to social history no one can doubt. Useful lists of authorities, however, are appended to the works of various writers, notably to Lubbock's Origin of Civilization; Starcke's Primitive Family; Chamberlain's Child and Childhood; Lehr's Le mariage; and especially Westermarck's Human Marriage. For marriage with kindred, including the deceased wife's sister, there is a good, though not exhaustive, bibliography by A. H. Huth in the Report of the First Annual Meeting of the Index Society (London, 1879), 25-47; greatly enlarged in his Marriage of Near Kin (2d ed., London, 1887), 394-465. Ethbin Heinrich Costa's Bibliographie der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Braunschweig, 1858) is helpful, particularly for the earlier monographic literature. For supplementary materials, especially the curiosities of the subject, consult Hugo Hayn's Bibliotheca Germanorum erotica: Verzeichniss der gesammten deutschen erotischen Literatur mit Einschluss der Uebersetzungen, nebst Angabe der fremden Originale (2d ed., Leipzig, 1885); the same writer's Bibliotheca Germanorum nuptialis (Cologne, 1890); and the well-known Bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs à l'amour, aux femmes, au mariage, etc. (3d ed., 6 vols., San Remo, London, Nice, and Turin, 1871-73). Legal works on marriage and related institutions are included in Martin Lipenius's Bibliotheca realis juridica omnium materiarum, rerum, et titulorum, in universo universi juris ambitu occurrentium, post F. G. Struvii et G. A. Jenichenii curas emendata ... et locupletata (2 vols., folio, Leipzig, 1757); but of much more service for the present purpose is the great work of J. F. von Schulte, Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts von Gratian bis auf die Gegenwart (3 vols., bound in 4, Stuttgart, 1875-80). Many recent publications are entered in George K. Fortescue's Subject Index of the Modern Works Added to the Library of the British Museum in the Years 1880-1895 (3 vols., London, 1886-97); while Poole's Index contains the titles of more than 1,200 articles on various phases of the subject, including woman in her family relations.
For topical analysis of the literature presented in this Bibliographical Index consult the critical and descriptive notes at the heads of the respective chapters.
I. EARLY HISTORY OF MATRIMONIAL INSTITUTIONS
Abercromby, John. "Marriage Customs of the Mordvins." Folklore, I, 417-62. London, 1890.