family is the institution, and it was antecedent to
marriage. Marriage has always been an elastic and variable usage, as it
now is. Each pair, or other marital combination, has always chosen its
own "ways" of living within the limits set by the mores. In fact the use
of language reflects the vagueness of marriage, for we use the word
"marriage" for wedding, nuptials, or matrimony (wedlock). Only the last
could be an institution. Wedlock has gone through very many phases, and
has by no means evolved along lines of harmonious and advancing
development. In the earliest forms of the higher civilization, in
Chaldea and Egypt, man and wife were, during wedlock, in a relation of
rational free cooperation. Out of this two different forms of wedlock
have come, the harem system and pair marriage. The historical sequences
by which the former has been produced could be traced just as easily as
those which have led up to the latter. There is no more necessity in one
than in the other. Wedlock is a mode of associated life. It is as
variable as circumstances, interests, and character make it within the
conditions. No rules or laws can control it. They only affect the
condition against which the individuals react. No laws can do more than
specify ways of entering into wedlock, and the rights and duties of the
parties in wedlock to each other, which the society will enforce. These,
however, are but indifferent externals. All the intimate daily play of
interests, emotions, character, taste, etc., are beyond the reach of the
bystanders, and that play is what makes wedlock what it is for every
pair. Nevertheless the relations of the parties are always deeply
controlled by the current opinions in the society, the prevalent ethical
standards, the approval or condemnation passed by the bystanders on
cases between husbands and wives, and by the precepts and traditions of
the old. Thus the mores hold control over individual taste and caprice,
and individual experience reacts against the control. All the problems
of marriage are in the intimate relations. When they affect large
numbers they are brought under the solution of the mores. Therefore the
history of marriage is to be interpreted by the mores, and its
philosophy must be sought in the fact that it is an ever-moving product
of the mores.

+365. Endogamy and exogamy.+ Although it seems, at first consideration,
that savages could not have perceived the alleged evils of inbreeding,
yet a ful