restricted to any one form of union.
Polygamy, polyandry, and monogamy all are practised. The family is
sometimes patriarchal, though more often it is matriarchal, with the
female the centre of it, and her love for the young infinitely
stronger and more devoted than the male, though even in this direction
there are many and notable exceptions. When we came to study the
history of mankind we found similar conditions persisting. Separate
groups living as they best could without caring about theories; their
sexual conduct ordered by a compromise between the procreative needs
on the one hand, and the necessities of the social conditions on the
other. Marriage forms, as we understand them, were for long unknown,
the relations of the sexes slowly evolving from a more or less
restricted promiscuity to a family union at first merely temporary,
and only later becoming fixed and permanent. Thus very gradually the
primitive instinctive sex impulses underwent expansion, and always in
the direction of the control of the individual desires in the interest
of the family.

The unit of the group or state is the family, therefore sex-customs
arise and laws are made not to suit the convenience of the woman or
the man, but for the preservation and good of the family. In a word,
the children--they are the pivot about which all regulations of
marriage should turn.

It is certain, however, that such control and such laws have never in
the past, and never in the future can be fixed to one unchanging form.
In proof of this I must refer the reader back to the historical
section of this book, where nothing stands out clearer than that the
most diverse morality and customs prevail in matters of sex. Wherever
for any reason there arises a tendency towards any form of sexual
association, such form is likely to be established as a habit, and,
persisting, it comes to be regarded as right, and is enforced by
custom and later by law, and also sometimes sanctified by religion. It
comes to be regarded as moral, and other forms become immoral.

Now, all this may seem to be rather far away from the matter we are
discussing--the present dissatisfaction with our marriage system. But
the point I want to make clear is this: there is no rigid and
unchangeable code of right or wrong in the sexual relationship. Our
opinions here are based for the most part on traditional morality,
which accepts what is as right because it is established. A small but
growing mi