e flows through us that we have to
make the utmost of our individual opportunities and powers, so that,
understanding our position as guardians to the generations yet unborn,
we may use to the very full, but refrain from any misuse of love's
possibilities of joy. We know that all we gain for ourselves we gain
in trust for the race, and what we lose for ourselves we waste for
the life to come. This has, of course, been said before by numberless
people, but it seems to me it has been realised by very few, and until
it is realised to the fullest extent it will never begin to be
practised. We shall continue at a crossed purpose between our own
interests and desires and the interests of the race, and shall go on
wasting the forces of love needlessly and riotously.

Armed with these conclusions I shall now attempt to examine our
existing marriage in its relation (1) to the needs of the children,
(2) to the individual needs apart from parentage. The extent of the
problems involved is almost illimitable, thus all that I can do is to
touch very briefly and insufficiently on a few facts.

As we question in turn the various systems of marriage it becomes
clear that monogamy is the form which has most widely prevailed, and
will be likely to be maintained, because of its superior survival
value. In other words, because it best serves the interests of the
race by assuring to the woman and her children the individual interest
and providence of the father. I believe further that monogamy of all
the sexual associations serves best the personal needs of the parents;
and, moreover, that it represents the form of union which is in
harmony with the instincts and desires of the majority of people. The
ideal of permanent marriage between one woman and one man to last for
the life of both must persist as an ideal never to be lost. I wish to
state this as my belief quite clearly. The higher love in true
marriage is the veritable law of the life to be; and beside it all
experiments in sensation will rot in their emptiness and their
self-love.

But this faith of mine in an ideal and lasting union does not lessen
at all my scepticism in the moral inefficacy of our present marriage
system. It is not the particular form of marriage practised that,
after all, is the main thing, but the kind of lives people live under
that form. The mere acceptance of a legally enforced monogamy does not
carry us very far in practical morality; we must claim someth