sible that by some such simple way of
escape we may come to change the pressure of our coercive marriage.

The briefest glance at our marriage system proves it to be founded on
the patriarchal idea of woman as the property of man, which is
sufficiently illustrated by the fact that a husband can claim sums of
money as compensation from any man who sexually approaches his wife,
while a woman, on her side, is granted compensation in the case of a
breach of promise of marriage. If we seek to find how this condition
has arisen we must look backwards into the past. To the fine legacy
left by the Roman law (which, regarding marriage as a contract, placed
the two sexes in a position of equal freedom) was added the customs of
the barbarians and the base Jewish system, giving to the husband
rights in marriage and divorce denied to the wife. Later, in the
twelfth century, came the capture of marriage by the Church and the
establishment of Canon law, whereby the property-value of marriage
became inextricably mingled with the sanctification of marriage as a
sacrament, which, strengthened by Christian asceticism and the
glorification of virginity, involved a corresponding contempt cast on
all love outside of legal marriage.[326] The action of this double
standard of sexual morality has led on the one side to the setting-up
of a theoretical ideal, which, as few are able to follow it, tends to
become an empty form, and this, on the other side, leads to a hidden
laxity that rushes to waste love out to a swift finish. The puritan
view has left us an inheritance of denials. It is small wonder, under
such circumstances, that marriage is often immoral, so often ending in
repulsion and weariness. "Our sexual morality," it has been said with
fine truth by Havelock Ellis, "is in reality a bastard born of the
union of property-morality with primitive ascetic morality, neither in
true relationship to the vital facts of life."

It may, indeed, be doubted if apart from property considerations we
have left any sexual morality at all. How else were it possible for
marriage (which, if it is to fulfil its moral biological ends, must be
based on physical and mental affinity and fitness) to be contracted,
as it often is, without knowledge or any true care of these essential
factors, and, moreover, to guarantee a permanence of a relationship
thus entered into blindly. At least it should be considered necessary
that a certificate of the health of the par