al structure. I have
proved that this bondage acts really for the benefit and happiness of
the individual, but this deep truth I must now leave. Marriage is,
thus, a concession of the individual to the general welfare of the
future and of the State. Now, with human nature as it is in its
present development, it is clearly claiming the impossible to demand
indissoluble marriage. Divorce is really implicit in the conditions of
marriage itself, and the firmest believers in monogamy must be the
supporters of practical and moral conditions of divorce.

The moral code of any society represents the experience of its
members. But experience is continually changing and enlarging, and
moral codes must also change and enlarge, or they become worn-out and
useless. Those people who are unable to modify their moral code to fit
new conditions and growth are doomed to extinction, while the people
who adjust their customs and laws to meet new requirements open up the
way to move on, and still onwards, in continual progress.

It were well to remember this as we come to question the conditions of
our law of divorce. There can be no possible doubt that if marriage is
to remain and become moral there must be an easier dissolution of its
bonds. The enforced continuance of an unreal marriage is really the
grossest form of immorality, harmful not only to the individuals
concerned, but to the children. The prejudices handed down to us by
past tradition have twisted morals into an assertion that a husband
or wife who have ceased to love must continue to share the rites of
marriage in mutual repugnance, or live in an unnatural celibacy.

The question as to how this condition arose may be answered very
briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this
being found impossible to maintain in practice, the State stepped in
with a way of escape--a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift
it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent! Adultery must be
committed. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another
partner must first be sought, and love degraded in an act of
infidelity. Adultery is, in fact, a State-endowed offence against
morality, just as the indissolubility of marriage is a theological
perversion of the plainest moral law, that the true relationship
between the sexes is founded on love. This bastard-born morality of
Church and State is as immoral in theory as it is evil in practice.

For if we look d