at brings
them back, what leads to their being forgiven and received into their
homes again, are matters that seriously concern the social case worker.
What is it that makes this plant called marriage so tough of fiber and
so difficult to eradicate from even the most unfriendly soil?

It is fortunate (since the majority of case workers are unmarried) that
simply to have been a member of a family gives one some understanding of
these questions. The theorist who maintains that marriage is purely
economic, or that it is entirely a question of sex, has either never
belonged to a real family or has forgotten some of the lessons he
learned there.

Many volumes have been written upon the history of marriage, or rather
of the family, since, as one historian justly puts it, "marriage has its
source in the family rather than the family in marriage."[2] In all
these studies the influence of law, of custom, of self-interest, and of
economic pressure, is shown to have molded the institution of marriage
into curious shapes and forms, some grievous to be borne. But is it not
after all the crystallized and conventionalized records of past time
which have had to be used as the source material of such studies, and
could the spiritual values of the family in any period be found in its
laws and learned discourses? We might rather expect to find students of
these sources preoccupied with the outward aspects, the failures, the
unusual instances. It is as true of human beings as of nations, that the
happy find no chronicler. "Out of ... interest and joy in caring for
children in their weakness and watching that weakness grow to strength,
family life came into being and has persisted."[3] It is hardly
conceivable that in any society, however primitive, there were not some
real families--even when custom ran otherwise--in which marriage meant
love and kindness and the mutual sharing of responsibilities. And these
families, today as always, are the creators and preservers of the
spiritual gains of the human race. It has been beautifully said of the
family in such a form, that "it is greater than love itself, for it
includes, ennobles, makes permanent, all that is best in love. The pain
of life is hallowed by it, the drudgery sweetened, its pleasures
consecrated. It is the great trysting-place of the generations, where
past and future flash into the reality of the present. It is the great
storehouse in which the hardly-earned treasures of the pa