uits her.
Such marriages necessarily, on the whole, turn out better than
marriages in which the woman, knowing nothing of what awaits her
and having no other experiences for comparison, is liable to be
disillusioned or to feel that she "might have done better." Even
when legal recognition is not sought until after the birth of
children, it by no means follows that any moral deterioration is
involved. Thus in some parts of Staffordshire where it is the
custom of the women to have a child before marriage,
notwithstanding this "corruption," we are told (Burton, _City of
the Saints_, Appendix IV), the women are "very good neighbors,
excellent, hard-working, and affectionate wives and mothers."

"The lower social classes, especially peasants," remarks Dr.
Ehrhard ("Auch Ein Wort zur Ehereform," _Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang I, Heft 10), "know better than we that
the marriage bed is the foundation of marriage. On that account
they have retained the primitive custom of trial-marriage which,
in the Middle Ages, was still practiced even in the best circles.
It has the further advantage that the marriage is not concluded
until it has shown itself to be fruitful. Trial-marriage assumes,
of course, that virginity is not valued beyond its true worth."
With regard to this point it may be mentioned that in many parts
of the world a woman is more highly esteemed if she has had
intercourse before marriage (see, e.g., Potter, op. cit., pp. 163
et seq.). While virginity is one of the sexual attractions a
woman may possess, an attraction that is based on a natural
instinct (see "The Evolution of Modesty," in vol. i of these
_Studies_), yet an exaggerated attention to virginity can only be
regarded as a sexual perversion, allied to _paidophilia_, the
sexual attraction to children.

In very small cooerdinated communities the primitive custom of
trial-marriage tends to decay when there is a great invasion of
strangers who have not been brought up to the custom (which seems
to them indistinguishable from the license of prostitution), and
who fail to undertake the obligations which trial-marriage
involves. This is what happened in the case of the so-called
"island custom" of Portland, which lasted well on into the
nineteenth century; according to this custom a woman before
marriage