he development of civilization we came to
the conclusion that in its main lines it involved, above all, personal
responsibility. A relationship fixed among savage peoples by social custom
which none dare break, and in a higher stage of culture by formal laws
which must be observed in the letter even if broken in the spirit, becomes
gradually transferred to the sphere of individual moral responsibility.
Such a transference is necessarily meaningless, and indeed impossible,
unless the increasing stringency of the moral bond is accompanied by the
decreasing stringency of the formal bond. It is only by the process of
loosening the artificial restraints that the natural restraints can exert
their full control. That process takes place in two ways, in part on the
basis of the indifference to formal marriage which has marked the masses
of the population everywhere and doubtless stretches back to the tenth
century before the domination of ecclesiastical matrimony began, and
partly by the progressive modification of marriage laws which were made
necessary by the needs of the propertied classes anxious to secure the
State recognition of their unions. The whole process is necessarily a
gradual and indeed imperceptible process. It is impossible to fix
definitely the dates of the stages by which the Church effected the
immense revolution by which it grasped, and eventually transferred to the
State, the complete control of marriage, for that revolution was effected
without the intervention of any law. It will be equally difficult to
perceive the transference of the control of marriage from the State to
the individuals concerned, and the more difficult because, as we shall
see, although the essential and intimately personal fact of marriage is
not a proper matter for State control, there are certain aspects of
marriage which touch the interests of the community so closely that the
State is bound to insist on their registration and to take an interest in
their settlement.

The result of dissolving the formal stringency of the marriage
relationship, it is sometimes said, would be a tendency to an immoral
laxity. Those who make this statement overlook the fact that laxity tends
to reach a maximum as a result of stringency, and that where the merely
external authority of a rigid marriage law prevails, there the extreme
excesses of license most flourish. It is also undoubtedly true, and for
the same reason, that any sudden removal of restra