gnition or respect,
and (as Wahrmund has truly said in his _Ehe und Eherecht_) it is
still necessary to insist on "the unconditional sanctity of
motherhood, which is entitled, under whatever circumstances it
arises, to the respect and protection of society."

It must be added that, from the social point of view, it is not
the sexual union which requires legal recognition, but the child
which is the product of that union. It would, moreover, be
hopeless to attempt to legalize all sexual connection, but it is
comparatively easy to legalize all children.

There has been much discussion in the past concerning the particular form
which marriage ought to take. Many theorists have exercised their
ingenuity in inventing and preaching new and unusual marriage-arrangements
as panaceas for social ills; while others have exerted even greater energy
in denouncing all such proposals as subversive of the foundations of human
society. We may regard all such discussions, on the one side or the other,
as idle.

In the first place marriage customs are far too fundamental, far too
intimately blended with the primary substance of human and indeed animal
society, to be in the slightest degree shaken by the theories or the
practices of mere individuals, or even groups of individuals.
Monogamy--the more or less prolonged cohabitation of two individuals of
opposite sex--has been the prevailing type of sexual relationship among
the higher vertebrates and through the greater part of human history. This
is admitted even by those who believe (without any sound evidence) that
man has passed through a stage of sexual promiscuity. There have been
tendencies to variation in one direction or another, but at the lowest
stages and the highest stages, so far as can be seen, monogamy represents
the prevailing rule.

It must be said also, in the second place, that the natural prevalence of
monogamy as the normal type of sexual relationship by no means excludes
variations. Indeed it assumes them. "There is nothing precise in Nature,"
according to Diderot's saying. The line of Nature is a curve that
oscillates from side to side of the norm. Such oscillations inevitably
occur in harmony with changes in environmental conditions, and, no doubt,
with peculiarities of personal disposition. So long as no arbitrary and
merely external attempt is made to force Nature, the vital order is
harmoniously maintained. Among certain spe