eritte, _Quelques Idees_.

[359] I may remark that this was pointed out, and its consequences
vigorously argued, many years ago by C.G. Garrison, "Limits of Divorce,"
_Contemporary Review_, Feb., 1894. "It may safely be asserted," he
concludes, "that marriage presents not one attribute or incident of
anything remotely resembling a contract, either in form, remedy,
procedure, or result; but that in all these aspects, on the contrary, it
is fatally hostile to the principles and practices of that division of the
rights of persons." Marriage is not contract, but conduct.

[360] See, e.g., P. and V. Margueritte, op. cit.

[361] As quoted by Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 29.

[362] Ellen Key similarly (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 343) remarks that to
talk of "the duty of life-long fidelity" is much the same as to talk of
"the duty of life-long health." A man may promise, she adds, to do his
best to preserve his life, or his love; he cannot unconditionally
undertake to preserve them.

[363] Hobhouse, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 159, 237-9; cf. P. and V.
Margueritte, _Quelques Idees_.

[364] "Divorce," as Garrison puts it ("Limits of Divorce," _Contemporary
Review_, Feb., 1894), "is the judicial announcement that conduct once
connubial in character and purpose, has lost these qualities.... Divorce
is a question of fact, and not a license to break a promise."

[365] See, _ante_, p. 425.

[366] It has been necessary to discuss reproduction in the first chapter
of the present volume, and it will again be necessary in the concluding
chapter. Here we are only concerned with procreation as an element of
marriage.

[367] Nietzold, _Die Ehe in AEgypten zur Ptolemaeisch-roemischen Zeit_, 1903,
p. 3. This bond also accorded rights to any children that might be born
during its existence.

[368] See, e.g., Ellen Key, _Mutter und Kind_, p. 21. The necessity for
the combination of greater freedom of sexual relationships with greater
stringency of parental relationships was clearly realized at an earlier
period by another able woman writer, Miss J.H. Clapperton, in her notable
book, _Scientific Meliorism_, published in 1885. "Legal changes," she
wrote (p. 320), "are required in two directions, viz., towards greater
freedom as to marriage and greater strictness as to parentage. The
marriage union is essentially a private matter with which society has no
call and no right to interfere. Childbirth, on the contrary, is a public
event. It touc