ith the Progress of Civilization--The Possibility of Loving
More Than One Person at a Time--Platonic Friendship--The Conditions Which
Make It Possible--The Maternal Element in Woman's Love--The Final
Development of Conjugal Love--The Problem of Love One of the Greatest of
Social Questions.

It will be clear from the preceding discussion that there are two elements
in every marriage so far as that marriage is complete. On the one hand
marriage is a union prompted by mutual love and only sustainable as a
reality, apart from its mere formal side, by the cultivation of such love.
On the other hand marriage is a method for propagating the race and
having its end in offspring. In the first aspect its aim is erotic, in the
second parental. Both these ends have long been generally recognized. We
find them set forth, for instance, in the marriage service of the Church
of England, where it is stated that marriage exists both for "the mutual
society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other," and
also for "the procreation of children." Without the factor of mutual love
the proper conditions for procreation cannot exist; without the factor of
procreation the sexual union, however beautiful and sacred a relationship
it may in itself be, remains, in essence, a private relationship,
incomplete as a marriage and without public significance. It becomes
necessary, therefore, to supplement the preceding discussion of marriage
in its general outlines by a final and more intimate consideration of
marriage in its essence, as embracing the art of love and the science of
procreation.

There has already been occasion from time to time to refer to
those who, starting from various points of view, have sought to
limit the scope of marriage and to suppress one or other of its
elements. (See e.g., _ante_, p. 135.)

In modern times the tendency has been to exclude the factor of
procreation, and to regard the relationship of marriage as
exclusively lying in the relationship of the two parties to each
other. Apart from the fact, which it is unnecessary again to call
attention to, that, from the public and social point of view, a
marriage without children, however important to the two persons
concerned, is a relationship without any public significance, it
must further be said that, in the absence of children, even the
personal erotic life itself is apt to suffer, for in the normal