them. Few of us but bow before
that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know
what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed
before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will
be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly
scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish
of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and
causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard
of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices.

Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the institution of
marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of
evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that
exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime,
disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of
this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of
things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the
nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of
sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is
because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her.
Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is
interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to
give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth,
marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the
social body. It is a device of man at his worst--a mixture of slavery,
savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated by nothing in the
physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a
contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which
cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness
be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be
abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind.
Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not
caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of
a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological
conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social
advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more
commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn;
but never