y as a tradition that molds the lives of husband and
wife. Women are still held more rigidly to their duties as wives than
men to their duties as husbands, and the will of the husband still rules
in the major affairs of life, even though in a thousand details the wife
rules. Theoretically every man willingly acknowledges the importance of
his wife as mother and homekeeper, but practically he acts as if his
work were the really important activity of the family. The obedience of
the wife is still asked for by most of the religious ceremonies of the
times. Two great opinions are therefore still struggling in the home and
in society; one that matrimony implies the dependence and essential
inferiority of woman, and the other that the man and woman are equal
partners in the relationship. I fully realize that the advocate of the
first opinion will deny that the inferiority of woman is at all implied
in their standpoint. But it is an inferior who vows obedience, it is the
inferior who loses legal rights, it is the inferior who yields to
another the "headship" of the home.

The struggle of these two opinions will have only one outcome, the
complete victory of the modern belief that the sexes are, all in all,
equal, and that therefore marriage is a contract of equals. Meanwhile
the struggling opinions, with the scene of conflict in every home, in
every heart, cause disorder as all struggles do. When the victory is
complete, then conduct will be definite and clear-cut, then the home
will be reorganized in relation to the new belief, and then new problems
will arise and be met. How conduct will be changed, what the new
problems will be and how they will be met, I do not pretend to know.

Meanwhile there is this to say,--that marriage should be guarded so that
the grossly unfit do not marry. A thorough physical examination is as
necessary for matrimony as it is for civil service, and many of the
horrors every generation of doctors has witnessed could be eliminated at
once and for all time.

Further, if marriage is a desirable state, and on the whole it must be
preferred to a single existence, surely so long as our code of morals
remains unchanged, and so long as we believe the race must be
perpetuated, then the too late marriage should be discouraged. The ideal
age for women to enter matrimony is from twenty-two to twenty-five; the
ideal age for men is from twenty-five to twenty-eight. It is not my
province to deal at length with