117-120. Soeren Hansen, "The Inferior Quality of the
First-born Children," _Eugenics Review_, Oct., 1913.
[4] Marro, _La Puberta_ (French translation _La Puberte_), Ch. XI.
XV
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
We contemplate our marriage system with satisfaction. We remember the
many unquestionable evidences in favour of it, and we marvel that it so
often proves a failure. For while we remember the evidence in favour of
it, we forget the evidence against it, and we overlook the important
fact that our favourable evidence is largely based on the vision of an
abstract or idealised monogamy which fails to correspond to the
detailed and ever varying system which in practice we cherish. We point
to the fact that monogamic marriage has probably flourished throughout
the history of the world, that it exists among savages, even among
animals, but we fail to observe how far that monogamy differs from
ours, even assuming that our monogamy is a real monogamy and not a
disguised polygamy, especially in the fact that it is a free union and
only subject to the inherent penalties that follow its infraction, not
to external penalties. Ours is not free; our faith in its natural
virtues is not quite so firm as we assert; we are always meddling with
it and worrying over its health and anxiously trying to bolster it up.
We are not by any means willing to let it rest on the sanction of its
own natural or divine laws. Our feeling is, as James Hinton used
ironically to express it: "Poor God with no one to help Him!"
The fact is that when we compare our civilised marriage system with
marriage as it exists in Nature, we fail to realise a fundamental
distinction.
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