Lastly, sociology is the most complicated of all the sciences because
the chain of causation is longer; and very few of those who write or
read about it have the patience to go back through psychology to biology
and the laws of life in their analyses. An institution like marriage is
criticized by those who think that it is an ecclesiastical invention of
yesterday, and that what hands have made, hands can destroy, though
marriage is aeons older even than the mammalian order. They take
transient, artificial conditions, lasting not for a second in the
history of mankind seen as a whole, and simply accepting these
conditions as part of the order of nature, they ask us to overthrow an
institution which is immeasurable ages older than man himself. The odds
are somewhat against them, one may surmise, but they may do considerable
injury to their own age notwithstanding.
After having dealt with this fundamental biological condition of
marriage, we must next turn to a psychological question which is
scarcely less important. The human being is immensely complex both in
composition and in needs, and the institution of monogamy does not
become easier of maintenance as human complexity increases. Amongst the
lower animals or even amongst the lower races of mankind, the relations
between the sexes are mostly confined to one sphere, but amongst
ourselves the problem is to mate for life complex individuals whose
needs are many, ranging from the purely physical to the purely
psychical.
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