feelings in a man and he ideas in her;this is the great and happy sign of the times. The way of evolution is to demand of love all that friendship affords and infinitely

more.

It should be evident that the question of divorce is the pursuance of the line of development of Protestantism. The Reformation succeeded in asserting the rights of the senses in human life. It is now the rights of the soul in sexual life that are in question.

The Catholic Church maintains-and rightly from its point of view-that, since even marriages entered into with the warmest love and under the most favorable circumstances may turn out unhappily, it is impossible to base the morality of marriage upon the emotion of love. Nothing that is founded upon emotion can be permanent. Nay, the richer, the more individually and universally developed a personality is, the less immutable will be the state of its soul. Thus even the highest need an inflexible law, an irremovable tie, to prevent them from being at the mercy of their emotions; while inferior beings need the same restraints so as not to be driven by their desires.

But marriage, which the Church made a sacrament and indissoluble, was already the legal expression of the husband's right of ownership over his wife and children. The course of development (including the concessions of Protestantism) has consisted in a continuous transformation of this religio-economical view; and development cannot stop until the last remnant of this conception has been destroyed.

Therefore the believers in Life refuse to admit either the half admissions of Protestantism, or the logical compulsions of Catholicism. They demand that the step from authority to freedom shall be taken outright, since they know that the external authority that simplifies life does not create the higher morality. Compulsion fetters legal action, but thereby only makes secret crime a social institution.

In love, the idea of personality has now brought us to the view that "property is theft"; that only free gifts are of value; that the rights of connubial "rights" and "duties" are to be exchanged for the great reconstructive thought that fidelity can never be promised, but that indeed it may be won every day. A fidelity thus won will

be the only kind that will be thought worth having in the future.

In the ideas of the Church, the incapacity of one party for marriage freed the other from the duty of fidelity. In the more spiritual view of the future, it will be equally evident that the same right exists to dissolve a marriage that has remained unconsummated in a spiritual sense.

It is, however, especially when a man or woman is divorced in order to marry again that an outcry is raised. Even those who have hitherto found a married couple extremely ill suited, forget at once that they did so should either of them "allow a third party to come between them." They forget not only their former judgment, but also the fact taught by experience that when two married people are wholly one, there is no room for a third between the bark and the tree. In the contrary case, a third comes between them sooner or later. Sometimes it is the child, sometimes a life's work, sometimes a new feeling. But something always comes, thanks to nature's “abhorrence of a vacuum," which is never more fatal than in marriage. Within the dimensions of the soul, as within those of space, no one can take the place of another, but can occupy only that space which another has left vacant or has been unable to retain.

The advocates of free divorce know well enough that it will involve abuses. whatever abuses free divorce may involve, they can not often be worse than those that marriage has produced and still produces-marriage, which is degraded to the coarsest sexual habits, the most shameless traffic, the most agonizing soul murders, the most inhuman cruelties, and the grossest infringements of liberty that any department of modern life can show. Moreover, those who thoughtlessly separate when greater facilities are given, will be the same class of people who now, in coercive marriage, secretly deceive one another.

Here, too, is the place to point out the one-sidedness of the notion that nothing is more important than that the parents should remain together for the sake of the children

since everything must finally depend upon how the parents remain together and upon what they become through remaining together.

The more degrading cohabitation is to the personality of each parent, the less

valuable will be the influence of the parental relation for the children.

Only one who sees in marriage a system directly ordained by God can maintain the proposition that the good of such a system must necessarily outweigh its defects. Those who maintain that the maintenance of marriage is always the sound and moral course, must take upon themselves the burden of proving that the dull connubial habits of divided mates are a pure source for the origin of new beings; that their mutually conflicting influences are better able to further the welfare of the children than a tranquil bringing up by one of them; and that the happiness of one of them in a new union is more dangerous to the children than his unhappiness in the former one.

Not until the diversity of souls becomes in our ideas a truth as real as the diversity of our bodies, shall we perceive that of all dogmas monogamy has been that which has claimed most human sacrifices.

And

it will one day be admitted that the autoda-fes of marriage have been just as valueless to true morality as those of religion were to the true faith.

The Grand Inquisitors of the past probably resembled those of the present day in that, when confronted by a particular case within the circle of their own friends and relations, they found easily enough extenuating circumstances which they did not otherwise admit. But we must learn to see that every case is a separate case and that, therefore, sometimes a new rule—and not merely an exception to an old rule is necessary. We cannot any longer maintain this double standard for known or unknown, for friends or enemies, for literature or life. It must be abolished by an earnest desire for genuine morality.

This double standard shows us, however, that even among the orthodox upholders of monogamy the impossibility of carrying out a monogamous morality that shall apply to all is beginning to be perceived. But the effort, nevertheless, in some degree to attain the impossible now stands in the way of realizing that possibility which is germinating here and there-the attainment of the morality of love. And only those who do not perceive the power of the new spring are afraid that the earth will not be able to dispense with its protection of withered leaves.

It follows that the ideal form of marriage must be considered as the perfectly free union of a man and a woman who, through mutual love, desire to promote the happiness of each other and of the race.

But, as development does not proceed by leaps, no one can hope that the whole of society will attain this ideal otherwise. than through transitional forms. These must preserve the property of the old form that of expressing the opinion of society on the morality of the sexual relations and thus providing a support for the undeveloped but at the same time must be free enough to promote a continual development of the higher erotic consciousness of the present time.

Society is the organization that results when human beings set themselves in motion to satisfy their needs and exercise their powers in common and it must adapt itself to new needs as they arise and give play to new powers as they are developed. This has now taken place in the erotic sphere. Indeed, many of those emotional needs and powers of the soul that were formerly nourished by and directed toward religion, are now coming to be nourished by and directed toward love. Love is thus becoming more and more a religion, and as such demands new forms for its practice.

But while the individualist can be satisfied only with the full freedom of love, he is compelled by the sense of solidarity, at least for the present, to demand a new law for marriage, since the majority is not yet ready for perfect freedom. And the sense. of solidarity and the claims of individualism. have equally weighty reasons for condemning the existing institution of marriage. It forces upon human beings, who are seldom ideal, a unity that only an ideal happiness renders them capable of supporting. It fulfils one of its missions-that of protecting the woman—in a way that is now humiliating to her dignity. It performs its second function-that of protecting the children-in an extremely imperfect fashion. While its third function-that of setting up an ideal of the morality of sexual relations -it performs in such a way that this moral ideal is now become a hindrance to the further development of morality.

The marriage law now in force is a geological formation, with stratifications belonging to various phases of culture now

concluded. Our own phase alone has left few and unimportant marks upon it.

It has been perceived in our time that love ought to be the moral ground of marriage; and love rests upon equality. But the law of marriage dates from a time when the importance of love was not recognized. It, therefore, rests upon the inequality between a lord and his dependent.

Our time has given to the unmarried woman the opportunity of making her own living, a legal status, and civil rights. But the marriage law dates from a time when woman had none of these things. The married woman thus, under this law, now occupies a position in sharp contrast to the independence of the unmarried.

Our time has displaced the ancient division of labor, by which the wife cared for the children and the husband provided maintenance. But the law of marriage dates from a time when this division held full sway and when it was, therefore, almost impossible for woman to receive protection for herself and her child otherwise than in matrimony. Now society has begun to provide protection for unmarried mothers, and the renunciation of liberty by which the wife purchases the protection of marriage is seen to be not only more and more unworthy, but also unnecessary.

Our time has recognized more and more the importance of every child as a new member of society and the right of every child to be born under healthy conditions. But the law of marriage was framed when this aspect of the matter had not entered the consciousness of mankind; when the illegitimate child was regarded as worthless, however superior in itself, and the legitimate child as valuable, whatever might be its hereditary defects. It therefore maintains that most crude injustice, the difference between legitimate and illegitimate children. It frees unmarried fathers from their natural responsibility, and drives unmarried mothers. to infanticide, to suicide, and to prostitution.

When every life comes to be regarded as an end in itself from the point of view that it can never be lived again and must, therefore, be lived as completely and greatly as possible; when every personality is valued as an asset in life that has never existed before and will never occur again; then also will the erotic happiness or unhappiness of human beings be treated as of greater importance. And not to them

selves alone, but also to the whole community, because of the life and of the work that their happiness may give to the race or that their unhappiness may withhold.

This is the rich promise that the new path offers. But the majority cannot see the promise, on account of the possible new dangers. It is this dread that still paralyzes the courage to dare the untried in order to win the valuable.

It is astonishing that those who tremble for the future never seek consolation in the past. When the family was losing its position of match-maker, there were prophecies of exactly the same "dissolution of society and the family" as are now dreaded in freer forms of matrimony. But the same people that now laugh at the former forebodings, are convinced that the latter will be realized. Man believes in nothing so reluctantly as in the powers of his own nature to replace outward bonds by inner ones. Yet nothing is more certain than that if feelings were no better than laws, there would never be new laws; and that long before the new forms are ready, there is an abundance of the new feelings that are to fill them.

This, in the succinct statement of a rough outline, is the ideal that is held out to us as not only capable of ultimate realization, but as even now worthy of being striven toward, as calling for our open and active support, and as warranting the running of risks in social experiment, even though, as the writer says as her final word "those who believe in the perfectibility of mankind for and through love must learn to reckon, not in hundreds of years, and still less in tens, but in thousands."

It is not the plea of self-indulgence. Now as always, the self-indulger makes no pleas. He indulges himself—and makes excuses if caught. It is, on the contrary, a voice boldly and honestly seeking to make articulate the ethical sense of the time; asking how Love, which is one of the great lords of life, can take its freedom from the hands of society any more than Death, the other, can do so; and answering with the magnificent faith of man's new religion, which regards humanity as climbing out of chaos instead of as fallen into sin, "that while. there is only one death, there are many sorts of love. Death never plays. When all love becomes equally serious, it will also possess Death's right to choose its own time."

Fear and Politics

HERE is only one thing to be afraid of, and that is fear.

Τ

Fortunately, most of our troubles never come to pass. And occasionally we go right through a time of trouble and forget to shudder until we get out on the broad highway where the road is clear and the automobiling good.

Some of our griefs we have cured, and the sharpest we have survived, but what torments of pain we endured from the evils that never arrived!

The world has fallen heir to a great legacy of fear. We are all more or less imbued with it.

If this were not so, I would not be writing on the subject now, and the fact that I am writing on it proves that I have not got the microbe fully out of my system.

But this I do believe that the lions are always chained, and usually they are only plaster-of-Paris lions.

Among our superstitious fears is the idea that a presidential year is ever a bad year for business.

Many good people always imagine that the party in power is oppressing the people, and that when there is a change in presidents, butter will be ten cents a pound, eggs three dozen for a quarter, with everything else cheap in proportion, and wages twice as high as they are now.

This idea probably comes from the fact that the average man reads only one newspaper, and that the one that mirrors his own prejudices.

Every president is a disappointment, and the hope of a change comes as a glad and welcome relief.

For most of us, the times are always hard,

and even in the midst of prosperity, many people find it difficult to pay their bills and to get enough money to buy all the things they would like to.

Inertia tugs at us, and the "cussedness of things" is on every hand. As election time approaches, we just quit work, lay off, and say, "Nothin' doin' until after election."

This state of mind comes to us from a time when kings ruled the world, and a change of government was effected only through death, violence, and revolution.

The grand chamberlain, who stood in the window of the palace and called aloud to the multitude, "The King is dead-long live the King!" while all around were soldiers standing at "present arms," and the air bristled with bayonets, is in our minds.

Government for us is not a thing that rules-it is merely a matter of business.

The real fact is, the public business at Washington is not conducted by the President or his cabinet. There is a big force of able men who have held their positions long, and these are the men who do their work and hold their peace.

The President's power is largely in the line of publicity. He stands in the lime-light, but the work goes right along without him.

We are ruled by the spirit of the times, the Zeitgeist is supreme, and no order, even of the Supreme Court, is operative unless it is backed up by public opinion.

In America to-day, we have a more stable public opinion than ever before in the history of the world. The new spirit of the times demands honesty in business and in all public service.

No man who could be elected president. could do us much harm, even were he so inclined, and there is no possibility of our electing a ruffian, a renegade, or a dictator to the office.