red.[1261]

+396.+ The point of this is that no society ever has existed or ever can
exist in which no divorce is allowed. In all stages of the father
family it has been possible for a man to turn his wife out of doors, and
for a wife to run away from her husband. They divorce themselves when
they have determined that they want to do so. It would be an easy
solution of marriage problems to assert that the society will use its
force to compel all spouses who disagree, or for whom the marriage
relation has become impossible through the course of events,
nevertheless to continue to live in wedlock. Such a rule would produce
endless misery, shame, and sin. There are reasons for divorce. Adultery
is recognized as such a reason in the New Testament. It is a rational
reason, especially under pair marriage. There are other rational
reasons. Some of them are modern forms of the reasons allowed in the
canon law, as above cited. The exegesis of the New Testament is not
simple. It does not produce a simple and consistent doctrine, and
therefore inference and deduction have been applied to it. 2 Cor. vi. 14
contradicts 1 Cor. vii. 12. The mores decide at last what causes shall
be sufficient. The laws in the United States once went very far in an
attempt to satisfy complaining married people. They were no better
satisfied at last than at first. Scandalous cases produced a conviction
that "we have gone too far," and the present tendency is to revoke
certain concessions. The fact that a divorce has been legally obtained
does not satisfy some former friends of the divorced so that they will
continue social intimacy. A code grows up to fit the facts. Sects help
to make such codes. Perhaps they make a code which is too stringent. The
members of the sect do not live by it. They seek remarriage in other,
less scrupulous sects, or by civil authority, or they change domicile in
order to get a divorce. Thus the mores control. When the law of the
state or of ecclesiastical bodies goes with the mores it prevails; when
it departs from the mores it fails. The mores are also sure to act in
regard to a matter which presents itself in a large class of cases, and
which calls for social and ethical judgments. At last, comprehensive
popular judgments will be formed and they will get into legislation.
They will adjust interests so that people can pursue self-realization
with success and satisfaction, under social judgments as to the rules
necessary to pr