at wrong? Who shall
dare to say that alone of all mistakes of youth, a mistaken choice in
marriage shall be for all life a sentence of doom? Who shall dare to
limit the power of rehabilitation of the family order, even when what
has failed is the central heart of married love? Our gospel of hope
and courage, and renewal of opportunity, and rebirth of affection must
know no limits if we would rightly trust the spirit within our being.

But for the shallow, and the selfish, and the pleasure-seeker without
reverence for the right way of life, and for the scoffer at all high
moods of feeling and of ideal aim, there can be little to justify his
flitting about on the very outmost limits of true love. For such, some
check must be had in ordered rules and legal bonds, in order that the
race-life shall go on in safety and in social health. Meanwhile,
although there is much to give us pause and to demand serious study
and earnest and wise social work in the situation revealed by the
divorce court statistics, there is nothing that need give hysterical
alarm lest the home is being destroyed and the family abolished. On
the contrary, there probably was never a time when so many people were
really happy, each and every member of the family, in the home
relation; and hence never a time when it was clearer that to keep the
home stable and permanent, and make marriage successful in the vast
majority of cases, we have only to get better and wiser people in
larger proportion.

To understand the real reason for marital unhappiness and for family
instability, to know that such reason inheres primarily in personal
character and not in any statute, is to begin work for the real cure
and prevention of such unhappiness and instability. The broken family
may be a sad necessity, alike for individuals concerned, and for the
well-being of society. To prevent that tragedy is a social duty than
which none is more pressing or more open to social effort.

=Turning From Compulsory to Attractive Methods of Reform.=--To
undertake that social task, the psychology of social effort must be
turned from compulsive methods of prevention of legal divorce, when
such divorce is sought, to ways of making marriage choices wiser,
marriage experience more sane and better balanced by sense of
obligation to the nearer and more remote of social relations, and by
putting at the command of all, the helpful sympathy and the social
guidance that can alone hold to firm and