the
idea of the men, until their wives taught them a lesson. Monogamy
introduces two permanent social characters that were formerly unknown:
the standing lover of the wife and the cuckold. The men had gained the
victory over the women, but the vanquished magnanimously provided the
coronation. In addition to monogamy and hetaerism, adultery became an
unavoidable social institution--denounced, severely punished, but
irrepressible. The certainty of paternal parentage rested as of old on
moral conviction at best, and in order to solve the unreconcilable
contradiction, the code Napoleon decreed in its article 312: "L'enfant
concu pendant le mariage a pour pere le mari;" the child conceived
during marriage has for its father--the husband. This is the last result
of three thousand years of monogamy.

Thus we have in the monogamous family, at least in those cases that
remain true to historical development and clearly express the conflict
between man and wife created by the exclusive supremacy of men, a
miniature picture of the contrasts and contradictions of society at
large. Split by class-differences since the beginning of civilization,
society has been unable to reconcile and overcome these antitheses. Of
course, I am referring here only to those cases of monogamy, where
matrimonial life actually remains in accord with the original character
of the whole institution, but where the wife revolts against the rule of
the man. Nobody knows better than your German philistine that not all
marriages follow such a course. He does not understand how to maintain
the control of his own home any better than that of the State, and his
wife is, therefore, fully entitled to wearing the trousers, which he
does not deserve. But he thinks himself far superior to his French
companion in misery, who more frequently fares far worse.

The monogamous family, by the way, did not everywhere and always appear
in the classic severe form it had among the Greeks. Among the Romans,
who as future conquerors of the world had a sharper although less
refined eye than the Greeks, the women were freer and more respected. A
Roman believed that the conjugal faith of his wife was sufficiently
safeguarded by his power over her life and death. Moreover, the women
could voluntarily dissolve the marriage as well as the men. But the
highest progress in the development of monogamy was doubtless due to the
entrance of the Germans into history, probably because on accoun