hly esteemed
alienist, Dr. Clouston, writes (_The Hygiene of Mind_, p. 245)
"there is only one natural mode of gratifying sexual _nisus_ and
reproductive instinct, that of marriage," the statement requires
considerable exegesis before it can be accepted, or even receive
an intelligible meaning, and if we are to understand by
"marriage" the particular form and implications of the English
marriage law, or even of the somewhat more enlightened Scotch
law, the statement is absolutely false. There is a world of
difference, as J.A. Godfrey remarks (_The Science of Sex_, 1901,
p. 278), between natural monogamous marriage and our legal
system; "the former is the outward expression of the best that
lies in the sexuality of man; the latter is a creation in which
religious and moral superstitions have played a most important
part, not always to the benefit of individual and social health."

We must, therefore, guard against the tendency to think that
there is anything rigid or formal in the natural order of
monogamy. Some sociologists would even limit the naturalness of
monogamy still further. Thus Tarde ("La Morale Sexuelle,"
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Jan., 1907), while
accepting as natural under present conditions the tendency for
monogamy, mitigated by more or less clandestine concubinage, to
prevail over all other forms of marriage, considers that this is
not due to any irresistible influence, but merely to the fact
that this kind of marriage is practiced by the majority of
people, including the most civilized.

With the acceptance of the tendency to monogamy we are not at the
end of sexual morality, but only at the beginning. It is not
monogamy that is the main thing, but the kind of lives that
people lead in monogamy. The mere acceptance of a monogamic rule
carries us but a little way. That is a fact which cannot fail to
impress itself on those who approach the questions of sex from
the psychological side.

If monogamy is thus firmly based it is unreasonable to fear, or to hope
for, any radical modification in the institution of marriage, regarded,
not under its temporary religious and legal aspects but as an order which
appeared on the earth even earlier than man. Monogamy is the most natural
expression of an impulse which cannot, as a rule, be so adequately
realized in full fruiti