that marriage is
firmly held in position by the pressure of two opposing forces. There are
two currents in the stream of our civilization: one that moves towards an
ever greater social order and cohesion, the other that moves towards an
ever greater individual freedom. There is real harmony underlying the
apparent opposition of these two tendencies, and each is indeed the
indispensable complement of the other. There can be no real freedom for
the individual in the things that concern that individual alone unless
there is a coherent order in the things that concern him as a social unit.
Marriage in one of its aspects only concerns the two individuals involved;
in another of its aspects it chiefly concerns society. The two forces
cannot combine to act destructively on marriage, for the one counteracts
the other. They combine to support monogamy, in all essentials, on its
immemorial basis.

It must be added that in the circumstances of monogamy that are not
essential there always has been, and always must be, perpetual
transformation. All traditional institutions, however firmly founded on
natural impulses, are always growing dead and rigid at some points and
putting forth vitally new growths at other points. It is the effort to
maintain their vitality, and to preserve their elastic adjustment to the
environment, which involves this process of transformation in
non-essentials.

The only way in which we can fruitfully approach the question of the value
of the transformations now taking place in our marriage-system is by
considering the history of that system in the past. In that way we learn
the real significance of the marriage-system, and we understand what
transformations are, or are not, associated with a fine civilization. When
we are acquainted with the changes of the past we are enabled to face more
confidently the changes of the present.

The history of the marriage-system of modern civilized peoples begins in
the later days of the Roman Empire at the time when the foundations were
being laid of that Roman law which has exerted so large an influence in
Christendom. Reference has already been made[315] to the significant fact
that in late Rome women had acquired a position of nearly complete
independence in relation to their husbands, while the patriarchal
authority still exerted over them by their fathers had become, for the
most part, almost nominal. This high status of women was associated, as it
naturally tend