he task to their friends, as is now generally done as
regards marriage settlements. They agree to live together on such
and such terms, making certain stipulations within the limits of
the code." The State, she holds, should, however, demand an
interval of time between notice of divorce and the divorce
itself, if still desired when that interval has passed.
Similarly, in the United States Dr. Shufeldt ("Needed Revision of
the Laws of Marriage and Divorce," _Medico-Legal Journal_, Dec.,
1897) insists that marriage must be entirely put into the hands
of the legal profession and "made a civil contract, explicit in
detail, and defining terms of divorce, in the event that a
dissolution of the contract is subsequently desired." He adds
that medical certificates of freedom from hereditary and acquired
disease should be required, and properly regulated probationary
marriages also be instituted.

In France, a deputy of the Chamber was, in 1891, so convinced
that marriage is a contract, like any other contract, that he
declared that "to perform music at the celebration of a marriage
is as ridiculous as it would be to send for a tenor to a notary's
to celebrate a sale of timber." He was of quite different mind
from Pepys, who, a couple of centuries earlier, had been equally
indignant at the absence of music from a wedding, which, he said,
made it like a coupling of dog and bitch.

A frequent demand of those who insist that marriage must be
regarded as a contract is marriage contracted for a term of
years. Marriages could be contracted for a term of five years or
less in old Japan, and it is said that they were rarely or never
dissolved at the end of the term. Goethe, in his
_Wahlverwandtschaften_ (Part I, Ch. X) incidentally introduced a
proposal for marriages for a term of five years and attached much
moral significance to the prolongation of the marriage beyond
that term without external compulsion. (Bloch considers that
Goethe had probably heard of the Japanese custom, _Sexual Life of
Our Time_, p. 241.) Professor E.D. Cope ("The Marriage Problem,"
_Open Court_, Nov. 15 and 22, 1888), likewise, in order to remove
matrimony from the domain of caprice and to permit full and fair
trial, advocated "a system of civil marriage contracts which
shall run for a definite time. These contrac