tter for implicit
or explicit contract, a matter, moreover, in which the community at large
has a real and proper interest: that is the fact of procreation.[366]

The ancient Egyptians--among whom matrimonial institutions were so elastic
and the position of woman so high--recognized a provisional and slight
marriage bond for the purpose of testing fecundity.[367] Among ourselves
the law makes no such paternal provision, leaving to young couples
themselves the responsibility of making any tests, a permission, we know,
they largely avail themselves of, usually entering the legal bonds of
marriage, however, before the birth of their child. That legal bond is a
recognition that the introduction of a new individual into the community
is not, like sexual union, a mere personal fact, but a social fact, a fact
in which the State cannot fail to be concerned. And the more we
investigate the tendency of the modern marriage movement the more we shall
realize that its attitude of freedom, of individual moral responsibility,
in the formation of sexual relationships, is compensated by an attitude of
stringency, of strict social oversight, in the matter of procreation. Two
people who form an erotic relationship are bound, when they reach the
conviction that their relationship is a real marriage, having its natural
end in procreation, to subscribe to a contract which, though it may leave
themselves personally free, must yet bind them both to their duties
towards their children.[368]

The necessity for such an undertaking is double, even apart from the fact
that it is in the highest interests of the parents themselves. It is
required in the interests of the child. It is required in the interests of
the State. A child can be bred, and well-bred, by one effective parent.
But to equip a child adequately for its entrance into life both parents
are usually needed. The State on its side--that is to say, the community
of which parents and child alike form part--is bound to know who these
persons are who have become sponsors for a new individual now introduced
into its midst. The most Individualistic State, the most Socialistic
State, are alike bound, if faithful to the interests, both biological and
economic, of their constituent members generally, to insist on the full
legal and recognized parentage of the father and mother of every child.
That is clearly demanded in the interests of the child; it is clearly
demanded also in the interests of t