they choose, be entitled to leave home for some municipal hostel where
for a while their parents will be compelled to pay for their support. It
will be asked, "Why should a parent pay for the support of a child who
will not live in his house?" It seems to me that the chief reply is,
"Why did you have that child?" There is another, too: "By what right
should this creature for whom you are responsible be tied to a house
into which it has been called unconsulted? Why should it submit to your
moral and religious views? to your friends? to your wall-paper?" It is a
strong case, and I believe that, as time goes on and the law is
strengthened, the young will more and more tend to leave their homes. In
good, liberal homes they will stay, but the others they will abandon,
and I believe that no social philosopher will regret that children
should leave homes where they stay only because they are fed and not
because they love.

So, flying apart by a sort of centrifugal force, the family will become
looser and looser, until it exists only for those who care for one
another enough to maintain the association. It cannot remain as it is,
with its right of insult, its claim to society; we can have no more
slave daughters and slave wives, nor shall we chain together people who
spy out one another's loves and crush one another's youth. The family
is immortal, but the immortals have many incarnations--from Pan and
Bacchus sprang Lucifer, Son of the Morning. There is a time to
come--better than this because it is to come--when the family,
humanized, will be human.

VII

SOME NOTES ON MARRIAGE

1

The questioning mind, sole apparatus of the socio-psychologist, has of
late years often concerned itself with marriage. Marriage always was
discussed, long before Mrs. Mona Caird suggested in the respectable
'eighties that it might be a failure, but it is certain that with the
coming of Mr. Bernard Shaw the institution which was questioned grew
almost questionable. Indeed, marriage was so much attacked that it
almost became popular, and some believe that the war may cut it free
from the stake of martyrdom. Perhaps, but setting aside all prophecies,
revolts and sermons, one thing does appear: marriage is on its trial
before a hesitating jury. The judge has set this jury several questions:
Is marriage a normal institution? Is it so normal as to deserve to
continue in a state of civilization? given that civilization's function
is to c