at nothing may be permitted to stand between them and the
satisfaction of personal desire. The disciples of Nietzsche do not
hesitate to stand boldly for the principle that might makes right,
that he who can crush his competitors in the race for pleasure and
profit has an indisputable claim on whatever he can grasp, and that
the principle of mutual consideration is antiquated and ridiculous.
Such principles and privileges may comport with the elemental
instincts and interests of unrestrained, primitive creatures, but they
do not harmonize with requirements of social solidarity and
efficiency. Social evolution in the past has come only as the struggle
for individual existence was modified by consideration for the needs
of another, and social welfare in the future can be realized only as
men and women both are willing to sacrifice age-long prejudice or
momentary pleasure and profit to the permanent good of the larger
group.

READING REFERENCES

COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 356-371.

BRANDT AND BALDWIN: _Family Desertion._

DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 85-95,
109-118.

GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Institution_,
pages 456-477.

HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 239-250.

CHAPTER X

DIVORCE

78. =The Main Facts About Divorce.=--An indication of the emphasis on
individual rights is furnished by the increase of divorce, especially
in the United States, where the demands of individualism and
industrialism are most insistent. The divorce record is the
thermometer that measures the heat of domestic friction. Statistics of
marriage and divorce made by the National Government in 1886 and again
in 1906 make possible a comparison of conditions which reveal a rapid
increase in the number of divorces granted by the courts. Certain
outstanding facts are of great importance.

(1) The number of divorces in twenty years increased from 23,000 to
72,000, which is three times the rate of increase of the population of
the country. If this rate of progress continues, more than half the
marriages in the United States will terminate in divorce by the end of
the present century.

(2) In the first census it was discovered that the number of divorces
in the United States exceeded the total number of divorces in all the
European countries; in the second census it was shown that the United
States had increased its divorces th