Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/665

Rh the preservation of the family against the disruptive tendencies of internal strife. Polygyny partially and externally secures this by placing the control of the family in the hands of a recognized head, and that head the member of the household indisputably the best able to hold his position against the other members. But the elements of discord and strife were left in the family, in the jealousies of the several wives, and in the conflicting claims of their children. When death removed the household despot, if not before, these elements of disintegration worked against the family structure. Rudimentary monogamy was the attempt to settle by law the relative positions of a man's several wives, placing one on a secure height above the others, to insure a certain descent of title, property, and power to her children. Roman law gives us the most perfect legal form of this transition stage toward pure monogamy. The Roman patrician was entitled by law to three wives, but he could only have one of the highest kind. This superior order of wife, whom the law protected against equal rivals, must be of the same high birth as the husband, could alone legitimatize his children to the extent of transmission of title and estate (save as he exercised his legal power of adoption); and the marriage ceremony, made binding by solemn religious rites, was annulled only by death. The second grade of wife could be of inferior birth, and was united to her noble husband merely by a civil service, which gave him full power over her, but which secured her legal protection and support, and could be annulled by divorce. The third grade of wifehood was one which gave perfect legal independence to the woman, and also removed from her all legal protection. Simple announcement of intention to assume such a relation was the only preliminary needed for this union; it could be dissolved by mutual consent. Rudimentary monogamy, you observe, raised the standard of a life-long union of one man with one woman, to beget, bear, and rear one set of offspring. And the Roman law, though recognizing other unions as legal, pushed them away as far as possible from this germinal seed of perfect family unity. Thus the seed grew, and we come rapidly on the to the last type of marriage, viz.:

Pure monogamy. This form of sexual union recognizes no other as legally admissible. Indulgence of passion there may be outside this narrow bond of one man to one woman, but it is unlawful, and its fruits have no legal place in the social order of the family. This is the type dominant in our civilization, and we have seen how slowly it has been built up, and for what high ends of government.

—Our laws are all founded on and modifications of the "common law" of England, which was in turn, for the most part, a gift from old Roman jurists to our civilization. This common law exemplifies in every word the emphasis formerly placed on the authority of recognized rulers, in general government and in domestic