Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/556

538 and extended on the other, which meets us on the threshold of primitive jurisprudence. Older probably than the state, the tribe, and the house, it left traces of itself on private law long after the house (another name for gens) and the tribe had been forgotten, and long after consanguinity had ceased to be associated with the composition of states." He also says: "It will be found to have stamped itself on all the great departments of jurisprudence, and may be detected as the true source of many of their most important and most durable characteristics." This is but another proof that the best things in law and love are always up to date.

Polyandric households prevailed to some extent where women were outnumbered by men, and polyandry is practiced now in some parts of Europe, India, and among certain tribes in the Pacific Islands and America. Among the usually polygynous Indian tribes, the Iroquois was a single monogamic exception.

Polygynists and polyandrists can never have known love in its quintessence. Love, unlike coffee, can not be diluted with safety for family use. Only the pure, strong extract is the basis of a true union between one man and one woman. And such a marriage is the only fit foundation for family life. True, there have been weddings—that is, ceremonies, festivities, and trousseaux—without love, but if the family had depended on the mere correlation of the sexes it would have died an early death as an institution. Professor Drummond explains how conjugal love came into existence in this way. Speaking of the loveless marriages of the early races and how love came, he says: "If neither the husband nor the wife bestowed this gift upon the world, who did? It was a little child. Till this appeared, man's affection was non-existent, woman's was frozen. But one day from its mother's very heart, from a shrine which her husband never visited nor knew was there, which she herself dared scarce acknowledge, a child drew forth the first fresh bud of love which was not passion, a love which was not selfish, a love which was an incense from its Maker, and whose fragrance from that hour went forth to sanctify the world."

However, it was never intended that parenthood should precede conjugal love, but rather that it should strengthen it. Mrs. Browning's interpretation of conjugal love in the first human family before the first baby came seems reasonable and right. In the Drama of Exile, Adam thanks God

 That rather, thou hast cast me out with her Than left me lorn of her in paradise, With angel looks and angel songs around To show the absence of her eyes and voice, And make society full desertness."