Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/188

 wives," to whom, in the end, a legal position was accorded. The monogamic régime making more and more way, the time came—at Rome, for example—when this disguised polygamy was no longer tolerated, and the concubinate became a marriage of the second order, being unable to co-exist with the other. At length there was a pretence of abolishing it, and there was no other matrimonial type legally recognised except the monogamic union, lasting till the death of the husband or wife. But custom has rebelled against the law, and monogamy has been more apparent than real. Prostitution for the least refined, adultery and free union for the others, have served as safety-valves for inclinations too inveterate and too violent to be controlled by legal texts. Has moral purity gained thereby? Surely not. Moreover, there is in consequence a whole population of illegitimate children, too often abandoned by their fathers, and suffering from their birth a legal indignity of the most iniquitous kind. Hence arise a thousand unmerited sufferings, which legislation must some day or other remedy, and from which the legal concubinate has spared China, for example. Doubtless the ideal is a fine thing, but it is folly to sacrifice the real to it, and to legislate without taking into account the requirements of human nature.