The Marriage Institution

83:0.1This is the recital of the early be­gin­nings of the in­sti­tu­tion of mar­riage. It has pro­gressed steadily from the loose and promis­cu­ous mat­ings of the herd through many vari­a­tions and adap­ta­tions, even to the ap­pear­ance of those mar­riage stan­dards which even­tu­ally cul­mi­nated in the re­al­iza­tion of pair mat­ings, the union of one man and one woman to es­tab­lish a home of the high­est so­cial or­der.

83:0.2Mar­riage has been many times in jeop­ardy, and the mar­riage mores have drawn heav­ily on both prop­erty and re­li­gion for sup­port; but the real in­flu­ence which for­ever safe­guards mar­riage and the re­sul­tant fam­ily is the sim­ple and in­nate bi­o­logic fact that men and women pos­i­tively will not live with­out each other, be they the most prim­i­tive sav­ages or the most cul­tured mor­tals.

83:0.3It is be­cause of the sex urge that self­ish man is lured into mak­ing some­thing bet­ter than an an­i­mal out of him­self. The self-re­gard­ing and self-grat­i­fy­ing sex re­la­tion­ship en­tails the cer­tain con­se­quences of self-de­nial and in­sures the as­sump­tion of al­tru­is­tic du­ties and nu­mer­ous race-ben­e­fit­ing home re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Herein has sex been the un­rec­og­nized and un­sus­pected civ­i­lizer of the sav­age; for this same sex im­pulse au­to­mat­i­cally and unerringly com­pels man to think and even­tu­ally leads him to love.