In the United States, not less clearly than elsewhere in countries of western civilization, marriage and the family are emerging as purely social institutions. Liberated in large measure from the cloud of mediæval tradition, their problems are seen to be identical in kind with those which have everywhere concerned men and women from the infancy of the human race. Accordingly, the extension of the sphere of secular legislation practically to the entire province of these institutions is a phenomenon of surpassing interest. Consciously or unconsciously, it is a recognition of the fact that matrimonial forms and family types are the products of human experience, of human habits, and are therefore to be dealt with by society according to human needs. In this regard the Reformation marks the beginning of a social revolution. From the days of Luther, however concealed in theological garb or forced under theological sanctions, however opposed by reactionary dogma, public opinion has more and more decidedly recognized the right of the temporal lawmaker in this field. In the seventeenth century the New England Puritan gave the state, in its assemblies and in its courts, complete jurisdiction in questions of marriage and divorce, to the entire exclusion of the ecclesiastical authority. Even the Council of Trent, by adjusting the dogma regarding the minister of the sacrament, had already left to Catholic states the way open for the civil regulation of matrimony--a way, as already seen, on which France did not hesitate to enter.[591] Later the French Revolution wrested from the church judicial and legislative authority in matrimonial law and administration, and placed it in the hands of the state. In 1792, by a wise and tolerant enactment, civil marriage and civil registration were established; but at the same time the revolt against the old ecclesiastical régime led to the sanction of free divorce. Absolute dissolution of wedlock was then authorized at the mutual desire of both husband and wife, for incompatibility of temper on the petition of either spouse, and for seven other specified causes.[592] The natural result was a vast number of decrees.[593] Accordingly, in 1803 the Code Napoléon, while retaining civil marriage, adopted a more conservative policy regarding divorce. Incompatibility was no longer recognized; mutual consent was admitted under limitations; and the whole number of specified causes was reduced to five. The divorce law of 1803 was abrogated in 1816, and only restored in its essential features in 1884; but the liberal policy of France, as expressed in the Code Napoléon, has undoubtedly had a powerful influence in the extension of civil marriage and divorce throughout Europe, where, as in America, the modern statute-maker has recovered and passed beyond the point gained by the Roman imperial constitutions between Augustus and Justinian.