IV. All phenomena that concern family life should be carefully studied and their bearing on the state ascertained as exactly as possible. There is no subject, for example, from which such wild conclusions are drawn as the matter of divorce. The average moralist, but more particularly the clergy, seeing the fairly astonishing increase in divorce during the last decade, jump to the conclusion that family life is decadent and immorality flagrantly on the increase. They point to the indubitable fact that a century ago divorces were insignificant in number; and they infer that morality was then on a much higher level than it is now. Such alarmists neglect certain elementary facts. The flippant manner in which marriage is treated by the Restoration dramatists and by novelists of the 18th century, the callous sexual morality revealed in diaries and in the conversations of men like Johnson alone are sufficient to suggest the need of a readjustment of one's view regarding the standard of morality in the past. A century ago it was the duty of a gentleman to drink to excess; and it was presumed that a guest had not enjoyed his dinner unless he was at least comfortably the worse for liquor. This view of drunkenness is admirably depicted in Dickens's _Pickwick Papers_, where intoxication is treated throughout as something merely humorous. There were just as many unhappy marriages formerly in proportion to the population as there are to-day; but the wife was held effectually from application for a divorce not only by rigid laws but by the sentiment of society, which ostracised a divorced woman, and furthermore by her lack of means and of opportunity for earning an independent livelihood. To-day women are not inclined to tolerate a husband who is brutal or debauched. Alarmists make a mistake when they place too much emphasis on the seeming triviality of the reasons, justifying their course, which wives advance when applying for a separation. For example, the phrase "incompatibility of temperament" is in a great number of cases merely a euphemism for something much worse. The clergy will counsel a woman to bear with what they call Christian resignation a husband addicted to drink or scarred by the diseases that are a consequence of sin. Abstractly considered, this may conceivably be good advice. But viewed in a common-sense way it is the duty of a woman to reflect on the consequences of conceiving children from such a man; and the researches of physicians will furnish her with incontrovertible facts regarding the impaired health of the offspring of such a union. A law which would permit of no divorce under such conditions, instead of benefiting the state, would injure it in its most vital asset--healthy children, the coming citizens. Doubtless the divorce laws in many States are too lax. But sweeping generalities based on theory will not remedy matters. Divorce may simply be a symptom, not a disease; a revolt against unjust