To understand how thoroughly marriage is based upon property and not upon love, it should suffice to contemplate the grounds on which legal divorce is granted. Divorce is not granted, in this country at least, on proofs of incompatibility of nature and absence of affection, but on proof of adultery, in which co-respondents may be compelled to pecuniarily compensate the husband on account of having made use of his wife without his permission as her owner. Connivance by the husband precludes the granting of a divorce. Man’s supremacy and woman’s subjection become evident in the fact that no amount of simple adultery in a husband can be made the ground of a divorce, nor is a wife able to claim any pecuniary compensation from the paramours of a husband. Matrimony, at this epoch, is for the most part a “commercial transaction,” but in the words of Herbert Spencer, “already increased facilities for obtaining divorce point to the probability that whereas in those early stages during which permanent monogamy was being evolved, the union by law (originally the act of purchase) was regarded as the essential part of marriage and the union by affection non-essential; and whereas at present the union by law is thought the more important and the union by affection the less important, there will come a time when the union by affection will be held of primary moment, and the union by law as of secondary moment; and hence reprobation of marital relations in which the union by affection has dissolved. That this conclusion will seem unacceptable to most is probable, I may say certain.” (_Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. p. 788.) Herbert Spencer strikes here at the very foundation of modern marriage. Moreover, in making affection rule sexual relations, he opens up all the possibilities of other forms of marriage than the monogamous, for affection may not only be transitory, but unrestricted to one. In face of the barbarous origin of marriage, there exists no reason why people of liberal thought should make a dogged, pious stand at monogamy while lightly dismissing promiscuity, polygamy, polyandry as disreputable forms of sex-union. Mr. Spencer holds that “the monogamic form of the sexual relation is manifestly the ultimate form,” but he gives no reasons to prove his case that are not sufficiently disproved by the form of marriage existing among the Nairs. Again, the fact of the numerical equality of the sexes does not make monogamy the only suitable form, although it supplies a reasonable objection to pure polygamy and pure polyandry. Mr. Spencer says that “monogamy is a pre-requisite to a high position of women.” Here he plainly overlooks the facts of the respected and comparatively independent position of women among peoples practising mixed polygamy and polyandry under fixed rules and regulations.