The whole question of the characteristics of sex requires to be far more carefully investigated than it has been. And here let me take the opportunity to express my positive appreciation of empirical science in connection with ethical theory. The chief object of this volume is to work out the general plan of the ethical relations, or the regulative principle in ethics, and this I am deeply convinced is supersensible and non-empirical. Applied ethics, however, is dependent not only on the regulative principle but on empirical science, that is, on an extended and ever-increasing knowledge of physiology, psychology, and of the environmental conditions that influence human beings, and I am keenly desirous to ward off the possible misunderstanding that the ethical theory here proposed is intended to replace the empirical science of man, individual or social Without the way there is no going. Without the truth there is no knowing; says Thomas à Kempis. The way is the empirical knowledge, the truth is the regulative principle. The way itself, as we proceed along it, will shed additional light on the truth. Nevertheless, without the outlines of the truth, without a goal in view, we should but be wandering blindly. It is likely that the relations between persons in marriage will in future become more complex, and the difficulties of adjustment more serious, in proportion as under the influence of the new education the individualities of men and women become more developed. Problems hardly as yet envisaged will then become pressing. But whatever the difficulties, they can be overcome if the ideal purpose of marriage be kept in view, namely, that two beings of opposite sexes shall spend their lives in the spiritual reproduction of offspring. The relation is triangular. Husband and wife are each to elicit the distinctive best in the other, incited, impelled to do so in order jointly to evoke the distinctive best in the young. And the young represent posterity. What the parents do for their own children they do for posterity, since children are that portion of posterity which comes under their immediate influence. And in this sense it may be said that marriage is an organ for the spiritual reproduction and advancement of the human race. FOOTNOTES: [72] Spurious or bastard organization was based on the empirical preëminence of some function like that of the priest or the warrior. [73] See _Marriage and Divorce_, D. Appleton & Co. CHAPTER III THE VOCATIONS The next term in the series of social institutions is the school, inclusive of its higher departments. But for reasons which will sufficiently appear to anyone who carefully reads this chapter, it is advisable to treat the vocations first.