These influences do not always, of course, take the same direction. At present, for example, artificial limitation of offspring receives irregular but effective community-sanction in face of opposition by Church and State. Or again, public opinion almost universally condemns the idea that a father may, by his will, remove his children from the custody of their mother, although the State, as in Maryland and Delaware, may sanction such an act. But, however much they may check one another, these influences are all constantly operating to restrict and regulate marriage away from its original intention as a purely personal relationship, and to keep it in the groove of economic and social institutionalism. The reasons for this are to be found in the vestigiary fear of sex, love of power, love of the habitual, religious superstition, and above all in the notion that the major interests of the group are essentially opposed to those of the individual and are more important than his. A combination of two of these motives has recently come under my own observation in the case of a young woman whose parents can not forgive her for having divorced a man whom she did not love and married a man whom she did. They were accustomed to their first son-in-law, and resent the necessity of adjusting themselves to the idea of having a new one. Moreover, they feel that their daughter should have spared them the “disgrace” of a divorce. The fact that she was unhappy in her first marriage and is happy in her second seems to have little weight with them. They did their best to prevent her second marriage and are at present exerting every effort to make it unsuccessful. It is needless to emphasize the fact that this order of interference can not be expected to disappear while the notion persists that the actions of one adult member of a family or group can possibly reflect credit or discredit upon all the other members. II