If one be an apologist for the present economic and social order, there is little fault to be found with this endless and manifold regulation of the most intimate concern of the individual, save that it is not as effective as it once was. Society, we are being constantly reminded, is founded in the family. No one, I think, will quarrel with this statement, particularly at this stage of the world’s rule by the exploiting State. Marriage is, to quote Dr. E. C. Parsons, “an incomparable protection of society--as society has been constituted”; and this for a reason which Dr. Parsons did not mention. Nor has the reason been stated by anyone else, so far as I am aware, although the fact is emphasized often enough. It is emphasized, however, largely in the spirit of a contemporary French writer who declares that “an institution upon which society[14] is based should not be represented to society as an instrument of torture, a barbarous apparatus. We know, on the contrary that this institution is good, and that it would be impossible to conceive of a better one upon which to base our customs.” Well, but suppose it _is_ an instrument of torture, or at least that we have come to find it highly unsatisfactory; must we, in spite of the fact, resolve to think it good because society is based upon it? Ought we not, rather, to examine the order of society that institutionalized marriage helps to perpetuate, in order to determine whether it is worth preserving at the cost of preserving also an institution which has become “an instrument of torture”?