Looking at the general domination of modern law it is truly astonishing how much uniformity is possible. But the fact of a uniform law being in force must not blind us to the existence of a great amount of diversity being now tolerated side by side with it. For instance, we are so accustomed to think of only one type of marriage that the various stages recognised in Roman law seem astonishing. Yet in legal status in England there are ten stages surviving, most of which are tolerated by the law. There is (1) royal assent, needful in the royal family, just as it is needful in every family in some African communities; (2) normal religious or civil marriage; (3) marriage of divorced persons, only civil; (4) within prohibited degrees, but tolerated socially, as deceased wife's sister, or (5) not tolerated, as uncle and niece; (6) quasi-permanent connection with full legal responsibility for children; (7) temporary license. Only in case of lack of full consent does the law step in to punish, in (8) marriage under age, (9) bigamy or (10) violence. Every one of these stages has been normal in some conditions of society, and most are normal in some countries even at present. We may, for example, instance (1) normal in Benin; (2) religious marriage only normal in England; (3) normal in Eastern Europe; (4) normal in our colonies; (5) normal in Italy; (6) normal in Islam; (7) normal in Madagascar in interregnum of sovereignty, and in other countries; (8) normal in India; (9) normal in Islam; (10) normal in most warfare. And each of these stages carries with it in England different legal and social conditions. Again, as regards the period of the marriage ceremony, the Church has had a long and hard fight to get it recognised as a hymeneal ceremony and not a maternity ceremony; yet the latter status is recognised in law as equal to the former, and it is still prevalent among a third of marriages in some Australian colonies, and very largely in England, both in the country from end to end and in town life. On the whole some fifteen hundred years of church pressure has not turned the scale very far against the older custom, which we might well call approximation by trial and error. Such is the diversity which is yet uncontrolled.