Perhaps there is not, strictly speaking, any such thing as “scientific” ethics. It is not the province of science to decide on the ends of life. Science can show that an ethic is unscientific, in the sense that it does not minister to any desired end. Science also can show how to bring the interest of the individual into harmony with that of society. We make laws against theft, in order that theft may become contrary to self-interest. We might, on the same ground, make laws to diminish the number of imbecile children born into the world. There is no evidence that existing marriage laws, particularly where they are very strict, serve any social purpose; in this sense we may say that they are unscientific. But to proclaim the ends of life, and make men conscious of their value, is not the business of science; it is the business of the mystic, the artist, and the poet. Modern Marriage and Ancient Laws By Arthur Garfield Hays Arthur Garfield Hays _is an attorney practicing in New York City. He was manager of the New York State La Follette campaign, 1924._ MODERN MARRIAGE AND ANCIENT LAWS BY ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS “Are we married?” This was a query recently put to a New York lawyer. The woman wanted to have been married, but wished not to be married any longer; at the same time she rather objected to a divorce. The man did not care much about it, so long as he could marry, or marry again, without too much inconvenience arising from the earlier entanglement. The lawyer’s answer was so obvious that it might have been made by a layman: “How do I know?” The two had been living together, had called each other husband and wife, and had in general passed as such, but at the beginning of the relationship each had felt that if one wanted to be free the other would not hold him or her; it was agreed that they should have no financial responsibility for each other and that there should be nothing about the arrangement which would make it last “till death do us part.” In speaking of themselves as “husband and wife” they had intended the words to represent merely a formula of their own.