Modern society, this summary seems to show, has been moving toward freedom of contract in marriage. Those phases which concern the state, such as economic provision and children, must be conserved. But time was--and still is in some places--when marriage itself was a tribal or a state matter. Then it became a family matter, determined by the parents, and property and family rights and interests were the important considerations. But parents, knowing by experience that there can be no happiness without security--although there might be unhappiness with it--failed to take into sufficient account the emotional content, and, particularly in the Western World, there developed a certain freedom of contract in making a choice. To-day, when people have come to recognize the necessity of sexual and social compatibility, which cannot be determined in advance, there has come a demand for a further freedom of contract, to which society has responded by more liberal divorce laws. The laws which permit a divorce where parties have not lived together for a certain length of time make the duration of the marriage relation really a matter of consent. They mean in effect that a contract of marriage contains an implied term that it is to continue until the parties consent to its end, and in human relations this means until one party demands its end. If a person proposed that the law recognize a marriage contract which was to continue until either party desired its termination, he would be regarded as a wrecker of our institutions; but society is doing this very thing--obscurely, perhaps, as an after-effect, not as a preconceived design; blindly, and not with intelligent forethought. Many have suggested that marriages be made harder and divorces easier. But how revolutionary would seem a suggestion that marriage contracts be made in advance, conforming to the teachings of experience, providing for maintenance and custody of children and limited by the understanding of the parties; that those who, for religious or ethical reasons, wished to enter into a life contract be permitted to do so; that those who wished to enter into a contract to terminate by joint consent or at the option of either party likewise be permitted to do so? An objection that this would be dangerous assumes that people choose the present form only because compelled to do so. Individuals are breaking from the old conventions, and the law, usually a laggard by a generation, is following them. In forty-three States desertion is a ground for divorce; in twenty of them, desertion for one year. In seven States, failure or neglect to provide is a ground; in four of them, the period is one year. In some States, if the parties live apart for a certain length of time--in three of them for five years--that is ground for divorce. Is not this divorce by agreement? And by implication, since living together requires the willingness of two parties, the result is a contract which may be ended by either of the