“Marriage,” said Goethe, “is the origin and the summit of all civilisation.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say _the family_ rather than _marriage_. The childless marriage may be and often is a thing of the utmost beauty and value to the individuals concerned, but it is certainly not the origin of civilisation, and if it be its summit it is also its grave. The eugenic support of marriage, therefore, depends upon a belief in the family, and that form of marriage will commend itself which provides the best form of family. From the point of view of certain eugenists, polygamy would be desirable in many cases, as extending the parental opportunities of the man of fine physique or intellectual distinction. The problem remains, however, as to the nurture of the children so obtained, and historical study returns us a very clear answer as to the relative merits of the polygamous family and the monogamous family. It is this last that pre-eminently justifies itself on the score of its services to childhood and therefore to the race. Its survival is a matter of absolute certainty, because of its survival-value. Neither Plato nor Mr. Shaw, nor any kind of collectivist legislation will permanently abolish it. =The principle of maternalism.=--The merits of monogamy can be defined in terms of the principle which I would venture to call maternalism--the principle of the permanent and radical importance of motherhood and whatever institutions afford it the greatest aid. Maternalism would point, I think, to the supreme paradox that the dominant creature of the earth is born of woman, and born the most absolutely helpless of all living creatures whatsoever, animal or vegetable; it would note that this utter dependence upon others, mother or foster-mother, is not only the most unqualified known, but the longest maintained; it would observe that of all the human beings now alive, all that have lived, all that are to be, not one could survive its birth for twenty-four hours but for motherhood; it would note that only motherhood has rendered possible the development of instinct into that intelligence which, itself dependent upon motherhood for the possibility of its development, has dependent upon it the fact that the earth is now man's and the fulness thereof; and to the advocates of all the political -isms that can be named, and the small proportion of them that can be defined, it would apply its specific criterion: Do you regard the safeguarding and the ennoblement of motherhood as the proximate end of all political action, the end through which the ultimate ends, the production and recognition of human worth, can alone be attained; do you realise that marriage is invaluable _because_ it makes for the enthronement of motherhood as nothing else ever did or can; do you realise that, metaphors about State maternity notwithstanding, the State has neither womb nor breasts, these most reverend and divine of all vital organs being the appanage of the