As we question in turn the various systems of marriage it becomes clear that monogamy is the form which has most widely prevailed, and will be likely to be maintained, because of its superior survival value. In other words, because it best serves the interests of the race by assuring to the woman and her children the individual interest and providence of the father. I believe further that monogamy of all the sexual associations serves best the personal needs of the parents; and, moreover, that it represents the form of union which is in harmony with the instincts and desires of the majority of people. The ideal of permanent marriage between one woman and one man to last for the life of both must persist as an ideal never to be lost. I wish to state this as my belief quite clearly. The higher love in true marriage is the veritable law of the life to be; and beside it all experiments in sensation will rot in their emptiness and their self-love. But this faith of mine in an ideal and lasting union does not lessen at all my scepticism in the moral inefficacy of our present marriage system. It is not the particular form of marriage practised that, after all, is the main thing, but the kind of lives people live under that form. The mere acceptance of a legally enforced monogamy does not carry us very far in practical morality; we must claim something much deeper than this. And this brings us to the base counterfeit of monogamy that is accepted and practised by many among us to-day; base because it is a monogamy largely mitigated by clandestine transitory loves--tipplings with sensation and snackings at lust which betray passion. Facts of daily observation may not be shuffled out of consideration by any hypocrisy. They must be faced and dealt with. Our marriage system is buttressed with prostitution, which thus makes our moral attitude one of intolerable deception, and our efforts at reform not only ineffective, but absurd. Without the assistance of the prostitution of one class of women and the enforced celibacy of another class our marriage in its present form could not stand. It is no use shirking it; if marriage cannot be made more moral--and by this I mean more able to meet the sex needs of all men and all women--then we must accept prostitution. No sentimentalism can save us; we must give our consent to this sacrifice of women as necessary to the welfare and stability of society. But with this question I shall deal in a later section of this chapter. There is, however, more than this to be said. Marriage is itself in many cases a legalised form of prostitution. From the standpoint of morals, the woman who sells herself in marriage is on the same level as the one who sells herself for a night, the only difference is in the price paid and the duration of the contract. Nay, it is probably fair to say that at the lowest such sale-marriage results in the greater evil, for the prostitute does not bear children.