It must, of course, be clearly understood that the idea of marriage as a form of sexual union based not on biological but on economic considerations, is very ancient, and is sometimes found in societies that are almost primitive.  Whenever, however, marriage on a purely property basis, and without due regard to sexual selection, has occurred among comparatively primitive and vigorous peoples, it has been largely deprived of its evil results by the recognition of its merely economic character, and by the absence of any desire to suppress, even nominally, other sexual relationships on a more natural basis which were outside this artificial form of marriage.  Polygamy especially tended to conciliate unions on an economic basis with unions on a natural sexual basis.  Our modern marriage system has, however, acquired an artificial rigidity which excludes the possibility of this natural safeguard and compensation.  Whatever its real moral content may be, a modern marriage is always “legal” and “sacred.”  We are indeed so accustomed to economic forms of marriage that, as Sidgwick truly observed (Method of Ethics, Bk. ii, Ch.  XI), when they are spoken of as “legalized prostitution” it constantly happens that “the phrase is felt to be extravagant and paradoxical.”

A man who marries for money or for ambition is departing from the biological and moral ends of marriage.  A woman who sells herself for life is morally on the same level as one who sells herself for a night.  The fact that the payment seems larger, that in return for rendering certain domestic services and certain personal complacencies—­services and complacencies in which she may be quite inexpert—­she will secure an almshouse in which she will be fed and clothed and sheltered for life makes no difference in the moral aspect of her case.  The moral responsibility is, it need scarcely be said, at least as much the man’s as the woman’s.  It is largely due to the ignorance and even the indifference of men, who often know little or nothing of the nature of women and the art of love.  The unintelligence with which even men who might, one thinks, be not without experience, select as a mate, a woman who, however fine and charming she may be, possesses none of the qualities which her wooer really craves, is a perpetual marvel.  To refrain from testing and proving the temper and quality of the woman he desires for a mate is no doubt an amiable trait of humility on a man’s part.  But it is certain that a man should never be content with less than the best of what a woman’s soul and body have to give, however unworthy he may feel himself of such a possession.  This demand, it must be remarked, is in the highest interests of the woman herself.  A woman can offer to a man what is a part at all events of the secret of the universe.  The woman degrades herself who sinks to the level of a candidate for an asylum for the destitute.