in many parts of the world a woman is more highly esteemed if she has had intercourse before marriage (see, e.g., Potter, op. cit., pp. 163 et seq.).  While virginity is one of the sexual attractions a woman may possess, an attraction that is based on a natural instinct (see “The Evolution of Modesty,” in vol. i of these Studies), yet an exaggerated attention to virginity can only be regarded as a sexual perversion, allied to paidophilia, the sexual attraction to children.

In very small cooerdinated communities the primitive custom of trial-marriage tends to decay when there is a great invasion of strangers who have not been brought up to the custom (which seems to them indistinguishable from the license of prostitution), and who fail to undertake the obligations which trial-marriage involves.  This is what happened in the case of the so-called “island custom” of Portland, which lasted well on into the nineteenth century; according to this custom a woman before marriage lived with her lover until pregnant and then married him; she was always strictly faithful to him while living with him, but if no pregnancy occurred the couple might decide that they were not meant for each other, and break off relations.  The result was that for a long period of years no illegitimate children were born, and few marriages were childless.  But when the Portland stone trade was developed, the workmen imported from London took advantage of the “island custom,” but refused to fulfil the obligation of marriage when pregnancy occurred.  The custom consequently fell into disuse (see, e.g., translator’s note to Bloch’s Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 237, and the quotation there given from Hutchins, History and Antiquities of Dorset, vol. ii, p. 820).

It is, however, by no means only in rural districts, but in great cities also that marriages are at the outset free unions.  Thus in Paris Despres stated more than thirty years ago (La Prostitution a Paris, p. 137) that in an average arrondissement nine out of ten legal marriages are the consolidation of a free union; though, while that was an average, in a few arrondissements it was only three out of ten.  Much the same conditions prevail in Paris to-day; at least half the marriages, it is stated, are of this kind.

In Teutonic lands the custom of free unions is very ancient and well-established.  Thus in Sweden, Ellen Key states (Liebe und Ehe, p. 123), the majority of the population begin married life in this way.  The arrangement is found to be beneficial, and “marital fidelity is as great as pre-marital freedom is unbounded.”  In Denmark, also, a large number of children are conceived before the unions of the parents are legalized (Rubin and Westergaard, quoted by Gaedeken, Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, Feb. 15, 1909).

In Germany not only is the proportion