a couple of centuries earlier, had been equally indignant at the absence of music from a wedding, which, he said, made it like a coupling of dog and bitch.

A frequent demand of those who insist that marriage must be regarded as a contract is marriage contracted for a term of years.  Marriages could be contracted for a term of five years or less in old Japan, and it is said that they were rarely or never dissolved at the end of the term.  Goethe, in his Wahlverwandtschaften (Part I, Ch.  X) incidentally introduced a proposal for marriages for a term of five years and attached much moral significance to the prolongation of the marriage beyond that term without external compulsion. (Bloch considers that Goethe had probably heard of the Japanese custom, Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 241.) Professor E.D.  Cope ("The Marriage Problem,” Open Court, Nov. 15 and 22, 1888), likewise, in order to remove matrimony from the domain of caprice and to permit full and fair trial, advocated “a system of civil marriage contracts which shall run for a definite time.  These contracts should be of the same value and effect as the existing marriage contract.  The time limits should be increased rapidly, so as to prevent women of mature years being deprived of support.  The first contract ought not to run for less than five years, so as to give ample opportunity for acquaintance, and for the recovery from temporary disagreements.”  This first contract, Cope held, should be terminable at the wish of either party; the second contract, for ten or fifteen years, should only be terminable at the wish of both parties, and the third should be permanent and indissoluble.  George Meredith, the distinguished novelist, also, more recently, threw out the suggestion that marriages should be contracted for a term of years.

It can scarcely be said that marriages for a term of years constitute a very satisfactory solution of the difficulties at present encountered.  They would not commend themselves to young lovers, who believe that their love is eternal, nor, so long as the union proves satisfactory, is there any need to introduce the disturbing idea of a legal termination of the contract.  On the other hand, if the union proves unhappy, it is not reasonable to insist on the continuation for ten or even five years of an empty form which corresponds to no real marriage union.  Even if marriage is placed on the most prosaic contractive basis it is a mistake, and indeed an impossibility, to pre-ordain the length of its duration.  The system of fixing the duration of marriage beforehand for a term of years involves exactly the same principle as the system of fixing it beforehand for life.  It is open to the same objection that it is incompatible with any vital relationship.  As the demand for vital reality and effectiveness in social relationships grows, this fact is increasingly felt.  We see exactly the same change among us