It is certainly inevitable that during a period of transition the natural order is to some extent disturbed by the persistence, even though in a weakened form, of external bonds which are beginning to be consciously realized as inimical to the authoritative control of individual moral responsibility.  We can clearly trace this at the present time.  A sensitive anxiety to escape from external constraint induces an under-valuation of the significance of personal constraint in the relationship of marriage.  Everyone is probably familiar with cases in which a couple will live together through long years without entering the legal bond of marriage, notwithstanding difficulties in their mutual relationship which would have long since caused a separation or a divorce had they been legally married.  When the inherent difficulties of the marital relationship are complicated by the difficulties due to external constraint, the development of individual moral responsibility cuts two ways, and leads to results that are not entirely satisfactory.  This has been seen in the United States of America and attention has often been called to it by thoughtful American observers.  It is, naturally, noted especially in women because it is in women that the new growth of personal freedom and moral responsibility has chiefly made itself felt.  The first stirring of these new impulses, especially when associated, as it often is, with inexperience and ignorance, leads to impatience with the natural order, to a demand for impossible conditions of existence, and to an inaptitude not only for the arbitrary bondage of law but even for the wholesome and necessary bonds of human social life.  It is always a hard lesson for the young and idealistic that in order to command Nature we must obey her; it can only be learnt through contact with life and by the attainment of full human growth.

Dr. Felix Adler (in an address before the Society of Ethical Culture of New York, Nov. 17, 1889) called attention to what he regarded as the most deep-rooted cause of an undue prevalence of divorce in America.  “The false idea of individual liberty is largely held in America,” and when applied to family life it often leads to an impatience with these duties which the individual is either born into or has voluntarily accepted.  “I am constrained to think that the prevalence of divorce is to be ascribed in no small degree to the influence of democratic ideas—­that is, of false democratic ideas—­and our hope lies in advancing towards a higher and truer democracy.”  A more recent American writer, this time a woman, Anna A. Rogers ("Why American Marriages Fail,” Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1907) speaks in the same sense, though perhaps in too unqualified a manner.  She states that the frequency of divorce in America is due to three causes:  (1) woman’s failure to realize that marriage is her work in the world; (2) her growing individualism; (3) her lost art of giving, replaced by a highly