The barrier which in Christendom has opposed itself to the natural recognition of this fact, so injuring alike the child and the State, has clearly been the rigidity of the marriage system, more especially as moulded by the Canon law.  The Canonists attributed a truly immense importance to the copula carnalis, as they technically termed it.  They centred marriage strictly in the vagina; they were not greatly concerned about either the presence or the absence of the child.  The vagina, as we know, has not always proved a very firm centre for the support of marriage, and that centre is now being gradually transferred to the child.  If we turn from the Canonists to the writings of a modern like Ellen Key, who so accurately represents much that is most characteristic and essential in the late tendencies of marriage development, we seem to have entered a new world, even a newly illuminated world.  For “in the new sexual morality, as in Corregio’s Notte, the light emanates from the child."[369]

No doubt this change is largely a matter of sentiment, of, as we sometimes say, mere sentiment, although there is nothing so powerful in human affairs as sentiment, and the revolution effected by Jesus, the later revolution effected by Rousseau, were mainly revolutions in sentiment.  But the change is also a matter of the growing recognition of interests and rights, and as such it manifests itself in law.  We can scarcely doubt that we are approaching a time when it will be generally understood that the entrance into the world of every child, without exception, should be preceded by the formation of a marriage contract which, while in no way binding the father and mother to any duties, or any privileges, towards each other, binds them both towards their child and at the same time ensures their responsibility towards the State.  It is impossible for the State to obtain more than this, but it should be impossible for it to demand less.  A contract of such a kind “marries” the father and mother so far as the parentage of the individual child is concerned, and in no other respect; it is a contract which leaves entirely unaffected their past, present, or future relations towards other persons, otherwise it would be impossible to enforce it.  In all parts of the world this elementary demand of social morality is slowly beginning to be recognized, and as it affects hundreds of thousands of infants[370] who are yearly branded as “illegitimate” through no act of their own, no one can say that the recognition has come too soon.  As yet, indeed, it seems nowhere to be complete.

Most attempts or proposals for the avoidance of illegitimate births are concerned with the legalizing of unions of a less binding degree than the present legal marriage.  Such unions would serve to counteract other evils.  Thus an English writer, who has devoted much study to sex questions, writes in a private letter:  “The best remedy for the licentiousness of celibate men and the