But
when will such constraint become necessary?
6. The continuance of the human race must be wrought out by man and
woman standing in that abiding and exclusive relation to one another,
which constitutes the state of marriage. Nature abhors promiscuity, or
free love. It is the delight of writers who use, perhaps abuse,
Darwin's name, to picture primitive mankind as all living in this
infrabestial state. But "the state supposed is suicidal, and instead
of allowing the expansion of the human race, would have produced
infertility, and probably disease, and at best only allowed the
existing numbers to maintain, under the most favourable circumstances,
a precarious existence. To suppose, therefore, that the whole human
race for any considerable time were without regular marriage, is
physiologically impossible. They could never have survived it."
(Devas, _Studies of Family Life_, S 101.)
7. Even if the alleged promiscuity ever did prevail--and it may have
obtained to some extent in certain degraded portions of humanity--its
prevalence was not its justification. The practice cannot have been
befitting in any stage of the evolution of human society.
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