of the social body; in fact it guarantees the women against desertion, augments the number of births, and assures to the children the care of one or more adoptive mothers, if the real mother happens to die. The opinion of Herbert Spencer, who quite à priori attributes to monogamy a diminution in the mortality of children,[1] is a most hazardous one. By the last census taken in Algeria we learn, not without surprise, that the increase in the indigenous Mussulman and polygamic population was much superior to that of the most prolific of the European monogamous states. Polygamy may therefore have its utilitarian value, and this is the case as soon as it adapts itself to the general conditions of social life. II. The Present.
It is many centuries since Europe adopted monogamic marriage as the legal type of the sexual union. That there exists by the side of regular marriage a considerable margin, in which are still found nearly all the other forms of sexual association, we do not deny; but in France, for example, two-thirds of the population live so entirely under the régime of legal monogamy, that it would be evidently superfluous to describe it here; it is, in substance, the Roman marriage, the bonds of which Christianity has striven to lighten. In the general opinion, marriage such as our laws and customs require it to be, is the most perfect type possible of conjugal union; and this current appreciation has not been a little strengthened by a learned treatise, frequently quoted, and of which I cannot dispense with saying a few words.
In 1859, a justly celebrated demographer, whom I have the honour to call friend, Dr. Adolphe Bertillon, published a monograph on marriage, which made a great sensation.[2]
This work, bristling with figures, scrupulously collected and strictly accurate, proves or seems to prove that the celibate third of the French population is, by reason of its celibacy, struck with decay, and plays the part of an inferior
