[262] W.G.  Sumner (Folkways, p. 418) even considers it desirable to change the form of the word in order to emphasize the real and fundamental meaning of morals, and proposes the word mores to indicate “popular usages and traditions conducive to societal reform.” “‘Immoral,’” he points out, “never means anything but contrary to the mores of the time and place.”  There is, however, no need whatever to abolish or to supplement the good old ancient word “morality,” so long as we clearly realize that, on the practical side, it means essentially custom.

[263] Westermarck, op. cit., vol. i, p. 19.

[264] See, e.g., “Exogamy and the Mating of Cousins,” in Essays Presented to E.B.  Tylor, 1907, p. 53.  “In many departments of primitive life we find a naive desire to, as it were, assist Nature, to affirm what is normal, and later to confirm it by the categorical imperative of custom and law.  This tendency still flourishes in our civilized communities, and, as the worship of the normal, is often a deadly foe to the abnormal and eccentric, and too often paralyzes originality.”

[265] The spirit of Christianity, as illustrated by Paulinus, in his Epistle XXV, was from the Roman point of view, as Dill remarks (Roman Society, p. 11), “a renunciation, not only of citizenship, but of all the hard-won fruits of civilization and social life.”

[266] It thus happens that, as Lecky said in his History of European Morals, “of all the departments of ethics the questions concerning the relations of the sexes and the proper position of woman are those upon the future of which there rests the greatest uncertainty.”  Some progress has perhaps been made since these words were written, but they still hold true for the majority of people.

[267] Concerning economic marriage as a vestigial survival, see, e.g., Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 212.

[268] Senancour, De l’Amour, vol. ii, p. 233.  The author of The Question of English Divorce attributes the absence of any widespread feeling against sexual license to the absurd rigidity of the law.

[269] Bruno Meyer, “Etwas von Positiver Sexualreform,” Sexual-Probleme, Nov., 1908.

[270] Elsie Clews Parsons, The Family, p. 351.  Dr. Parsons rightly thinks such unions a social evil when they check the development of personality.

[271] For evidence regarding the general absence of celibacy among both savage and barbarous peoples, see, e.g., Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, Ch.  VII.

[272] There are, for instance, two millions of unmarried women in France, while in Belgium 30 per cent, of the women, and in Germany sometimes even 50 per cent, are unmarried.

[273] Such a position would not be biologically unreasonable, in view of the greatly preponderant part played by the female in the sexual process which insures the conservation of the race.  “If the sexual instinct is regarded solely from the physical side,” says D.W.H.  Busch (Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes, 1839, vol. i, p. 201), “the woman cannot be regarded as the property of the man, but with equal and greater reason the man may be regarded as the property of the woman.”