From the infancy of the human race, we have already seen, the monogamic family has been the _prevailing_ type. There have been, it is true, many variations, many aberrations, from this type under diverse conditions, religious, economic, or social. Under changing influences the interrelations of the members of the group--of husband and wife, of parent and child--and their relations individually and collectively to the state, have varied from age to age or from people to people. There have been wife-capture, wife-purchase and the _patria potestas_. But in essential character--at first for biological, later for ethical or spiritual reasons--the general tendency has always been toward a higher, more clearly differentiated type of the single pairing family. Moreover, setting aside all question of special priestly sanctions, the healthiest social sentiment has more and more demanded that the "pairing" should be lasting. Whether of Jew or gentile, the highest ideal of marriage has become that of a lifelong partnership. Are these tendencies to remain unbroken? Is the stream of evolution to proceed, gaining in purity and strength? Are marriage and the family doomed; or are they capable of adaptation, of reform and development, so as to satisfy the higher material and ethical requirements of the advancing generations? Seemingly they are now menaced by serious dangers. Some of them have their origin in the new conditions of a society which is undergoing a swift transition, a mighty transformation, industrially, intellectually, and spiritually; while others, perhaps the more imminent, are incident to the institutions themselves as they have been shaped or warped by bad laws and false sentiments. Apparently, if there is to be salvation, it must come through the vitalizing, regenerative power of a more efficient moral, physical, and social training of the young. The home and the family must enter into the educational curriculum. Before an adequate sociological program can be devised the facts must be squarely faced and honestly studied. In the sphere of domestic institutions, even more imperatively than in that of politics or economics, there is need of light and publicity.