Note 3 — QUO VADIMUS?

Its early history shows it to be a contrivance for the safe-guarding of infants in their earliest years by allocating a large proportion of responsibility to the father. Among Semitic and other Asiatic tribes, this allocation of responsibility was fortified by the somewhat crude precaution of secluding women. Marriage as a means of allocating responsibility will become superfluous as soon as parentage can be infallibly traced with the aid of the microscope, as some biologists confidently foretell. The chief raison d’etre of marriage will then be gone, but it will no doubt continue for a considerable time as a picturesque survival of an ancient custom.