TUE BROADER SOCIAL :MOVEMENT. It is evident that there is a profound and widespread social movement going on beneath the great variety of law, religion, and other conditions through which this movement finds expression. and which is most marked in the United States. Some re on this broader movement and its recent treatment will, perhaps. best set forth the sub ject in its outlines.
Until recent years. and even now. divorce is treated chiefly in its legal or ecclesiastical phases. This treatment has also been individualistic to a great degree. That is, both Church and State have regarded chiefly the two individuals directly con cerned. with some consideration of the interests of the Chnreh or State. lint the family has been relatively overlooked. The ennon law, the writ ings of the early fathers, and, in fact, the great body of literature on the subject. are singularly laeking in direct attention to the family as the real subject in the discussion of divorce. The term marriage has been used to cover both the creative agreement in marriage and the subse f• relation. Two views of the relation and its .dissolution grow out of this. One makes the rela tion a mere contract from beginning to end. and therefore subject to all the remedies of ordinary contracts. The other insists that a status is created by the original contract, and that it is this status or relation with which divorce deals, sometimes calling it. as Bishop and others have done, "a contract ggi generig." or "a state of matrimony." Pout very infrequently is this tailed a family. thus in reality making divorce the legal dissolution of a family instead of individual relief from a contract. Some eonservative have said that marriage, after all, is only a modes gdi.
An interminable discussion has gone on over the techniva I meaning of the New TustallICIlt, in order to nix the rules of ecclesiastical practice. The lIontan Catholic •hurch has held to a con sistent course in its ecclesiastical discipline: hut has generally been compelled to share its control. of divorce in recent times. in the more progres sive countries, with the State. In Russia the Ortho dox (reek Church and other •milessions are al lowed to administer, in all affairs of marriage and divorce, according to their own rules. Austrian law also adjusts itself to the different faiths of its subjects. And divorce laws, in their grounds for divorce, usually follow the religious opinions of the people. The obligatory civil marriage, with an optional religious celebration, prevails in several European countries.
The condition of what may be called the socio logical strata of a period or country helps to shape the customs or laws of marriage and di vorce. Among the early peoples of the Mediterra nean, these subjects were entirely within the con trol of the families immediately concerned, as in Japan until recently. The three kinds of Roman marriage were the expression of as many types in Roman society. As the early family yields more and more of social function to the State, the individual and relations of contract gradu ally supplant the family and those of status.
All intermediary social forms, especially those of the domestic and communal type. tend to shrivel and lose their functions. Historically the increase and prominence of divorce have marked decaying civilizations. Whether the in crease of the last thirty years will continue in the United States remains to he seen. There is an element of truth in the claim that the increase of divorce is in one sense the incident of social health. This rests, however, on certain assump tions concerning, those who seek divorce which are of limited application.
Christianity came when the Roman world was far along in social disintegration. Its Founder said very little about institutions. Even Church, State. and family were left by Elm to the devel opment of the p.reat principles which lle forth. It may he doubted if He ever legislated or in tended that His utterances should be taken as legislittion, even for His Church. Early Chris tianity necessarily sought men as individuals, and dealt with them as such. INIarriage. divorce, celibacy, chastity were all considered chiefly with regard to their effect on individual well-being. Their social, institutional hearings were ignored, it was in respect to the Church. The family is hardly named in the canon law, which was cast in the matrix of Roman law when in its later stages of individualism, in the regu lations of Protestant churches. The emphasis of the Reformation on the individual, the art of printing. the use of gunpowder, the beginnings of modern science, and the discovery of America all increased the power of the individual. Later, the ethical and political theories of Crotins, Hobbes, Locke. Ronssenu, Blackstone, and the earlier schools of political economy, the American and French Revolutions, the rise of the modern industrial system, and -till later the use of steam and electricity. have all done numb to accelerate those change. by which the individual and the larcest social combinations have absorbed the attention of society at the expense of all domestic and commercial group.. evangelistic work of the last century, the temperance and the anti slavery reform-. and the advancement of woman through assertion of her rights. should also, for similar reasons, be named as directly or indirect r it Mt Ory to the increase of divorce. That the eeneral result is good as a whole may be fully conceded without denying the incidental ct il-. The increase of divorce and changing opin ion, and practice regarding marriage and other incidents id the family. in this light seem to he the result of ehanges in the constitution of West ern civilization. I low far the disintegration and reconstruction of families is consistent with the health and growth of the social body has become a question of first importance in social science.