The statistics of illegitimacy, of commercialized prostitution, of venereal disease, of infant mortality, of early death or life-long invalidism of wives and mothers, of marital unhappiness and parental neglect which are found by honest investigation in states and nations in which no divorce is allowed do not lead to the belief that legal permanence of the marriage bond secures socially helpful family life.

On the contrary, such facts already show that divorce in the civilization we have inherited comes as a result of bad conditions which worked infinite harm before divorces could be obtained.
=Old Institutions Need New Sanctions.=--We must now ask of any laws concerning any institution not what did ancient "folk-ways" ordain but what do modern conditions require?
No form of human association, however old and whatever its contribution to the social inheritance, but is on trial to-day before all free minds.

That trial must be openly conducted.

No "secret diplomacy" to reinstate old ideals or laws against the common belief; no "boring from within" to propagate new schemes the object of which is to gratify personal wish without regard to public good; but "open covenants" with the future "openly arrived at" in an ethically consecrated present.

What shall be our guide in such a free and frank consideration of the present and the future of the family?
=The Monogamic Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness.=--In the first place, one must accept the fact that it is presumptive evidence of the continued worth and value of any inherited institution if it can be proved that it has served vital social needs which still operate and that no other existing institution is able or ready to take its place for the special social service which it was designed to render.