RESTRICTIONS IN MARRIAGE.   57

marriage, but chore especially the influence and authority of ministers of religion in enforcing celibacy. They have notoriously used it when aid has been invoked by members of the family on grounds that are not religious at all, but merely of family expediency. Thus, at some times and in some Christian nations, every girl who did not marry while still young, was practically compelled to enter a nunnery from which escape was afterwards impossible.

It is easy to let the imagination run wild on the supposition of a whole-hearted acceptance of Eugenics as a national religion ; that is of the thorough conviction by a nation that no worthier object exists for man than the improvement of his own race ; and when efforts as great as those by which nunneries and monasteries were endowed and maintained should be directed to fulfil an opposite purpose. I will not enter further into this. Suffice it to say, that the history of conventual life affords abundant evidence on a very large scale, of the power of religious authority in directing and withstanding the tendencies of human nature towards freedom in marriage.

CONCLUSION.-Seven different subjects have now been touched upon. They are monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, taboo, prohibited degrees and celebacy. It has been shown under each of these heads how powerful are the various combinations of immaterial motives upon marriage selection, how they may all become