demoralization of certain classes. While there may not have been,
therefore, any general growth of vice in the United States along with
the growth of divorce, it is conceivable that it may have increased
greatly in certain classes of American society. Be this as it may, it is
not necessary to assume that there has been any growth of vice in the
American population, for if actual moral practices are no higher than
they were fifty years ago that alone would be a sufficient reason to
explain considerable disintegration of our family life. It is an
important truth in sociology that the morality which suffices for a
relatively simple social life, largely rural, such as existed in this
country fifty years ago, is not sufficient for a more complex society
which is largely urban, such as exists at the present time. Moreover,
recognized moral standards within the past fifty years have largely been
raised through the growth of general intelligence. It follows that
immoral acts, which were condoned fifty years ago and which produced but
slight social effect, to-day meet with great reprobation and have far
greater social consequences than a generation ago. This is particularly
true of the standards which the wife imposes upon the husband. For
centuries, as we have already seen, the husband has secured divorce for
adultery of the wife, but for centuries no divorce was given to the wife
for the adultery of the husband; and this is even true to-day in modern
England, unless the adultery of the husband be accompanied by other
flagrant violations of morality. Conduct on the part of the husband,
which the wife overlooked, therefore, a generation ago, is to-day
sufficient to disrupt the family bonds and become a ground for the
granting of a divorce. Even if vice, then, has not increased in our
population, if moral practices are no higher to-day than fifty years
ago, we should expect that this alone would have far different
consequences now than then. The growth of intelligence and of higher and
more complex forms of social organization necessitates realization of