be.

Moreover, the divorce courts have two excuses for their laxity. First,
the divorce courts are always greatly overburdened with the number of
cases before them; and, secondly, public opinion, which the courts as
well as other phases of our government largely reflect, favors this
laxity. This is shown by the fact that public opinion stands back of the
lax divorce statutes of many states, all efforts to radically change
these statutes having failed of recent years.

(10) Our study of the family has accustomed us to the thought that the
family is an institution which, like all other human institutions,
undergoes constant changes. Now at periods of change in any institution,
periods of transition from one type to another, there is apt to be a
period of confusion. The old type of institution is never replaced at
once by a new type of institution ready-made and adjusted to the social
life, but only gradually does the new institution emerge from the
elements of the old. In the meantime, however, there may be a
considerable period of confusion and anarchy. This social principle, we
may note, rests upon a deeper psychological principle, that old habits
are usually not replaced by new habits without an intervening period of
confusion and uncertainty. In other words, in the transition from the
old habit to the new habit there is much opportunity for disorganization
and disintegration. It is exactly so in human society, because social
institutions are but expressions of habit.

Now, the old semipatriarchal type of the family, which prevailed down to
the beginning of the nineteenth century, the type of the family which we
might perhaps properly call the monarchical type, has been disappearing
for the past one hundred years,--is in fact already practically extinct,