governesses, etc., but more frequently maintaining separate establishments. These horrors are too often known or suspected by the unhappy wife, who, "for the sake of peace/' or "to avoid publicity," or "on account of the children," or from womanly pride, and, in many cases, from pure Christian fortitude, endures her torture in silence.
The age properly considered "marriageable" is a ques- tion of which there can be no absolute solution, dependent, as it is, on so great a variety of conditions, as climate, constitution, temperament, the actual state of health of the individual, etc. As a general rule it is imperative that the full growth shall have been attained, the vital organs in good condition, and those of generation free from all faulty conformation which may interfere with the consummation of the marriage. It is also essential that in man the sexual instinct shall have become sufficiently awakened, that the desire for sexual relations shall have created in some sort of a necessity.9 In a word, both sexes should have reached the age of procreative maturity. True procreative maturity is that condition in which the genital functions can be performed without danger to health, and in which the requisite qualities may be transmitted to the resulting offspring. So understood, this period is distinguished from that of puberty by the term nubility; that is, the age suitable for marriage. At the nubile age the procreative ability has existed for some time without employment, so that it may have completely developed, and be able to manifest its fullest powers. To this end it is essential that the seminal secretion shall have re-entered the organism, in order to have imparted the requisite vigor to the constitution, and to have afforded the full and normal development of the body.
The civil laws of different times and countries have
