I myself once proposed an alternative scheme, to wit, the prohibition
of sentimental marriages by law, and the substitution of match-making
by the common hangman. This plan, as revolutionary as it may seem,
would have several plain advantages. For one thing, it would purge the
serious business of marriage of the romantic fol-de-rol that now
corrupts it, and so make for the peace and happiness of the race. For
another thing, it would work against the process which now selects out,
as I have said, those men who are most fit, and so throws the chief
burden of paternity upon the inferior, to the damage of posterity. The
hangman, if he made his selections arbitrarily, would try to give his
office permanence and dignity by choosing men whose marriage would meet
with public approbation, i.e., men obviously of sound stock and
talents, i.e., the sort of men who now habitually escape. And if he
made his selection by the hazard of the die, or by drawing numbers out
of a hat, or by any other such method of pure chance, that pure chance
would fall indiscriminately upon all orders of men, and the upper
orders would thus lose their present comparative immunity. True enough,
a good many men would endeavour to influence him privately to their own
advantage, and it is probable that he would occasionally succumb, but
it must be plain that the men most likely to prevail in that enterprise
would not be philosophers, but politicians, and so there would be some
benefit to the race even here. Posterity surely suffers no very heavy
loss when a Congressman, a member of the House of Lords or even an
ambassador or Prime Minister dies childless, but when a Herbert Spencer
goes to the grave without leaving sons behind him there is a detriment
to all the generations of the future.
I did not offer the plan, of course, as a contribution to practical
politics, but merely as a sort of hypothesis, to help clarify the
problem. Many other theoretical advantages appear in it, but its
execution is made impossible, not only by inherent defects, but also by
a general disinclination to abandon the present system, which at least
offers certain attractions to concrete men and women, despite its
unfavourable effects upon the unborn. Women would oppose the
substitution of chance or arbitrary fiat for the existing struggle for
the plain reason that every woman is convinced, and no doubt rightly,
that her own judgment is superior to that of either the common hangman
or the gods, and that her own enterprise is more favourable to her
opportunities. And men would oppose it because it would restrict their
liberty. This liberty, of course, is largely imaginary. In its common
manifestation, it is no more, at bottom, than the privilege of being
bamboozled and made a mock of by the first woman who ventures to essay
the business. But none the less it is quite as precious to men as any
other of the ghosts that their vanity conjures up for their
enchantment. They cherish the notion that unconditioned volition enters
into the matter, and that under volition there is not only a high
degree of sagacity but also a touch of the daring and the devilish. A
man is often almost as much pleased and flattered by his own marriage
as he would be by the achievement of what is currently called a
seduction. In the one case, as in the other, his emotion is one of
triumph. The substitution of pure chance would take away that soothing
unction.
The present system, to be sure, also involves chance. Every man
realizes it, and even the most bombastic bachelor has moments in which
he humbly whispers: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” But that
chance has a sugarcoating; it is swathed in egoistic illusion; it shows
less stark and intolerable chanciness, so to speak, than the bald
hazard of the die. Thus men prefer it, and shrink from the other. In
the same way, I have no doubt, the majority of foxes would object to
choosing lots to determine the victim of a projected fox-hunt. They
prefer to take their chances with the dogs.