Marriage, like all other social institutions of consequence, is
surrounded by a whole series of common assumptions that cry out to be
cleared up.
There is a pompous and solemn side to marriage, and there is a private
museum side.
Marriage poses as an harmonious general concord in which religion,
society, and nature join.
But is it anything of the kind? It would appear to be doubtful. If the
sole purpose of marriage is to rear children, a man ought to live with a
woman only until she becomes pregnant, and, after that moment, he ought
not to touch her. But here begins the second part. The woman bears a
baby; the baby is nourished by the mother's milk. The man has no right
to co-habit with his wife during this period either, because it will be
at the risk of depriving the child of its natural source of nutriment.
In consequence, a man must either co-habit with his wife once in two
years, or else there will be some default in the marriage.
What is he to do? What is the moral course? Remember that three factors
have combined to impose the marriage. One, the most far-reaching today,
is economic; another, which is also extremely important, is social, and
the third, now rapidly losing its hold, but still not without influence,
is religious. The three forces together attempt to mould nature to their
will.
Economic pressure and the high cost of living make against the having of
children. They encourage default.
"How are we to have all these children?" the married couple asks. "How
can we feed and educate them?"
Social pressure also tends in the same direction. Religious morality,
however, still persists in its idea of sin, although the potency of this
sanction is daily becoming less, even to the clerical eye.
If nature had a vote, it would surely be cast in favour of polygamy. Man
is forever sexual, and in equal degree, until the verge of decrepitude.
Woman passes through the stages of fecundation, pregnancy, and
lactation.
There can be no doubt but that the most convenient, the most logical and
the most moral system of sexual intercourse, naturally, is polygamy.
But the economic subdues the natural. Who proposes to have five wives
when he cannot feed one?
Society has made man an exclusively social product, and set him apart
from nature.
What can the husband and wife do, especially when they are poor? Must
they overload themselves with children, and then deliver them up to
poverty and neglect because God has given them, or shall they limit
their number?
If my opinion is asked, I advise a limit--although it may be artificial
and immoral.
Marriage presents us with this simple choice: we may either elect the
slow, filthy death of the indigent workingman, of the carabineer who
lives in a shack which teems with children, or else the clean life of
the French, who limit their offspring.
The middle class everywhere today is accepting the latter alternative.
Marriage is stripping off its morality in the bushes, and it is well
that it should do so.