Straw Wreath Discourse of a Consistorial Secretary, Wherein he and
it prove that Adultery and Divorce are Allowable.
I confess here, our enlightened age should be named an adulterous
generation. I certainly said once at the marketplace in Marseilles,
that I held the miserable thing, matrimonial infidelity, to be right.
Even long before I got to Munich, I said one ought to annex to the
Metropolitan Church, of the marriage bed, a chapel of ease--in Upper
Saxony I said, if that countess went on bearing for a whole year
something daily: then with countesses even now, at least the _foregone_
year were to be had--in the ten German circles I certainly expressed
myself in ten different ways:--But it was not then in place anywhere to
expound the matter clearly out of physiology, but only here.
It was _Sanctorius_[13] who seated himself upon a Delphic night stool
and there sat out the truth, that man got himself clothed upon every
eleven years with a new body--the old one, like the German body
politic, wearing away piece by piece till there remains of the whole
mummy not so much as an apothecary will give, shaved down minutely, in
a tea-spoon. _Bernouilli_ contradicted Sanctorius up and down and
showed us that he had blundered, for not in eleven, but in three years,
the one of the twin brothers evaporated and the other crystallized. In
short French and Russians change body oftener than the shirt on the
body, and a Province is getting new bodies and a new religious
Provincial jointly in three years as aforesaid.
The matter is by no means indifferent. For it is accordingly impossible
that a baldhead, who celebrated his marriage jubilee should point to a
bit of skin on his whole body as big as a penny and remark: "With this
scrap of skin I stood 25 years ago at the altar and was, together with
the rest, coupled to my jubilant wife here." That the jubilee-king
cannot possibly do. The marriage ring, to be sure, has not dropped off,
but the ring finger which it encircled has, long ago. In fact it is a
trick beyond all tricks, and I appeal to other Consistorial
secretaries. For the poor bride goes up joyfully under the bed canopy
with the _statua curulis_ of a bodily bridegroom and thinks--what knows
she of good physiology?--that she has in the body something solid, a
piece of iron, an article of real estate, in short a head with hairs,
of which she can one day say, they have grown gray on mine and on my
cap! Such is her hope; meanwhile in the midst of her hoping the rogue
of a body works off its whole set of members, as a student his pawned
student's goods, in the course of three years, in infinitesimal
particles in mist and darkness. If she turns round on New Year's
Eve--there lies in the marriage bed beside her a mere wax cast or
second edition which the former body has left of itself, and in which
there remains no longer a single leaf of the old one. What now--when
the cubic contents of the bridal bed and of the marriage bed are so
different--is a wife to think of the whole matter! I mean, if, _e. g_.,
a whole female consisting of (_e. g_. the Lady Consistorial President,
the lady Vice-President, the lady Consistorial Secretary) after three
years finds upon the pillow an entirely different male Consistory, from
what the marriage promised this dissolved one should be: what course is
a woman to take, who, if she is a consistorial half, knows right well
_quid juris_? She, I say, who must have heard a hundred times over at
the dinner table, that such an absconding of the male body is a cursed
_malicious abandonment_ or _desertio malitiosa_, which entirely
releases her from her marriage vows--and in fact such a straw widow may
actually have read Luther _de causis matrimonii_ and have inferred
therefrom that he does not forbid a maliciously deserted wife after a
year or half a year to contract a new marriage. To betake herself to
the aforesaid new marriage will manifestly be the first duty and design
of such a deserted one; but as the new extant body of a husband cannot
help the evaporation of its predecessor, accordingly, rather than
distress him, she will do it without his knowledge and without
vindictive feeling--perhaps when he is at the Exchange--or in the
pulpit--or at the fair--or on board ship--or behind the session table
or abroad somewhere.
Meanwhile the husband is no fool, but has always enough of physiology
about him to know that the wife also changes her body as often as her
maids; consequently he needs not to watch any chance. _Nov. 22_ c.25 of
itself hands him the right of divorce, if she has run away from him for
a night; but here the Consistorial Counselloress has absolutely blown
away for ever and moreover repeats this evaporation every three
years--she, who, nevertheless, according to "Lange's Clerical Rights,"
which the Consistorial Counsellor has on his book-shelf, would be
obliged to follow him, if he were banished the country, even though, in
the marriage-contract she had reserved the right to stay at home. Thus
speaks Lange to husbands on the point. In the great world, where true
chastity and universal knowledge, including of course physiology, are
at home, the point has long since been treated with intelligence and
propriety, and conscientiousness has been carried to great length. For
as, in that sphere, a husband three years after the wedding-feast no
longer expects to find in his spouse an apothecary's ounce of blood,
nor a thin vein in which it ran, remaining of the old one; as,
therefore, he thinks to find again the emigrated parts of his good lady
much sooner and more surely in any other than in herself; as,
accordingly, he must, much rather, regard love for his partner as
infidelity to her and with her--(and, strictly taken, it is even
so)--: it follows now, that the question is mainly one of pure
morality; he, therefore, leaves to that assemblage of veins, nervous
ganglia, finger-nails and nobler parts, which one calls _in toto_ his
wife--leaves her (or it) his name, half his credit, and half his
children, because, on the whole, in the great world, one does not like
publicly to dissolve public connections, and prefers, at last, to walk
in a thousand air-woven fetters; but _this_ his respect for morality
and public sentiment does not allow him, to have one and the same
dwelling--table--society with a wife who has another body; he does not
even (which, perhaps, is being too scrupulous) like to appear with her
in public and refrains at least in his house from all that of which he
or Origen made themselves incapable.
There are miserable, faded pulpits, which may object to my position,
that the wedded souls remain when the bodies have evaporated. For with
the soul (therefore with the memory, the thinking faculty, the moral
principle, etc.), at the present day there is little or no union in
wedlock, but only with that which hangs round it. Secondly, it may be
learned of any materialist on the philosophic exchange, that the soul
is nothing but a sucker of the body, which, therefore, with both man
and wife, passes away simultaneously with the body. One need not,
however, take that ground, but one need only concur with Hume, who
writes that there is no such thing as a soul, but merely a collection
of ideas that cling together like toads'-spawn and so creep through the
brain and think themselves. Under such circumstances the bridal pair
may thank God, if their pair of coupled souls will hold together only
as long as the two pairs of dancing-pumps at the marriage-ball. One
sees this too the forenoon after the honeymoon.
Therefore, as has been said, no Canonist can put off the week in which
man and wife may lawfully proceed to breach of marriage vows, longer
than to the fourth year after betrothal; only for people of the world
and of standing, this is hard and too rigorous, especially if they know
from their "Keil" (the anatomist) that in a year the old body has
entirely thawed away--a miserable sixteen pound avoirdupois alone
excepted. Hence, it has often been my idea, that if I should bring my
breach of marriage into the very first year (as many do) I should
really be unfaithful to only a few pounds of my consort, (who weighs
107)--namely the sixteen pounds that still remained.
On the same exchange of bodies whereon one grounds his breach of
marriage vows, must the Consistory ground its rule of divorce. For, as
people often remain together, in open wedlock, nine, eighteen years
after marriage, whereas all physiologists know that there are two new
married bodies in the case, and without priestly consecration,
accordingly the Consistory is now bound to look into it and interfere
and divorce the two foreign bodies by a decree or two. Hence one will
never hear of a conscientious Consistory's making any difficulty in
separating Christians who are already joined in wedlock; but on the
other hand one will quite as seldom hear of a case in which it divorces
those who have merely promised marriage, without the greatest
difficulty; and very naturally; for in the former case, that of a long
marriage, true infidelity is to be averted by the bill of divorcement,
because there are uncoupled bodies; but _here_, in the case of
betrothal, the bodies which have made the engagement are not yet fully
present, and they must first live for a long time in wedlock, before
they are ripe for divorce. This is the true solution of an apparent
contradiction, which has already misled so many weak minds to regard us
all in Consistory as greedy of perquisites, and me as the marker, and
our green session-boards as green billiard tables, around which
President and Councillors skip with long queues, to play out our games;
ah! besides, a Consistorial committee cuts more pens than coins money.
Why, on the whole, do not the Pastors report to us every couple in
their parishes that have cohabited over three years, that they may be
divorced at the proper time? Such a divorce, for which no further
grounds are needed than this, that the two people have lived together a
great while, has, indeed, in all countries no other design than that of
allowing them to be afterward reunited regularly with their renewed
bodies. The Consistory and I fare most accursedly in the matter, if
things are not somewhat mended, when the new minister mounts the
throne. Verily, such a spiritual administrative college often applies
the long saw, and saws the marriage blocks or beds, in which the wedded
pairs had lain for twenty-one years, who in so long a time had been
seven times at least (infidelity and divorce falling due every three
years) been proper subjects for infidelity and divorce; what forfeiture
of perquisites, since we must needs multiply four-fold the costs of
divorce, which we might have multiplied seven-fold! Besides such
liquidation of divorce-expenses amounts to little, because it is
notoriously moderated and, in fact, by the Consistory itself. Besides,
one practises in the Consistorial Chamber the forethought and
afterthought, by which I always, after fifteen or twenty years, draw
out again the bill of perquisites, which the divorced pair had already
paid, and hand it anew to the Consistorial messenger and collector, not
so much for the purpose of getting the fees twice over (which is a
secondary matter) as to duplicate the receipt, in case the divorced
couple should have lost the first, and also to guard them against a
third payment. One would make everything easy for the couple, by
allowing the payment to be made in several and small installments.
... And to-day is three years since I too was joined in marriage....
but the straw-wreath oration on that occasion was too poor to
repeat....