Thus, though it would be too much to say that everything that is
obnoxious in marriage and family life will be cured by Communism, yet
it can be said that it will cure what Jesus objected to in these
institutions. He made no comprehensive study of them: he only expressed
his own grievance with an overwhelming sense that it is a grievance so
deep that all the considerations on the other side are as dust in the
balance. Obviously there are such considerations, and very weighty ones
too. When Talleyrand said that a married man with a family is capable
of anything, he meant anything evil; but an optimist may declare, with
equal half truth, that a married man is capable of anything good; that
marriage turns vagabonds into steady citizens; and that men and women
will, for love of their mates and children, practise virtues that
unattached individuals are incapable of. It is true that too much of
this domestic virtue is self-denial, which is not a virtue at all;
but then the following of the inner light at all costs is largely
self-indulgence, which is just as suicidal, just as weak, just as
cowardly as self-denial. Ibsen, who takes us into the matter far more
resolutely than Jesus, is unable to find any golden rule: both Brand
and Peer Gynt come to a bad end; and though Brand does not do as much
mischief as Peer, the mischief he does do is of extraordinary intensity.