The one question that should never be put to a petitioner for divorce
is "Why?" When a man appeals to a magistrate for protection from someone
who threatens to kill him, on the simple ground that he desires to live,
the magistrate might quite reasonably ask him why he desires to live,
and why the person who wishes to kill him should not be gratified. Also
whether he can prove that his life is a pleasure to himself or a benefit
to anyone else, and whether it is good for him to be encouraged to
exaggerate the importance of his short span in this vale of tears rather
than to keep himself constantly ready to meet his God.
The only reason for not raising these very weighty points is that we
find society unworkable except on the assumption that every man has a
natural right to live. Nothing short of his own refusal to respect that
right in others can reconcile the community to killing him. From this
fundamental right many others are derived. The American Constitution,
one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were
forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had
to face instead of chopping logic in a university classroom, specifies
"liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as natural rights. The terms are
too vague to be of much practical use; for the supreme right to life,
extended as it now must be to the life of the race, and to the quality
of life as well as to the mere fact of breathing, is making short work
of many ancient liberties, and exposing the pursuit of happiness as
perhaps the most miserable of human occupations. Nevertheless, the
American Constitution roughly expresses the conditions to which modern
democracy commits us. To impose marriage on two unmarried people who
do not desire to marry one another would be admittedly an act of
enslavement. But it is no worse than to impose a continuation of
marriage on people who have ceased to desire to be married. It will
be said that the parties may not agree on that; that one may desire
to maintain the marriage the other wishes to dissolve. But the same
hardship arises whenever a man in love proposes marriage to a woman and
is refused. The refusal is so painful to him that he often threatens to
kill himself and sometimes even does it. Yet we expect him to face his
ill luck, and never dream of forcing the woman to accept him. His case
is the same as that of the husband whose wife tells him she no longer
cares for him, and desires the marriage to be dissolved. You will
say, perhaps, if you are superstitious, that it is not the same--that
marriage makes a difference. You are wrong: there is no magic in
marriage. If there were, married couples would never desire to separate.
But they do. And when they do, it is simple slavery to compel them to
remain together.