To sum up, we have to depend on the solution of the problem of
unemployment, probably on the principles laid down in the Minority
Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, to make the sexual
relations between men and women decent and honorable by making women
economically independent of men, and (in the younger son section of the
upper classes) men economically independent of women. We also have to
bring ourselves into line with the rest of Protestant civilization by
providing means for dissolving all unhappy, improper, and inconvenient
marriages. And, as it is our cautious custom to lag behind the rest
of the world to see how their experiments in reform turn out before
venturing ourselves, and then take advantage of their experience to get
ahead of them, we should recognize that the ancient system of specifying
grounds for divorce, such as adultery, cruelty, drunkenness, felony,
insanity, vagrancy, neglect to provide for wife and children, desertion,
public defamation, violent temper, religious heterodoxy, contagious
disease, outrages, indignities, personal abuse, "mental anguish,"
conduct rendering life burdensome and so forth (all these are examples
from some code actually in force at present), is a mistake, because the
only effect of compelling people to plead and prove misconduct is that
cases are manufactured and clean linen purposely smirched and washed
in public, to the great distress and disgrace of innocent children
and relatives, whilst the grounds have at the same time to be made so
general that any sort of human conduct may be brought within them by a
little special pleading and a little mental reservation on the part of
witnesses examined on oath. When it conies to "conduct rendering life
burdensome," it is clear that no marriage is any longer indissoluble;
and the sensible thing to do then is to grant divorce whenever it is
desired, without asking why.