it might of course be contended—and probably with some truth—that the
human male is, by his nature and needs, polygamous. Nor is it necessary
to suppose that polygamy in certain countries and races is by any means
so degrading or unsuccessful an institution as some folk would have it
to be.[17] But, as Letourneau in his “Evolution of Marriage” points out,
the progress of society in the past has on the whole been from confusion
to distinction; and we may fairly suppose that with the progress of our
own race (for each race no doubt has its special genius in such
matters), and as the spiritual and emotional sides of man develop in
relation to the physical, there is probably a tendency for our deeper
alliances to become more unitary. Though it might be said that the
growing complexity of man’s nature would be likely to lead him into more
rather than fewer relationships, yet on the other hand it is obvious
that as the depth and subtlety of any attachment that will really hold
him increases, so does such attachment become more permanent and
durable, and less likely to be realized in a number of persons. Woman,
on the other hand, cannot be said to be by her physical nature
polyandrous as man is polygynous. Though of course there are plenty of
examples of women living in a state of polyandry both among savage and
civilized peoples, yet her more limited sexual needs, and her long
periods of gestation, render one mate physically sufficient for her;
while her more clinging affectional nature perhaps accentuates her
capacity of absorption in the one.
In both man and woman then we may say that we find a distinct tendency
towards the formation of this double unit of wedded life (I hardly like
to use the word Monogamy on account of its sad associations)—and while
we do not want to stamp such natural unions with any false
irrevocability or dogmatic exclusiveness, what we do want is a
recognition to-day of the tendency to their formation as a natural fact,
independent of any artificial laws, just as one might believe in the
natural bias of two atoms of certain different chemical substances to
form a permanent compound atom or molecule.
It might not be so very difficult to get quite young people to
understand this—to understand that even though they may have to contend
with some superfluity of passion in early years, yet that the most
deeply-rooted desire within them will probably in the end point to a
permanent union with one mate; and that towards this end they must be
prepared to use self-control against the aimless straying of their
passions, and patience and tenderness towards the realization of the
union when its time comes. Probably most youths and girls, at the age of
romance, would easily appreciate this position; and it would bring to
them a much more effective and natural idea of the sacredness of
Marriage than they ever get from the artificial thunder of the Church
and the State on the subject.
No doubt the suggestion of the mere possibility of any added freedom of
choice and experience in the relations of the sexes will be very
alarming to some people—but it is so, I think, not because they are at
all ignorant that men already take to themselves considerable latitude,
and that a distinct part of the undoubted evils that accompany that
latitude springs from the fact that it is not recognized; not because
they are ignorant that a vast number of respectable women and girls
suffer frightful calamities and anguish by reason of the utter
inexperience of sex in which they are brought up and have to live; but
because such good people assume that any the least loosening of the
formal barriers between the sexes must mean (and must be meant to mean)
an utter dissolution of all ties, and the reign of mere licentiousness.
They are convinced that nothing but the most unyielding and indeed
exasperating straight-jacket can save society from madness and ruin.
To those, however, who can look facts in the face, and who see that as a
matter of fact the reality of Marriage is coming more and more to be
considered in the public mind in comparison with its formalities, the
first thought will probably be one of congratulation that after such
ages of treatment as a mere formality there should be any sense of the
reality of the tie left; and the second will be the question how to give
this reality its natural form and expression. Having satisfied ourselves
that the formation of a more or less permanent double unit is—for our
race and time—on the whole the natural and ascendant law of sex-union,
slowly and with whatever exceptions establishing and enforcing itself
independently of any artificial enactments that exist, then we shall not
feel called upon to tear our hair or rend our garments at the prospect
of added freedom for the operation of this force, but shall rather be
anxious to consider how it may best be freed and given room for its
reasonable development and growth.
I shall therefore devote the rest of the chapter to this question. And
it will probably seem (looking back to what has already been said) that
the points which most need consideration, as means to this end, are (1)
the furtherance of the freedom and self-dependence of women; (2) the
provision of some rational teaching, of heart and of head, for both
sexes during the period of youth; (3) the recognition in marriage itself
of a freer, more companionable, and less pettily exclusive relationship;
and (4) the abrogation or modification of the present odious law which
binds people together for life, without scruple, and in the most
artificial and ill-assorted unions.
It must be admitted that the first point (1) is of basic importance. As
true Freedom cannot be without Love so true Love cannot be without
Freedom. You cannot truly give yourself to another, unless you are
master or mistress of yourself to begin with. Not only has the general
custom of the self-dependence and self-ownership of women, in moral,
social, and economic respects, to be gradually introduced, but the Law
has to be altered in a variety of cases where it lags behind the public
conscience in these matters—as in actual marriage, where it still leaves
woman uncertain as to her rights over her own body, or in politics,
where it still denies to her a voice in the framing of the statutes
which are to bind her.
With regard to (2) hardly any one at this time of day would seriously
doubt the desirability of giving adequate teaching to boys and girls.
That is a point on which we have sufficiently touched, and which need
not be farther discussed here. But beyond this it is important, and
especially perhaps, as things stand now, for girls—that each youth or
girl should personally see enough of the other sex at an early period to
be able to form some kind of judgment of his or her relation to that sex
and to sex-matters generally. It is monstrous that the first case of
sex-glamor—the true nature of which would be exposed by a little
experience—should, perhaps for two people, decide the destinies of a
life-time. Yet the more the sexes are kept apart, the more overwhelming
does this glamor become, and the more ignorance is there, on either
side, as to its nature. No doubt it is one of the great advantages of
co-education of the sexes, that it tends to diminish these evils.
Co-education, games and sports to some extent in common, and the doing
away with the absurd superstition that because Corydon and Phyllis
happen to kiss each other sitting on a gate, therefore they must live
together all their lives, would soon mend matters considerably. Nor
would a reasonable familiarity of this kind between the sexes in youth
necessarily mean an increase of casual or clandestine sex-relations. But
even if casualties did occur they would not be the fatal and
unpardonable sins that they now—at least for girls—are considered to be.
Though the recognition of anything like common pre-matrimonial
sex-intercourse would probably be foreign to the temper of a northern
nation; yet it is open to question whether Society here, in its mortal
and fetichistic dread of the thing, has not, by keeping the young of
both sexes in ignorance and darkness and seclusion from each other,
created worse ills and suffering than it has prevented, and whether, by
giving sexual acts so feverish an importance, it has not intensified the
particular evil that it dreaded, rather than abated it.
In the next place (3) we come to the establishment in marriage itself of
a freer and broader and more healthy relationship than generally exists
at the present time. Attractive in some ways as the ideal of the
exclusive attachment is, it runs the fatal risk, as we have already
pointed out, of lapsing into a mere stagnant double selfishness. But,
after all, Love is fed not by what it takes, but by what it gives; and
the love of man and wife too must be fed by the love they give to
others. If they cannot come out of their secluded haven to reach a hand
to others, or even to give some boon of affection to those who need it
more than themselves, or if they mistrust each other in doing so, then
assuredly they are not very well fitted to live together.
A marriage, so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide
excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in separate
objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all the time in
the bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very freedom be all the more
poignantly attractive, and by its very scope and breadth all the richer
and more vital—would be in a sense indestructible; like the relation of
two suns which, revolving in fluent and rebounding curves, only recede
from each other in order to return again with renewed swiftness into
close proximity—and which together blend their rays into the glory of
one double star.
It has been the inability to see or understand this very simple truth
that has largely contributed to the failure of the Monogamic union. The
narrow physical passion of jealousy, the petty sense of private property
in another person, social opinion, and legal enactments, have all
converged to choke and suffocate wedded love in egoism, lust, and
meanness. But surely it is not very difficult (for those who believe in
the real thing) to imagine so sincere and natural a trust between man
and wife that neither would be greatly alarmed at the other’s friendship
with a third person, nor conclude at once that it meant mere
infidelity—or difficult even to imagine that such a friendship might be
hailed as a gain by both parties. And if it is quite impossible (to some
people) to see in such intimacies anything but a confusion of all
sex-relations and a chaos of mere animal desire, we can only reply that
this view exposes with fatal precision the kind of thoughts which our
present marriage system engenders. In order to suppose a rational
marriage at all one must credit the parties concerned with some modicum
of real affection, candor, common sense and self-control.
Withal seeing the remarkable and immense variety of love in human
nature, when the feeling is really touched—how the love-offering of one
person’s soul and body is entirely different from that of another
person’s, so much so as almost to require another name—how one passion
is predominantly physical, and another predominantly emotional, and
another contemplative, or spiritual, or practical, or sentimental; how
in one case it is jealous and exclusive, and in another hospitable and
free, and so forth—it seems rash to lay down any very hard and fast
general laws for the marriage-relation, or to insist that a real and
honorable affection can only exist under this or that special form. It
is probably through this fact of the variety of love that it does remain
possible, in some cases, for married people to have intimacies with
outsiders, and yet to continue perfectly true to each other and in rare
instances, for triune and other such relations to be permanently
maintained.
We now come to the last consideration, namely (4) the modification of
the present law of marriage. It is pretty clear that people will not
much longer consent to pledge themselves irrevocably for life as at
present. And indeed there are always plentiful indications of a growing
change of practice. The more people come to recognize the sacredness and
naturalness of the real union, the less will they be willing to bar
themselves from this by a life-long and artificial contract made in
their salad days. Hitherto the great bulwark of the existing institution
has been the dependence of Women, which has given each woman a direct
and most material interest in keeping up the supposed sanctity of the
bond—and which has prevented a man of any generosity from proposing an
alteration which would have the appearance of freeing himself at the
cost of the woman; but as this fact of the dependence of women gradually
dissolves out, and as the great fact of the spiritual nature of the true
Marriage crystallizes into more clearness—so will the formal bonds which
bar the formation of the latter gradually break away and become of small
import.
Love when felt at all deeply has an element of transcendentalism in it,
which makes it the most natural thing in the world for the two
lovers—even though drawn together by a passing sex-attraction—to swear
eternal troth to each other; but there is something quite diabolic and
mephistophelean in the practice of the Law, which creeping up behind, as
it were, at this critical moment, and overhearing the two pledging
themselves, claps its book together with a triumphant bang, and
exclaims: “There now you are married and done for, for the rest of your
natural lives.”
What actual changes in Law and Custom the collective sense of society
will bring about is a matter which in its detail we cannot of course
foresee or determine. But that the drift will be, and must be, towards
greater freedom, is pretty clear. Ideally speaking it is plain that
anything like a perfect union must have perfect freedom for its
condition; and while it is quite supposable that a lover might out of
the fullness of his heart make promises and give pledges, it is really
almost inconceivable that anyone having that delicate and proud sense
which marks deep feeling, could possibly demand a promise from his loved
one. As there is undoubtedly a certain natural reticence in sex, so
perhaps the most decent thing in true Marriage would be to say nothing,
make no promises—either for a year or a life-time. Promises are bad at
any time, and when the heart is full silence befits it best.
Practically, however, since a love of this kind is slow to be realized,
since social custom is slow to change, and since the partial dependence
and slavery of Woman must yet for a while continue, it is likely for
such period that formal contracts of some kind will still be made; only
these (it may be hoped) will lose their irrevocable and rigid character,
and become in some degree adapted to the needs of the contracting
parties.
Such contracts might, of course, if adopted, be very various in respect
to conjugal rights, conditions of termination, division of property,
responsibility for and rights over children, etc. In some cases[18]
possibly they might be looked upon as preliminary to a later and more
permanent alliance; in others they would provide, for disastrous
marriages, a remedy free from the inordinate scandals of the present
Divorce Courts. It may however be said that rather than adopt any new
system of contracts, public opinion in this country would tend to a
simple facilitation of Divorce, and that if the latter were made (with
due provision for the children) to depend on mutual consent, it would
become little more than an affair of registration, and the scandals of
the proceeding would be avoided. In any case we think that
marriage-contracts, if existing at all, must tend more and more to
become matters of private arrangement as far as the relations of husband
and wife are concerned, and that this is likely to happen in proportion
as woman becomes more free, and therefore more competent to act in her
own right. It would be felt intolerable, in any decently constituted
society, that the old blunderbuss of the Law should interfere in the
delicate relations of wedded life. As it is to-day the situation is most
absurd. On the one hand, having been constituted from times back in
favor of the male, the Law still gives to the husband barbarous rights
over the person of his spouse; on the other hand, to compensate for
this, it rushes in with the farcicalities of Breach of Promise; and in
any case, having once pronounced its benediction over a pair—how hateful
the alliance may turn out to be to both parties, and however obvious its
failure to the whole world—the stupid old thing blinks owlishly on at
its own work, and professes itself totally unable to undo the knot which
once it tied!
The only point where there is a permanent ground for
State-interference—and where indeed there is no doubt that the public
authority should in some way make itself felt—is in the matter of the
children resulting from any alliance. Here the relation of the pair
ceases to be private and becomes social; and the interests of the child
itself, and of the nation whose future citizen the child is, have to be
safe-guarded. Any contracts, or any proposals of divorce, before they
could be sanctioned by the public authority, would have to contain
satisfactory provisions for the care and maintenance of the children in
such casualties as might ensue; nor ought there to be maintained any
legal distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘legitimate’ children, since it
is clear that whatever individuals or society at large may, in the
former case, think of the conduct of the parents, no disability should
on that account accrue to the child, nor should the parents (if
identifiable) be able to escape their full responsibility for bringing
it into the world. If those good people who make such a terrible outcry
against folk entering into married life without going through all the
abracadabra of the Law, on account of the children, would try and get
the law altered so as to give illegitimate children the same status and
claim on their parents as legitimate children, it would show more
genuinely for their anxiety about the children, and would really be
doing something in the interests of positive morality.
If it be objected that private contracts, or such facilitations of
Divorce as here spoken of, would simply lead to frivolous experimental
relationships entered into and broken-off ad infinitum, it must be
remembered that the responsibility for due rearing and maintenance of
children must give serious pause to such a career; and that to suppose
that any great mass of the people would find their good in a kind of
matrimonial game of General Post is to suppose that the mass of the
people have really never acquired or been taught the rudiments of common
sense in such matters—is to suppose a case for which there would hardly
be a parallel in the customs of any nation or tribe that we know of.
In conclusion, it is evident that no very great change for the better in
marriage-relations can take place except as the accompaniment of
deep-lying changes in Society at large; and that alterations in the Law
alone will effect but a limited improvement. Indeed it is not very
likely, as long as the present commercial order of society lasts, that
the existing Marriage-laws—founded as they are on the idea of
property—will be very radically altered, though they may be to some
extent. More likely is it that, underneath the law, the common practice
will slide forward into newer customs. With the rise of the new society,
which is already outlining itself within the structure of the old, many
of the difficulties and bugbears, that at present seem to stand in the
way of a more healthy relation between the sexes, will of themselves
disappear.
It must be acknowledged, however, that though a gradual broadening out
and humanizing of Law and Custom are quite necessary, it cannot fairly
be charged against these ancient tyrants that they are responsible for
all the troubles connected with sex. There are millions of people to-day
who never could marry happily—however favorable the conditions might
be—simply because their natures do not contain in sufficient strength
the elements of loving surrender to another; and, as long as the human
heart is what it is, there will be natural tragedies arising from the
willingness or unwillingness of one person to release another when the
former finds that his or her love is not returned.[19] While it is quite
necessary that these natural tragedies should not be complicated and
multiplied by needless legal interference—complicated into the
numberless artificial tragedies which are so exasperating when
represented on the stage or in romance, and so saddening when witnessed
in real life—still we may acknowledge that, short of the millennium,
they will always be with us, and that no institution of marriage alone,
or absence of institution, will rid us of them. That entire and
unswerving refusal to ‘cage’ another person, or to accept an affection
not perfectly free and spontaneous, which will, we are fain to think, be
always more and more the mark of human love, must inevitably bring its
own price of mortal suffering with it; yet the Love so gained, whether
in the individual or in society, will be found in the end to be worth
the pang—and as far beyond the other love, as is the wild bird of
Paradise that comes to feed out of our hands unbidden more lovely than
the prisoner we shut with draggled wings behind the bars. Love is
doubtless the last and most difficult lesson that humanity has to learn;
in a sense it underlies all the others. Perhaps the time has come for
the modern nations when, ceasing to be children, they may even try to
learn it.
THE FREE SOCIETY
Taking, finally, a somewhat wider outlook over the whole subject of the
most intimate human relations than was feasible in the foregoing
chapters, we may make a few general remarks.
One of the great difficulties in the way of arriving at any general
understanding on questions of sex—and one which we have already had
occasion to note—is the extraordinary diversity of feeling and
temperament which exists in these matters. Needless to say, this is
increased by the reserve, natural or artificial, which so seldom allows
people to express their sentiments quite freely. In the great ocean
there are so many currents, cold and warm, fresh, and salt, and
brackish; and each one thinks that the current in which he lives is the
whole ocean. The man of the world hardly understands, certainly does not
sympathize with, the recluse or ascetic—and the want of appreciation is
generally returned; the maternal, the sexual, and the philanthropic
woman, are all somewhat unintelligible to each other; the average male
and the average female approach the great passion from totally different
sides, and are continually at odds over it; and again both of these
great sections of humanity fail entirely to understand that other and
well-marked class of persons whose love-attraction is (inborn) towards
their own sex, and indeed hardly recognize the existence of such a
class, although as a matter of fact it is a large and important one in
every community. In fact, all these differences have hitherto been so
little the subject of impartial study that we are still amazingly in the
dark about them.
When we look back to History, and the various customs of the world in
different races and tribes and at different periods of time, we seem to
see these natural divergencies of human temperament reflected in the
extraordinary diversity of practices that have obtained and been
recognized. We see that, in some cases, the worship of sex took its
place beside the worship of the gods; and—what appears equally
strange—that the orgiastic rites and saturnalia of the early world were
intimately connected with religious feeling; we find that, in other
cases, asceticism and chastity and every denial of the flesh were
glorified and looked upon as providing the only way to the heavenly
kingdom; we discover that marriage has been instituted and defined and
sanctioned in endless forms, each looked upon as the only moral and
possible form in its own time and country; and that the position of
women under these different conditions has varied in the most remarkable
way—that in some of the primitive societies where group-marriages[20] of
one kind or another prevailed their dignity and influence were of the
highest, that under some forms of Monogamy, as among the Nagas of
Bengal,[21] women have been abjectly degraded, while under other forms,
as in Ancient Egypt and the later Roman Empire, they have been treated
with respect; and so forth. We cannot fail, I say, to recognize the
enormous diversity of practice which has existed over the world in this
matter of the relations of the sexes; nor, I may add, can we venture—if
we possess any sense of humanity—to put our finger down finally on any
one custom or institution, and say, Here alone is the right way.