it a higher conception of marriage as the realization of the ideal,
individual only-love. As Ludwig Stein justly remarks:
“It was not in our own time that marriage first began to degenerate to
the level of an economic idea. The converse, indeed, is true; the
economic background of marriage, as it so clearly manifests itself
among savage races, =first began to disappear in the course of the
development of our own system of civilization, and therewith began
also the liberation of mankind from the burden of metallic
shackles=.”[179]
At the same time, it cannot be denied that even at the present day the
economic factor plays a very extensive part in the determination of
marriage, although certainly not to the degree maintained by Buckle, who
held that there was a fixed and definite relationship between the number
of marriages and the price of corn.[180] Beyond question, economic
considerations have a great influence upon the frequency of marriage.
Many marriages, even to-day, are purely mercenary marriages; but still
at the present time the qualities of intellect and emotion, quite apart
from physical characteristics, have at least an equal share in the
production of marriage. Only among the classes who feel it their duty to
keep up a particular kind of appearance, among the upper-middle classes,
the aristocracy, and among officers in the army, is the economic
question the main determining influence in marriage. Well known, also,
is the predominance of mercenary marriages among the Jews.
One may be an enemy of mammonism, and still see the necessity for an
economic regulation of conjugal relations in view of the expected
offspring, of the altered conditions of life, of the increase in the
household, and of the necessity for safeguarding personal independence
and free development. Such economic considerations can harmonize
perfectly with the demand for personal sympathy, and with the most
intimate physical and spiritual harmony between husband and wife.
Schmoller rightly places the most important advance of the modern family
in this, that it becomes more and more transformed from a productive and
business institute into an institute of moral life in common; that by
the =limitation= of its economic purposes the nobler ideal must become
more predominant, and the family become a richer soil for the
cultivation of sympathetic sentiments.[181]
More especially among the upper classes of modern European and American
society is there apparent an increasing disinclination to marriage, or,
to employ a phrase of the moral statistician Drobisch, there is a
decline in the intensity of the marriage impulse. Although the often
burning money question no doubt plays its part, that part is, on the
whole, much smaller than the part played by the ever-increasing
difficulties of individual spiritual harmony, difficulties dependent on
differences in age, character, education, views of life, and individual
development during marriage. This disinclination to marry is nourished
by certain tendencies of the time to be subsequently described, and by
certain changes in the relations between the sexes.
To many also the idea of “=conjugal rights=,” as established by law,
appears a horrible compulsion, an assignment to physical and spiritual
prostitution. The modern consciousness of free personality, in fact, no
longer harmonizes with that stoical conception of duty in marriage such
as, for example, is described by B. Chateaubriand in his memoirs,
although, of course, every one who enters on marriage ought to be aware
that by doing so he assigns to the other party certain rights, the
non-fulfilment of which actually destroys the character and the idea of
marriage. Thus, the conduct of a schoolmistress of Berlin, who
persistently refused physical surrender to her husband, on the ground
that she had wished merely to contract an “ideal” marriage (of the same
kind as the mystical “reformed marriage” of the American woman Alice
Stockham), demands emphatic condemnation. But an abominable =misuse= of
“conjugal rights” is unquestionably made by inconsiderate husbands, who
demand from their wives unlimited, excessively frequent, gratification
of their sexual desire, without any regard to the wife’s physical and
spiritual condition at the time. That in this respect the idea of
“conjugal rights” is greatly in need of revision has been convincingly
proved by Dorothee Goebeler in an essay entitled “Conjugal Rights,”
published in the _Welt am Montag_ of August 6, 1906.
Too frequently, also, it happens that the husband simply transfers into
his married life previous customs of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse,
and makes use in marriage of the experience he has gained in intercourse
with prostitutes or with priestesses of the love of the moment; he
treats his wife as an object of sensual lust, without paying any regard
to her individuality and to her more delicate erotic needs.
This physical dissonance is not even the worst. Too often it is simply
boredom which kills love in married life. Like Nora in “A Dolls’ House,”
one waits for the “wonderful,” and the wonderful does not happen.
Instead of this the years pass by; sexual passion, greatly influenced as
it is by the spiritual environment, gradually disappears, and with it
disappears also the last possibility of spiritual sympathy. Thus, the
character of most marriages is =solitude=. They represent the tragedy
of desolation, of the eternal self-seeking of husband and wife.
What disastrous consequences, finally, may result from the part played
in marriage by =disease=, what tragic conflicts may here rise, can be
studied in the great book “Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage
and the Married State” (Rebman, 1906), an encyclopædic work edited by H.
Senator and S. Kaminer, discussing in detail the relation between
disorders of health and the married state.
The calamities of modern marriage are strikingly illuminated in the
following psychologically interesting account given by the alienist
Heinrich Laehr (“Concerning Insanity and Lunatic Asylums,” p. 44 _et
seq._; Halle, 1852):
“How, as a matter of fact, do marriages come about? In heaven
certainly a very small number indeed, if by that phrase we understand
marriages undertaken with the full understanding of the nature of the
sacrifice involved, under the impulsion of an inner necessity, and
based upon deep mutual inclination founded upon self-respect and
respect for each other; in social circles, and not in heaven, on the
other hand, the majority of marriages are made. The question upon
which ultimately so many marriages depend is, what each will gain by
it, whilst inner sensations and mutual liking are regarded as
subordinate matters.... A man is fully informed about such matters in
early years; a woman is full of dark perceptions, uncertain as to what
she is to receive and what she is to give. She is naturally impelled
by her sense of inward weakness to yield to anyone more powerful than
herself, and, in the intoxication of sensual excitement, under
conditions in which both, in order to please, tend to show the best
side only to each other, she is far less able than man to weigh
beforehand the significance of such a step. Later, indeed, when, in
the trodden path of marriage, the current of love runs more slowly,
her eyes are opened, naked reality takes the place of the pictures of
imagination, which formerly caused self-deception, and what appeared
to be love, but was not love, takes flight for ever. What has not been
hidden under the name of love! It conceals the pretence of egoistic
impulses, vanity it may be, the life of pleasure, avarice, indolence;
and what a number of marriages are entered into on the part of the
woman in order to escape from the oppression of repugnant domestic
conditions, because the imagined future appears to them more pleasant
in contrast with the actual present.
“There are in the course of marriage so many periods of misunderstood
depression, sadness, trouble; and mankind so readily forgets the
golden rule, that these periods have to be got through by means of
mutual aid, and that in married life husband and wife should do all
that is possible to help one another onwards, and not to thrust one
another back--so easily is this forgotten, that only too readily the
mirth and gladness with which married life was begun vanish away. The
intense pain which attacks us with violence, but only at long
intervals, has a far less depressing influence on our organism than
much less severe, but frequently repeated, emotional disturbances,
especially such as arise out of the wretchedness of life. They give
rise in us to irritability of the nervous system, by which
sensitiveness is increased; and repeated misunderstandings in married
life soon make both husband and wife feel that marriage is rather a
burden than a joy.”
That women as well as men recognize the danger to love entailed by
marriage is shown by Frieda von Bülow in “Einsame Frauen,” pp. 93, 94
(1897):
“During this period I have often considered the question of such
continued life in common. Is it not inevitable that this unceasing,
intimate association must always give rise to mutual hatred? Husband
and wife learn to know one another through and through. The veil of
white lies which plays so important a part in ordinary social
intercourse is here impossible. The characters are seen naked in all
their weakness, all their incapacity for love, all their vanity, all
their egoism. In such circumstances, phrases intended to conceal
appear simply untruths, and instead of producing illusion they repel.
Just as in the first awakening of love, all the powers of the soul are
directed towards the discovery of the excellences of the beloved one,
so here the soul is for ever upon a voyage of discovery seeking for
faults. In both cases alike, a sufficiency of that which one seeks is
found.”
The poets also give us an insight into the depths of the eternal
contradiction between love and marriage. Who does not know the saying of
the idealistic and optimistic Schiller: “Mit dem Gürtel, mit dem
Schleier reisst der schöne Wahn entzwei”--“With the girdle, with the
veil (of marriage), the beautiful illusion is torn to pieces”? Consider,
also, the horribly clear characterization of the pessimistic Byron (in
“Don Juan,” canto iii., stanzas 5-8):
V.
“’Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That love and marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime.
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine--
A sad, sour, sober beverage--by time
Is sharpen’d from its high, celestial flavour,
Down to a very homely household savour.
VI.
“There’s something of antipathy, as ’twere,
Between their present and their future state;
A kind of flattery that’s hardly fair
Is used until the truth arrives too late--
Yet what can people do, except despair?
The same things change their names at such a rate;
For instance--passion in a lover’s glorious,
But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.
VII.
“Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;
They sometimes also get a little tired
(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond;
The same things cannot always be admired,
Yet ’tis “so nominated in the bond,”
That both are tied till one shall have expired.
Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning
Our days, and put one’s servants into mourning.
VIII.
“There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,
Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis;
Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages;
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?”
It is significant that those who most praise marriage are young people
who do not know marriage from experience, but have failed to find true
happiness in celibacy. We think of the words of Socrates, that it is a
matter of indifference whether a man marries or does not marry, for in
either case he will regret it.
Our own time is certainly characterized by hostility to marriage. It is
the =form= of modern marriage which frightens most people; the
compulsion which has actually been rendered more stringent by the new
Civil Code of 1900. Modern individualism draws back from the undeniable
=loss of freedom= which legal marriage entails. The shadow which,
according to a saying of E. Dühring, indissoluble marriage has thrown
upon love and upon the nobler aspects of the sexual life, is darker
to-day than ever before.
Hence the growing disinclination to marry, which, significantly enough,
is increasingly manifest upon the part of women; hence, above all, the
=extraordinary increase in divorce=.
According to a statement in the _Vossische Zeitung_ (No. 137, March 22,
1906), the number of divorces in Germany underwent a =marked= increase
in the year 1904. In that year there were 10,882 divorces; in 1903,
9,932; in 1902, 9,074; thus in the year 1904 there was an increase of
590, or 9·6 per cent.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, a marked increase in the
number of divorces was already discernible. For instance, in the years
1894-1899 the number rose from 7,502 to 9,433. It was at that time
believed that the increase depended upon the fact that in most of the
countries of the German Confederation the new Civil Code made divorce
more difficult, and that for this reason as many people as possible were
seeking divorce before the new Code came into action. It is true that
the number of divorces diminished after the Civil Code passed into
operation. In the year 1900 the divorces numbered 7,922, and in the year
1901, 7,892. =Since then, however, there has once more been a marked
increase=, so that =the figure for the year 1904 is 2,990 in excess of
that for the year 1901, an increase of 38 per cent=. This increase is
principally to be referred to the fact that the so-called =relative
grounds for divorce=, enumerated in § 1568 of the Civil Code,[182]
appear to have justified a great number of demands for divorce. The
marked extensibility of the sections of this paragraph leaves the judge
very wide discretion in its application.
To what an extent the increase in the number of divorces influences the
existing marriages is seen as soon as we compare the number of divorces
with the number of marriages. It appears that in the years 1900 and
1901, for every 10,000 marriages, there were 8·1 divorces; in 1902, 9·3
divorces; in 1903, 10·1 divorces; and in 1904, 11·1 divorces. Thus in
the year 1904, there were 3 more divorces per 10,000 marriages than in
the year 1901.
I have already referred to the enormous importance of divorce in
relation to the recognition on the part of the State of the temporary
character of every marriage, whereby, in principle, free love, which is
no more than a temporary marriage, receives a civil justification, and
is legitimized. This fact stands out still more clearly when we
recognize the legal possibility of =repeated= divorces on the part of
one and the same person. Numerous actual examples of this can be given.
Thus a well-known author was divorced no less than =four= times, and of
his four wives one, on her side, had been divorced by other men. Two
divorces on both sides are by no means rare. If we consider the matter
openly and unemotionally, it must be admitted that this is nothing else
than the much-opposed “free love,” the bugbear of all honest
Philistines, =a free love which has already received the official
sanction of the State=.
When four or five divorces are possible to the same individual by
official decree, when, that is to say, this procedure has received civil
sanction, the number may for theoretical purposes be multiplied at
discretion.
He who knows human nature, he who knows that the consciousness of
freedom in mature human beings--and only such should enter upon
marriage--strengthens and confirms the =consciousness of duty=--such a
one need not fear the introduction of free marriage. On the contrary, it
may be assumed that divorces would be far less common than they are in
the case of coercive marriage.
According to the Civil Code, divorces are obtainable on the ground of
adultery, hazard to life, malicious abandonment, ill-treatment, mental
disorder, legally punishable offences, dishonourable and immoral
conduct, serious disregard of conjugal duties. As we saw, the last
clause empowered the judge in difficult cases, by a humane, reasonable
interpretation of the idea “disregard of conjugal duties,” to pronounce
a divorce. It is obvious that in every divorce the interests of the
=children= of the marriage (if any) must be especially safeguarded.
Marriage in France, to which hitherto the clauses of the Code Napoléon,
analogous to those of our Civil Code, have been applicable, is said to
have recently undergone reform, both in respect of moral and of legal
rights. In Paris there has been constituted a standing “Committee of
Marriage Reform,” composed of well-known authors, jurists, and women,
among the number being Pierre Louys, Marcel Prevost, Judge Magnaud,
Octave Mirbeau, Maeterlinck, Henri Bataille, Henri Coulon, and Poincaré.
In an address to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate by the President
of this Committee, Henri Coulon, in which he gives the reasons for
desiring a change in the present marriage laws,[183] he says:
“It would be childish to disguise the fact that the institution of
marriage has entered upon a critical phase; philosophers and novelists
lay odds on the complete disappearance of the institution. In this,
perhaps, they go too far. But it is none the less true that it is a
matter of profound interest and importance to reform the institution
of marriage. Granted this, how shall we begin?
“The entrance into marriage must be made as easy as possible; in this
way the number of marriages which are based upon love will rapidly
increase. Then, the married pair must have =equal rights, equal
duties=, and =equal responsibilities=; in this way marriage will
become more practical and less immoral than it is at present.
Finally--and this is the most important of all--it is necessary =to
facilitate divorce=. Divorce will then become the worthy separation of
two thinking beings, and will no longer be the disgusting comedy that
it is at the present day.
“For those determined to live apart, for those whose morals are loose,
indissoluble marriage itself is no longer a bond. Absolute freedom is
no hindrance to conjugal fidelity and constancy; on the contrary,
=freedom is the cause of constancy=.
“Divorce is not happiness, but it is a help towards happiness. For two
human beings who hate one another to continue to live together is a
much greater evil than divorce. Certainly it would be preferable if
husband and wife could continue to love one another as they did during
the first days of their married life; that they should love their
children and be honoured by them. But since humanity is not free from
faults and vices, this does not always happen. Divorce, as we wish for
it, makes marriage worthier and more profound. Such marriages will be
better suited to the new social movements and to the modern spirit.
“=The civil equality of the two sexes must be a fundamental principle
of modern law.= The French Civil Code already recognizes for both
sexes equal rights in some respects; but the wife still loses a
certain portion of her rights in the moment that she marries. She is
in fact rendered incapable of business. The contrast between the
incapacity for business of the married woman and the capacity for
business of the unmarried is one of the characteristic traits of our
legislation.
“Divorce, as it now exists, contradicts the indissolubility of the
marriage bond demanded by the Church. Adultery should only be regarded
as a ground for divorce, and should not exonerate the murderer who
kills his adulterous wife or her accomplice.
“We demand the abolition of the punishment for adultery, because
prosecutions of this character arise either from revengeful feelings
or from litigiousness.”
Justice demands that with this facilitation of divorce, as advocated in
the French scheme of marriage reform, there should be associated
=increased= security for the care of the dependent wife and children
after divorce. In this connexion, =conjugal responsibility= is merely a
part of =sexual responsibility= in general. If two independent, free
individuals have sexual relations one with the other, in or out of
marriage, they thereby both undertake in respect of their =own persons=
and of all possible =offspring=, the duty and the responsibility which
are the outcome of a natural instinctive feeling, namely, “the sense of
sexual responsibility.” This must dominate the entire sexual life of
every human being, as a categorical imperative. In this is to be found
the necessary ethical counterpoise to the activity of boundless sexual
egoism.
For the love of the future and its social regulation, the three
following conditions appear to me to be determinative; they form a part
also of the French programme of marriage reform:
1. =Equal rights, equal duties, equal responsibilities on the part of
husband and wife.=
2. =Facilitation of divorce.=
3. =Individual freedom to be regarded as preferable to coercion. Freedom
best promotes constancy in love.=[184]
If these principles were strictly carried out in practical life, without
doubt, and as a matter of absolute certainty, the number of divorces
would not increase, but would diminish, and we should sooner witness the
realization of the ideal of true marriage, as the lifelong union of two
free personalities, fully conscious of their duties and their rights.
The high ethical and social significance of family life will ever
continue, even under the freest love, by which, as I must again and
again insist, I do not understand unrestricted and continually changing
extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. Against this the gravest
considerations must be urged. What “free love” is, is already apparent
from the preceding exposition, but in the next chapter the subject will
be more thoroughly discussed.
APPENDIX
ONE HUNDRED TYPICAL MARRIAGES AND SOME CHARACTERISTIC PICTURES OF THE
MARRIED STATE, AFTER GROSS-HOFFINGER
In a long-forgotten, but very interesting, book by Dr. Anton J.
Gross-Hoffinger, entitled “The Fate of Women, and Prostitution in
Relation to the Principle of the Indissolubility of Catholic Marriage,
and especially in Relation to the Laws of Austria and the Philosophy of
our Time,”[185] we find a collection, equally interesting to
psychologists and to students of human character, to the physician, the
jurist, and the sociologist, of a hundred typical marriages, and also a
more detailed description of the course of a few marriages. These
sketches deserve to be preserved from oblivion, because they will serve
equally well as an example of marriages of our time.
In the first place, the author discusses the principal difficulties of
marriage. He then asks whether, in view of the smallness of the number
of those comparatively happy persons who have found it possible to live
a legal and at the same time a natural family life, the existing
marriage laws, religious ideas, and social customs have attained their
aim, whether they give rise, as a general rule, to happy and fruitful,
honourable and blessed unions. The author hesitated long before
presenting for the first time “to the Catholic world the picture of the
actual state of marriages in that world, a picture based upon numerous
experiences and observations.” He investigated one hundred marriages of
persons belonging to the most diverse classes, without selection, as
they came under his observation by chance; then, again, another hundred,
and once again a third hundred. Always the results were equally sad;
always the ratio between happy and unhappy marriages was the same. The
result of his investigations was, he states:
“Although I have earnestly sought for happy marriages, my search has
to this extent been vain, that I have never been able to satisfy
myself that =happy= marriages are anything but =extremely isolated
exceptions to the general rule=.”
In his view this is not the unhappy result of erroneous observation, but
depends upon exact observation during a long series of years, and in
conditions which brought him into intimate relationship with numbers of
persons in all classes of society.
Thus, after a long, difficult, and careful investigation into a
=hundred= marriages among persons of different classes, he obtained the
following results, here briefly summarized:
Upper Classes.
1. The marriage not unhappy, wife suffering from disorder arousing
suspicion of syphilis; conjugal fidelity of the husband prior to the
occurrence of this illness doubtful. Children sickly.
2. Both parties to the marriage happy =in advanced age=, after the
husband had lived freely.
3. Both parties happy =in advanced age=--childless.
4. Husband impotent, wife unhappy.
5. Husband an old man, wife =unfaithful=.
6. Husband and wife apparently happy--children scrofulous.
7. The husband removed from home by circumstances, wife unfaithful.
8. Both parties unhappy, the husband a libertine.
9. Both parties apparently content in advanced age.
10. Husband a dissolute old libertine, wife unhappy, but resigned--no
children.
11. Condition precisely similar to No. 10.
12. A happy mésalliance.
13. The husband phlegmatically happy, wife dissolute, children ill,
mother sickly.
14. Husband dissipated, wife resigned. Husband and wife have come to
an understanding.
15. Husband a libertine, wife a Messalina. Both parties syphilitic.
Children sickly.
16. Both parties unhealthy and miserable. Husband dissipated, coarse.
Wife ill, in a decline.
17. Husband a coarse libertine, wife separated from him and unhappy.
Upper-Middle Classes.
18. Both parties unhappy. Husband impotent. Wife, who is elderly, a
Messalina. Marriage childless and unceasingly stormy.
19. Both parties tolerably happy, owing to gentleness and
good-heartedness. Husband a sensualist and unfaithful. Wife faithful,
ailing.
20. Both parties unhappy. Incessant domestic warfare in the house.
21. Phlegmatic rich husband, poor suffering wife--marriage
childless--happily, as it seems.
22. Both parties in very advanced age, apparently happy. Their past
doubtful. Scrofulous children.
23. Childless marriage between a former high-class mistress and a
dissolute man.
24. An apparently happy marriage between a still young husband and an
elderly wife. The former compensates himself secretly.
25. Unhappy marriage. Both parties unsatisfied. Husband dissolute.
Wife resigned.
26. Happy marriage.
27. Doubtfully happy marriage.
28. Extremely unhappy marriage. Husband a libertine, unprincipled;
wife half insane; children syphilitic.
29. Unhappy marriage, the husband formerly somewhat fickle, the wife
unforgiving.
30. =Happy marriage.= Both parties immoral, dissolute; the wife
carries on secret prostitution with the knowledge of the husband, who
on his side keeps several mistresses. They take matters
philosophically!
31. The husband a libertine and seducer by profession, the wife
separated from him.
32. Happy marriage. The husband inclined to gallantry, without being
absolutely dissolute. Wife gentle, patient, fond of her husband, and
faithful.
33. The husband ill as the result of dissipation, the wife frivolous.
Indifferent marriage.
34. The husband made happy by means of his wife’s money, but neglects
her; she is very ill, wasting away. Childless marriage.
35. Husband impotent. Wife, with knowledge of her husband, on intimate
terms with a friend of the family. In its way a happy marriage.
36. Dissolute husband, dissolute wife, both shameless and
=free-thinking=--in mutual indifference they =seem= fairly happy.
37. Husband old and sickly, a worn-out libertine. The wife on intimate
terms with a friend of the house. =Happy marriage!=
38. Unhappy marriage. Husband phlegmatic, wife extremely passionate
and voluptuous.
39. Unhappy marriage. A worthless speculator who led astray the wife
of a wealthy man and then deserted her. Childless.
40. Husband debilitated by excesses; wife immoral. =Happy marriage!=
41. Husband debilitated by excesses; wife patient. =Happy marriage!=
42. A similar state of affairs.
43. Happy marriage. Both parties still very young, untried.
44. Happy marriage. Husband phlegmatic--wife faithful.
45. Husband debilitated by excesses, wife rich. At the moment, a happy
marriage.
Professional and Trading Classes.
46. Happy marriage. The husband phlegmatic and =seldom= unfaithful;
wife forbearing, good, and faithful.
47. Happy marriage. Both parties rich and young. Husband, without his
wife’s knowledge, loves the joys of Venus.
48. Unhappy marriage. An enforced marriage of prudence. The husband
lives with a concubine, wife separated from him.
49. Unhappy marriage. Poverty, jealousy, and childlessness.
50. Happy marriage, owing to the forbearance and consideration of the
wife towards the sullen, irascible husband.
51. Unhappy marriage. Husband lives happily with a concubine, the wife
unhappily with a false friend.
52. Unhappy marriage. Phlegmatic husband, immoral wife, continuous
quarrelling.
53. Unhappy marriage. The husband henpecked, impotent. The wife
masterful, quarrelsome, and ill-tempered.
54. Husband and wife have separated.
55. Happy marriage. The husband is good-humoured and deceived; the
wife a sensual libertine; children sickly; wife incurably ill.
56. Happy marriage. The husband a worn-out debauchee, the wife a
worn-out prostitute. Both incurably ill, for the same reason.
57. Happy marriage, happy from necessity and phlegm.
58. Happy marriage. The husband, a swindler, does everything possible
for those dependent on him. The wife, formerly a prostitute, is happy
in consequence of his care.
59. A happy, artistic marriage. Happy on account of mutual laxity and
accommodation.
60. Similar circumstances.
61. Happy marriage. The husband conceals his diversions with success.
Wife faithful and always gentle.
62. Unhappy marriage. Light conduct on both sides, with usual results.
63. Happy marriage. The conjugal fidelity of the husband not above
suspicion.
64. }
} Similar circumstances.
65. }
66. Unhappy marriage. A marriage of prudence. The husband set himself
up with his wife’s money, but spends it on light women; the wife
revenges herself by boundless ill-temper.
67. Unhappy marriage. Marriage of prudence. The young husband settled
in business on the money of his elderly wife; she nags, and he is
drinking himself to death.
68. Marriage happy owing to =avarice= on both sides.
69. Marriage compulsorily happy owing to =poverty= on both sides.
70. Happy marriage! Husband a drunkard. Wife avaricious. Childless.
71. Husband and wife are separated; the husband abandoned his wife to
poverty and prostitution.
72. Unhappy marriage. Husband impotent, wife lustful. Continued
unhappiness.
73. Young married pair; wife mistress of a wealthy Jew, who supports
the family.
74. Unhappy marriage. Husband dissolute, no longer cares for his wife;
the latter incurably ill; children syphilitic.
75. Unhappy marriage. Both parties sickly and poor.
76. A marriage of speculation. Husband has sold his wife three times
to different wealthy men; in this way he makes his living.
77. Immoral marriage. The husband lives by a swindling industry. The
wife lives on a pension given by one whose mistress she formerly
was--children brought up to prostitution.
78. Easy-going marriage. Husband formerly a domestic servant, now in
business; wife formerly a prostitute who had saved money. Childless.
79. Happy marriage, between a fool and a clever woman.
80. Unhappy marriage. The husband dislikes his wife, is plagued to
death by her; she brought the property into the house.
81. Dissipated husband, dissipated wife, separated from one another.
The children scrofulous.
82. Impotent husband, licentious wife, sickly children; angry and
stormy scenes.
83. Worn-out libertine, young wife; the parties are not unhappy, owing
to affluence and freedom from cares.
84. Artistic marriage. Wife the mistress of a great man. The household
goes on comfortably.
Lower Classes.
85. Dissolute husband. Formerly well-to-do, owing to his wife’s dowry,
now reduced with her to beggary. Living by a trifling commission
business. Wife sickly. Children dead.
86. Marriage happy, in consequence of great poverty.
87. A procurer’s family.
88. =Happy marriage.= Husband a thief, wife a prostitute.
89. The marriage unhappy in consequence of poverty.
90. Unhappy marriage. The husband a drinker, the wife working amid
trouble and poverty.
91. Unhappy marriage. Poverty, misunderstanding, jealousy, and
illness.
92. A family of servants. Wife and daughter at the disposal of the
master.
93. Unhappy marriage. Frequent brawls. Mutual mistrust, hatred, and
contempt.
94. Unhappy marriage. Upright husband deceived by his wife, and, in
consequence of great poverty, is unable to control her.
95. Unhappy marriage. Husband has run away.
96. Immoral marriage. Husband, wife, and children live on the wages of
unchastity.
97. }
}
98. }Miserable marriages, which ended in the poor-house.
}
99. }
100. A happy pair, who had endured all the severe trials of life, had
forgiven each other everything, and never abandoned one another, a
=virtuous= marriage in the noblest sense.
Thus, among these hundred marriages there were:
Unhappy, about 48
Indifferent 36
Unquestionably happy 15
Virtuous 1
Virtuous and orthodox --
Further, among these hundred marriages there were:
Intentionally immoral 14
Dissolute and libertine 51
Altogether above suspicion ?
Further:
Wives who were ill owing to the husband’s fault 30
Wives who were ill not owing to the husband’s fault 30
Wives who were unhappy, and had themselves to
blame for it 12
Among these hundred marriages only one was happy owing to mutual
faithfulness; all the other slightly happy marriages, if one may call
them so, were so only because the wife did not disturb herself with
regard to the question of her husband’s faithfulness.
From these statistics Gross-Hoffinger draws the following conclusions:
1. About =one-half= of all marriages are =absolutely unhappy=.
2. Much more than one-half of all marriages are obviously
=demoralized=.
3. The morality of the remaining smaller moiety is preserved only by
avoiding questions regarding the husband’s faithfulness.
4. Fifteen per cent. of all marriages live on the earnings of
professional unchastity and procurement.
5. The number of orthodox marriages which are entirely above every
suspicion of marital infidelity (assuming the existence of complete
sexual potency) is in the eyes of every reasonable man, who understands
the demands which Nature makes, and the violence of those demands,
=equivalent to nil=. Hence the =ecclesiastical= purpose of marriage is
=generally=, =fundamentally=, and =completely evaded=.
“No =compulsion=,” thus concludes the author, “is more unnatural than
that of the Catholic (Protestant, Jewish, Greek Orthodox) religion, by
which is prescribed a compulsory continuance of marriage, with its
fantastic code and ridiculous conjugal duties and rights.
“First of all, this compulsion--this sacrament of marriage--marriage
which is nothing, can be nothing, =according to nature= should be
nothing, but =a free union and a civil arrangement=--results in the
=avoidance of marriage=.
“Secondly, it results that in marriage the purposes of marriage are
not and cannot be completely fulfilled.
“Thirdly, that marriage has ceased to be the natural marriage which it
should be, and has become merely a business, a speculation, or a
hospital for invalids.”
In illustration of this proposition, Gross-Hoffinger finally describes
from life twenty-four marriages, some of which, being especially
interesting, we will here record.
1.
Countess B., owing to unavoidable difficulties, was unable to contract
a suitable marriage, and attained the age of thirty whilst still
unmarried. The result of this was she gave herself to a servant,
consequently became infected, and died of syphilis some months after
she had, finally, married. Her husband was left with an unhappy
memorial of this brief marriage.
2.
Count C., a man of high rank, lost his beloved wife through death.
Circumstances made it impossible for him to marry again. He was afraid
of acquiring venereal disorders, and therefore abstained from natural
connexion. Through lack of natural sexual gratification his sexual
impulse became perverse, and he took to the practice of Greek love.
3.
Prince D., young, impotent, concluded a marriage of convenience with a
beautiful, very passionate lady, who, on account of her husband’s
impotence, compensated herself with domestic servants, members of her
retinue, and cavalry soldiers, and gave birth in these conditions to
several children, which inherited the title of the putative father. In
such circumstances the marriage has been very unhappy, but necessity
compels the husband to bear his fate with patience.
4.
Count E., in other respects a man of fine character, made a marriage
of convenience with a lady of good family, who, however, was not in a
position to make him happy. From natural nobility of character, he was
unwilling to distress his unhappy wife by entering openly into
relations with a concubine, and therefore sought sexual gratification
with prostitutes. He became infected, and transmitted the illness to
his wife, who became seriously ill, and gave birth to diseased
children. Although the poor sufferer is unaware of the origin of her
troubles, and bears them with patience; although her husband takes all
possible care of her, and does his best to bring about the restoration
of her health; the marriage, owing to the uneasy conscience of the
husband and the physical suffering of the wife, is obviously a very
unhappy one.
5.
Baron F., a man of wide influence, in youth a libertine--frivolous,
and of an emotional disposition, insusceptible to finer feelings,
contracted successively four marriages of convenience, which in all
cases terminated in the death of the wife. There is reason to believe
that the unceasing libertinism and unscrupulous conduct of the husband
had shortened the life of his wives--and this is all the more probable
because all the Baron’s children are sickly and scrofulous.
6.
Count G., dissipated libertine, wasted his property in wild
extravagance, and compelled his wife to live apart from him, whilst he
spent enormous sums on professional singers and dancers and common
prostitutes. Being ruined as completely financially as physically, he
was despised by persons of all classes, persecuted by his creditors,
and absolutely detested by his wife. Although his pleasures consist
chiefly in reminiscences, he still devotes enormous sums to them, the
money being obtained by a continued increase in his debts.
7.
Count H. has been married for many years, but lives on the most
unpleasant terms with his wife, and devotes his spare time to the
society of prostitutes. The scum of the street form his favourite
associates; but his voluptuous adventures carry him also into family
life, and no respectable middle-class wife or girl, however innocent,
is safe from his advances, which are all the more incredible because
he is quite an old man and completely impotent. He uses all possible
means to make the woman of his choice compliant--presents, promises,
threats.
8.
Dr. S., husband of an immoral wife, public official, libertine,
philosopher, enjoying a small secured income. Lives with his wife on a
footing which permits both parties unlimited freedom. The worthy
couple devote their whole energies to earning money by their industry,
in part by secret prostitution on the part of the wife, in part by
direct and indirect procurement by the holding of piquant evening
parties for youthful members of the aristocracy. The family has an
extraordinary vogue. Persons of high position are engaged in
confidential intercourse with them; young girls of the better classes
gladly attend their soirées, since there they meet the élite of the
young aristocracy, rich Jews, and officers. This interesting pair get
through an almost incredible amount of money; they keep a magnificent
carriage, they have a country house, a valuable collection of
pictures, etc. It is only from their servants that both of them
receive little respect, since the male portion of the household
subserve the lustful desires of the wife, the female domestics those
of the husband, and all must be initiated into the secrets of the
household industry.
9.
Dr. U. was till recently an old bachelor, who had never wished to
share his property with a wife and children, and found it much cheaper
and more agreeable to impregnate servant-girls and other neglected
characters than to keep a mistress, or to seek his pleasures in the
street. Finally, becoming infirm at sixty-two years of age, and
needing nursing, on account of an occasional gouty swelling of the
leg, he discovered that it was not good for man to be alone. Having
rank and wealth, it would have been easy for him to find a young and
pretty girl who, under the title of wife, would have undertaken to
play the part of sick nurse. But the old practitioner knew too well
the value of what he had to offer to throw himself away on a poor
girl. He considered that it would be reasonable to choose such a
partner that he would not be obliged to divide his income, and to find
some one to take care of him in his old age who would cost him nothing
at all, but would rather provide for her own needs. He thought less,
therefore, of youth than of property, less of beauty than of thrifty
habits; and finally found an old maid, a woman with some property,
who, on account of a somewhat unattractive exterior, had failed to
obtain a husband. Now one can see the prudent husband, who is as
faithful to his wife as the gout is faithful to him, walking from time
to time in the street on the arm of his life companion, whose aspect
is somewhat discontented. She still wears the same clothes which she
wore before her marriage, and which have a sufficiently shabby
appearance, but she endures her lot with patience, because she is now
greeted as “gnädige Frau,” and people kiss her hand, as they did not
do formerly.
10.
Count J., a man of unblemished character, lived for some time a happy
married life. The increasing age of the wife, however, associated with
the exceptional constitution of the Count, whose youth seemed
remarkably enduring, led to scenes of jealousy, which embittered the
life of both. We can hardly suppose that this jealousy is altogether
unfounded; but surely it is a matter for regret that two human beings
of distinctly noble character should by marriage be exposed to
lifelong unhappiness.
11.
Herr von K., a young merchant in the wholesale trade, is married to
the daughter of a man of position, and the wife by a rich dowry helped
to found her husband’s fortunes; hence she enjoys the distinction over
other wives that her husband pretends a great tenderness for her, and
conceals his indiscretions with the greatest possible care. For this
reason, she has always been devoted to him; she regards him as the
example for all other husbands, as a true phenomenon in the midst of
an utterly depraved world of immoral men. And as an actual fact, if
one sees this man, how he lives in appearance only for his business,
with what delicate modesty he avoids any conversation about loose
women, if one hears him zealously preach against husbands who deceive
their wives, how inconceivable it is to him that a man should find any
pleasure in immoral women--one would be willing to swear that he is
everything that his wife enthusiastically describes him to be. But
some wags amongst his acquaintances, by taking incredible pains,
discovered that this honourable merchant had no less than =seven
mistresses=, two of whom belonged to the class of prostitutes, two to
the class of grisettes; the remaining three had been decent
middle-class women. To these last he presented himself under various
names and in the most diverse forms--now as attaché to an embassy, now
as an officer, now as a journeyman mechanic. To all these latter
mistresses he had promised marriage, and by a succession of presents,
oaths, and lies, he had in each case attained his end, and thereafter
abandoned them without remorse to the consequences of the adventure,
whilst he himself set out to seek in a fresh quarter of the town new
sacrifices for the altar of his lusts. Since he never had anything to
do with known prostitutes and procuresses, but by personal pains
provided the materials for his pleasures, he succeeded both as a
merchant and as a husband in preserving the reputation of a man free
from illicit passion and deserving of all confidence.
12.
Major W., a distinguished officer, a man of honour in every respect,
had in youth married a chambermaid, naturally, as one can imagine,
from pure inclination. But the marriage remained barren, because the
wife suffered from organic troubles; and soon her sexual powers were
completely extinguished. Whilst the husband still remained virile, the
wife was already an old woman, suffering from spasmodic and other
affections, surrounded always by medicine-bottles and medical
appliances, always ill-humoured and nagging, a true torment for the
good-natured and amiable husband. The latter bears with Christian
patience and inexhaustible love the ill-humour of his wife; but Nature
is less pliable than his kind heart: his conjugal tenderness
diminishes, and his ardent temperament seeks other outlets for the
gratification of his natural sexual desires. The sick wife notices
this coolness, and revenges herself by a refined cruelty. She knows
that sulkiness on her part makes him ill and miserable; she therefore
afflicts him with coldness of manner, and by jealousy and ill-temper
she makes his life a hell. There occur horrible scenes of domestic
brawling, which more than once have led the husband to attempt to end
his troubles by suicide. He suffers in a threefold fashion: by the
continued irritation of his healthy natural impulse, by the illnesses
he contracts in gratifying that impulse, and by the sorrows of his
really loved wife. He imposes upon himself a voluntary celibacy in
order that he may not make her ill; but this sacrifice does not
suffice, it does not make his wife gentler towards him. She demands
from him, tacitly, all the ardency of the bridegroom; there is no
rescue possible from this inferno. The husband surrenders himself to a
quiet despair. He is faithful in his vocation; he lives only for the
wife, who torments him continually. The neighbours see a very
unedifying example of an extremely unhappy marriage, originally
contracted as a pure love match, and none the less entailing martyrdom
alike on husband and wife.
NOTE.--That in Vienna the conjugal conditions so graphically described
in the above extracts are still much the same as formerly, and that
marriage needs and marriage lies are there exceptionally painful is
shown by the foundation in Vienna of a “Society for Marriage Reform,”
which sent to the Assembly of German Jurists, meeting at Kiel in the
beginning of September, 1906, the telegraphic request that they would
undertake a revision of Austrian marriage law, since hitherto no cure
had been found for unhappy marriage in Austria, no divorce was possible,
and those who had obtained a judicial separation could, according to
Canon Law, sue one another on account of adultery (_cf._ _Neue Freie
Presse_, No. 15108, September 13, 1906). It is hardly credible, but,
according to a report in the _Berlin Aerzte-Correspondenz_, 1907, No. 8,
it is true, that the Medical Court of Honour for the town of Berlin and
the province of Brandenburg, in the year of our Lord 1906, punished
physicians on the ground of adultery!
[155] P. Näcke, one of the most trustworthy authorities on sexual
anthropology, writes as follows: “That in ancient times, before
monogamy, there was polygamy, or even a state resembling promiscuity,
=is very probable= (Westermarck notwithstanding), =and can, in fact,
be assumed a priori=” (“Einiges zur Frauenfrage und zur sexuellen
Abstinenz”--“A Contribution to the Woman’s Question and to the Problem
of Sexual Abstinence”), published in the _Archiv f.
Kriminalanthropologie_, vol. xiv., p. 52 (Hans Gross, 1903). _Cf._
also Lohsing’s “Zustimmung zur Annahme einer ursprünglichen
Promiscuität,” _ibid._, vol. xvi., p. 332.
The question of sexual promiscuity has recently been further
considered by P. Näcke (“Earliest Beginnings of Human Society,” in
_Die Umschau_ of August 17, 1907). He believes that the state of pure
promiscuity lasted a short time only, and gave place to certain nuclei
of family structure, a kind of semi-promiscuity, which, prior to the
complete development of the family union, lasted much longer than the
state of pure promiscuity. Still, these earliest families were merely
temporary, and only later became fixed and permanent. This assumption,
however, does not affect the fact of a primordial pure promiscuity.
Näcke himself also recognizes promiscuity as the natural state of
primitive man.
[156] H. Schurtz, “Altersklassen und Männerbünde: eine Darstellung der
Grundformen der Gesellschaft”--“Age Classes and Associations of Men: a
Demonstration of the Fundamental Forms of Society,” p. 176 (Berlin,
1902).
[157] N. Melnikow, “The Buryats of the District of Irkutsk,” published
in the Transactions of the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology,
and Primeval History, p. 440 (1899).
[158] Marco Polo, translated by Yule, 2nd edition, vol. ii., pp. 38,
39 (London, 1875).
[159] _Cf._ my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia
Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 165-169.
[160] _Cf._, regarding group-marriage, the writings of Joseph Kehler,
more particularly “Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe”--“The Primitive History
of Marriage” (Stuttgart, 1897); “Rechtsphilosophie und
Naturrecht”--“The Philosophy of Law and Natural Right,” published in
Holtzendorff-Kohler’s “Encyklopädie der Rechtswissenschaft,” pp. 27-36
(Leipzig, 1902); “Die Gruppenehe”--“Group-Marriage,” in “Aus Kultur
und Leben,” pp. 22-29 (Berlin, 1904); finally the chapter on
“Group-Marriage” by Schurtz (_op. cit._). [A quite modern instance of
group-marriage was the Oneida community, “a league of two hundred
persons to regard their children as ‘common.’” For an account of the
Oneida experiment see Noyes, “A History of American
Socialisms.”--TRANSLATOR.]
[161] J. J. Bachofen, “Das Mutterrecht”--“Matriarchy” (Stuttgart,
1861).
[162] Ludwig Stein, “Die Anfänge der Kultur”--“The Beginnings of
Civilization”--pp. 106, 107.
[163] Eduard von Mayer, “Die Lebensgesetze der Kultur”--“The Vital
Laws of Civilization”--p. 210.
[164] G. F. W. Hegel, “Fundamental Outlines of the Philosophy of Law,
or Natural Rights and Political Science in Outline,” edited by Eduard
Gans, second edition, p. 218 (Berlin, 1840).
[165] That is to say, it is not sufficient to replace the father-right
by the mother-right, as, for example, Ruth Bré demands (“The Children
of the State, or the Mother-Right?” Leipzig, 1904).
[166] There is a most apposite remark in one of George Meredith’s
novels. He imagines that an Oriental vizier (from a Mohammedan
country) is visiting our “Christian” capital, and late one evening,
after a dinner-party at a distinguished house, walks homeward by way
of Piccadilly. He asks, and is told, who are the numerous ladies
walking the streets at that late hour. “_I perceive_” said the vizier,
“_that monogamic society has a decent visage and a hideous
rear_.”--TRANSLATOR.
[167] M. Nordau, “The Conventional Lies of our Civilization,” pp.
263-317 (Leipzig, 1884).
[168] Georg Hirth estimates the percentage of marriages of convenience
as even higher--viz., 90 per cent. _Cf._ his “Ways to Love,” p. 607.
[169] _Cf._ my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia
Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 165-174; vol. ii., pp. 190, 191, 208, 209,
363, 364.
[170] Schopenhauer’s Collected Works, edited by E. Grisebach, vol.
ii., p. 1337 (Leipzig, 1905).
[171] Ernest Stiedenroth, “Psychologie zur Erklärung der
Seelenerscheinungen,” pp. 224, 225 (Berlin, 1825).
[172] Max Nordau, “Conventional Lies,” p. 305.
[173] _Cf._ in this connexion the feuilleton of the _Vossische
Zeitung_, No. 286, June 17, 1904. Jean Paul, also, was an enthusiast
in theory and practice for such double love. He called it
“simultaneous love.” The idea of simultaneous love has also been
employed in a recently published French novel, “A la Merci de
l’Heure,” by Jean Tarbel (Paris, 1907). The heroine has need of two
lovers--a celebrated literary professor for head and heart, and in
addition, a young physician for the gratification of her sensual
needs. Contrariwise, Knut Hamsun, in “Pan,” and Guy de Maupassant in
“Notre Cœur,” describe the double love of a man for a woman of the
world and for a child of Nature.
[174] Friederich Schleiermacher, “Philosophic and Other Writings,”
vol. i., p. 473 (Berlin, 1846).
[175] _Cf._ Eduard von Hartmann, “Philosophie des Unbewussten,” p.
205. In a French collection--“L’Amour par les Grands Écrivains,” by
Julien Lemer, p. 14 (Paris, 1861)--we find the saying, “Ordinairement,
lorsqu’on se marie par amour, il vient ensuite de la haine; c’est que
j’ai vu de mes yeux” (“Ordinarily, when one marries for love, hate
takes its place. I have seen it with my own eyes”).
[176] _B. Z. am Mittag_, No. 210, September 7, 1906.
[177] “Annales d’Hygiène Publique,” 1900, p. 340.
[178] Elard H. Meyer, “Deutsche Volkskunde,” p. 166 (Strasburg, 1898).
[179] Ludwig Stein, “Der Sinn des Daseins”--“The Sense of Existence,”
p. 235 (Tübingen and Leipzig, 1904).
[180] H. Th. Buckle, “History of Civilization in England.”
[181] G. Schmoller, “Elements of General Political Economy,” vol. i.,
p. 250 (Leipzig, 1901).
[182] § 1568 runs: “A husband or wife can sue for divorce when the
wife or husband =by serious disregard of the duties entailed by
marriage=, or by dishonourable or immoral conduct, has brought about
so profound a disorder of the conjugal relationship that to the
offended party the continuation of the marriage appears impossible.
Gross ill-treatment is also to be regarded as a serious infringement
of these duties.” It is clear that the emphasized passage is capable
of manifold interpretations, and it thus compensates for the abolition
of the earlier grounds for divorce based upon incompatibility of
temper.
[183] Taken from the newspaper _Le Jour_, No. 337, July 6, 1906.
[184] Compare Browning’s lines, in “James Lee’s Wife”:
“How the light, light love, he has wings to fly
At suspicion of a bond.”--TRANSLATOR.
[185] “Die Schicksale der Frauen und die Prostitution im Zusammenhange
mit dem Prinzip der Unauflösbarkeit der katholischen Ehe und besonders
der österreichischen Gesetzgebung und der Philosophie des Zeitalters”
(Leipzig, 1847).
CHAPTER XI
FREE LOVE
“_The transformation of coercive marriage into a free and equal
marriage, one more closely approaching perfection, both naturally and
morally, can only be effected in conjunction with social arrangements
providing for the complete economic independence of woman, and giving
security for her material means of subsistence. Unless this
indispensable preliminary is fulfilled, the highest ideal of free
morality will be debased to the level of a gross caricature._”--E.
DÜHRING.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XI
Free love as a burning question of our time -- Definition -- Free love
not equivalent to extra-conjugal sexual intercourse -- Defamation of
free love and sanction of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse by the
coercive-marriage-morality -- The immoral duplex morality for man and
woman -- Its momentous influence upon the sexual corruption of the
present day -- Free love as the only source of help -- Actual
realization of free love among the proletariat -- Strengthening of the
sense of responsibility in consequence of free love.
History of free love in the nineteenth century -- William Godwin’s
fight against coercive marriage -- His free union with Mary
Woolstonecraft -- Shelley’s polemic against conventional sexual
morality -- John Ruskin on free love -- Goethe’s marriage of
conscience -- His “Wahlverwandtschaften” (“Elective Affinities”) --
The remarkable proposal for a temporary marriage in this romance --
Perhaps based upon a Japanese custom -- Malayan temporary marriage --
Influence of Schlegel’s “Lucinde” -- Karoline’s marriage wanderings --
Free love in Jena and Berlin -- Communistic-socialistic ideas
regarding free love -- Rétif de la Bretonne, Saint-Simon, Enfantin,
and Fourier -- George Sand’s “Jacques” -- The “Es-geht-an-Idea” of the
Swedish author Almquist -- Schopenhauer’s fight against coercive
marriage -- His one-sided standpoint -- His description of the
disastrous effects of monogamic coercive marriage -- His apology for
concubinage -- Criticism of his view of the rôle of women in marriage
reform -- His theory of tetragamy -- =First communication of a
hitherto unpublished note of Schopenhauer’s on tetragamy= -- Criticism
of this theory.
Free love based upon =only-love=, the watchword of the future --
Bohemian love -- Does not correspond to the ideal of free love --
Importance of social and economic factors in the sexual relationships
of the present day -- Efforts for sexual reform -- The literature of
free love -- Charles Albert’s communistic foundation of free love --
Liberation of love from the dominion of the state and of capital --
Ladislaus Gumplowicz -- Bebel’s “Die Frau und der Sozialismus” (“Woman
and Socialism”) -- The psychologico-individual foundation of free love
-- Eugen Dühring -- Edward Carpenter’s “Love’s Coming of Age” -- His
ideas regarding self-control and spiritual procreation -- Ellen Key’s
work, “Ueber Liebe und Ehe” (“Love and Marriage”) -- Detailed analysis
of this work -- Her critique of nominal “monogamy” -- Her idea of
“spiritualized sensuality” -- “Erotic monism” -- The unity of marriage
and love -- Sexual dualism owing to coercive marriage and prostitution
-- General diffusion of erotic scepticism -- Recognition of love as
the spiritual force of life -- Importance of relative asceticism --
Love’s choice -- Medical certificates of fitness for marriage --
Immoral love -- The right to motherhood -- Preliminary conditions --
Necessity for free divorce -- Unfortunate marriages -- Importance of
divorce to children -- New programme of the rights of children --
Ellen Key’s new marriage law -- Endowment of motherhood --
Authorities for the protection of children -- Division of the property
of husband and wife -- Discontinuance of the coercion to live together
-- Secret marriages -- Conditions under which marriage is to be
contracted -- Divorce -- Council of Divorce -- Jury for the care of
children -- Sexual responsibility -- “Marriages of conscience” --
Examples from Sweden -- Public notification of “free” unions -- Legal
recognition of “free” unions in Sweden -- Increase in the number of
“marriage protestants” -- Importance of free love to the vital advance
of humanity -- General characterization of Ellen Key’s book -- Its
importance in connexion with sexual reform in Germany -- Formation of
“The Association for the Protection of Mothers” -- Directors and
committee of this society -- Preliminary appeal and programme of the
association -- The periodical _Mutterschutz_ -- The formation of local
groups -- The “Umwertungs-Gesellschaft” (Revaluation Society) of the
United States -- Its characterization of modern marriage -- The Berlin
“Union for Sexual Reform” -- Helene Stöcker’s “Love and Woman” --
Conception of the sexual problem in the sense of Nietzsche -- No
revolution, but evolution and reform -- Deepening of woman’s soul by
means of the older love -- The affirmation of life of the new love --
The economic and social grounds for the necessity of social reform --
Friedrich Naumann, Lily Braun, and others, on this subject -- Increase
in enforced abstinence from marriage -- The “maintenance question” a
crying scandal of our time -- A characteristic letter -- The radical
evil of conventional morality -- Insurance of motherhood -- Homes for
pregnant women and for infants -- The rights of the “illegitimate”
child -- Suggestions regarding a statistical inquiry relating to free
love and illegitimate offspring in the upper classes -- Examples of
celebrated personalities.
CHAPTER XI
The problem of “free love” is the burning question of our time. Upon its
proper solution depends the future of civilization, and our ultimate
liberation from the ignominious conditions of the amatory life of the
present day, dependent as these are upon coercive marriage. This is our
firm conviction, our profound belief, one which we share with many, and
those not the worst minds of our day.
Free love is neither, as malevolent opponents maintain, the abolition of
marriage, nor is it the organization of extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse. Free love and extra-conjugal sexual intercourse have
nothing whatever to do one with the other. Indeed, I go so far as to
maintain that true free love, as it must and will prevail, will limit
casual and unregulated extra-conjugal sexual intercourse =to a far
greater extent= than coercive marriage has ever succeeded in doing.
Above all, free love will ennoble sexual intercourse.
For the longer, in existing economic conditions, we cling to the
antiquated “coercive marriage,” which has so long been in need of
reform, the smaller is the number of those who desire to marry, the more
advanced becomes the age of marriage, the greater becomes the general
sexual wretchedness, the deeper shall we sink into the mephitic slough
of prostitution, towards which the increasing promiscuity of
extra-conjugal sexual intercourse inevitably leads us.
For this is the peculiar, hypocritical, and absurd mode of argument of
those who uphold conventional marriage; they despise and brand with
infamy every sexual relationship of two adult independent persons based
upon free love, and sanction quite openly casual transitory
extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, devoid of all personal relationships,
not only with prostitutes, but also with respectable women.
“Bachelorhood,” says Max Nordau, “is very far from being equivalent to
sexual continence. The bachelor receives from society the tacit
permission to indulge in the convenience of intercourse with woman,
when and where he can; it calls his self-seeking pleasures
‘successes,’ and surrounds them with a kind of poetic glory; and the
amiable vice of Don Juan arouses in society a feeling composed of
envy, sympathy, and secret admiration.”[186]
On the other hand, =this same= conventional coercive marriage morality
demands from the girl complete sexual continence and intactness until
the time of her marriage!
But every reasonable and just man must ask the question, Where, then,
are the unmarried men to gratify their sexual impulse if at the same
time the unmarried girls are condemned to absolute chastity?
It is merely necessary to place these two facts =side by side= in order
to expose the utter mendacity and shamelessness of the coercive marriage
morality, and to display the true cancer of our sexual life, the sole
cause of the increasing diffusion of =prostitution=, of =wild sexual
promiscuity=, and of =venereal diseases=.
When hereafter, before the judgment-seat of history, the dreadful
“_j’accuse_” is uttered against the sexual corruption of our time, then
there will be a good defence for those of us who, under the device,
“Away with prostitution! away with the brothels! away with all ‘wild’
love! away with venereal diseases!” were the first to indicate =free
love= as the one and only means of rescue from these miseries.
We are always told that men are not yet ready for the free, independent
management of their sexual life; mankind is not yet ripe for the
necessary responsibility. Our opponents point especially to the danger
of such an opinion and such reforms for the lower classes.
But human beings are better than the defenders of the obsolete
conventional morality would have us believe, and above all, it is the
members of the lower classes whom we may quietly allow to follow the
dictates of their own hearts. They, indeed, give us the example that
freedom is not equivalent to immorality and pleasure-seeking; that, on
the contrary, it is freedom that awakens and keeps active the
consciousness of duty and the sense of responsibility.
Alfred Blaschko rightly draws attention to the fact that among the
proletariat for a long time already the idea of free love has been
actually realized. In a large majority of cases men and women of these
classes have sexual intercourse with one another, especially between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-five, without marrying.[187]
“Among the proletariat free love has never been regarded as sinful.
Where there is no property which is capable of being left to a
legitimate heir, where the appeal of the heart draws man and woman
together, from the very earliest times people have troubled themselves
little about the blessing of the priest; and had it not been that at
the present day the civil form of marriage is so simple, whilst, on
the other hand, there are so many difficulties placed in the path of
unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, =who can tell if the
modern proletariat would not long ago, as far as they themselves are
concerned, have abolished marriage=?”[188]
Blaschko adduces proofs that in all places in which free love is not
possible =prostitution takes its place=.
This fact affords a striking proof of the necessity of free love. For
there can be no doubt as to the correct answer to the question which is
better, prostitution or free love.
Max Marcus and other physicians have recently discussed the question
whether the medical man is justified in recommending extra-conjugal
sexual intercourse. I myself, as a physician, and as an ardent supporter
of the efforts for the suppression of venereal diseases, in view of the
enormous increase of professional prostitution (both public and
private), and in view also of the extraordinarily wide diffusion of
venereal diseases, feel compelled to answer this question, generally
speaking, =in the negative=. Yet I look to the introduction of free
love, and in association with free love of a new sexual morality, in
accordance with which man and woman are regarded as two free
personalities, with equal rights and also equal responsibilities, as the
only possible rescue from the misery of prostitution and of venereal
disease.
Place the free woman beside the free man, inspire both with the profound
sense of =responsibility= which will result from the activity of the
love of two free personalities, and you will see that to them and to
their children such love will bring true happiness.
Before going further into this problem of free love, I will give a brief
account of the history of the question during the nineteenth century. We
shall see that quite a number of leading spirits, morally lofty natures,
were occupied with the question, because they were deeply impressed with
the intolerable character of existing conditions in the sexual sphere,
and were convinced that help was only to be found in a relaxation of
those conditions in the sense of a =freer= conception of sexual
relationships.
In addition to the romanticists (_vide supra_, pp. 169 and 175) in the
beginning of the nineteenth century in England, William Godwin, the
lover and husband of Mary Wollstonecraft (the celebrated advocate of
woman’s rights), in his “Political Justice,” declared the conventional
coercive marriage to be an obsolete institution, by which the freedom of
the individual was seriously curtailed. Marriage is a question of
property, and one person ought not to become the property of another.
Godwin maintained that the abolition of marriage would have no evil
consequences. The free love and subsequent marriage of Godwin and Mary
Wollstonecraft deserves a short description. Godwin was of opinion that
the members of a family should not see too much of one another. He also
believed that they would interfere with one another’s work if they lived
in the same house. For this reason he furnished some rooms for himself
at a little distance from Mary Wollstonecraft’s dwelling, and often
first appeared at her house at a late lunch; the intervening hours were
spent by both in literary work. They exchanged letters also during the
day.[189]
Doubtless under the influence of the views of Godwin, Shelley, in the
notes to “Queen Mab,” writes a violent polemic against coercive
marriage. He says:
“Love withers under constraint; its very essence is liberty; it is
compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there
most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in
confidence, equality, and unreserve. How long, then, ought the sexual
connexion to last? What law ought to specify the extent of the
grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife ought
to continue so long united as they love each other; any law which
should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of
their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny.”[190]
He then proceeds to attack the conventional morality so intimately
associated with coercive marriage, and concludes with the words:
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to
natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at
the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the
human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A
system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to
human happiness than marriage. I conceive that from the abolition of
marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connexion would
result. =I by no means assert that the intercourse would be
promiscuous=; on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of parent
to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked
above all others with generosity and self-devotion.”[191]
Here, also, we find the expression of the firm conviction that in the
freedom of love is to be found an assured guarantee for its durability!
Later, also, the English Pre-Raphaelites, especially John Ruskin,
advocated free love, and maintained that the sacredness of these natural
bonds lay in their very essence. It is love which first makes marriage
legal, not marriage which legalizes love (_cf._ Charlotte Broicher,
“John Ruskin and his Work,” vol. i., pp. 104-106; Leipzig, 1902).
In Germany, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, a lively
discussion of the problems of love and marriage ensued upon the
publication of Friedrich Schlegel’s “Lucinde” and Goethe’s
“Wahlverwandtschaften”--“Elective Affinities” (1809).
Goethe, in his very rich amatory life, especially in his relationship to
Charlotte von Stein and to Christiane Vulpius, with the latter of whom
he lived for eighteen years in a free “marriage of conscience,”[192] and
whose son, August, the offspring of this union, he adopted long before
the marriage was legitimized, realized the ideal of free love more than
once. Although in his book “Wahlverwandtschaften” (“Elective
Affinities”) he at length gave the victory to the moral conception of
monogamic marriage, and propounded it as an illuminating ideal for
civilization (which “ideal standpoint” we ourselves, as we have shown in
the previous chapters, fully share), yet in this novel he has
represented conjugal struggles, from which it appears how profoundly he
was impressed by the importance of a transformation of amatory life in
the direction of freedom. It is especially by the mouth of the Count in
this work that he gives utterance to such ideas. The latter records the
advice of one of his friends that every marriage should be contracted
for the term of five years only.
“This number,” he said, “is a beautiful, sacred, odd number, and such
a period of time would be sufficient for the married pair to learn to
know one another, for them to bring a few children into the world, to
separate, and, what would be most beautiful of all, to come together
again.”
Often he would exclaim:
“How happily would the first portion of the time pass! Two or three
years at least would pass very happily. Then very likely one member of
the pair would wish that the union should be prolonged; and this
desire would increase the more nearly the terminus of the marriage
approached. An indifferent, even an unsatisfied, member of such a
union would be pleased by such a demeanour on the part of the other.
One is apt to forget how in good society the passing of time is
unnoticed; one finds with agreeable surprise, when the allotted time
has passed away, =that it has been tacitly prolonged=. It is precisely
this voluntary, tacit prolongation of sexual relationship, freely
undertaken by both parties without any extraneous compulsion, to which
Goethe ascribes =a profound moral significance=.”
I should like to draw the attention of students of Goethe to the fact
that this recommendation of a temporary marriage for the term of five
years, with tacit prolongation of the term, is a very ancient Japanese
custom, or, at any rate, was so thirty years ago.
Wernich, who for several years was Professor of Medicine at the Imperial
University of Japan, remarks:
“Marriages were concluded for a term only: in the case of persons of
standing for =five= years; among the lower classes for a shorter term.
It was =very rare=, however, only in cases in which the marriage was
manifestly unhappy, for a separation to take place when the term
expired. If there were healthy living children such a separation
hardly ever occurred--most of these temporary marriages were, in fact,
extremely happy, and the same is true of Jewish marriages, in which
divorce is easily effected by a very simple ceremonial, closely
resembling that of the Japanese.”[193]
In view of the remarkable coincidence between the proposal in Goethe’s
“Elective Affinities” and the Japanese custom, we are probably justified
in assuming that Goethe was acquainted with the latter.
“Lucinde” gave expression to the feelings and moods of the time in
respect of love and marriage on behalf of a circle far wider than that
of the romanticists. At no time were the ideals of free love so deeply
felt, so enthusiastically presented, as then; above all, by the
beautiful Karoline, who, after long “marriage wanderings,” especially
with A. W. Schegel, finally found the happiness of her life in a free
marriage with Schelling, which subsequently became a legally recognized
union.
“In her letters,” says Kuno Fischer, “she praises again and again the
man of her choice and of her heart, in whose love she had really
attained the goal which she had longed and sought in labyrinthine
wanderings.... And that Schelling was the man who was able completely
to master the heart of this woman and to make her his own, gives to
his features also an expression which beautifies them.”[194]
Rahel, Dorothea Schlegel, and Henriette Herz, extolled, under the
influence of “Lucinde,” the happiness of free love. For this period of
genius in Jena and Berlin, as Rudolph von Gottschall calls it, the
free-love relationship of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and Frau
Pauline Wiesel was typical. This relationship is more intimately known
to us from the letters exchanged between the two, published by Alexander
Büchner in 1865. In these letters, to quote a saying of Ludmilla Assing,
we find “the most passionate expression of all that it is possible to
express in writing.”
In France the discussion of the question of free love was to an
important extent associated with the communistic-socialistic ideas of
Saint Simon, Enfantin, and Fourier. Before this, Rétif de la Bretonne,
in his “Découverte Australe” (a work which exercised a great influence
upon Charles Fourier),[195] demanded that the duration of marriage
should be in the first instance two years, with which period the
contract should spontaneously terminate. Saint Simon and Barrault
proclaimed the “free wife,” Père Enfantin proclaimed the “free union,”
and Fourier proclaimed “free love” in the phalanstery.
A reflection of this idea is to be found in the novels of George Sand,
especially “Lelia” and “Jacques,” these tragedies of marriage; in
“Jacques,” for example, we find the following passage:
“I continue to believe that marriage is one of the most hateful of
institutions. I have no doubt whatever that when the human race has
advanced further towards rationality and the love of justice, marriage
will be abolished. =A human and not less sacred union= would then
replace it, and the existence of the children would be not less cared
for and secured, without therefore binding in eternal fetters the
freedom of the parents.”
We must mention Hortense Allart de Méritens (1801-1879) as a
contemporary of the much-loving George Sand, and, like her, a
theoretical and practical advocate of free love. She was cousin to the
well-known authoress Delphine Gay, and herself wrote a _roman à clef_,
published in 1872, “Les Enchantements de Prudence,” in which she records
the history of her own life, devoted to free love. First the beloved of
a nobleman, she ran away when she discovered she was pregnant, and then
lived successively with the Italian statesman Gino Capponi (1826-1829);
with the celebrated French author Chateaubriand (1829-1831); with the
English novelist and poet Bulwer (1831-1836); the Italian Mazzini
(1837-1840); the critic Sainte-Beuve (1840-1841); these being all free
unions. From 1843 to 1846 she was the perfectly legitimate and extremely
unhappy wife of an architect named Napoléon de Méritens, whereas with
her earlier lovers she had lived most happily. Léon Séché, in the _Revue
de Paris_ of July 1, 1907, has recently described the life of this
notable priestess of free love, to whose above-mentioned romance George
Sand wrote a preface (_cf._ _Literarisches Echo_ of August 1, 1907, pp.
1612, 1613).
In Sweden at about the same time the celebrated poet C. J. L. Almquist
was a powerful advocate for free love. In the numbers for July and
August, 1900, of the monthly review, _Die Insel_, Ellen Key has
published a thoughtful essay, containing an analysis of Almquist’s views
on this subject.
In the novel “Es Geht An” Almquist advocates the thesis that true love
needs no consecration by a marriage ceremony. On the contrary, a
ceremony of this kind belies the very nature of marriage, for it forms
and cements false unions; and any relationship concluded on the lowest
grounds, if it has only been preceded by a marriage ceremony, is
regarded as pure, whilst a union based upon true love without marriage
is regarded as unchaste. In the sense of free love Lara Widbeck, in “Es
Geht An,” arranges her own life and that of her husband Albert. Both are
to be masters of their respective persons and of their respective
property; they are to live for themselves, the work of each is to be
pursued independently of the other, and in this way it will be possible
to preserve a lifelong love, instead of seeing love transformed into
lifelong indifference or hate.
Even at the present day in Sweden the idea of free love is known, after
this romance of Almquist’s, as the “Es-geht-an idea” and also as
“briar-rose morality.” It was, above all, Ellen Key who revived
Almquist’s idea, and enlarged it to the extensive programme of marriage
reform in the direction of free love, which we shall consider more fully
below.
In his last writings Schopenhauer occupied himself at considerable
length with the problems of love, but entirely from the standpoint of
misogyny and of duplex sexual morality. Still, he recognized the great
dangers and disasters which the traditional coercive marriage entails
upon society, and rightly regarded this formal marriage as the principal
source of sexual corruption.
In his essay “Concerning Women” (“Parerga and Paralipomena,” vol. xi.,
pp. 657-659), ed. Grisebach, he writes:
“Whereas among the polygamist nations every woman is cared for, among
monogamic peoples the number of married women is limited, and there
remains an enormous number of unsupported superfluous women.[196]
Among the upper classes these vegetate as useless old maids; among the
lower classes they are forced to earn their living by immeasurably
severe toil, or else they become prostitutes. These latter lead a life
equally devoid of pleasure and of honour; but in the circumstances
they are indispensable for the gratification of the male sex, and
hence they constitute a publicly recognized profession, the especial
purpose of which is to safeguard against seduction those women more
highly favoured by fortune, who have found husbands, or may reasonably
hope to do so. In London alone there are 80,000 such women. =What else
are these women than human sacrifices on the altar of
monogamy=--=sacrifices rendered inevitable by the very nature of the
monogamic institution?= All the women to whom we now allude--women in
this miserable position--form the inevitable counterpoise to the
ladies of Europe, with their pretension and their pride. For the
female sex, regarded as a whole, polygamy is a real benefit. On the
other hand, from the rationalistic point of view, it is impossible to
see why a man whose wife is suffering from a chronic disease, or
remains unfruitful, or has gradually become too old for him, should
not take a second wife. That which produces so many converts to
Mormonism appears to be the rejection by the Mormons of the unnatural
institution of monogamy. In addition, moreover, the allotment to the
wife of unnatural rights has imposed upon her unnatural duties, whose
neglect, nevertheless, makes her unhappy. To many a man considerations
of position, of property, make marriage inadvisable, unless the
conditions are exceptionally favourable. He would then wish to obtain
a wife of his own choice, under conditions which would leave him free
from obligations to her and her children. However economical,
reasonable, and suitable these conditions may be, if she agrees to
them, and does not insist upon the immoderate rights which marriage
alone secures to her, she will, because marriage is the basis of every
society, find herself compelled to lead an unhappy life, one which, to
a certain degree, is dishonourable; because human nature involves
this, that we assign a quite immeasurable value to the opinion of
others. If, on the other hand, she does not comply, she runs the
danger either of being compelled to belong as a wife to a man
repulsive to her, or else of withering as an old maid, for the period
in which she can realize her value is very short. In relation to this
aspect of our monogamic arrangement, the profoundly learned treatise
of Thomasius, _De Concubinatu_, is of the greatest possible value, for
we learn from it =that among all cultured people, and in all times,
until the date of the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted,
and even to a certain extent legally recognized, and was an
institution not involving any dishonour=. From this position it was
degraded only by the Lutheran Reformation, for the degradation of
concubinage was regarded as a means by which the marriage of priests
could be justified; and, on the other hand, after the Lutheran
denunciation of concubinage, the semi-official recognition of that
institution by the Roman Catholic Church was no longer possible.
“Regarding polygamy there need be =no dispute=, for it is a
universally existing fact, and the only question is regarding its
=regulation=. Where are the true monogamists? We all live =at least=
for a time, but most of us continually, in a state of polygamy. Since,
consequently, every man makes use of many wives, nothing could be more
just than to leave him free, and even to compel him, to provide for
many wives.”
Just as are these views of Schopenhauer’s regarding the necessity of a
freer conception and a freer configuration of sexual relations, and
regarding the shamefulness of exposing to infamy the unmarried mother
and the illegitimate child, so much the more dangerous is his view of
the part to be played by women in this reform of marriage. Woman as an
inferior being, without freedom, is once more to lose all her rights,
instead of standing beside man as a free personality with equal rights
and equal duties. The result of a rearrangement of amatory life on this
basis would inevitably be a new and a worse sexual slavery.
As Julius Frauenstädt records, Schopenhauer, in a separate manuscript
found amongst his papers, has described the evil conditions of monogamy,
and has recommended, as a step to reform, the practice of “tetragamy.”
This peculiar and unquestionably very interesting essay has not found
its way into the Royal Library of Berlin. With regard to the whereabouts
of the manuscript we are uncertain; perhaps Frauenstädt destroyed it.
However, we find a brief, hitherto unpublished, extract from this essay
in Schopenhauer’s manuscript book, “Die Brieftasche,” written in 1823,
which is preserved in the Royal Library in Berlin.[197]
I publish here, for the first time, the summary account of tetragamy
contained on pp. 70-77 of the aforesaid manuscript book:
SKETCH OF SCHOPENHAUER’S “TETRAGAMY”
(HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED).
“Inasmuch as Nature makes the number of women nearly identical with
that of men, whilst women retain only about half as long as men their
capacity for procreation and their suitability for masculine
gratification, the human sexual relationship is disordered at the very
outset. By the equal numbers of the respective sexes, Nature appears
to point to monogamy; on the other hand, a man has =one= wife for the
satisfaction of his procreative capacity only for half the time for
which that capacity endures; he must, then, take a second wife when
the first begins to wither; but for each man only one woman is
available. The tendency exhibited by woman in respect of the duration
of her sexual capacity is compensated, on the other hand, by the
quantity of that capacity: she is capable of gratifying two or three
vigorous men simultaneously, without suffering in any way. In
monogamy, woman employs only half of her sexual capacity, and
satisfies only half of her desires.
“If, now, this relationship were arranged in accordance with purely
physical considerations (and we are concerned here with a physical,
extremely urgent need, the satisfaction of which is the aim of
marriage, alike among the Jews and among the Christians), if matters
were to be equalized as completely as possible, it would be necessary
for two men always to have one wife in common: let them take her when
they are both young. After she has become faded, let them take another
young woman, who will then suffice for their needs until both the men
are old. Both women are cared for, and each man is responsible for the
care of one only.
“In the monogamic state, the man has for a single occasion too much,
and for a permanency too little; with the woman it is the other way
about.
“If the proposed institution were adopted in youth, a man, at the
time when his income is usually smallest, would have to provide only
for half a wife, and for few children, and those young. Later, when he
is richer, he would have to provide for one or two wives and for
numerous children.
“Since this institution has not been adopted--for half their life men
are whoremongers, and for the other half cuckolds; and women must be
correspondingly classified as betrayed and betrayers--he who marries
young is tied later to an elderly wife; he who marries late in youth
acquires venereal disease, and in age has to wear the horns. Woman
must either sacrifice the bloom of her youth to a man already
withered; or else must discover that to a still vigorous man she is no
longer an object of desire. The institution we propose would cure all
these troubles; the human race would lead happier lives. The
objections are the following:
“1. That a man would not know his own children. Answer: This could, as
a rule, be determined by likeness and other considerations; in
existing conditions it is not always a matter of certainty.
“2. Such a _menage à trois_ would give rise to brawls and jealousy.
Answer: Such things are already universal; people must learn to behave
themselves.
“3. What is to be done as regards property? Answer: This will have to
be otherwise arranged; absolute _communio bonorum_ will not occur. As
we have already said, Nature has arranged the affair badly. It will,
therefore, be impossible to overcome all disadvantages.
“As matters are at present, Duty and Nature are continually in
conflict. For the man it is impossible from the beginning to the end
of his career to satisfy his sexual impulse in a legal manner. Imagine
his condition if he is widowed quite young. For the woman, to be
limited to a =single= man during the short period of her full bloom
and sexual capacity, is an unnatural condition. She has to preserve
for the use of one individual what he is unable to utilize, and what
many others eagerly desire from her; and she herself, in thus
refusing, must curb her own desires. Just think of it!
“More especially we have to remember that always the number of men
competent for sexual intercourse is double the number of functionally
capable women, for which reason every woman must continually repel
advances; she prepares for defence immediately a man comes near her.”
When we consider this suggestion of tetragamy of Schopenhauer’s from our
own standpoint, we find an accurate exposition of the evils arising from
monogamic coercive marriage, and a clear-sighted presentation of the
physiological disharmonies of the sexual life arising from the
difference between man and woman, upon which recently Metchnikoff also
has laid so much stress. In other respects Schopenhauer’s views are for
us not open to discussion, for, as already pointed out, he regards woman
from the first simply as a chattel, and denies to her any individuality
or soul; and, secondly, because he rejects the principle of the
=only-love=--a principle so intimately associated with the idea of woman
as individual. For the watchword of the future must be: Free love, based
upon the only-love! and, indeed, the only-love manifesting itself
reciprocally in the full struggle for existence.
For this reason, also, the characteristic free love of the Bohemians of
Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century, and more
especially during the period 1830 to 1860, can only be regarded as a
truly poetic love-idyll, when compared with that grand and earnest love
consecrated wholly to =work=, and to the =inward spiritual development=
which presents itself to modern humanity as an ideal love, as the united
conquest of existence. Grisette love, which Sebastian Mercier described
with great force, and which found its classic representation in Henry
Murger’s “Vie de Bohème,” was characterized by the enduring
life-in-common of the loving couples, who belonged for the most part to
the circle of artists and students. Thus it stood high as heaven above
our modern “intimacy,” which, for the most part, has a quite transitory
character; and yet the Bohemian free love corresponded in no way to the
conception and ideal of free love as a community of spirit and of life.
The development of modern civilization, in association with the
awakening of individualism, and with the economic revolution of our
time, has created entirely new foundations for sexual relationships, and
has made continually more apparent the injurious and destructive effects
of our long outworn sexual morality. These changes have taught us to
understand that in the so-called social question the sexual problem
possesses as much importance as the economic problem--perhaps more. They
have shown us the necessity for a new love of the future, for the reason
that to cling to the old, outlived forms would be equivalent to a
continuous increase in sexual corruption in the widest sense of the
word, combined with a general disease contamination of civilized
nations--as the threatening spread of prostitution, and more especially
of secret prostitution, and the increased diffusion of venereal
diseases, demonstrate before our eyes.
Almost at the same time, during recent years, among the various
civilized nations of Europe there have originated efforts for a radical
transformation of conventional sexual morality, and for a reform,
adapted to modern conditions, of marriage and of the entire amatory
life. In France, England, Sweden, and Germany, writers have appeared,
producing books, many of which have been important, full of matter, and
comprehensive, entirely devoted to this object. Societies for marriage
reform and sexual reform have been founded in North America, France,
Austria, and Germany; parliamentary commissions for the investigation of
these questions have been established. Several newspapers have been
founded for the reform of sexual ethics. In short, a general interest
has been aroused in this central question of life, and theoretical and
practical activity have been directed towards its solution.
All at once, as if by general agreement, civilized humanity asked itself
the earnest and solemn question, How was it possible that to hundreds
and thousands the simple right to love was refused, so that they were
condemned to a joyless existence, in which all the beautiful blossoms of
life withered away; that hundreds of thousands of others were condemned
to the hideous misery of prostitution; that, finally, the =community at
large= was delivered up in ever-increasing degree to devastation by
venereal diseases and their consequences?
How is it possible, asks Karl Federn, in the preface to his translation
of Carpenter’s “Wenn die Menschen reif zur Liebe werden” (“Love’s
Coming-of-Age”)--how is it possible that we sing love-songs, and yet
have an amatory life like that which we lead to-day, and have a moral
doctrine such as that which is dominant to-day?
All honour to the men and women who have dared to give an answer to
these questions, who have opposed conventional lies with the truth of
love, and who point out the new way along which mankind will go--will
go, because it =must=.
It is impossible here to mention by name all the writings dealing with
the reform of sexual relationships which have appeared within recent
years. Their name is legion. We must content ourselves with an allusion
to those books which most of all deserve the name of epoch-making, which
have aroused the interest of the community, and which may probably be
said to have first stimulated the discussion of the problem, and to have
been principally effective in starting the flowing current of reform.
In France, Charles Albert has treated the problem of free love from the
communistic standpoint.[198] In the first two chapters of his book, he
describes the development of the primitive sexual impulse, to become
the most supreme individual love, and then gives an interesting account
of the struggle of middle-class society against love, which to-day is
endangered to an equal extent both by the =state= and by =capital=.
“Capitalistic society represents one fact, love another. It suffices
to place them one beside the other in order to notice how sharp a
contrast there is between them, an eternal state of war.”
It is only money that dominates the thought and feeling of modern
humanity; for love and its idealism there is no longer any room; social
economy recognizes only a sexual relationship, but not the higher
feeling of love. Capital subjects the whole of the sexual life to its
laws. In prostitution this great social crime finds its conclusion. The
majority of marriages are nothing more than “sexual bargains.”
Free love is simply love liberated from the dominion of the state and of
capital. It can, therefore, be realized only by an economic revolution,
which will put an end to the economic struggle for existence. Free love
means the independence of the sexual from the material life. =Economic
reform= is the only way to the higher love. This is the author’s
conviction. But he is not subject to any deceptive delusion that with
this all will become beautiful and good; with this all problems will be
solved, all incompleteness at an end.
“We do not,” Albert continues, “regard the province of the sexual life
in the society of the future as an Eden, wherein those individuals
best suited one to the other will come together with mathematical
certainty, to lead a cloudless existence. Just as to-day, there will
be unrequited love, uncertain search and endeavour, errors and
deceptions, misunderstandings, satiety, aberrations, and sorrows.
However great the material prosperity may be which mankind in the
future will enjoy, the life of feeling will always remain the source
of incalculable disturbances, and love will not be the rarest cause of
such disturbances; but still a large proportion of the existing causes
of pain can and must disappear.”
The indispensable preliminary to free love is the complete equality of
man and woman. This, however, can only be attained by means of
communism--that is to say, by that ordering of society in which property
and wages cease to exist, in which not only the means of production, but
also all the articles of consumption, are appropriated to the common
use, and woman will no longer possess a commercial value, as she does at
the present day.
Like Albert, Ladislaus Gumplowicz[199] also believes that free love can
only be realized in a collectivist community.
However important it is to draw attention to the economic point of view,
as was done before Albert and Gumplowicz by Bebel, in his celebrated
“Woman and Socialism” (thirty-fourth edition, Stuttgart, 1903), still,
it appears to me that the communistic solution is not the only possible
solution, and that free love can very well be associated with the
preservation of private property.[200]
While the progressive changes in the economic structure of society
powerfully influence sexual relationships and lay down the rules for
their existing forms, still, physiological individual factors play a
great part also in the matter. The first to insist on this fact were the
Englishman Carpenter and the Swedish writer Ellen Key.[201]
Edward Carpenter,[202] at one time a priest in the Anglican Church, in
his study of the question of free love, without ignoring the economic
factor, lays stress above all on the psychical factor, the inward
spiritual relationship between man and wife.
He writes (_op. cit._, p. 120):
“It is in the very nature of Love that as it realizes its own aim it
should rivet always more and more towards a durable and distinct
relationship, nor rest till the permanent mate and equal is found. As
human beings progress, their relations to each other must become much
=more= definite and distinct, instead of less so--and there is no
likelihood of society in its onward march lapsing backwards, so to
speak, to formlessness again.”
Above all, Carpenter has introduced into the discussion of free love an
element which to me appears of great importance from the medical
standpoint: the question of relative asceticism, of =self-control=. He
rightly considers that the duty of the love of the future does not
subsist merely in the common physical union, but also in =spiritual
procreation=. From the intimate spiritual contact between two
differentiated personalities, the highest spiritual values proceed. Only
self-control leads us to this highest love.
“It is a matter of common experience that the unrestrained outlet of
merely physical desire leaves the nature drained of its higher
love-forces.... Any one who has once realized how glorious a thing
Love is in its essence, and how indestructible, will hardly need to
call anything that leads to it a sacrifice” (_op. cit._, pp. 7, 8).
The indispensable prerequisites to the reform of love and marriage are,
according to Carpenter, the following (_op. cit._, p. 100):
(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. (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.
Carpenter accepts Letourneau’s view, that, in a more or less distant
future, the institution of marriage will undergo transformation into
monogamic unions, freely entered on, and when necessary freely
dissolved, by simple mutual consent, as is already done in several
European countries--in Canton Geneva, in Belgium, in Roumania, as
regards divorce; and in Italy as regards separation. State and society
should take part in the matter only so far as the safety of the children
demands, concerning whom =more extensive duties= should be expected from
the parents. Carpenter also points out, as was shown seventy years ago
by Gutzkow, that, as regards the development of the children, it is
better, in unhappy marriages, that their parents should separate than
that the children should grow up amid the miseries of such marriages.
“Love”--thus Carpenter concludes his dissertation on marriage in the
future--“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” (_op. cit._, p. 113).
A greater vogue even than Carpenter’s book had was obtained by the
essays of the Swedish writer Ellen Key, “Love and Marriage,” which in
1894 appeared in a German translation,[203] and had an unusual success
in the book-market. It is without exception the most interesting and
pregnant work on the sexual question which has ever appeared. Written
from the heart, and inspired by the observations of a free and lofty
spirit, it avoids none of the numerous difficulties and by-paths in this
department of thought; and the reproach of libertinism which has been
cast at the author must be emphatically rejected. Ellen Key is the most
outspoken realist of all the writers on the subject of free love. She
takes her arguments from actual life; she associates her ideas of reform
always with the real; she writes as an earnest evolutionist. Thus, in
her book, her first aim is to establish “the course of the evolution of
sexual morality” and the “evolution of love.”
Ellen Key starts from the fact that no one has ever offered any proof
that monogamy is that form of the sexual life which is =indispensable=
to the vital force and civilization of the nations. Even among the
Christian nations =it has never yet really existed=, and its
legalization as the only permissible form of sexual morality has
hitherto been rather harmful than helpful to general morality.
The writer then develops the idea, no less beautiful than true, that the
genuine character of love can be proved only by the lovers actually
living together for a considerable time; only thus is it possible to
demonstrate that it is moral for them to live together, and that their
union will have an elevating influence on themselves and their
generation. Consequently, of no conjugal relationship can we
=beforehand= affirm or deny its success. Every new pair, whatever form
they may have chosen for their common life, =must first of all prove for
themselves that they are morally justified in living together=.
Ellen Key then proceeds to maintain a view, which I myself also regard
as an integral constituent of the programme of the love of the future,
and one which I have advanced in earlier writings: that love is not
merely, as Schopenhauer thought, an affair of the =species=, but is, at
least in equal degree, the concern of the loving =individuals=. This is
the result and the meaning of civilization, which, as I have proved in
earlier chapters, exhibits a =progressive= individualization and an
increasing spiritual enrichment of love (the “spiritualized sensuality”
of Ellen Key), and thus gives to love a thoroughly independent
importance for each individual.
“In view of the manner in which civilization has now developed
personal love, this latter has become so composite, so comprehensive
and far-reaching, that =not only in and by itself=--independently of
the species--=does it constitute a great life-value, but it also
increases or diminishes all other values=. In addition to its
primitive importance, it has gained a new significance: to carry the
flame of life from sex to sex. No one names that person immoral who,
deceived in his love, abstains in his married life from procreating
the species; that husband and wife also we shall not call immoral, who
continue their married life rendered happy by love, although their
marriage has proved childless. But in both cases =these human beings
follow their subjective feelings at the expense of the future
generations, and treat their love as an independent aim=. The right
already recognized in these individual cases, as belonging to the
individual at the expense of the species, will continue to undergo
enlargement in proportion as the importance of love continues to
increase. On the other hand, the new morality will demand from love an
ever-increasing =voluntary limitation of rights at those times when
the growth of a new life renders it necessary=. It will also demand a
=voluntary or enforced renunciation of the right to procreate new life
under conditions which would make this new life deficient in value=.”
Ellen Key terms this new, modern love “erotic monism,” because it
comprehends the =entire unitary personality=, including the spiritual
being, not merely the body. George Sand gave the first definition of
this love as being of such a kind that “neither had the soul betrayed
the senses, nor had the senses betrayed the soul.”
This erotic monism proclaims as its indestructible foundation the =unity
of marriage and love=.
The idea of unity gives to the human being the right to arrange his
sexual life according to his personal wishes, subject to the condition
that he does not consciously injure the unity, and therewith, mediately
or immediately, the right, of possible posterity.
Thus, according to Ellen Key, love “=will continually become to a
greater extent a private affair of human beings, whilst children, on the
contrary, will become more and more a vital problem of society=.” From
this it follows that the two “most debased and socially sanctioned
manifestations of sexual subdivision (of dualism), =coercive marriage=
and =prostitution=, will gradually become =impossible=, because, after
the victory of the idea of unity, they will cease to correspond to human
needs.”
Ellen Key rightly insists that among the young men of the present day
there is an increasing hostility to socially protected immorality (both
in the form of coercive marriage and in that of prostitution); whilst
they increasingly exhibit a monistic yearning for love. The general
diffusion, which we shall describe at length in a special chapter, of
ascetic moods and of misogyny among men and of misandry among women, is
partly connected with the feeling that the present social forms of the
sexual relationship limit to an equal extent the worth and the freedom
of mankind.
To-day the “purity fanatics and the frantic sensualists” meet in common
mistrust of the developmental possibilities of love, because they do not
believe in the possible ennoblement of the blind natural impulse. In
contrast to these, Ellen Key reminds us of the fact of the “mystical
=yearning for perfection=, which in the course of evolution has raised
impulse to become passion, and passion to become love, and which is now
striving =to raise love to an ever greater love=.”
We must recognize love as =the spiritual force of life=. Love, like the
artist, like the man of science, has a right to the peculiar, original
activity of its own poietic force, to the production of new spiritual
values. The more perfect race that is to come must, in the fullest
meaning of the words, =be brought forth by love=.
For this, however, the indispensable preliminary is the inward =freedom=
of love; the free-love union is the watchword of the future. Ellen Key
also shows that among the lower classes free love has long been
customary, and that there the dangerous utilization of prostitution is
far more limited than among the higher classes, with which view
Blaschko’s statistical data regarding the far greater diffusion of
venereal diseases among the higher classes of society are in substantial
agreement.
No less indispensable to free love, however, is the full, mature
development of the loving individual. For this reason, Ellen Key demands
self-control and sexual continence at least until the age of twenty
years. She regards the indiscriminate sexual intercourse which is to-day
an established custom among all young men as the murder of love. But too
early marriages are no less dangerous. She demands for the woman at
least an age of twenty; for the man, an age of twenty-five years; and
=until these respective ages are attained, sexual continence should be
observed as fully as possible by both sexes=.
This self-command is good for the physical development, “steels the
will, gives the joy of power to the personality; and these qualities are
later of importance in all other spheres of activity.”
With wonderful beauty, Ellen Key describes the happiness of the =power
of waiting= in love, and quotes in this connexion the lovely phrases of
the Swedish poet Karlfeldt:
“There is nothing on earth like the times of waiting,
The days of springtime, the days of blossoming;
Not even May can diffuse a light
Like the clear light of April.”
On the other hand, it is a demand of true morality that healthy men and
women between the ages of twenty and thirty years should enjoy the
possibility of marriage--of free marriage. This possibility can,
however, be secured only by economic reforms.
The author then considers the very important point of love’s choice, and
demands above all the compulsory provision of a =medical certificate of
health= before entering on marriage.
“It is absolutely beyond question that the healthy self-seeking which
wishes to safeguard the personal ego, in conjunction with the
increasing valuation of a healthy posterity, will hinder the
contraction of many unsuitable marriages. In other cases, love might
overcome these considerations, as far as husband and wife are
themselves concerned; but they must then renounce parentage. In those
cases, on the contrary, in which the law would distinctly forbid
marriage, one could naturally not prevent the sick persons from
procreating independently of marriage; but the same is true of all
laws: the best do not need them, the worst do not obey them, but the
majority are guided by them in the formation and development of their
ideas of what is right.”
As =immoral=, Ellen Key indicates:
“Parentage without love.
“Irresponsible parentage.
“Parentage on the part of immature or degenerate human beings.
“Voluntary unfertility on the part of a married pair who are competent
to reproduce their kind.
“All manifestations of the sexual life resulting from force or
seduction, or from the disinclination or the incapacity for the proper
fulfilment of sexual intercourse.”
It is interesting to note that Ellen Key prophesies as the result of the
progressive improvement of the species by love’s selection, the
attainment of a state wherein =every= man and =every= woman will be
suited for the reproduction of the species. Then would the ideal of
monogamy, one husband for one wife, one wife for one husband, be for the
first time realized.
Very beautifully, and with a prudent insight into the actual
relationships, Ellen Key discusses the question of the “right to
motherhood,” where she finds occasion to describe the new and very
various types of women which the evolution of modern life has brought
into being. She recognizes only with reservation the general right to
motherhood, but she does not regard it as a desirable example to follow
when a woman becomes a mother without love, either in marriage or out of
it. It is not right to do what is generally done to-day by the
man-haters--namely, to demand from the majority of unmarried women that
they should produce a child without love. This should not even happen
when love exists, but a permanent life-in-common with the father of the
child is impossible. An unmarried woman who determines on motherhood
should be fully =mature=, and already have behind her “the second
springtime” of her life; she must “not only be pure as snow, pure as
fire, but also must be possessed of the full conviction that with the
child of her love she will produce a radiance in her own life and will
endow humanity with new wealth.”
=Such= an unmarried woman really =makes a present= of her child to
humanity, and is quite different from the unmarried woman who “has a
child.”
Indeed, for the =majority=, the ideal always remains that of the ancient
proverb, that man is only half a human being, woman only half; and only
the father and the mother with their child become a whole one!
With regard to divorce, Ellen Key demands that it should be perfectly
free, and should depend only upon the definite desire, held for a
certain lapse of time, of either or both parties. The dissolution of
marriage must be no less easy than the breaking off of an engagement.
“Whatever drawbacks,” she says, “free divorce may involve, they can
hardly be worse than those which marriage has entailed, and still
continues to entail. Marriage has been degraded to the coarsest sexual
customs, the most shameless practices, the most distressing spiritual
murders, the most cruel ill-treatment, and the grossest impairment of
personal freedom, that any province of modern life has exhibited! One
need not go back to the history of civilization; one need simply turn
to the physician and magistrate, in order to learn for what purpose
the ‘sacrament of marriage’ is employed, and frequently employed by
the very same men and women who are professed enthusiasts as to its
moral value!”
Just as little as the relations between friends, between parents and
children, or between brothers and sisters, necessarily give rise to
lasting sentiments of affection, is it possible to expect this of two
lovers. The “marriage fetters,” described with such horrible truth by
John Stuart Mill and Björnstjerne Björnsen, are to-day felt to be
intolerable. The love of the modern man flourishes only in freedom.
“The delicate erotic sentiment of the present day shrinks from
becoming a fetter; it shuns the possibility of becoming a hindrance.”