How far our Happiness depends on Others.
I. _What Others Give Us: Safety, Liberty, Education._
A student of human affairs has observed that it is very difficult to
find happiness within oneself, and impossible to discover it
elsewhere. Were the witticism reversed it would be equally true.
“Imperfect happiness,” observes the philosopher Kant, “arises from
man’s _unsocial_ passions.” Man’s only enemy is man, but he is also
his only ally. In the pursuit of happiness each must aid himself with
all his might, but all his might will prove of no avail without the
aid of others.
The well-being of the individual depends directly on the social
organization around him. From it alone can he obtain safety, freedom,
and the means of knowledge; in return, it demands respect for its
rules,――that which we call Morality.
For security, safety, man is absolutely dependent on his fellows, on
society. Deprived of it, a prey to well-grounded fears, he can neither
develop his own powers nor enjoy the fruit of his labors. If you know
the bloodhounds are on your track, the most beautiful landscape will
lose its attractions. When the courtier Damocles praised Dionysius to
his face as the happiest man on earth, the tyrant seated the sycophant
at a luxurious repast with a sword suspended above his head by a
single hair. The story is familiar to all, because its moral is a
universal truth. The king stood alone on the giddy height of his
power, and the dread of the inevitable fall was the vampyre that
sucked the blood from all his pleasures and left them corpses before
his eyes.
Men have always felt that the only security is to become members of a
social organization. The savagest horde has its own, its totem, clan,
or gens. But in pursuit of safety, men are apt to sacrifice freedom.
To escape the fire, they plunge into the water; but neither element is
their right abode. Society stands opposed to the individual. It
governs by rules and averages, demands conformity, restricts liberty,
dislikes personality.
Thus arises the ceaseless struggle, to and fro, over the earth,
through all history, between the social and the individual theories of
happiness. The constitution of the ideal civil society should realize
the conditions necessary for the highest personal enjoyment. But where
do we find such a constitution? Not even in theory have we reached it.
On the one side are the moral tyrants, afflicted with what Mirabeau
called the mania of governing, _la fureur de gouverner_, who would
make men happy against their will by prescribing for them what they
should eat and what they should drink, on what days they should work
and on what days play. Over against them is the camp of the
disclassed, unable to govern themselves, and, therefore, hating to be
governed by any.
Both are equally impotent to the end both profess. Nothing but a
distorted growth can result from a conformity to moral standards
brought about by external compulsion. Only what a man does or leaves
undone of his own free will develops and strengthens his nature.
Freedom makes him a man, compulsion an animated machine. Good soldiers
are not trained by fighting behind ramparts, but by exposure in the
field to the enemy. What if some perish in the fray? The success of
the day is cheaply bought by the fall of the few.
Limitations, restrictions, however, there must be, and that man alone
is truly a freeman who recognizes and respects them. Liberty is not
lawlessness; it is the ability to make the law our servant and not our
master, an ability which we must acquire through our own efforts. The
rights of men are equal, but they can enjoy them only so far as they
qualify themselves so to do. All citizens of the United States have an
equal right to pre-empt a portion of the public domain; but to secure
the land they must make certain personal efforts. So it is with all
other social advantages and conditions of happiness; men deserve them
only so far as they cultivate a capacity for them; and not equality,
but justice in their distribution, must be the final aim of every sane
social compact.
The only use of this excellent government of ours, or of any other on
the face of the earth, is――what? The preservation of your liberty and
mine. Nothing else. Never forget this. Any government is worth paying
a dollar to support, or lifting a finger to defend, only so far as it
secures to each woman and man her or his greatest possible personal
liberty. To the extent that it falls short of this or goes beyond it,
it is worthless and an enemy. The limits of a government are plain
enough, when we thus define them from the vantage-ground of individual
freedom. It should protect from external enemies and internal
dissensions, and from violence to person or property; it should
enforce justice between man and man, and woman and man; it should
extend its direct care to the weak, the immature, and the incapable;
and it should supply to all the means of self-culture, of education,
in its widest sense. Here its action should end. All else should be
left to the individual.
There is another theory of government than this. It would treat all
men as if they never come of age, or remain forever feeble-minded. It
would supply them with work, take care of their pay, dictate their
amusements, prohibit doubtful indulgences, and deliver from
temptations by removing them. Such a government would make grown-up
children, not men. It is the ideal of all priests, of most women, and
of dreamers. It has at times been partially realized, and always with
disastrous results to the strength of the individual character. I have
seen more drunken men in one week in the State of Maine, where the
sale of intoxicants is prohibited, than during three months in Italy,
where their sale is unrestricted.
The advocates of all such attacks on personal liberty――be they priests
or social dreamers――are not less opposed to free thought than to free
action. The defense of their opinions, not the discovery of truth, is
to them the purpose of research. The logical ultimatum of the one is
the stake, of the other the dynamite bomb. Both would restrict the
untrammeled and unbiased pursuit of knowledge.
Knowledge, however, is the twin brother of liberty and the provider
for the treasury of happiness. Much more than a fine phrase is the
poet’s line, that “He is a freeman, whom the truth makes free.” Not
what he is, or what he has, but what he _knows_, gives the individual
real power, and, through power, freedom and the ability to use it for
the gratification of his desires through the unrestricted employment
of his faculties.
The materials of knowledge are represented by the degree of
civilization possessed by a nation. Their distribution should be
through education――unbiased, secular, universal――co-extensive with the
demand of the governed, equal to both sexes. This is within the plain
province of government. Children cannot educate themselves, and
ignorant parents see no need of learning. Yet the period of childhood
is the golden age for instruction. It is the epoch of permanent
impressions, dear and indelible, like the initials of a loved one cut
on the bark of a young beech, remaining legible even when the solid
heart of the aged tree is decayed.
Inertia denies the possibility of improvement. Obscurantism dislikes
it. Let them pass on. Whatever a man is, there is the power for better
within him; we know not how much better. Faculties trained turn from
bad to good. What is a weed in the fields becomes a flower in the
garden. The State cannot afford to leave education to the people.
Grass grows of itself, but grain needs tillage.
How strongly this is shown in the lamentable education of women in all
civilized countries! Sedulously confined to empty accomplishments and
conventional moralities, they are everywhere found to be the chief
supporters of decaying dogmas, serfs to social opinion, frittering
away their lives in vanities which men have left centuries behind
them. Both sexes are to blame for this. Men love to rule, and they
fear the increased knowledge which freedom would bring to women; and
women are jealous of the eminence which learning gives a sister and
seek to belittle its value.
What if I refer again and again to this subject? I have too often
witnessed the exceeding unhappiness of women in all grades of society
not to have it frequently in my thoughts. They are more unhappy than
men, as I have said before, and I believe it is mainly because they
are worse educated. I know the instruction in the best schools for
girls in the United States, and to what is it directed? To two ends,
to be “good,” and to shine in society. What they should be taught is
to understand the hygiene of their own bodies, to take care of their
own money, to govern their decisions by justice and reason and not by
impulse, to occupy their thoughts with facts and not with fiction,
and, more than all, to be independent in thought and deed, and not to
allow either society or sentimentality to cast the final vote in the
direction of their actions.
Such doctrine may sound heretical; so I hasten to bring to its support
a reputable endorser in the person of a clergyman of the Church of
England, that writer who so charmingly combines the best of humor with
the best of sense, the Rev. Sydney Smith. I take it from his essay on
“Female Education,” an essay that ought to be read and pondered by
every woman in the land, the whole burden and spirit of which is
expressed in the following most pregnant sentence,――“The happiness of
woman will be increased in proportion as education gives to her the
habit and the means of _drawing her resources from herself_.”
How much better this than the following insufferable twaddle of Thomas
de Quincey: “It is more in harmony with the retiring graces of their
sexual character that they should practice a general rule of
submission to the traditional belief of their own separate Church,
even when that belief has long been notoriously challenged as
erroneous”? He is in earnest, too; and the late Poet Laureate in “In
Memoriam” said nearly the same. Blind leaders of the blind! who think
that falsehood and ignorance are going to point the way to light and
truth.
The fact is, the moral side of woman has been educated, and thus
educated, out of all proportion to her other faculties. What is not
“very stuff of the conscience” makes little or no impression on her.
The Good, the Fit, the Conventional are for her the True; which is a
grievous error, and retards her real progress.
Education is not only the foundation for happiness; it should and it
can be made a pleasure in itself. This will sound strange to those who
are principally familiar with such institutions of education as those
of the Mr. Squeers or Dr. Blimber type. But the schoolmaster has
himself been to school, and after flogging children for several
thousand years, and thereby developing a healthy hatred of books which
it is a wonder did not hurl the race back into barbarism, he has
learned from Froebel and Pestalozzi and others that it is actually
possible for a sane mind to study with pleasure if the chance is
offered. Indeed, a learned writer who has many admirers in this
country, Mr. Herbert Spencer, is able to say,――“The usual test of
political legislation――its tendency to promote happiness――is beginning
to be the test of legislation for the school and the nursery;” and
elsewhere,――“As a final test by which to judge any plan of culture
should come the question,――Does it create a pleasurable sensation in
the pupil?”
This is good counsel; but, like many good things, it is also old. Two
thousand years ago or so Plato wrote,――“In education, direct boys to
what amuses their minds.”
Security, liberty, and the means of knowledge,――these, therefore, are
the conditions of happiness which every government should, and all in
some measure do, offer the individual. For them, he is entirely
dependent on others. In whatever delusion to the contrary his
ignorance or his arrogance may plunge him, he can obtain these
inestimable benefits in no other way than through the social
organization, and he cannot therefore escape his liability for them.
If he denies it or refuses it, the consequences will be as inevitable
as they will be disastrous. He who wisely consults the conditions
which determine his own happiness will not seek in isolation or
self-sufficiency these elements, which can alone be obtained through
the co-operation of his fellow-man.
* * * * *
Social progress is advanced far more by strengthening the weak than by
chastising the wicked.
* * * * *
The sense of safety implies not merely absence of fear, but also
freedom of action.
* * * * *
Justice should be the motto of the State; prudence that of the
individual.
* * * * *
Self-recognition is a part of happiness; but the recognition by others
of what we pride ourselves upon, is another and a large part of it.
* * * * *
Man is a social being; but the true aim of his social activity is to
learn how to be solitary.
* * * * *
He who thinks it necessary to seek solitude for self-improvement often
finds there is still one too many persons present.
* * * * *
The purpose of law is liberty; of obedience, independence; of
submission, emancipation.
* * * * *
The well-being of the individual, not of the class, should be the aim
of government. It should not be “by the people for the people,” but by
the people for the person.
* * * * *
The true moral education is that which makes every intellectual
question a matter of conscience, and every matter of conscience an
intellectual question.
* * * * *
An explanation which demonstrates the impossibility of knowing is
about as satisfactory as one which imparts the knowledge desired. But
there are some who call everything incomprehensible which they do not
comprehend.
* * * * *
Many children and nearly all girls are educated by equivocations and
taught truths by means of falsehoods. What have the teachers to expect
when their pupils discover this fact?
* * * * *
There are a good many branches of education about which it is
sufficient for most to know that they exist.
* * * * *
That moral strength is alone real which has been acquired by repeated
exposure to temptation and repeated successful resistance.
* * * * *
We never fully acknowledge to ourselves how very human we are. We each
secretly think that there is something in us not shared by any other
man or woman.
* * * * *
Women love too deeply to be able to judge justly.
II. _What we Owe Others: Morality, Duty, Benevolence._
The much-maligned Epicurus is reported to have delivered the oracular
utterance,――“The man who is not virtuous can never be happy;” and
poets and moralists have exhausted their ingenuity in devising
variants of the well-worn line,――“’Tis virtue only makes our bliss
below.”
Who would have supposed that philosophers should have been found――aye,
and they of high degree――who toss overboard these venerable maxims as
antiquated rubbish? Yet such is the surprising case.
The mighty Kant, tearing away the cobwebs of the dogmatic philosophy,
feared not to declare,――“There is not in the moral law the slightest
ground for a necessary connection between Morality and Happiness;” and
again,――“The goal of a perfect harmony of Desire and Duty cannot be
obtained;” while in our own day the critical Alexander Bain calmly
observes,――“Happiness and Virtue are independent aims and not
identical. The treatment of Happiness should be dissevered from that
of Ethics.”
Scarcely could the contrast of the new and the old schools of thought
be more vividly displayed than in these brief quotations. There are
some, indeed, who have even gone farther, and maintained that the
pursuit of happiness and that of virtue are not only independent, but
even incompatible aims; because, writes Dr. Despine, a French
psychologist of repute,――“Happiness is the satisfaction of desire,
while virtue consists in doing good, not to satisfy the desire of
doing it, but out of a sense of duty, and in opposition to desire.”
This statement, however, overlooks the existence of a moral sense and
the normal pleasure derived from its gratification.
Morality and the moral sense are not to be confounded. All men have a
love for the beautiful, but nowise agree as to what is beautiful; and
there is just as wide and just as impassable a gulf between the
various conceptions of morals, although, in all, the moral sense is
present.
Morality is nothing more than the conformity of the individual to the
type of the society in which he lives. It is the recognition of the
debt which he owes it for securing him the privileges of safety,
liberty, and education, as I have explained in the last chapter. Not
his own moral sense, but the society in which he is, lays down the
terms on which that debt is to be paid; and while he feels on the one
side entitled to these rights, he acknowledges, on the other, his
liability for his social duties in exchange for them.
There is, therefore, no such thing as a universal or even a general
code of morality, nor can there be. There is no act which may not
sometimes be right and sometimes be wrong. I have heard of a French
writer, who composed a work entitled “The Seven Cardinal Sins,”
showing how under certain circumstances every one of them could be
committed by a perfectly virtuous person. I have never read his book,
but I delight in his doctrine. Take the Decalogue itself, written, as
we are told, by the very finger of Divinity, and there is not a
command in it that both Christian and Jew do not break most virtuously
whenever occasion calls. “Thou shalt not kill;” and all nations spend
more annually in preparations for killing by land and sea than they do
in a generation for institutions of learning. “Thou shalt not rob;”
and Abraham Lincoln with one glorious stroke of his pen robbed the
citizens of the United States of a hundred million dollars’ worth of
valuable slaves. Truth-telling? The observation of Socrates in the
Symposium still holds good,――“In speaking of holy things or persons,
there is a general understanding that you should praise them, not that
you should tell the truth about them;” witness the discussions that
come up from time to time on the characters of “the Fathers of the
Republic” or the books of the Bible.
In every code of morals there is one law for our friends and another
for the rest of the world; our duty to our family is ever in conflict
with our duty to our neighbor; and our duty to our country is opposed
to our duty to humanity at large. A father who would treat other
children as his own would be deemed unnatural, and a statesman who
consulted the advantages of other nations would be cast out as a
traitor. This is the “dualism of morals,” and its necessary existence
destroys all possibility of a universal and inflexible code of morals.
The antagonism is not likely to decrease. The most violent
contradictions between the various views of life will be likely to be
found precisely in the highest culture; because there the individual
comes most to his own, and is least willing to sacrifice his own
rights to a society whose claims he disallows.
Men now question the right of society to demand what it does from them
in exchange for the benefits it confers upon them; and they are right.
Society itself must be brought to the test of the Moral Sense. This
faculty is that which we also call the sense of Duty, or of “the
Ought,” or Conscience. It is a judge, not a lawgiver, and it derives
its right of sitting in judgment from its ancient descent, dating back
to the time when man first gathered together in hordes or clans under
some sheltering rock for mutual aid. It is as much a part of human
nature as is the love of association, and as such its satisfaction is
as essential to happiness, but is by no means the whole of happiness,
as so many have taught. In fact, it is often enough entirely absent,
as in genuine criminals. It is now well known that these neither
experience remorse for crime nor take pleasure in well-doing, whatever
sentimentalists may say to the contrary.
The pleasure of the moral sense comes solely from the satisfaction of
itself, and not necessarily, in the least, from the practice of virtue
or benevolence or charity. The inquisitor, Torquemada, lighting the
hellfires of the Inquisition, the anarchist hurling his bomb into the
crowd, Judith yielding her maiden chastity to the embrace of
Holofernes, all enjoyed the highest pleasure of the moral sense,
because all acted in the complete conviction that they were doing
right.
The man is moral who believes he is so, and the woman is chaste who
considers herself such, no matter what their actions are. What we
think the most fiendish crimes have been perpetrated by fervent
Christians, and there are religions now numbering millions of
intelligent adherents in which the prostitution of girls is considered
a meritorious act.
When Adam Smith laid down the three requisites for individual
happiness as health, freedom from debt, and a clear conscience, he
framed a sensible prescription; but should have explained that a clear
conscience in nearly all cases means simply conformity to the standard
of our age and nation, not at all to any higher or abstract ideal. So
far from the devotion to a lofty or unusual virtue bringing happiness,
it always entails proscription, pain, and sorrow on him who advocates
it. The crowd ever cry out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Every one of
the noble army of leaders in ethical progress was in his own day
branded as an infidel, cursed by the Churches, and driven forth from
the enjoyments which a less developed moral sense would have permitted
him to indulge. He who rises above the law is ever against the law.
Hence it is that with perfect truth, though with a lurking satire on
the commonplaces of moral doctrine, Professor Bain writes,――“To
realize the greatest happiness from virtue we should be careful to
conform to the standard of the time and place, neither rising above
nor falling beneath it; we should make our virtues apparent and showy,
and perform them with the least sacrifice to ourselves; we should hold
our associations with duty, as well as our natural sympathies with our
fellows, only at a moderate strength.”
In certain natures the satisfaction of the moral sense yields a
happiness worth all sacrifices, just as in others the feeling of
unrestrained liberty will be gratified at the expense of everything
that the majority hold dear. Both are exceptional, and there are quite
as many who suffer nothing from a violation of the sense of duty or
from the loss of liberty.
No platitude is more erroneous than this,――“To be vicious is to be
miserable;” for were it so, we should not have the hordes of the
vicious infesting society. Far more correct is the observation of that
acute observer of life, Vauvenargues, that virtue cannot make the
vicious happy, _La vertu ne peut faire le bonheur des méchants_. He
might have added that virtue can never make the virtuous happy, for
the really virtuous man is always above the standard of his time, and
is sure to suffer in consequence from the antagonism he develops, and
from his sorrowful appreciation of the sentiment that prompts it.
The education of the moral sense has hitherto been retarded by two
popular but mistaken doctrines; the one that the moral life is “the
chief end of man;” the other that it means obedience to a code of
laws.
Again I repeat that the chief end of man is the symmetrical
development of all his powers and faculties and the enjoyment which he
will derive from their activity, and not at all the exclusive or
preponderant attention to one or the other element of his nature. His
moral sense is merely the guide of the duties he owes to others,
duties indispensable to his own life and liberty, but by no means
exhaustive of his nature; rather, merely giving him the opportunity
for the higher aim of developing himself. The moral life is but a
means to an end, and not an end in itself.
The confusion of the moral life with obedience to a moral code dates
back beyond history, and is almost as active to-day as ever, in spite
of the efforts of such teachers as Buddha and Christ to show the
falsity of it. Both proclaimed the absolute independence of the moral
sense from moral laws. Such laws are either religious, expressing
supposed duties to God, as the Jews believe that He forbade them to
eat pork, or, as they and the Christians, that He decided that one day
in seven is more sacred than the others; or they are conventional or
civil, which are merely the customs, _mores_, of the nation or
community.
Independent of all these codes, which for the most part are survivals,
and in the present day absurd, are the Benevolent Emotions, the
gratification of which to the properly developed individual
constitutes a large element of personal happiness. They arise not from
a sense of duty, because they do not have reference to what is due the
social compact, but from sympathy, acquired or inherited. The relief
of the pain of others, the administration of efficient consolation,
the diminution of the sorrows of those around us, yield to ourselves a
pleasurable satisfaction, a sense of appropriate activity, which is so
real that it is a wonder it is not more diligently cultivated. Too
many, perhaps, look for a part of their return in the gratitude of
those assisted, instead of in the pleasure of the act itself, and,
being disappointed, find the field of charity less flowery than they
anticipated. They commit the common error of placing the end of
enjoyment external to themselves instead of the means only.
* * * * *
The only sure method to distinguish good from evil is first to learn
to discriminate true from false.
* * * * *
A sincere lover of truth is never wholly in the wrong; chiefly because
he never claims to be wholly in the right.
* * * * *
The finest thought I found in Chamfort’s writings――and it is
wonderfully fine, deserving to be the motto of every work on the Art
of Happiness――is this,――_Le plaisir peut_ _s’appuyer sur l’illusion,
mais le bonheur repose sur la vérité_, “Errors may yield us Pleasure,
but truth alone can give Happiness.”
* * * * *
Only through fulfilling his duties to society can man secure from
society that which is essential to his own welfare. This is why the
inward realization of the moral law becomes a part of the Art of
Happiness.
* * * * *
A moral act is simply one which, at the time and under the special
circumstances, is useful to the society in which it takes place. Hence
it has nothing to do with individual Motive, which is the only Mentor
recognized by the educated moral sense.
* * * * *
The ancient Greeks believed that the laws of human society are laws of
nature, and therefore absolute. In Sophocles’ tragedy, it is no excuse
for Œdipus, when he kills his father and marries his mother, that he
does so in absolute ignorance of the relationship. His remorse and
punishment are not abated.
* * * * *
One school of modern writers maintains that all virtues are but vices
disguised; another, that all vices are but virtues misdirected. As
these terms are entirely relative, both schools are right,――and wrong.
* * * * *
So long as war is possible, a perfected social life is impossible; but
when Justice will not be listened to in any lower notes, she must
speak through the mouths of cannons.
* * * * *
Peace, not happiness, is the reward of virtue.
* * * * *
The man who professes duty as the sole guide of his life is either
hypocritical or ignorant.
* * * * *
Weaklings and hypocrites like to extol the goodness of men; the former
to allay their own fears, the latter because it reflects flatteringly
on themselves.
* * * * *
It is no proof that a sentiment is noble because men are willing to
die for it. More men knowingly sacrifice themselves to pleasure than
to duty.
* * * * *
The lines of morality, observed Burke, differ from those of geometry;
they have breadth as well as length, and for that reason will not form
set and angular figures.
III. _The Practice of Business and the Enjoyment of Society._
Let us grant that the true aim of the individual is his own highest
development: he can reach it only through the ministry of his fellow
beings. Vain the effort to seek expansion or happiness apart from his
kind. The soul rusts in solitude; to be bright and keen it requires
friction with others. Alone, it starves and pines, grows misshapen and
distorted; in company, it gives and receives, assists others, and is
in turn assisted. Let us do no injustice to the balm and the blessings
of solitude; but the growth of the world is due to the blending and
the striving of mind with mind.
The word which expresses this is Association. It conveys various
degrees of intimacy, from the lowest, that of the ordinary intercourse
of Business and Society, through the increasingly closer ties of
Fellowship, Comradeship, and Friendship, up to that dearest of all,
wherein the two sexes unite to cast the rays of life into the infinite
future, Love and Marriage.
There is nothing in any of these that demands the sacrifice of the
individual. The gauge which marks the high-water line in them all is
one and the same――the maintenance of the utmost freedom of the
individual along with the utmost sympathy and accordance with the
individuality of others. As it is only through these, through
participation in all of these relations of association, that the
highest degree of personal happiness can be attained, I shall consider
each in turn very briefly, little more than hinting of those maxims
and principles which stand approved as contributing to a reasonable
success and a wise enjoyment of them.
Dealing with men is the daily business of life; but a knowledge of
human nature, even in this restricted relation, is the latest
knowledge which one acquires.
The first maxim is _to distrust_.
“All men are liars,” said the Psalmist; and there is no stronger proof
of the saying than that all men deny it. History and sermons and
sympathy combine to conceal or to modify the truth, in order that we
may walk in peace with our fellow-men. Be it so. But at least, in our
own minds, let us acknowledge facts. We are none the better ourselves
for believing others to be better than they are. “The transacting of
business,” observes Bacon, “is chiefly a commerce with fools;” my
comment upon which is, that he will be the worst fooled who thinks he
is the only wise man; of which my Lord of Verulam is said to have been
a conspicuous example.
Insincerity has no limit. If a man does not show what he is when first
you meet him, wait a year to decide. The insincere aim most to deceive
by what most they show. Concerning them, therefore, follow the Italian
maxim, believe the incredible and doubt the probable. The very pious
cashier, not the thoughtless clerk, will be the one to run away with
the money.
The second maxim is _to trust_.
Confidence in others is the corner-stone both of fortune and felicity.
It is the grateful dew which fertilizes the flowers of sincerity, of
truthfulness, and honor; and even common honesty will wither if
exposed to the scalding breath of suspicion. Reputation lives in the
minds of others, and if we know ours has no fixed abode there, but is
harbored as a doubtful and distrusted intruder, our staunchest
argument for preserving it is gone.
He who can happily combine the oil and vinegar of these two maxims in
his dealings with men, will carry with him a charm which will guard
him from the bitterest disappointments to which we are liable in the
hard contest for material aims.
Business intercourse we cannot avoid; but we seek it for other ends
than pleasure; social intercourse is that which we pursue for
enjoyment only,――or, at least, pretend to. Hence, we call it
specifically “Society;” and we distinguish it into certain fanciful
grades, as “good society,” “the best society,” and “high life.” Men
and women enter it equally, and the spirit of it is held to be apart
from, even quite the reverse of, that of business life. Many men and
all women look upon it as the field in which the chief victories of
their careers must be won and the main elements of their happiness
discovered.
Why sneer at such sentiments? The drawing-room, the only stage on
which the two sexes meet on equal terms, is the innermost sanctuary of
civilization, and the hostess is high priestess of the shrine. Its
development registers the epochs in the history of culture. Francis I
has two special claims on the praise of posterity; the one, that he
proclaimed himself honored by the friendship of Titian; the other,
that he was the first to admit women to the court society of France.
The drawing-room confers the last degree in the liberal arts. No
education is complete which has not received its finishing touches at
the hands of a refined woman; and enlightenment will first deserve its
name when her rights are everywhere as much respected and her
influence as freely acknowledged as they are now in her own parlors.
Good-will is the basis of good society. He who quits a company,
pleased, and conscious of having pleased, is its model member. There
is nothing derogatory in this. Conceal it as we may, the secret motive
of our every effort is the hope of pleasing somebody else. The
interchange of kindly courtesies and approving expressions is a
commendable pastime. He who prides himself on being “beholden to
nobody” is a pseudo-philosopher. The true philosopher enjoys society,
but is not dependent on it for his enjoyment.
Would-be superior men have inveighed against society because its
members are and must be for the most part “ordinary people,” and its
topics common-place. Really superior men prefer ordinary people,
because, as Goethe so well said, “They are more human.” Nobody was
common-place to the eye of that great master, because each represented
the species. It is certainly true that in the long run, and for “human
nature’s daily use,” ordinary people are the most agreeable. We really
should not desire high thinking in high life. People fraternize more
readily on lower levels because they are broader. Nations gather
together on plains, not on mountain tops. These are suitable for
star-gazers and eagle-hunters.
Those who dislike society are usually those who are not at ease in it,
from lack of early training. Few enjoy dancing who have learned from
an awkward master, and a lifetime is not long enough to comb the
hayseed from a farmer boy’s hair.
The one maxim for success in society is to be agreeable; and the
agreeable man is he who agrees with others. Society expects persons to
offer enjoyment and pleasure, not improvement. One should accept men
as they are and not seek to change them; it is a less task to adapt
yourself to others than them to you. One that enters a company that he
likes, is liked by it; but nothing is so justly exasperating as a show
of superiority.
The aim of society is to bring about a closer union of its members by
having them meet on planes of thought and emotion which are common to
all. The expression of discordant ideas and feelings, be they higher
or lower, is, therefore, out of place. On the other hand, a company is
harmonized, and its elements happily fused together, by some general
impression made on all at the same moment, and the enjoyment of all is
correspondingly heightened. This may be by a strain of music
appropriately introduced, by a few apt remarks on a topic of general
interest, or by the exhibition of curious or beautiful objects. The
sense of a sentiment in common is at once established, and the company
feels that each knows the other better for this property in
commonalty. The skillful hostess knows how often and by what devices
thus to promote the unity of her guests. Multiply the ties which bind
society together and you multiply the pleasure it yields and the
benefits which are derived from it.
Really good society is not selfish, nor does it encourage selfishness.
Rather it is based on a certain sacrifice of self. Those circles offer
little enjoyment where each aims at nothing but his own; amusement is
absent where no one endeavors to amuse others. Nor is it unjustly
censorious. Its judgments are generally recognized as fair, and
nothing so fortifies the moral sense as the approval of the society in
which one is accustomed to move; while the terrors of the Hereafter
are small compared to its disapproval. The stoutest minds have
acknowledged this. “Who can see worse days,” asks Bacon, “than he who
yet living doth follow at the funeral of his own reputation? I can
desire no greater place than in the front of good opinion.”
It is quite true that this power, like that of all irresponsible
autocrats, is sometimes abused to the injury of the worthy; but the
harm is slight compared to the results which are good. True, also,
that general society is a poor test of a man’s real nature. One may
possess many agreeable qualities and yet fail to be agreeable, through
lack of good taste or early training in their use under social
conditions. Or, again, though a kindly disposition makes a man
popular, it by no means follows because a man is popular that he has a
kindly disposition. We must accept society with these deficiencies,
for in spite of them all it is a potent auxiliary in the pursuit of
happiness.
Genuine kindliness of heart,――this is the sweetest trait of human
nature. Unfortunately, it is one of the rarest; so that society, which
appreciates it so highly that it cannot exist without at least its
semblance, substitutes for it――Politeness.
Though a semblance only, it is a noble counterfeit. Urbanity presages
perfected Humanity. It is the outward and visible sign of what should
be the inward and spiritual nature. It is a prophecy of the Golden Age
and is based on the Golden Rule. When some one asked Aristotle how we
should conduct ourselves toward our associates, he replied,――“We
should treat them as we wish them to treat us.”
Politeness is the only currency which costs nothing and buys much. Its
tenders are counters and yet pass as coin. Who but a fool, therefore,
would refuse to use them liberally? Such fools there are, however, and
in abundance. It is a key which has the pleasant power of both closing
the doors below and opening those above us; for there is no bar to the
unwelcome familiarity of inferiors equal to scrupulous politeness, and
no passport so sure to the esteem of our superiors in age or station.
Cheap as it is, it is too precious to be wasted, and like the free
gifts of nature, water or sunlight, there are occasions when it must
be doled out in small quantities, and at all times be dispensed with a
provident hand. Few social blunders are more painful than to display a
warmth of manner which is not reciprocated; and there are rude natures
who cannot distinguish kindliness of behavior from weakness of
purpose.
The common lien of society is Talk; and the talk must be essentially
small talk. No greater blunder could be committed than to suppose that
society wants, or ought to want, Conversation, in the dignified sense
of that term, in which an idea is introduced and expanded, a
proposition developed, or an argument stated. Nothing of the sort.
“The best conversation,” observes Mr. Malloch, “is never worth
remembering.” Perhaps he had in his mind the remark of Talleyrand, who
said that the finest converser he ever heard was his own mother, but
that he was unable to recall a single pointed or brilliant expression
she had used.
Small talk is in society what small change is in the daily affairs of
life,――you need it twenty times for your gold-piece once. It is no
such easy matter to master the art of it. To talk much and to say
little one must be very clever or a fool; and the still higher art of
putting others to their best paces, so that you act only as starter in
the race while others win the purse, asks an amount of tact which is
equaled only by the self-denial involved.
The expert in talk will aim to please and not to instruct; he will not
disturb the convictions of elderly persons who have made up their
minds; nor the self-complacency of any by a display of superiority,
especially in his judgment or reasoning powers; if he boasts, it will
be of his luck and not of his cleverness; he may compliment a woman on
her beauty, but never a rich man on his riches; he will contradict
only those who disparage themselves, and if he dips into a deep
question, he will only stir it and not settle it; he will avoid
allusions to his own ailments, but sedulously inquire about those of
others; but his chief aim will be to find out first whether the person
whom he addresses prefers to talk or to listen, and scrupulously let
him have his way.
* * * * *
When all are of one mind, what is left to say worth hearing?
* * * * *
Save your best thoughts for your best friends.
* * * * *
Frivolity is the armor of good society, worn to protect it against the
violence of passions and the ennui of enthusiasms.
* * * * *
Subservience to society is in man what “protective mimicry” is in
insects,――an unconscious tendency to imitation for the purpose of
self-preservation.
* * * * *
Youth looks to be received in society with greater sympathy than it
finds; age will find more than it generally expects.
* * * * *
Acquaintances rate us first at the value we put on ourselves; later at
the value we prove to them.
* * * * *
Those who visit you, find out how you live; you must visit them to
find out how they live.
* * * * *
Forgive if you can, but do not forget. Characters change little, and a
base action is a landmark worth remembering.
* * * * *
A lie comes readier in society than in solitude; but for all that, it
is easier to deceive oneself than others.
* * * * *
Only those of violent prejudices violently attack the prejudices of
others.
* * * * *
It is a rule in polite society not to refer to three subjects――a man’s
false hair, his religion, or his politics; and for the same
reason――because neither is his own, but merely borrowed from others.
* * * * *
Curious inconsistency! People talk willingly about their physical
ailments, but unwillingly about their moral defects; though the former
cannot be mended by discussing them, and the latter might be.
* * * * *
Silence is often sanatory. There are subjects, thoughts, and memories
which, like certain bodily functions, cannot be avoided, but should
not be talked about.
* * * * *
Reserve is a great help to reputation. I know a shallow scientist who
has gained a fine position mainly owing to his knack of leaving his
hearers with the impression that he knows much more than he has told.
* * * * *
It is a noble trait to be above the temptations of fortune; but those
who care least about money are not therefore the most honest.
* * * * *
Nothing is more interesting than self-revelation; nor more tedious
than self-publication.
* * * * *
If you avoid disagreeable people, and cease thinking about them, for
you they will have no existence.
* * * * *
Society is the jury impaneled to try the causes of which the law takes
no cognizance.
* * * * *
The worst of an unfounded accusation is its foundation.
* * * * *
Never hit at a hornet unless you are sure of killing it. Never notice
a social scandal about yourself unless you can refute it absolutely. A
weak defense is more damaging than silence.
* * * * *
It is a much admired art to turn the weaknesses of others to our own
profit. How sublime would be the science which would direct their
strength to their own true interests!
IV. _On Fellowship, Comradeship and Friendship._
Man is slow to understand how human he is. He thinks he can measure
himself by other standards than himself, but all his circuits lead him
home again; his most positive knowledge is of himself, and by analogy
of his own kind. With a wise recognition of the limits of his own
nature he should seek happiness in the conditions of existence known
to him and especially among his own species, where alone he can find
beings whose endowments are the same, and whose affinities and
sympathies respond to his own.
Society, as I have said, is the common field of intercourse in
civilized life, and it makes for itself its own various limitations
and restrictions. Other methods of Association are based on quite
different principles, but have all been organized with the aim of
increasing happiness, and all therefore deserve the cultivation of him
who is sedulous about his own. The two motives which give them origin
are, the one, Interest; the other, Sympathy. The former I may call
Fellowships; the latter, Comradeships.
Fellowships, composed of those who _follow_ the same business, trade,
or profession, and thus have an interest in common,――this is what the
word means. They are the guilds, unions, lodges, clubs, societies,
associations, companies, which swarm so in our day, whose members are
held together by a desire of mutual assistance in making money, or
raising wages, or providing against misfortune, or maintaining
privileges, or buying cheap, or paying each other’s funeral expenses,
or in a thousand other ways advancing the interests, and thus
relieving the burdens and increasing the enjoyment, of their members.
I knew a man who belonged to over three hundred such associations, and
as he was in other respects a sensible person, he probably found a
profit in this multiplication of ties.
It is a discovery of modern times of no mean importance that after
several thousand years of open trial, government and religion and
friendship and love have all failed in relieving the misery of human
life, but that the intelligent recognition of the mutuality of
interests does not fail; and, when properly organized, may be counted
on with utmost confidence to prevent most of the disasters and to
secure most of the essential material blessings of life,――far beyond
the dreams of the most sanguine reformers of earlier generations.
There is no reason why we should have the poor always with us, except
the ignorance of men as to their own material interests or their
indifference to them; and these difficulties must in time diminish, if
not disappear. Through association for mutual aid in buying and
selling, in labor and investment, in defense and assistance, in credit
and insurance, and the like, the date is almost calculable when the
deserving poor will as a class no longer exist, and extreme indigence
will mean either idleness or crime.
The rock on which most such schemes have shattered has been that in
their blind effort at mutuality they have overlooked the prime import
of individuality――the freedom and autonomy of each member. It should
never be forgotten that the only value of any scheme of association is
the development of the individual. Any society which does not make
this its first and clearly announced purpose is doomed to a deserved
failure. There is no sentiment in such associations. They classify men
like bricks or boxes, according to the externals or accidents of their
professions or places. They pay no heed to personality beyond the one
element in it which they are formed to take cognizance of. For that
very reason they are apt to demand disproportionate sacrifices for
this, and to encroach on liberty by unjust demands on the member’s
time, labor, leisure, or money. They are liable to reach a point where
the benefits they confer are not worth the sacrifices they require.
This is the history of many labor unions in the United States, and it
is the characteristic of all the so-called socialistic schemes for
improving society. In all of them society is looked upon as paramount
to the individual, instead of the individual as paramount to society;
whereas, his development is that alone for which society has any right
to exist.
Comradeship differs from Fellowship as social does from business life.
In it there is no question of interests in common, but only of tastes
in common――a mutuality which exists often to the sad injury of
interests. Comrades are birds of a feather, who assemble because they
resemble――in accordance with the French proverb, _Qui se rassemblent,
s’assemblent_. They all like dogs, or whist, or yachts, or music, or
old books, or four-in-hands, or spectral analysis,――any of the
occupations of choice which are pursued for the pleasure they yield.
In modern life this form of Association has largely taken the place of
Friendship as it was understood by the ancients. It is better adapted
to the bustle and scurry of these days, when the busy worker has not
time to cultivate the amenities of sentiment, but desires to find
others who share his favorite tastes, and a ready-made sympathy which
he need not be at the trouble of looking after, but which is always at
hand when he wants it. This he finds in such comradeships, where each
comes because he has likings similar to the others, and is therefore
sure to be a pleasant arrival. Each thus gratifies his own taste and
increases its capacity for gratification; for tastes are like
magnets,――the more they are used the stronger becomes their power of
attraction.
The higher grades of comradeship are seen in artistic, literary, and
scientific societies, which pursue their objects for the love of the
subject, and not for commercial or other material ends. The
intellectual communion which they yield to their members is a pleasure
of a very high order, and an additional and valuable advantage which
they possess is that they bring workers in the same fields of
unselfish pursuits together, soften the asperities which ignorance of
each other’s personalities might allow to remain, and often pave the
way for warm and abiding friendships. Those men of science or artists
who hold themselves aloof from such reunions usually do so through
self-distrust or undue sensitiveness, and sin both against their own
happiness and the prosperity of their favorite employment.
Both the religious and the moral life――they are not the same――should
find their chief activity in the sphere of comradeship. It was the
beautiful ideal of George Fox that the Church of the future should be
a Society of Friends. The ideal is too lofty for human nature; but it
is quite possible and should be a daily occurrence that the members of
a church or a society united for the development of the benevolent or
religious sentiments should display as much mutual good feeling and as
warm a personal interest in the common purpose, as, say, dog-fanciers
who belong to the same kennel club.
Friendship is far rarer than Comradeship, because it is more delicate
and requires a higher type of character. Most men are incapable of it,
and therefore cannot distinguish it from a mere community of tastes.
It goes much farther, embracing the whole nature, and lifting the
relation out of the plane of interests or tastes into that of
sentiment and spiritual sympathy. No one is capable of friendship who
thinks what use he can make of it. Friendship is free trade, and knows
neither charity, robbery, nor reciprocity. It keeps neither a debit
nor a credit account, and it leaves no room for ingratitude, because
the credit of each party is unlimited.
The completest friendship is that in which the utmost sympathy is
united with the utmost independence. The differences must not be so
great as to prevent a thorough understanding, nor so small as to do
away with admiration for the personal qualities of each other, and
some desire to emulate them.
These phrases do not mean that we should look for perfection in
friends. Quite the contrary. What could be more fatiguing than
perfection? Its monotony would be unendurable. The affection for
friends is not a tribute paid to their merits. Their very faults often
endear them. We do not wish them removed. For ourselves, it may be
well to retain some of those defects which give our friends pleasure;
though this is to be taken with reserve; for, on the other hand, a
great charm in a friend is that he brings us not what we expected, but
something equally pleasant which we did not expect.
Friendship is strengthened by a certain amount of reserve. Few
persons, to use the slang of the studio, “strip well.” Every one gains
by veiling some of his parts. For the same reason we should not ask
nor desire complete confidence from a friend. There are always secrets
which it is better not to know. We may inquire the cause of his
despondency, for sympathy and aid are natural to the sentiment of
friendship; but should wait to be told the sources of his elation.
In a similar manner absence for not too long a time strengthens
friendship by allowing its value to be felt, and the imagination to
clothe the absent in some of the fanciful and beautiful garbs of the
ideal. But too prolonged a stay leaves friendship a memory rather than
a passion.
“But what!” some one will exclaim. “Are we to set about making and
keeping friends with the same attention as if we were raising
hot-house fruit?” Yes, precisely so; but if a friend is not in your
estimation worth as much as a bunch of Hamburg grapes, I assure you it
will be time wasted for you to try. When people complain that they
have no friends, inquire what efforts they have made to get and keep
them. True friendship is rare because it is rarely sought for. When
Lord Bacon wrote, “There is little friendship in the world, and least
of all between equals,” the great Chancellor unwittingly testified to
the truth of those charges of perfidy which posterity has brought
against his name. Friends must be diligently sought for, and when
found must be sedulously cherished. Dr. Johnson never said a wiser
word than when he gave the advice, directed especially to those who
are advancing in years, “to keep our friendships in constant repair.”
Such a relation of sentiment between men can scarcely be formed in
later life. As trees grow old their fibres become rigid, and their
branches cannot be interlocked to arch a bower. But, by a delightful
compensation of nature, it is precisely at this period of life that
the sweetest friendships of all are formed――those between men and
women. Some have doubted these, and I grant you most are incapable of
them; but in facts and friendships there is no such thing as gender.
There are too many beautiful examples in history to allow room for
scepticism here.
Need I count them? Need I refer to the friendship between
Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier, extending over thirty years, during
which she was the guide, consoler, and confidante of the great
statesman and author; not as a learned woman,――for that she was
not,――but as a truly sympathetic soul? Need I quote from that charming
volume of letters, the _Briefe an eine Freundin_, which testify to the
long, the loving, and the pure bond that united Wilhelm von Humboldt
to Charlotte Diede?
Or is there occasion to dwell on that instance which enshrines
elements of sweetness even beyond these, the friendship between
Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna? Think of the inspired and
self-centred artist, living alone with his dreams of matchless beauty,
meeting no man worthy of admittance even to the threshold of his
affections, he who could write from Rome to his nephew in Florence, “I
have no friends; I need none and wish none;” finding at last in the
noble and tender soul of this distinguished woman the sentiments and
sympathy for which he had been unconsciously longing, and which were
necessary to complete the symmetry of both his own life and hers!
* * * * *
The burden laid on Beauty is, that it can have many lovers but no
friends.
* * * * *
A very positive character is at first pleasing. We ourselves are
troubled by so many problems that it is a relief to think,――“Here is
one who has solved them all.” But we soon find that such characters
merely slam the door in the face of importunate inquiries.
* * * * *
Men’s characters are polar forces; the stronger they repel some, the
stronger they attract others.
* * * * *
The society of those who enjoy is alone enjoyable.
* * * * *
Be select in your friends, but miscellaneous in your acquaintances.
Ask not sympathy from the latter nor assistance from the former.
* * * * *
If you would keep friends, shun explanations.
* * * * *
If you doubt the persistence in adversity of what is called
friendship, make friends with an impecunious debtor.
* * * * *
Men admire women who try to please them; women admire men who, they
believe, have qualities worthy of admiration.
* * * * *
We like those who can be useful to us, and love those to whom we can
be useful.
* * * * *
The secret of gaining friends is to cultivate within ourselves the
capacity for friendship.
* * * * *
New acquaintances cannot take the place of old friends; but when your
teeth wear out, an artificial denture is a vast advantage over bare
gums.
* * * * *
Be sure that the man who boasts of a hundred friends, has none.
V. _Love, Marriage, and the Family Relation._
“It is not good that the man should be alone.” Venerable maxim! First
reflection of the Creator on the species! Standing condemnation of all
schemes of celibacy, of all orders of monks and nuns, vestals and
spiritual eunuchs!
The character of any man or woman who leads the single life is
incomplete, lacking in fullness of sympathy for certain aspects of our
common nature, not perfectly rounded to the orb of man’s whole life.
All examples, even the highest, give evidence of this. No man who has
not had a wife whom he loved can understand what love is; he who is
not a parent, can never appreciate the feelings of a father.
The fruition of life, even on the lowest terms, is impossible without
the union of the sexes. The first Napoleon, in one of his letters,
describing the essential needs of man, numbered them as three,――food,
shelter, woman. All doctrines and social theories which conflict with
this primordial law of the life of the species are unnatural, and
their tendency is lowering to the progress of the race. Maternity, not
virginity, is the holier state. Celibate orders have proved as sterile
in intellectual as in physical offspring.
Love, marriage, children, the family,――the emotions and feelings, the
affections and the ideas, which centre around these foci of human
activity are essential elements in every life which is lived to the
full measure of its powers. Nothing can take their places. Happiness
without them is not human.
The emotion of Love belongs to those whose aims are ideal, because it
is concerned with the future evolution of the species. In the
iridescent glow of this master-passion its object never seems a mere
human being, a man or a woman, but is invested with a charm unseen by
the eye, not expressed in form or color, endowed with the power of
exciting the soul to an indefinite and passionate expansion. It is the
inaudible appeal of unborn posterity for its share in the world of
Being.
Hence it is that Love is so powerfully excited by Beauty, by the
symmetry and traits which foreshadow the final physical perfection of
the race, the unconscious but unceasing struggle of organic nature
toward nobler transformations, toward the building of a tabernacle fit
to be a shrine for the activities of a higher life.
Though hundreds of volumes have been written in poetry and prose on
the subject of Love, it remains unexhausted, because it is
inexhaustible. Its seed-field is the boundless future, its message
concerns all posterity. There is something in it deeper than the
emotion of any single heart, farther reaching than any individual
effort. There is a secret about it which can never be wholly told,
which it were a profanation to try to express. Even between loving
ones, it is better not to talk much of it, nor too curiously to think
about it. When true and pure, it will be manifested without words in
ennobling the character and elevating its aims and actions.
The attraction of woman for man is her invisible presage of
motherhood. This it is which lends the nameless charm to the maiden
and the sacred dignity to the matron. Around her, centre all those
sentiments which constitute the Home, the family, and the parental
affections. These find their proper expression in Marriage.
The history of the institution of marriage is a curious narrative.
Every conceivable relation of the sexes has been established by one
community or another, and sanctioned by the moral sense of the time
and place. There have been hordes where the relations have been
communal or miscellaneous; others, where a man had many wives; others,
as in Thibet to-day, where the woman would have many husbands;
sometimes the woman selects the man, at others the man the woman, and
elsewhere the marriage is arranged by third parties; in some, marriage
is indissoluble, in others, more or less easily annulled; while in
certain religious societies in our own country the method of selective
and temporary unions has been practiced. The result of all these
experiments has been to show that the happiness of both parties is
best consulted by strictly monogamous or pairing marriages, where each
exerts a certain amount but not entire freedom of selection, and where
the lien can be canceled when it proves clearly detrimental to the
felicity of either.
Very few words will be necessary to defend the first of these three
conditions. Under whatever form we find polygamy, whether legalized,
as in Mohammedan countries, or sanctioned by religion, as among the
Mormons, or winked at by usage, as in mistress-keeping, it inevitably
results in the degradation of the woman and her subjection to the
dominion of lower impulses. To every one who believes that her
happiness demands equal attention to that of the man, all schemes of
polygamy stand condemned.
The second condition I have stated will need more defense. Especially
in our country is it unpopular to oppose the course of love. “Let me
not,” exclaims the great dramatist, “to the marriage of true minds
admit impediment.” Yet all will admit certain impediments. The laws of
many States prohibit the marriage of near of kin, of first cousins,
and of uncles with nieces, although in Germany unions of the latter
class are very common.
Immature age does legally, and should always, act as a bar to
marriage. At what period of life marriage is likely to prove most
happy is a curious question, which has never been properly studied.
The physiologist, basing his opinion on grounds of his science, would
say that the woman should be between twenty and thirty, and the man
between twenty-five and thirty-five. Dr. Johnson, regarding the
question from another point of view, made the wise observation,――“Those
who marry late are best pleased with their children, and those who
marry early with their partners.”
Apart from questions of immature age and near relationship, marriages
in the United States are generally contracted without restriction. The
young of both sexes are usually conceded full liberty to make their
own selection, the burden of the support of both being generally
assumed by the husband. The consequence is that such unions are
frequently entered upon with slight real acquaintance of each other,
the wife is wholly dependent, and the husband has a heavy load to
carry,――conditions calculated to intensify the struggle for existence
and diminish the happiness of home.
From considerable observation of family life in both countries, I
believe that the French system is superior to ours. In a French family
of the middle or upper classes, the parent who desires to marry a
daughter, for instance, takes pains to introduce and recommend young
men of suitable station. No coercion is used on either side. Only when
an affection naturally springs up is the union decided upon. A
marriage-settlement is drawn by which each of the young couple
receives a certain amount of property, wholly independent of the
control of the other. Thus they are freed from the severest pressure
of monetary anxiety, and, what is especially valuable, the wife has a
recognized place of power, and secures her rightful prestige in the
family circle. I have often observed how superior is the position of
the wife in France to what it is in this country. The reason is in the
better method of forming marriages.
A sympathetic marriage is the happiest condition of human life; but
one without sympathy is a hateful servitude. How distressing to be
obliged to live _for_ those whom we cannot bear to live _with_!
The number of unhappy marriages in the United States may be guessed
from the records of the divorce courts, which register only some of
the most unhappy. The divorces granted annually sever nearly thirty
thousand couples, and this although in many States such separation is
costly, slow, and difficult. These figures represent, therefore, but a
small fraction of the marriages which are galling the backs of one or
both of the parties concerned.
When we reflect what the true foundations of the marital relations
should be,――love, affection, sympathy,――it would appear wholly foreign
to its character that it should be made an obligatory fetter and a
continued curse by any law, civil or religious. The moral sense,
personal affection, parental feeling, and the sentiment of society,
would seem to be sufficient to preserve all those unions which should
be preserved. Their severance should be left to the option of the
parties concerned alone. Surely the happiness of the individual would
be better consulted by such an arrangement than by that which now
prevails.
Marriages, so far from being entered upon with greater recklessness,
would then be more cautiously undertaken, because their durability
would depend on mutual satisfaction. The woman would have full
equality of rights, and not be a miserable sacrifice to unjust laws,
as now she often is. It would be a step toward the ideal of the
marriage state, which is a union based on love, in which each party
has absolutely equal rights and stands pledged to equal duties, and
neither is bound to the other longer than love and duty are respected.
Neither government nor religion should put obstacles in the way of the
dissolution of marriage other than those safeguards of the interests
involved, which attend the termination of all important contracts.
Deep thinkers on the relations of life in goodly number have long
advocated these views. They have been those of John Milton, of William
von Humboldt, of John Stuart Mill. Nor is there anything in them which
an enlightened moral or religious sentiment should oppose; rather the
contrary. As Milton so well says in his Treatise on Divorce,――“Where
Love cannot be, there can be left of wedlock nothing but the empty
husk of an outside matrimony, as undelightful and unpleasing to God as
any other kind of hypocrisy.”
The object of marriage is the Family. Love claims immortality through
posterity. The hidden though ever-present purpose of the union of the
sexes is the perpetuation and evolution of the species. Any union
which avoids this object is destructive, and not creative of true
happiness. We are told of the ancient ascetic sect of the Essenes that
the sexes united in marriage, but remained chaste; and had families of
children, but gathered them from among the foundlings and homeless
orphans of the highways. Their impossible example does not merit the
praise, as it has not enlisted the imitation of, later generations.
The maternal and paternal affections, the love of family and the
pleasures derived from the ties of kindred, are enjoyments which the
properly constituted individual will never be willing to sacrifice
unless constrained thereto by mighty and exceptional conditions. The
tacit assumption of mutual aid and confidence between brothers and
sisters, and the intimacy which is fostered by even remoter degrees of
relationship, are beneficent elements of the social compact, and
contribute largely to the happiness of the individual.
The Family, as we understand it, is distinctly a product of high
civilization. In savage tribes the ties of consanguinity are quite
different. In many, for instance, the father is scarcely regarded as a
relation, blood kin being counted through the mother only. The rise of
the paternal or patriarchial form of the family appears at a higher
stage of culture; and when, as among the Etruscans and Romans, it was
coincident with a recognized equality in marriage, society advanced
with rapid strides.
Some believe that the theory of the family, as it has so long
prevailed in Europe, is inappropriate for this country, and hence that
it is disappearing among us, as unsuited to the development of our
forms of culture. Children desire their liberty earlier, and parents
are ready to comply with their requests. No ties other than material
ones are recognized as constituting a family unit. It will be for the
future to decide whether the greater personal independence thus
secured has been of more value to the happiness of the race than the
elements of affection sacrificed in obtaining it.
* * * * *
Law is the bond of the state, love, of the family. The former rules
best by precept, the latter by example.
* * * * *
Those marriages are ominous which transmit miseries.
* * * * *
The family tie differs from the tie of friendship in that it binds
together interests rather than sympathies.
* * * * *
Love, says Michael Angelo in one of his Sonnets, is the mental
impression of ideal beauty:――
Amore e un concetta di bellezza
Immaginata, cui sta dentro al cuore.
* * * * *
The aims of the child centre around his maturity; those of the man
around his posterity.
* * * * *
The generations unborn are the sovereigns of the world, and the goals
we are running for are invisible. Posthumous aims are the potent.
* * * * *
The heart of every woman is like a page written with sympathetic ink.
It seems blank, but warm it sufficiently, and you will find a
love-letter written on it.
* * * * *
_Cara amica_, beware of that tendency in your nature to repose utter
confidence. Learn that nought is so fragile as Faith. It is like those
delicate vases of Venetian glass which a single drop of poison is said
to shiver into atoms. Better the homely ware which will toss it out,
and fill again with wine. It is a law of reasoning that full belief is
disproved by a single event, but partial belief only by a series of
events. But what have you to do with reasoning? you who must trust
“not at all, or all in all”? and bless you for it, fated, foolish
friend.
* * * * *
A man weeps for the lost loved one; a woman for the lost love.
* * * * *
Love is the language in which the gods speak to man, observes Plato.
Unfortunate is he who hears it not; doubly unfortunate he who hears,
but comprehends it not.
* * * * *
True love is love of love; not love of the pleasures of love.