Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/301

man, has completely lost its scope and purport, that it is usually entered into without regard to the affinity between the parties, that young men and maidens are formally trained to consider love as something distinct from marriage, owing to the examples they see around them in every-day life, and still more to the light literature of all languages, that in fact they learn to look upon them as antagonistic in most cases, and when their hands are united in public, make the reservation in the secret depths of their souls, consciously or only indistinctly apprehended, that the inclinations of their hearts are not to be influenced by this formality—the economic organization of our civilization is to blame for these facts. This organization has selfishness as its foundation; it recognizes only the single being and not the species, its attention is confined strictly to the individual and it neglects in every respect the race; it allows a piratical system of economy to exist which sacrifices the future to the present, and among all its numerous watchmen and guards, attorneys and bailiffs, there is not a single being whose duty it is to look after the interests of posterity. What matters it to a society organized in this way, that the reproduction of the species occurs under the most unfavorable conditions? The living generation has only itself to think of. If it can complete its existence in the utmost possible comfort, it has fulfilled its duty to itself completely, and it is not aware of any other duty. The succeeding generation in its turn may look after itself alone, and if it is mentally and physically impoverished by the fault of the parents, so much the worse for k. Are the children born in a marriage without love, pitiable creatures? What does it matter, if only the wedded couple obtained the substantial advantages they sought by the marriage? Are the children of love without marriage usually sacrificed to the mothers' dread