now the last and most painful question of all obtrudes itself upon us: is matrimony a lie simply because it is usually entered into for mercenary motives and not for the possession of a certain individual, and is it a constraint merely because the morality of Christianity will not concede the fact of the existence of such a thing as love, in conjunction with the fetters imposed by the priest? Is not matrimony rather, as it exists today in our civilization, an altogether unnatural form of the relations between the two sexes, and in its present phase of development, that is, as a perpetual alliance for the whole life, would it not be a lie even if marriages were never contracted on any other grounds than those of love, and all its natural rights were conceded to passion?
We are so far removed from a condition of nature in regard to the relations between the sexes, that it is extremely difficult now to distinguish with certainty between what is physiological and necessary in this matter, and what has been so distorted, perverted and artificially added to, during centuries of inherited transmission, that it has come at last to have the appearance of nature. But a careful, critical analysis of the inmost promptings of the human heart, added to the deductions drawn from observations of the life of the higher animals, leads an adherent of the present institution to very discouraging conclusions. Marriage, as it has developed historically with our civilization, is based principally and solely upon the recognition of monogamy. But it appears that monogamy is not a natural condition of mankind, hence there is a fundamental contradiction between the individual impulse and the social institution, the cause of constantly renewed conflicts between sentiment and customs, in many cases bringing the substance into perpetual opposition to the form and making the state of matrimony a lie. Scarcely
