The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/9. Marriage
MARRIAGE.
Is marriage a relation which is or can be imposed by the State, by religion, by the police, by the clergy, by relatives, or by any other power?
Everybody will answer: It is the union of a man and a woman resulting from spontaneous affection. Therefore only each particular couple that enters into such a union carries the motive and the aim of the union within itself, and no power in the world has the right to control this motive or to stipulate what the aim shall be. Only liberty in entering into and liberty in dissolving marriage can secure its character, determine its moral nature, and guarantee the attainment of its end.
The chief end of marriage can be expressed in three words: Propagation, Love, Friendship.
We have seen in the chapter on Morality in what respect man differs from the animal in the gratification of his natural needs. This difference refers not only to the gratification of the sexual need, but also to its consequences: propagation. The animal propagates unconsciously, and separates itself from its young just as unconsciously as soon as they are able to provide their own food. And even this unconscious care emanates chiefly only from the mother, while the male generally concerns himself neither for the mother nor the young after copulation. The well-known passionate love of animals for their young is at an end from the time when the latter no longer need aid, and old and young no longer know each other.
The egotism and coarse conception of men would fain have transferred this mode of propagation also to the human race. That would mean in other words: we want to be animals in this respect, not human beings. While the animal sees in the female only an instrument for procreation, the woman is to the man only the complement of his being, his second ego, in and with whom he begins to live his complete life; while in the animal a merely temporary affection secures the indispensable aid for the rearing of the young, children are to men a desirable continuation of their own personality through whom they establish their continuity beyond death with the infinite stream of humanity. And through this ethical continuity and the ethical consequences of sexual intermingling there arises between man and woman, between father and mother, between parents and children, that relation which we designate by the word family.
Thus with regard to propagation, family life at once makes an essential distinction between man and the animal. To want to destroy the family is either a great error or a great vulgarity. It is founded in nature, and when viewed in the light of its ethical import it lays the foundation of the most beautiful, the truest, and the surest human happiness. The animal has no family because it has no reason; reason cannot desire to destroy the family, because it would thereby only re-establish crude nature, that is, destroy morality and, with morality, itself.
But the more the importance of the family is appreciated by society and by the individual, the higher and nobler the conception of it is, the more must its fundamental condition be recognized as that liberty which alone admits of complete harmony, of true attachment, of sincere union between man and woman. Nothing must be allowed to influence the choice except spontaneous affection; nothing must stand in the way of a separation where this affection, and with it the desire of a union, is wanting. The family is inconceivable without real marriage, marriage is inconceivable without love, and love can no longer be distinguished from prostitution when the free bond of the union is vitiated by compulsion. If propagation, to return to this point, is to have an ethical significance and ethical consequences, it must not proceed on the plane of bestial association, but just as little in false or forced relationships Every child that springs from a union which would have ceased had not external considerations or binding fetters held it together, transmits the curse of the misfortune and of the immorality to the next generation.
As a second end of marriage, which we must at the same time call its origin, I designate love. I shall spare myself the trouble of combating those philosophers who would deny the existence of love. At the same time I do not content my. self with conceiving of love only in its romantic form, and I do not care to construct a cornerstone of the moral order of things from an intoxication of the senses or of the imagination. I shall let the happiness which accompanies this intoxication stand in all its beauty wherever it is present; but we must place its substance on a basis of reason, and make a consciousness of the intoxication. This is accomplished by tracing love to man's perfect consciousness of his sovereignty in the world, of his worth and his liberty, and then, moreover, to the true recognition of the advantages of external and internal beauty which satisfy not only a sensual but, at the same time, an ethical and æsthetical need in the lovers. Lovers must come to be to each other that which men have hitherto placed above the clouds by the words "god"? and "goddess;" yes, they must become even more to each other, namely, the realized ideal of their moral conceptions and of their sense of beauty. If they learn to seek and to appreciate each other in this sense, love will become a lasting enthusiasm, and the words of Schiller, which unfortunately apply to most of our present relationships, will have become untrue:
With that sweetest holiday
Must the May of life depart;
With the cestus loosed — away
Flies illusion from the heart.
On the contrary, the illusion will become a beautiful truth. Every real love of noble, intelligent people will only be confirmed by sexual union. The so-called "nuptial bed" is the grave of false, but the ark of covenant of true, love.
The want of love always consists either in moral degeneration or in a wrong choice. Let men be educated for love, and leave to them the liberty to annul a wrong choice by separation, and true marriage will crowd out a thousand relationships which now are nothing but institutions for the perpetuation of misery and prostitution.
Love is called "blind." To what purpose? Supposing it could be demonstrated that the passionate attachment of two people was an illusion which augmented and beautified their respective qualities, the happiness which they would mutually prepare for each other would not therefore be destroyed. But by their conception of each other they at all events show their ability to form a certain ideal; and if in the course of their acquaintance it becomes apparent that they have not reached this ideal, their experience may serve as a guide which will enable them to find it all the surer in another relationship.
As for the rest, many an argument might be brought forward against the blindness of love. I should be much inclined to credit it with clear-sightedness. The loving interest sharpens the vision for the detection and appreciation of qualities which the indifferent person would overlook or fail to appreciate. Thus above all those are blind who charge love with blindness, and it is only necessary to view men from the standpoint of love in order to secure to them the recognition and appreciation of their qualities.
But the question will be raised: Will love, after all these concessions are made to it, be sufficient to fill out an entire life? Can it, even if it outlasts the honeymoon and the time which might suffice to test the possibility of an illusion, — can it satisfy the heart so long that its value will not be lost in the need for change which would finally lead to an anarchy of the affections?
This question brings us to the third word with which I designated the end and substance of marriage — to friendship.
Of course I hold that love in marriage changes from a state of passionate attachment into a condition of quiet friendship; but at the same time, I maintain that true friendship exists only in marriage.
The question whether between persons of the same sex real friendship is possible has never, so far as I know, been met with a doubt. And yet I am very much inclined to answer it with a downright no.
All sympathies and antipathies of men are founded in egoism in the good sense. Self-interest is the natural guide in all steps, and there is no danger in acknowledging this when a correct, general principle is added to this guide as its test, that is, when the pursuit of self-interest is placed under moral control.
The duration and value of a union between two people depends entirely on whether these persons are fitted to conform to their respective egoisms, that is, to mutually satisfy their needs, be these needs intellectual, emotional, or physical. But now it is clear, and experience confirms it every day, that two persons of the same sex, even if in individual qualities they attract or agree with each other, can yet never in the long-run have in all things the same interests, but will sooner or later in some case or other show themselves as competitors. Individual examples to the contrary occur only where exaggeration and exaltation sacrifice the personal interests of the different persons to an abstraction of friendship, or where circumstances keep both persons at a certain distance from each other, so that the competition of the respective interests finds no point of conflict. Ifa conflict and an estrangement are to be avoided in a constant living together, one person must so far give up his independence that the preponderance of the other changes into domineering guidance. But if this is the case, the true conception of the friendship which is to exist between persons of the same sex is lost.
Among men it is now ambition, now partisanship, now. the friction of character, now a difference in principles, etc.; among women it is generally competition in love, jealousy, vanity, etc., which causes the rupture of friendships.. (Examples of friendship among women are hardly ever to be found except with old maids who have resigned all human impulses, especially sexual competition.) But these points of collision disappear entirely by the side of the all-conclusive fact that persons of the same sex do not at all possess, and cannot possess, the qualities which enable them to satisfy each other entirely, to complement each other entirely, and, I might say, to let the cogs of their egoism work exactly into each other. The man can never fill the place of a woman to the man, the woman can never fill that of a man to the woman, but the man can fill the place of a woman to the woman, and the woman the place of a man to the man. The inadequacy of friendship among persons of the same sex the Greeks have shown most strikingly in their attempt to complete, as it were, the friendships into which the abnormal taste of the times had led the men by the unnatural introduction of the feminine element of "love." Accustomed to look upon women as inferior beings, but not able to withdraw themselves entirely from the acknowledgment of the feminine element, they transferred it, as it seems, partly to youths in order to sanction its acknowledgment through the male sex. And while thereby unconsciously degrading woman, they avenged her at the same time in themselves, by their endeavor to complete, to idealize themselves by the feminine element. The two sexes are designed to complement each other, to perfect the human being in each. This completion is the bond of true friendship; and if, on the one hand, the writer is not entirely wrong who says, "One man and one woman are together equal to two angels, two women are together equal to two devils;" Rousseau, on the other hand, hits the truth exactly when he says, "A man's best friend is his wife." I admit that the psychological interest and common ideal aims ‘can bring about a relationship between men which deserves the name of friendship; but, according to our views, perfect friendship demands complete devotion, complete confidence, and mutual indispensableness, which exists as little among men as among women, and is only conditioned by a difference of sex.
Also with regard to the external development of character the difference of the two sexes is very well adapted to establish a relation of friendship. While the man as the representative of strength impresses the woman, the' clinging nature of woman seems made for the purpose of subordinating herself to the male predominance without losing her personality or lapsing into servile dependence. On the other hand, man will make concessions to the weak woman which he would never make to a rival in strength. Only man and woman can unite a proper subordination with a just coördination in a natural way.
But woman is not only clinging, she is also faithful, sincere, and sacrificing. The woman grows into the relation with her friend with her whole soul; and where the uncouth egoism or the polemical nature of the man would allow a break to appear, the love of the woman knows at once how to mend it. The woman is the uniting element in the formation, and the conciliatory element in the preservation, of the relationship. The woman is not only a perfect friend, she even does not cease to be one unless the man makes the friendship altogether impossible. If I must bethink myself whether I have ever had perfect friends among men, Iam on the other hand quite certain that I have found perfect friends among women.
Since we are here speaking of marriage, it is self-evident that friendship can be understood only as one of the forms or modifications of love. It is love without the passion of love; it is love without sensuality; it is benevolence, confidence, and attachment ushered in and confirmed by sexual devotion and union. It combines, therefore, I might say, at the same time the greatest absence of egoism with the satisfaction of egoism, and is thus perfectly adapted to establish a relationship for the whole life. It is not to be inferred from this, however, that a true marriage necessarily can only exist in a union for life.
Having established the three chief aims and requirements of marriage, we have still to refute one point that refers to a peculiar right which men claim to possess over women — a right which, if it did exist, would make every marriage impossible. I mean the pretended right of sensual extravagance.
We have seen the degeneracy of the male sex with regard to love. Woman has remained the vestal who has preserved the fire of love in its purity, while man has smothered it in the smoke of sensual passion. While man in general is always sensually disposed, even without feeling the least higher interest for the woman who serves him, the passion of woman is generally awakened only by love; and giving herself up without attachment is entirely foreign to the true and noble woman. With her, the passion does not attach merely to the sex as with man, but at the same time to the person. Excellent women have without reserve told me their thoughts on this point. They admit the possibility that in an unguarded moment even a stranger, by an impressive beauty and manliness, could place the woman in a state of sensual excitement, but that she would still be far from yielding to this excitement even in such a case, and that in any case the relation could not be at an end for the woman and her wish fulfilled by mere physical yielding. This was not a mere matter of education, but had its foundation in the nature of woman.
Woman is sensual when she loves, while man, as a rule, loves only when he is sensual. The question now is simply this: Is there an essential difference of nature or not? Is there a peculiar need for sensuality in man aside from love, and, therefore, a peculiar right for him, or not? Or can it be demanded of him that he should, like woman, restrain his sensuality within the limits of love? There are points to be considered here upon which a great deal depends, but on which no settled views seem as yet to have been developed, mainly for the reason that either hypocrisy or egotism would not lay them open for discussion. I, however, have made up my mind to discuss all human auestions in a human manner. Only vulgarity and a bad conscience can fear being led too far in such a discussion.
The general opinion amounts to this, that the man has greater sensual needs, especially a greater need for change, therefore also a greater right to satisfy it than the woman. I have even heard intellectual men who were not by education especially disposed towards sensuality, and who in every way distinguished themselves by moral aspirations, express themselves to the effect that in the society of the future man could not be restricted to a single woman, but would have to be granted the liberty of living with a certain number of women — who, however, need not live together — in a simultaneous marriage relation.
So the man is to be a sort of human rooster, as it were, who keeps a court of human hens.
If women were hens, it is not at all to be doubted that the roosters would assemble in sufficient numbers about them. But the first difficulty with which we meet here is the opposition of the women. If we inquire among all women, not a single one will be found who would be willing to share a beloved man with another woman, except she had been deprived of her reason by a silly fanaticism, as is the case with the Mormons. The Count of Gleichen would in our time have to narrow down his broad nuptial couch to one half its dimensions. Only very superior and imposing manly personalities, as for instance Goethe, have succeeded in making several women at the same time partially happy, or in silencing in them the opposition of rivalry, which by no means is equivalent to assent. Woman is guided by the proper feeling that a real marriage relation can exist only between two persons. And if the woman, in accordance with this feeling, resents the proposal to share her lover with other women, she only makes use of her right; and in formulating this right she will ask men this question: Which one of you would be willing to be required to share his beloved with other men?
Whatever a man or a woman possesses of love, confidence, and devotion can be entirely bestowed upon one person. It is impossible to simultaneously love two men or two women truly. A man can have twenty mistresses at the same time, but not two wives. But woman has a right to be a wife, she has a right to demand that everything should be given her which she herself offers, and it is to misunderstand her right, no less than the nature of marriage, when one expects a woman to be content to lie in wait, as it were, with her love, till her lover has made the round among colleagues, and her turn for a visit has come.
Woman does not ask for several men, but one she wishes to possess wholly. Only degenerate women, inured to immorality by education and surroundings, or prompted by an abnormal physical constitution, can entertain relations with several men at the same time, or even follow the footsteps of a Messalina, of whom Juvenal says that she was wont to return home from the haunts of lust "worn out but not satisfied." If, on the ground of their sensual capacity, men would establish a right to have "conjugal relations" with several women at the same time, they have an opportunity to become convinced by Parisian Messalinas that women could insist on the right to have fifty husbands, where a man would ask but for five wives.
But, on the other hand, they could be convinced by the example of noble women who have given themselves up to love in full freedom without regard for the judgment of the world, that it is not a need of the feminine sex to have several men at their disposal at the same time. Ninon, George Sand, and others have not been content with one love relation, but they have never loved two men at the same time; i.e., they have never stood in conjugal relations with two men at once. They kept every relationship pure until it had outlived itself, and then entered into a new one, i.e., into a new marriage. And they would surely have confined themselves to a single man,shad they found one who had possessed the qualities that could have interested such extraordinary women and made them happy for life.
We can, therefore, consider it as an established fact that the woman, just as she does not crave several husbands at the same time, will also not tolerate a rival in the marriage relation. Could it, therefore, be doubtful whether a man must restrict himself to one wife at a time, woman would be the one to decide. It would be contrary to reason to assume that the nature of man required several women at the same time, while it was the nature of woman, on the other hand, to treat the removal of this need as a vital question. Where there have been or still are nations among whom the husband, beside his legal wife, kept concubines (for instance among savages, the ancients, and Mussulmen), there we find this abuse founded upon the disqualification and degradation of woman, who will submit to it only so long as she has not attained to a consciousness of herself. Such a degradation has the same origin as that of the women of India, who are obliged to throw themselves into the flames in honor of their dead husbands. I come to the conclusion, therefore, that the claims of men to variety are founded entirely upon past conditions and past education, and that woman will have to recall them within the proper limits. "The man who, on the plane of our civilization, desires several wives at the same time comes, therefore,
1) into opposition with the will of each one of them, and can attain his end only through deceit and concealment;
2) he violates justice;
3) he offends the dignity of woman; and,
4) he destroys marriage, and with it the moral element in the relation of the sexes.
How, then, secure marriage and morality? How remove the objection of male desire, which under present conditions is always striving to overstep the boundaries of morality?
The attainment of this end cannot be hoped ee after all that has hitherto been considered, without fulfilling the following requirements:
1) Guarding youth from secret vices by careful education, adequate occupation, and close attention, so that the lustful instinct may not be cultivated abnormally early, and undermine, the capacity for sexual love.
2) Early marriage of youths and maidens, in order that the want of opportunity to satisfy the awakened sexual needs may not drive them into wrong ways. It is here to be observed that the premature development of sexual desire is nothing but the consequence of our bad education hitherto, and that the young man has no sexual needs to satisfy previous to his marriage. Thus he is, on entering marriage, not yet addicted to licentiousness, his first sexual gratification coincides with his first love, and thus he is led back to the plane of morality on which that portion of the feminine sex which has not fallen a prey to prostitution has remained. The gratification of the sexual instinct ts thus wholly placed within the marriage relation. But in order that it become possible to uphold this moral barrier, we must
3) not restrict the liberty of marriage by tedious formalities and impeding conditions. The agreement of the lovers and a notice concerning their union must suffice for the forming of marriage. The priest does not make marriage, the law does not make marriage, the parents do not make marriage, the magistrate does not make marriage, but love and the agreement of the lovers make it. Let marriage, therefore, be made dependent on nothing save the conditions for its existence.
4) The liberty which prevails in the contracting of marriage must also prevail in the dissolution of marriage. Whether the object of marriage has been attained can only be decided by the judgment of those who have contracted it. If they do not feel satisfied, to attempt to preserve it by force means to destroy it by force. By this force the very thing would again be introduced which is chiefly to be prevented, namely, dissipation outside of marriage. The married do not exist for the sake of marriage, but marriage exists for the sake of the married. The bond must, therefore, be severed when it has become a fetter. What is the object of marriage? As we have seen: propagation, love, friendship. And to this you want to force us by making separation more difficult? Strange lunacy!
5) State education of the children. When parents are fettered to the marriage relation longer than perhaps during the first years, by the care for the support and education of the. children, there arises, especially in disordered economic conditions, either the danger that they will fulfil their paternal duties at the price of marriage by remaining together contrary to their inclinations, or that, in case of a separation, the burden of supporting the children will fall on one party only, or, finally, that this support will turn out to the disadvantage of the children. If the parents have sufficient means to dispense with the assistance of the State, they will of course, even without it, be secured against the danger of sacrificing their love or their liberty to their cares; but most of them are without means, and the State certainly loses nothing if by bearing the cost of education it buys of them the opportunity to rear moral and happy citizens instead of immoral and unhappy ones. So long, however, as the State has not reached the point where, as a last resort, it secures an education to all children, it is self-evident that with the liberty to dissolve marriage ad libitum must remain the common obligation of the parents to take upon themselves the education and support of their children.
The objections and doubts which will be raised against these requirements are easily to be foreseen, especially since, in judging of the prerequisites of a future development of social conditions, the opponent is but too ready to take existing conditions as a foundation for his suppositions. In the first place, a "moral" solicitude will be expressed that the liberty of forming or dissolving a marriage relation at pleasure will involve people in the danger of using marriage merely as a means for variety in the satisfaction of their desires. Unions will be made to-day and unmade to-morrow, etc. Granted that such a supposition could come true, we need only ask ourselves the question whether the moral condition of society could thus become worse than it now is. As if the present society could run any sort of risk thereby! Could men be brought to a higher and more disgusting degree of moral corruption than the present secret prostitution has reached, even if freedom of lust should be publicly proclaimed? Certainly not. But let us take another point of view. Let us picture to ourselves a society consisting throughout of cultured, normally constituted people who have been educated for liberty, and who feel themselves secure in their chief interests, and let us ask ourselves whether in such a society a man would value less the joys of a sincere relation with a beloved woman, and the happiness of seeing the continuance of his existence secured, as it were, in his children, than the Turkish satisfaction of sleeping with a different concubine every night. And let us, moreover, keep in mind that the women of the future are not the women of the present, and let us ask ourselves whether they, when they have become economically independent of men, will still consent to, and find their happiness in, being merely the changing concubines of modern Turks. Those married people who are entirely suited to each other and are happy together will certainly not separate for the mere reason that they have full liberty to do so, and those who are not happy together can by an unrestricted change certainly not harm society as much as they now do. Let us even consider the possibility that a man might unite himself with a different woman every year, and consider whether it would be more immoral for him to have had a dozen wives or several hundred mistresses during his lifetime.
A further question by the doubters, who draw their conclusion only from present conditions, will be whether the liberty of changing the marriage relation, and the support of the children by the State, would not have to result in the destruction of the family.
The family is formed by the mutual attachment of the married couple, and by their love for their children. This attachment and this love are a natural need, and satisfy an interest than which there is none higher and greater. It is, therefore, an entirely false supposition that parents who really love each other could find it to their interest to dissolve the family; but for those who do not love each other the family has lost all value and all moral import. It is, therefore, a service to moral society to make dissolution possible to such families. Moreover, the need of parents to have their children constantly about them generally exists only during the early years of the latter. Finally, the admission of the children into public institutions does not at all imply their separation from the parents; the intercourse between them must rather always be left free to as large an extent as the purpose of the institution will permit.
It is self-evident that there ought not to exist any compulsion for the parents to give their children over to public institutions at a certain age; the State is only to offer the possibility and tke opportunity for it. But if that is done in the right manner, it will appear that no compulsion is necessary.
No reasonable person will imagine that he can reach his ideal, whatever it may be. In all efforts at reform, the correct principle must be discovered and established as an ideal aim. The nearest possible approach is then a matter of circumstances and of practical possibilities. It is not to be expected, therefore, that the realization of the above requirements will eliminate all immoral elements from society. Neither can there be the least idea of creating a new state of things in a day, or of suddenly destroying the after-effects of former conditions. It.is sufficient if the established principles are recognized as correct, gain adherents, and, as far as it is possible, serve the enlightened minds of both sexes even now as a guide for their actions.
- ↑
Ach! des Lebens schönste Feier
Endigt auch den Lebensmai;
Mit dem Gürtel, mit dem Schleier
Reisst der schöne Wahn entzwei.