The Truth about Marriage/Chapter3
CHAPTER III
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MARRIAGE
It is entirely obvious that marriage is the most fundamental and the most primary of human relationships.
No other relationship enters into comparison with it as to its basic character. For it is the fountain of all other relationships.
The relationship of father, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, cousins, grandparents, and all blood relationships, proceed from it.
And more than that, from marriage proceed not only families and family life, but society itself, the nations, all humanity.
It would seem highly important to have the fountain from which proceeds all human life kept pure and protected by whatever useful means society may determine.
After all it is a question of society protecting itself.
The mistake that people today seem to be making in their extreme individualism in the matter of marriage is that it is merely a personal matter. We grant that it is a personal matter, and we shall later show how largely personal it is.
But when people become careless of others involved in marriage, and indifferent to all that may socially proceed from marriage, society has the right to take a hand.
The individualist asks: "Is not one the master, or the mistress, of one's own life and destiny?"
Yes, one has the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness so long as his practice does not interfere with similar rights possessed by others.
If marriage is to descend to the level of brute mating, with no regard for offspring and the future,—descend into mere lust and temporary pleasure, it would mean that the fountain of all human life had ceased to be protected.
For licentious living destroys society itself as well as the individual.
We cannot allow the individual to pollute the fountain from which all drink. He may destroy himself, but he must not be allowed to destroy society. He cannot be allowed to make laws subversive of the common good, nor be a law unto himself.
One might want to build his house out in the middle of the city street, or to run his automobile without regard to traffic laws, or to violate other city ordinances which provide for the common good; but there is an order in human life without which life is not protected and no individual can be allowed wantonly to break those laws.
John Jones feels the instinctive or primitive urge of love of the sex. Nothing else matters to him.
He does not realize that love of the sex is given by the Creator to lead finally to love of one of the sex, and thus to mating, for the sake of the continuance of the human race. He thinks of his particular love of the sex as meant only for his individual delight, purely a private affair.
Is he unlike the rest of us? One of the most difficult things for the individual to realize is the fact of his social obligation.
We sometimes think that we have no obligations to society. Perhaps we do not have the social obligation to attend parties, receptions, and other things provided largely by the womenfolks to secure contacts between eligible men and women who are eternally on the lookout for a suitable mate for themselves or daughters, but we can never escape the social bearing of our love affairs.
The precise form of the ceremony of marriage is not the important thing, but the fact of some form which will make marriage more or less binding, binding enough to compel the fulfillment of the obligations which follow from it, which are inherent in it and inseparable from it.
One may borrow money from another and feel that the essence of the loan is the verbal promise, or the mental intention, to repay the money. It is, but it is also indispensable for the protection of the lender that there shall be some visible evidence of the loan and the conditions of repayment. Otherwise the loan may prove to be as unimportant to the borrower as it too often is when there is no formality about it.
The same principle is true of marriage. Therefore it is always regarded as a social contract.
And when a young man tells a young girl that the essence of marriage is their mutual love, he is correct, but if he fails to protect her rights and the rights of possible offspring by a social contract which binds him, he is a scoundrel.
But we are getting new ideas in the matter of marriage in our day. Getting married has become a very commonplace thing. If one does not like one's partner, it is easy to get another, and start all over again. It is like taking a meal in a chance restaurant, he can find another restaurant for the next meal. If one does not like one's husband or wife, accepted on the spur of the moment, there are plenty of others. Why be serious about it? It is old-fashioned to take such things seriously.
And yet, as we have seen, marriage is the most serious thing in the world, the most important step in life, affecting human society as well as individuals for time and eternity.
It has always existed, as far as human records go, and it has always been entered into with much ceremony and consideration.
It seems right to question many customs and traditions that have become embedded in the life of the nations. For example, the Chinese did right to question the custom of binding the feet of their little girls and thus deforming them for life. We think they did right to dispense with their once cherished pigtails.
It is certain that we did well to dispense with the universal practice of dueling.
We are doing well to question the wisdom of war.
But those things are destructive, and marriage is constructive. It is inherent in the nature of man and indispensable for the conservation of human society, yes, and indispensable for human happiness as dueling and war are not.
It is perfectly right to question marriage as an institution, even to consider abolishing the marriage ceremony. Why not? How can we know what is good or bad unless we investigate them? It is not enough to be told that marriage has always existed as an institution and been preceded by a ceremony of one kind or another.
If marriage cannot withstand the investigation, why not know the facts in the case? But it may prove that marriage is one of those institutions, like parenthood and childhood, that cannot be discarded or disregarded.
We have already seen its social nature. We realize that because of its social nature it must be protected from ruthless iconoclasts who have nothing in mind except the joy of destruction or the lust of plundering marriage sweets.
When the boy who is innocent says to the girl in these modern days, "Let's get married," thinking as he does so that it does not make any particular difference if a mistake is temporarily made, he does not realize that he is playing with parenthood and childhood as if they were temporary things. Possibly he is doing the girl an irreparable injury, and cheapening his own ideals. Probably he is doing irreparable wrong to his own offspring.
Most of the cases that come to my attention as needing the advice of a psychologist, because of many kinds of complexes, have had a childhood which was marred by an unhappy marriage between the parents.