Christianity it was no offence for the German husband to commit adultery
(Westermarck, _Origin of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, p.
453).
[320] "This form of marriage," says Hobhouse (op. cit., vol. i, p. 156),
"is intimately associated with the extension of marital power." Cf.
Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 231. The very subordinate position of the
mediæval German woman is set forth by Hagelstange,
_Süddeutsches
Bauernleben in Mittelalter_, 1898, pp. 70 et seq.
[321] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 259; Smith and
Cheetham, _Dictionary of
Christian Antiquities_, art. _Arrhæ_. It would appear, however, that the
"bride-sale," of which Tacitus speaks, was not strictly the sale of a
chattel nor of a slave-girl, but the sale of the _mund_
or protectorship
over the girl. It is true the distinction may not always have been clear
to those who took part in the transaction. Similarly the Anglo-Saxon
betrothal was not so much a payment of the bride's price to her kinsmen,
although as a matter of fact, they might make a profit out of the
transaction, as a covenant stipulating for the bride's honorable treatment
as wife and widow. Reminiscences of this, remark Pollock and Maitland (op.
cit., vol. ii, p. 364), may be found in "that curious cabinet of
antiquities, the marriage ritual of the English Church."
[322] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 278-281, 386. The
_Arrha_ crept into
Roman and Byzantine law during the sixth century.
[323] J. Wickham Legg, _Ecclesiological Essays_, p. 189.
It may be added
that the idea of the subordination of the wife to the
husband appeared in
the Christian Church at a somewhat early period, and no doubt
independently of Germanic influences; St. Augustine said (Sermo XXXVII,
cap. vi) that a good _materfamilias_ must not be ashamed to call herself
her husband's servant (_ancilla_).
[324] See, e.g., L. Gautier, _La Chevalerie_, Ch. IX.
[325] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 293 et seq.; Esmein, _op. cit._, vol.
i, pp. 25 et seq.; Smith and Cheetham, _Dictionary of
Christian
Antiquities_ art. "Contract of Marriage."
[326] Any later changes in Catholic Canon law have
merely been in the
direction of making matrimony still narrower and still more remote from
the practice of the world. By a papal decree of 1907,
civil marriages and
marriages in non-Catholic places of worship are declared to be not only
sinful and unlawful (which they were before), but
actually null and void.
[327] E.S.P. Haynes, _Our Divorce Law_, p. 3.
[328] It was the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth
century, which made
ecclesiastical rites essential to binding marriage; but even then
fifty-six prelates voted against that decision.
[329] Esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. 91.
[330] It is sometimes said that the Catholic Church is able to diminish
the evils of its doctrine of the indissolubility of
marriage by the number
of impediments to marriage it admits, thus affording
free scope for
dispensations from marriage. This scarcely seems to be the case. Dr. P.J.
Hayes, who speaks with authority as Chancellor of the
Catholic Archdiocese
of New York, states ("Impediments to Marriage in the Catholic Church,"
_North American Review_, May, 1905) that even in so
modern and so mixed a
community as this there are few applications for
dispensations on account
of impediments; there are 15,000 Catholic marriages per annum in New York
City, but scarcely five per annum are questioned as to validity, and these
chiefly on the ground of bigamy.
[331] The Canonists, say Pollock and Maitland (loc.
cit.), "made a
capricious mess of the marriage law." "Seldom," says Howard (_op. cit._,
vol i, p. 340), "have mere theory and subtle quibbling had more disastrous
consequences in practical life than in the case of the distinction between
_sponsalia de præsenti_ and _de futuro_."
[332] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 386 et seq. On the whole, however,
Luther's opinion was that marriage, though a sacred and mysterious thing,
is not a sacrament; his various statements on the matter are brought
together by Strampff, _Luther über die Ehe_, pp. 204-
214.
[333] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 61 et seq.
[334] Probably as a result of the somewhat confused and incoherent
attitude of the Reformers, the Canon law of marriage, in a modified form,
really persisted in Protestant countries to a greater
extent than in
Catholic countries; in France, especially, it has been much more
profoundly modified (Esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. 33).
[335] The Quaker conception of marriage is still vitally influential.
"Why," says Mrs. Besant (_Marriage_, p. 19), "should not we take a leaf
out of the Quaker's book, and substitute for the present legal forms of
marriage a simple declaration publicly made?"
[336] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 456. The actual
practice in
Pennsylvania appears, however, to differ little from
that usual in the
other States.
[337] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 109. "It is, indeed, wonderful,"
Howard remarks, "that a great nation, priding herself on a love of equity
and social liberty, should thus for five generations
tolerate an invidious
indulgence, rather than frankly and courageously to free herself from the
shackles of an ecclesiastical tradition."
[338] "The enforced continuance of an unsuccessful union is perhaps the
most immoral thing which a civilized society ever
countenanced, far less
encouraged," says Godfrey (_Science of Sex_, p. 123).
"The morality of a
union is dependent upon mutual desire, and a union
dictated by any other
cause is outside the moral pale, however custom may
sanction it, or
religion and law condone it."
[339] Adultery in most savage and barbarous societies is regarded, in the
words of Westermarck, as "an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive
claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an
offence against property;" the seducer is, therefore, punished as a thief,
by fine, mutilation, even death (_Origin of the Moral
Ideas_, vol. ii, pp.
447 et seq.; id., _History of Human Marriage_, p. 121).
Among some peoples
it is the seducer who alone suffers, and not the wife.
[340] It is sometimes said in defence of the claim for damages for
seducing a wife that women are often weak and unable to resist masculine
advances, so that the law ought to press heavily on the man who takes
advantage of that weakness. This argument seems a little antiquated. The
law is beginning to accept the responsibility even of
married women in
other respects, and can scarcely refuse to accept it for the control of
her own person. Moreover, if it is so natural for the
woman to yield, it
is scarcely legitimate to punish the man with whom she has performed that
natural act. It must further be said that if a wife's
adultery is only an
irresponsible feminine weakness, a most undue brutality is inflicted on
her by publicly demanding her pecuniary price from her lover. If, indeed,
we accept this argument, we ought to reintroduce the
mediæval girdle of
chastity.
[341] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 114.
[342] This rule is, in England, by no means a dead
letter. Thus, in 1907,
a wife who had left her home, leaving a letter stating that her husband
was not the father of her child, subsequently brought an action for
divorce, which, as the husband made no defence, she
obtained. But, the
King's Proctor having learnt the facts, the decree was rescinded. Then the
husband brought an action for divorce, but could not
obtain it, having
already admitted his own adultery by leaving the
previous case undefended.
He took the matter up to the Court of Appeal, but his
petition was
dismissed, the Court being of opinion that "to grant relief in such a case
was not in the interest of public morality." The safest way in England to
render what is legally termed marriage absolutely
indissoluble is for both
parties to commit adultery.
[343] Magnus Hirschfeld, _Zeitschrift für
Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct., 1908.
[344] H. Adner, "Die Richterliche Beurteilung der
'Zerrütteten' Ehe,"
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. ii, Teil 8.
[345] Gross-Hoffinger, _Die Schichsale der Frauen und
die Prostitution_,
1847; Bloch presents a full summary of the results of
this inquiry in an
_Appendix_ to Ch. X of his _Sexual Life of Our Times_.
[346] Divorce in the United States is fully discussed by Howard, op. cit.,
vol. iii.
[347] H. Münsterberg, _The Americans_, p. 575.
Similarly, Dr. Felix Adler,
in a study of "The Ethics of Divorce" (_The Ethical Record_, 1890, p.
200), although not himself an admirer of divorce,
believes that the first
cause of the frequency of divorce in the United States is the high
position of women.
[348] In an important article, with illustrative cases, on "The
Neuro-psychical Element in Conjugal Aversion" (_Journal of Nervous and
Mental Diseases_, Sept., 1892) Smith Baker refers to the cases in which "a
man may find himself progressively becoming
antipathetic, through
recognition of the comparatively less developed
personality of the one to
whom he happens to be married. Marrying, perhaps, before he has learned to
accurately judge of character and its tendencies, he
awakens to the fact
that he is honorably bound to live all his physiological life with, not a
real companion, but a mere counterfeit." The cases are still more
numerous, the same writer observes, in which the sexual appetite of the
wife fails to reveal itself except as the result of
education and
practice. "This sort of natural-unnatural condition is the source of much
disappointment, and of intense suffering on the part of the woman as well
as of family dissatisfaction." Yet such causes for divorce are far too
complex to be stated in statute-books, and far too
intimate to be pleaded
in courts of justice.
[349] Ten years ago, if not still, the United States
came fourth in order
of frequency of divorce, after Japan, Denmark, and
Switzerland.
[350] Lecky, the historian of European morals, has
pointed out (_Democracy
and Liberty_, vol. ii, p. 172) the close connection
generally between
facility of divorce and a high standard of sexual
morality.
[351] So, e.g., Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, vol. i, p. 237.
[352] In England this step was taken in the reign of
Henry VII, when the
forcible marriage of women against their will was
forbidden by statute (3
Henry VII, c. 2). Even in the middle of the seventeenth century, however,
the question of forcible marriage had again to be dealt with (_Inderwick_,
Interregnum, pp. 40 et seq.).
[353] Woods Hutchinson (_Contemporary Review_, Sept.,
1905) argues that
when there is epilepsy, insanity, moral perversion,
habitual drunkenness,
or criminal conduct of any kind, divorce, for the sake of the next
generation, should be not permissive but compulsory.
Mere divorce,
however, would not suffice to attain the ends desired.
[354] Similarly in Germany, Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, who had suffered much
from marriage, whatever her own defects of character may have been, writes
at the end of _Meine Lebensbeichte_ that "as long as women have not the
courage to regulate, without State-interference or
Church-interference,
relationships which concern themselves alone, they will not be free." In
place of this old decayed system of marriage so opposed to our modern
thoughts and feelings, she would have private contracts made by a lawyer.
In England, at a much earlier period, Charles Kingsley, who was an ardent
friend to women's movements, and whose feeling for
womanhood amounted
almost to worship, wrote to J.S. Mill: "There will never be a good world
for women until the last remnant of the Canon law is
civilized off the
earth."
[355] "No fouler institution was ever invented,"
declared Auberon Herbert
many years ago, expressing, before its time, a feeling which has since
become more common; "and its existence drags on, to our deep shame,
because we have not the courage frankly to say that the sexual relations
of husband and wife, or those who live together, concern their own selves,
and do not concern the prying, gloating, self-righteous, and intensely
untruthful world outside."
[356] Hobhouse, op. cit. vol. i, p. 237.
[357] The same conception of marriage as a contract
still persists to some
extent also in the United States, whither it was carried by the early
Protestants and Puritans. No definition of marriage is indeed usually laid
down by the States, but, Howard says (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 395), "in
effect matrimony is treated as a relation partaking of the nature of both
status and contract."
[358] This point of view has been vigorously set forth by Paul and Victor
Margueritte, _Quelques Idées_.
[359] I may remark that this was pointed out, and its
consequences
vigorously argued, many years ago by C.G. Garrison,
"Limits of Divorce,"
_Contemporary Review_, Feb., 1894. "It may safely be asserted," he
concludes, "that marriage presents not one attribute or incident of
anything remotely resembling a contract, either in form, remedy,
procedure, or result; but that in all these aspects, on the contrary, it
is fatally hostile to the principles and practices of
that division of the
rights of persons." Marriage is not contract, but conduct.
[360] See, e.g., P. and V. Margueritte, op. cit.
[361] As quoted by Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 29.
[362] Ellen Key similarly (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p.
343) remarks that to
talk of "the duty of life-long fidelity" is much the same as to talk of
"the duty of life-long health." A man may promise, she adds, to do his
best to preserve his life, or his love; he cannot
unconditionally
undertake to preserve them.
[363] Hobhouse, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 159, 237-9; cf. P.
and V.
Margueritte, _Quelques Idées_.
[364] "Divorce," as Garrison puts it ("Limits of Divorce," _Contemporary
Review_, Feb., 1894), "is the judicial announcement that conduct once
connubial in character and purpose, has lost these
qualities.... Divorce
is a question of fact, and not a license to break a
promise."
[365] See, _ante_, p. 425.
[366] It has been necessary to discuss reproduction in the first chapter
of the present volume, and it will again be necessary in the concluding
chapter. Here we are only concerned with procreation as an element of
marriage.
[367] Nietzold, _Die Ehe in Ægypten zur Ptolemäisch-
römischen Zeit_, 1903,
p. 3. This bond also accorded rights to any children
that might be born
during its existence.
[368] See, e.g., Ellen Key, _Mutter und Kind_, p. 21.
The necessity for
the combination of greater freedom of sexual
relationships with greater
stringency of parental relationships was clearly
realized at an earlier
period by another able woman writer, Miss J.H.
Clapperton, in her notable
book, _Scientific Meliorism_, published in 1885. "Legal changes," she
wrote (p. 320), "are required in two directions, viz., towards greater
freedom as to marriage and greater strictness as to
parentage. The
marriage union is essentially a private matter with
which society has no
call and no right to interfere. Childbirth, on the
contrary, is a public
event. It touches the interests of the whole nation."
[369] Ellen Key, _Liebe und Ehe_, p. 168; cf. the same author's _Century
of the Child_.
[370] In Germany alone 180,000 "illegitimate" children are born every
year, and the number is rapidly increasing; in England it is only 40,000
per annum, the strong feeling which often exists against such births in
England (as also in France) leading to the wide adoption of methods for
preventing conception.
[371] "Where are real monogamists to be found?" asked Schopenhauer in his
essay, "Ueber die Weibe." And James Hinton was wont to ask: "What is the
meaning of maintaining monogamy? Is there any chance of getting it, I
should like to know? Do you call English life
monogamous?"
[372] "Almost everywhere," says Westermarck of polygyny (which he
discusses fully in Chs. XX-XXII of his _History of Human Marriage_) "it is
confined to the smaller part of the people, the vast
majority being
monogamous." Maurice Gregory (_Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1906) gives
statistics showing that nearly everywhere the tendency is towards equality
in number of the sexes.
[373] In a polygamous land a man is of course as much
bound by his
obligations to his second wife as to his first. Among
ourselves the man's
"second wife" is degraded with the name of "mistress,"
and the worse he
treats her and her children the more his "morality" is approved, just as
the Catholic Church, when struggling to establish
sacerdotal celibacy,
approved more highly the priest who had illegitimate
relations with women
than the priest who decently and openly married. If his neglect induces a
married man's mistress to make known her relationship to him the man is
justified in prosecuting her, and his counsel, assured of general
sympathy, will state in court that "this woman has even been so wicked as
to write to the prosecutor's wife!"
[374] Howard, in his judicial _History of Matrimonial
Institutions_ (vol.
ii. pp. 96 et seq.), cannot refrain from drawing
attention to the almost
insanely wild character of the language used in England not so many years
ago by those who opposed marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and he
contrasts it with the much more reasonable attitude of the Catholic
Church. "Pictures have been drawn," he remarks, "of the moral anarchy such
marriages must produce, which are read by American,
Colonial, and
Continental observers with a bewilderment that is not
unmixed with
disgust, and are, indeed, a curious illustration of the extreme insularity
of the English mind." So recently as A.D. 1908 a bill was brought into the
British House of Lords proposing that desertion without cause for two
years shall be a ground for divorce, a reasonable and
humane measure which
is law in most parts of the civilized world. The Lord
Chancellor (Lord
Loreburn), a Liberal, and in the sphere of politics an enlightened and
sagacious leader, declared that such a proposal was
"absolutely
impossible." The House rejected the proposal by 61 votes to 2. Even the
marriage decrees of the Council of Trent were not
affirmed by such an
overwhelming majority. In matters of marriage
legislation England has
scarcely yet emerged from the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ART OF LOVE.
Marriage Not Only for Procreation--Theologians on the
_Sacramentum
Solationis_--Importance of the _Art of Love_--The Basis of Stability in
Marriage and the Condition for Right Procreation--The
Art of Love the
Bulwark Against Divorce--The Unity of Love and Marriage a Principle of
Modern Morality--Christianity and the Art of Love--Ovid-
-The Art of Love
Among Primitive Peoples--Sexual Initiation in Africa and Elsewhere--The
Tendency to Spontaneous Development of the Art of Love in Early
Life--Flirtation--Sexual Ignorance in Women--The
Husband's Place in Sexual
Initiation--Sexual Ignorance in Men--The Husband's
Education for
Marriage--The Injury Done by the Ignorance of Husbands--
The Physical and
Mental Results of Unskilful Coitus--Women Understand the Art of Love
Better Than Men--Ancient and Modern Opinions Concerning Frequency of
Coitus--Variation in Sexual Capacity--The Sexual
Appetite--The Art of Love
Based on the Biological Facts of Courtship--The Art of Pleasing Women--The
Lover Compared to the Musician--The Proposal as a Part of
Courtship--Divination in the Art of Love--The Importance of the
Preliminaries in Courtship--The Unskilful Husband
Frequently the Cause of
the Frigid Wife--The Difficulty of Courtship--
Simultaneous Orgasm--The
Evils of Incomplete Gratification in Women--Coitus
Interruptus--Coitus
Reservatus--The Human Method of Coitus--Variations in
Coitus--Posture in
Coitus--The Best Time for Coitus--The Influence of
Coitus in Marriage--The
Advantages of Absence in Marriage--The Risks of Absence-
-Jealousy--The
Primitive Function of Jealousy--Its Predominance Among Animals, Savages,
etc., and in Pathological States--An Anti-Social
Emotion--Jealousy
Incompatible with the Progress of Civilization--The
Possibility of Loving
More Than One Person at a Time--Platonic Friendship--The Conditions Which
Make It Possible--The Maternal Element in Woman's Love--
The Final
Development of Conjugal Love--The Problem of Love One of the Greatest of
Social Questions.
It will be clear from the preceding discussion that
there are two elements
in every marriage so far as that marriage is complete.
On the one hand
marriage is a union prompted by mutual love and only
sustainable as a
reality, apart from its mere formal side, by the