“It is not the brutality of man,” says Eberstadt, “which has imposed a higher responsibility upon woman; Nature herself has done this. Nature has endowed man and woman differently in respect of the consequences of sexual intercourse. The fruit of intercourse is entrusted to the woman alone. Now, one who has special responsibilities has also special duties. Certain breaches of conjugal responsibility are more sternly condemned when committed by the man; certain others—especially such as concern care for the offspring—are more severely judged in the wife. The relative positions in respect of sexual intercourse are different in man and in woman, for reasons which are physical and inalterable. Seduction, ill-treatment, abandonment of a wife, and adultery, are punished in the husband by law and custom. The wife, on the other hand, loses her honoursimplyon account of promiscuous and unregulated intercourse, because Nature herself forbids this intercourse if the material and spiritual tie between mother, father, and child is to persist.”
“It is not the brutality of man,” says Eberstadt, “which has imposed a higher responsibility upon woman; Nature herself has done this. Nature has endowed man and woman differently in respect of the consequences of sexual intercourse. The fruit of intercourse is entrusted to the woman alone. Now, one who has special responsibilities has also special duties. Certain breaches of conjugal responsibility are more sternly condemned when committed by the man; certain others—especially such as concern care for the offspring—are more severely judged in the wife. The relative positions in respect of sexual intercourse are different in man and in woman, for reasons which are physical and inalterable. Seduction, ill-treatment, abandonment of a wife, and adultery, are punished in the husband by law and custom. The wife, on the other hand, loses her honoursimplyon account of promiscuous and unregulated intercourse, because Nature herself forbids this intercourse if the material and spiritual tie between mother, father, and child is to persist.”
In accordance with these considerations, Eberstadt holds fast to the demand for “monandry” on the part of the wife; he rejects on principle the idea ofsexualequality between man and wife, and relegates the progressive development of marriage exclusively to thespiritualandmoralprovinces.
Although we recognize the general accuracy of this view, and admit that it is based upon conditions imposed once for all by Nature herself, still we are compelled to regard it as too narrow and one-sided, for it completely overlooks the fact that this demand for monandric love on the part of woman can be fulfilled in association with a freer moulding of woman’s amatory life. We need merely think of the often happy marriages of one woman toseveralmen—nota benein temporal succession—in which marriages perfectly healthy children have been born to different fathers, in order to see that for the woman of the future a freer moulding of the amatory life is also possible, though admittedly withinnarrowerlimits than in the case of man. Just as the mastership of the husband must give place to an equality of authority on the part of husband and wife, considered as two free personalities, so also must the “duplex morality” undergo a revision in the sense above indicated.
In passing, let us remark that all those who proscribe any kind of extra-conjugal intercourse on the part of woman, and who love to brand as an “outcast” any woman who indulges in it, should have their attention directed for a moment to the tremendous fact of politically tolerated, and even legalized,prostitution, which, like a haunting shadow, accompanies theso-called conventional marriage—a shadow growing everlargerthe more strictly, exclusively, and narrowly the idea of this “marriage” isconceived.[166]
The civilized ideal of marriage is the lifelong duration of the marriage between two free, independent, mature personalities, who share fully love and life, and by a common life-work further their own advantage and the well-being of their children.But this rarely attained ideal of civilization in no way excludes other forms of marriage, which have a more transient and temporary character, without thereby doing any harm either to the individual or to society.
More than forty years ago Lecky, the English historian of civilization, an investigator whom no one can blame, in respect of the tendency of his writings, for advancing lax ideas regarding sexual morality or for advising libertinage, expressed himself admirably on this subject. In his “History of European Morals” he wrote:
“In these considerations, we have ample grounds for maintaining that the lifelong union of one man and of one woman should be the normal or dominant type of intercourse between the sexes. We can prove that it is on the whole most conducive to the happiness, and also to the moral elevation, of all parties. But beyond this point it would, I conceive, be impossible to advance, except by the assistance of a specialrevelation!It by no means follows that because this should be the dominant type, it should be the only one, or that the interests of society demand that all connexions should be forced into the same die.Connexions, which were confessedly only for a few years, have always subsisted side by side with permanent marriages; and in periods when public opinion, acquiescing in their propriety, inflicts no excommunication on one or both of the parties, when these partners are not living the demoralizing and degrading life which accompanies the consciousness of guilt, and when proper provision is made for the children who are born, it would be, I believe, impossible to prove, by the light of simple and unassisted reason, that such connexions should be invariably condemned. It is extremely important, both for the happiness and for the moral well-being of men, that lifelong unions should not be effected simply under the imperious prompting of a blind appetite. There are always multitudes who, in the period of their lives when their passions are most strong, are incapable of supporting children in their own social rank, and who would therefore injure society by marrying in it, but are nevertheless perfectly capable of securing an honourable career for their illegitimate childrenin the lower social sphere to which these would naturally belong (!). Under the conditions I have mentioned these connexions are not injurious, but beneficial, to the weaker partner; they soften the differences of rank, they stimulate social habits, and they do not produce upon character the degrading effect of promiscuous intercourse, or upon society the injurious effects of imprudent marriages, one or other of which will multiply in their absence. In the immense variety of circumstances and characters, cases will always appear in which, on utilitarian grounds, they might seem advisable.”
“In these considerations, we have ample grounds for maintaining that the lifelong union of one man and of one woman should be the normal or dominant type of intercourse between the sexes. We can prove that it is on the whole most conducive to the happiness, and also to the moral elevation, of all parties. But beyond this point it would, I conceive, be impossible to advance, except by the assistance of a specialrevelation!It by no means follows that because this should be the dominant type, it should be the only one, or that the interests of society demand that all connexions should be forced into the same die.Connexions, which were confessedly only for a few years, have always subsisted side by side with permanent marriages; and in periods when public opinion, acquiescing in their propriety, inflicts no excommunication on one or both of the parties, when these partners are not living the demoralizing and degrading life which accompanies the consciousness of guilt, and when proper provision is made for the children who are born, it would be, I believe, impossible to prove, by the light of simple and unassisted reason, that such connexions should be invariably condemned. It is extremely important, both for the happiness and for the moral well-being of men, that lifelong unions should not be effected simply under the imperious prompting of a blind appetite. There are always multitudes who, in the period of their lives when their passions are most strong, are incapable of supporting children in their own social rank, and who would therefore injure society by marrying in it, but are nevertheless perfectly capable of securing an honourable career for their illegitimate childrenin the lower social sphere to which these would naturally belong (!). Under the conditions I have mentioned these connexions are not injurious, but beneficial, to the weaker partner; they soften the differences of rank, they stimulate social habits, and they do not produce upon character the degrading effect of promiscuous intercourse, or upon society the injurious effects of imprudent marriages, one or other of which will multiply in their absence. In the immense variety of circumstances and characters, cases will always appear in which, on utilitarian grounds, they might seem advisable.”
In ancient Rome these laxer unions were recognized by law as a form of marriage, and this legal recognition protected them, notwithstanding the unlimited freedom of divorce, from social contempt and stigmatization. “Concubinage” was such a second kind of marriage, which was thoroughly recognized and thoroughly honourable. Theamica convictrixoruxor gratuitawas neither a legitimate wife nor simply a mistress; she had rather the position of women in our own day who have contracted a “morganatic” marriage, a “left-handed marriage.” The only difference was that these ancient unions were more readily dissoluble.
It was the Christian dogma and the sacramental and lifelong character of marriage which first caused the stamp of infamy to be impressed upon all other varieties of sexual intercourse. The religious marriage was in its very nature indissoluble; indeed, by forbidding mixed marriages (marriages between Christian and pagan) individual freedom was entirely prohibited.
In contrast with this ancient religious view, the State, by the introduction of civil marriage, of mixed marriage (vide supra), and of divorce, has been compelled to make continually greater concessions to modern ideas, andhas already recognized in principlethat marriages limited in duration harmonize exceedingly well with the demands of civilization; that in general, as Lecky maintained, the recent changes in economic conditions have a much greater influence upon marriage and the forms of marriage than the ecclesiastical and mystical conception of the institution.
Anyone who wishes to gain an insight into this very difficult problem of modern marriage must first obtain clear views in respect of certain peculiarities of individual human love, regarding the intimate connexion of which with the whole process of mental evolution we have already dealt in earlier chapters.
Max Nordau has written a celebrated chapter on “The Lie ofMarriage,”[167]and in the light of reality marriage is, in fact, oftensuch a lie as he describes, especially in view of the fact that not less than 75 per cent. of modern marriages are so-called “marriages of convenience,” and in no sense are properlylove-marriages.[168]
But it is a well-known fact that these marriages of reason are often more enduring than love-marriages. This depends upon the nature of human love, which is by no means inalterable,but changes in accordance with the various developmental phases of the individual, needs new incitements and new individual relationships.
In No. 14,919 of theNeue Freie Presseof Vienna, March 6, 1906, there appeared among the advertisements a remarkable question, which was probably directed by a betrayed or deceived lover to his beloved:
“Ewige Liebe—ewige Lüge?”“Eternal Love—Eternal Lie?”
“Ewige Liebe—ewige Lüge?”“Eternal Love—Eternal Lie?”
“Ewige Liebe—ewige Lüge?”
“Eternal Love—Eternal Lie?”
Love also, personal love, is transitory, like man himself, like the isolated individual. It differs in the different ages of life; it differs, too, according to its object for the time being. Eduard von Hartmann calls love a thunderstorm, which does not discharge in a single flash of lightning, but gradually discharges the electrical energy in several successive flashes, and after the discharge “there comes the cool wind, the heaven of consciousness clears once more, and we look round astonished at the fertilizing rain falling on the ground, and at the clouds fleeing towards the distant horizon.”
All those who are well acquainted with humanity, all poets and psychologists, are in agreement respecting the fugitive character of youthful love. For this reason, they advise against marriage concluded during the passion of early youth. This poetry of love at first sight is, according to Gutzkow, the eternalgame of chanceof our young people, in which their health, their life, and their future go to wreck.
Another keen observer, Kierkegaard, in his “Diary of a Seducer,” says:
“Love has many mysteries, and this first love is also a mystery, if not the greatest. Most men in their ardent passion are as if insane; they become engaged or commit some other stupidity, and in a moment it is all over, and they know once more what it has cost them, what they have lost.”
“Love has many mysteries, and this first love is also a mystery, if not the greatest. Most men in their ardent passion are as if insane; they become engaged or commit some other stupidity, and in a moment it is all over, and they know once more what it has cost them, what they have lost.”
And, finally, a third eminent writer on eroticism, Rétif de la Bretonne, says:
“It is a folly of the same kind to trust the constancy of a young man of twenty years of age. At this age it is less a woman that one loves than women; one is intoxicated rather by sensual phenomena than by the individual, however lovable that individual may be.”
“It is a folly of the same kind to trust the constancy of a young man of twenty years of age. At this age it is less a woman that one loves than women; one is intoxicated rather by sensual phenomena than by the individual, however lovable that individual may be.”
But to youth love is almost always no more than a beautiful memory, a vanishing paradise. There clings to it something imperishable, which has, however, no binding force.
And just as to every man the love of youth appears ideal in character, precisely because it is not subjected to the rude considerations of reality, so also in every subsequent love it is almost always thefirst beginningsonly in which true beauty and deep perception are experienced.
“A thousand years of tears and pains,” Goethe makes his Stella say, “could not counterpoise the happiness of the first glance, the trembling, the stammering, the approach and the withdrawal, the self-forgetfulness, the first fugitive ardent kiss, and the first gently breathing embrace.”
“A thousand years of tears and pains,” Goethe makes his Stella say, “could not counterpoise the happiness of the first glance, the trembling, the stammering, the approach and the withdrawal, the self-forgetfulness, the first fugitive ardent kiss, and the first gently breathing embrace.”
The eternal duration of such feelings is contradicted by an anthropologico-biological phenomenon of human sexuality, which I have described as “the need for sexualvariety.”[169]Human love, as a whole and in its individual manifestations, is dominated and influenced by the need for change and variety. Schopenhauer drew attention to this primordial and fundamental phenomenon of human love; he was wrong, however, in limiting it to the malesex.[170]As I have already insisted, this general human need for variety in sexual relationships is to be regarded rather as a generalprinciple of explanation of admitted facts, than as a desirable ideal. On the contrary, in my opinion, faithfulness, constancy, and durability in love, bring under control and diminish this need for sexual variety, through the recognition of the eminentadvances in civilizationby means of which the human amatory life will be further developed and perfected in a higher sense. But the facts of daily observation are not to be shuffled out of existence by any kind of hypocrisy or prudery. They must be faced and dealt with.
First, it is an incontestable fact that the so-called “only” love is one of the greatest rarities; that, on the contrary, in thelife of the majority of men and women a frequent repetition and renewal of love-sentiments and love-relationships occurs. For the most part these loves occur at successive intervals. Stiedenroth, in his admirable “Psychology,” makes the following remarks regarding these successive outbursts of passion and the transitory character of the feeling of love:
“Since no two human beings are precisely alike, one will at one time love passionately one only; in succession, however, several can be loved, and the opinion that one person only can be loved in a lifetime originates in rare dreams regarding the ideal, of which a quite false representation is made. An object can indeed appear which transcends the ideal hitherto conceived; but passion does not need a fully developed ideal for its first foundation; it needs merely that which in the theory of the feelings has been found to be a necessary condition of love. That every love gladly thinks itself immortal, lies in the nature of the case, for on account of the overwhelming character of the sensations of love, it is impossible to understand how they can ever come to an end. Experience, however, teaches us the contrary, and insight enables us to recognize thereason.”[171]
“Since no two human beings are precisely alike, one will at one time love passionately one only; in succession, however, several can be loved, and the opinion that one person only can be loved in a lifetime originates in rare dreams regarding the ideal, of which a quite false representation is made. An object can indeed appear which transcends the ideal hitherto conceived; but passion does not need a fully developed ideal for its first foundation; it needs merely that which in the theory of the feelings has been found to be a necessary condition of love. That every love gladly thinks itself immortal, lies in the nature of the case, for on account of the overwhelming character of the sensations of love, it is impossible to understand how they can ever come to an end. Experience, however, teaches us the contrary, and insight enables us to recognize thereason.”[171]
Regarding the frequent occurrence of several love-passions on the part of the same person, there can be two opinions; but is it possible that anyone cansimultaneouslybe in love with several individuals? I answer this question with an unconditional “Yes,” and I agree fully with Max Nordau when he explains that it is possible to love at the same time several individuals with almost identical tenderness, and that it is not necessarily lying when ardent passion for each of them isexpressed.[172]
It is precisely the extraordinarily manifold spiritual differentiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. Our spiritual nature exhibits the most varied colouring. It is difficult always to find the corresponding complements in one single individual.
I ask those who are well acquainted with modern society if they have not met men, and women also, who had advanced so far in the adaptation of their love-needs to the anatomical analysis of their psychical life, that for the romantic, realistical, æsthetic traits of their nature, for the lyrical or dramatic moods of their heart, they demanded correspondinglydifferentlovers; and if these several lovers should encounter each other, and be angry with one another, the one who loved them both (or all)would be inclined to cry out in naive astonishment, like the heroine in Gutzkow’s “Seraphine,” “Love one another! love one another! You are all one, one—in me!”
In the romance “Leonide,” by Emerentius Scävola, the heroine is at the same time the wife of two husbands. Reality also is familiar with double love of this kind—for example, in the relationship of the Princess Melanie Metternich to her husband, the celebrated statesman, and to her previous bridegroom, BaronHügel.[173]Especially frequent is the gratification of higher ideal needs and of the simple natural impulse, by means of two different persons. A man can love at the same time a woman of genius and a simple child of Nature. In the novel “Double Love” (1901), Elisar von Kupffer describes the simultaneous love of a learned man for his extremely intelligent wife and for a buxom servant-girl. A well-known example is also the double love of Wieland—the ideal love for Sophie Laroche, the frankly sensual love for Christine Hagel. But not only do differences of culture, of position, of character, play a part in such multiple love; the simple difference also of bodily appearance may lead to such simultaneous attractions; for example, a man may love at the same time a brunette and a blonde, an elegant little sylph and a distinguished presence. This is, however, on the whole, much rarer than simultaneous attraction to two different spiritual varieties.
Such facts as these are not to be employed so much in advocacy of the multiplication of love-relationships as for the illustration of the enormous difficulty in obtaining complete harmony between human beings, between one man and one woman. There remains always a balance of yearning, which the other does not fulfil; always a balance of striving, which the other is unable to understand. This cannot, however, affect in the slightest degree the ideal of thesingle love; on the contrary, it makes it stand out all the more brilliantly before our spiritual vision. It is rare, like every ideal, and attainable only by few. This rarity ofcompletelove between a man and a woman is dwelt on also by Henry Laube in his novel “Die Maske,” in which he describes love in all its manifoldness and modern distraction.
Schleiermacher described very strikingly the necessity that exists for the repetition and manifoldness of love-perceptions:
“Why,” says he, “should it be different with love from what it is in every other matter? Is it possible that that which is the highest in mankind should be brought at the first time, by the most elementary activity, to a perfect conclusion in a single deed? Should we expect it to be easier than the simple art of eating and drinking, which the child first attempts, and attempts again and again, with unsuitable objects and rude experimentation, and with results which, contrary to his deserts, are not always unfortunate? In love, also, there is need forpreliminary experiments, leading to no permanent result, from which, however, every one carries away something,in order to make the feeling more definite and the prospect of love greater andgrander.”[174]
“Why,” says he, “should it be different with love from what it is in every other matter? Is it possible that that which is the highest in mankind should be brought at the first time, by the most elementary activity, to a perfect conclusion in a single deed? Should we expect it to be easier than the simple art of eating and drinking, which the child first attempts, and attempts again and again, with unsuitable objects and rude experimentation, and with results which, contrary to his deserts, are not always unfortunate? In love, also, there is need forpreliminary experiments, leading to no permanent result, from which, however, every one carries away something,in order to make the feeling more definite and the prospect of love greater andgrander.”[174]
Georg Hirth also shows that true mastery of love only becomes possible by means of repetition. There are ideal masculine and feminine Don Juan natures, which are always searching for the genuine, eternal, only love; as, for example, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, wandering perpetually from man to man; or a similar figure, the titular heroine of the romance “Faustine,” by the Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn. Many, most indeed, of such never learn to know true love, because they never find the proper object of love; and they die, as Rousseau, in his “Confessions,” says so strikingly, without ever having loved, eternally torn by the need for love, without ever having been able perfectly to satisfy that need. Happy indeed are those like Karoline, who in Schelling found at length the man whose powerful personality fully corresponded to her idea of love.
The need for such a great and true love remains fixed, notwithstanding all deceptions, bitternesses, and the sorrows of unsatisfied longing. Love is, in fact, the human being himself; like the human being, love has its development, its impulse towards higher things, towards that which is better. No painful experience can completely annihilate love, and the need for love. In a beautiful stanza a French poet of the eighteenth century, the Chevalier de Bonnard, has described this essential permanency of love:
“Hélas! pourquoi le souvenirDe ces erreurs de mon auroreMe fait-il pousser un soupir!Je dois peut-être aimer encore,Ah! si j’aime encore, je sens bienQue je serai toujours le même;Le temps au cœur ne change rien:Eh! n’est-ce pas ainsi qu’on aime?”
“Hélas! pourquoi le souvenirDe ces erreurs de mon auroreMe fait-il pousser un soupir!Je dois peut-être aimer encore,Ah! si j’aime encore, je sens bienQue je serai toujours le même;Le temps au cœur ne change rien:Eh! n’est-ce pas ainsi qu’on aime?”
“Hélas! pourquoi le souvenirDe ces erreurs de mon auroreMe fait-il pousser un soupir!Je dois peut-être aimer encore,Ah! si j’aime encore, je sens bienQue je serai toujours le même;Le temps au cœur ne change rien:Eh! n’est-ce pas ainsi qu’on aime?”
True love is the product of the ripest development; it is therefore rare, and comes late. For this reason, as Nietzsche points out, the time for marriage comes much earlier than the time for love. It is by means of spiritual relationships that love first becomes enduring. Its prolongation is almost always effected only by an enlargement and variation of psychical relationships. Physical relationships alone soon lose through habituation the stimulus of novelty; whence we explain the fact that so many husbands, notwithstanding the physical beauty of their wives, become unfaithful to them, often in favour of much uglier women, of girls of the lower classes, or even of prostitutes. The de Goncourts remark in their “Diary” that the beauty which in acocottea man will reward with 100,000 francs, will not in his own wife seem worth 10,000 francs—in the wife whom he has married, and who, with her dowry, has brought him this magnificent beauty into the bargain. For this reason, a priest, when a wife complained to him that her husband had begun to get somewhat cold in his manner to her, gave the following by no means bad advice: “My dear child, the most honourable wife must have in her just a suspicion of the demi-mondaine.”
The greatest danger for love, a danger which therefore makes its appearance above all in married life, is the danger ofhabituation. This has a double effect. On the one hand, by the mere monotony of eternal repetition, love may become blunted.
“It is worth remarking,” says Goethe, “that custom is capable of completely replacing passionate love; it demands not so much a charming, as a comfortable object; given that, it is invincible.”
“It is worth remarking,” says Goethe, “that custom is capable of completely replacing passionate love; it demands not so much a charming, as a comfortable object; given that, it is invincible.”
In the second place, however, custom contradicts the already mentioned need for variety, the eternal uniformity of daily companionship puts love to sleep, damps its ardour, and even gives rise to a sense of latent or open hatred between a married pair. This hatred is observed most frequently inlove-matches,[175]precisely because here the ideal is all the more cruelly disturbed by the rude grasp of realities; especially if the intimate life in common enfolds a human, all-too-human, element, and tears away the last ideal veil. With justice the common bedroom of a married couple has been called “the slaughter of love.”
A further cause of unhappy marriages is to be found in unfavourable age-relations of the married couple. The most serious is the premature entrance upon marriage.
Before the introduction of the Civil Code, the age of nubility in the German Empire was attained, in the male sex, with the completion of the twentieth, in the female sex with the completion of the sixteenth year of life. In Prussia a Minister of Justice could give permission to marry at an even earlier age. According to the Civil Code, men could not marry until they were of full age (twenty-one), and women, as before, not until they were sixteen years of age. Women are able to obtain remission from this restriction, but not men. In special cases, however, a man is enabled to marry before the age of twenty-one years if the Court of Wardship (cf.the English Court of Chancery) declares him to be of full age, which the Court has power to do at any time after he is eighteen years of age.
Whilst, before the year 1900, on the average, there were not as many as 300 men under twenty years who annually contracted marriage with the permission of the Minister of Justice—already a matter for serious consideration—since the introduction of the new Code, by which the ordinary age of nubility for man is raised by one year,the number of persons prematurely contracting marriage has exhibited a notable increase. In the year 1900 there were 1,546, and in the year 1901 actually 1,848 young men married before the age of twenty-one years. These very early marriages were distributed among all professions, and almost all classes of the population.
This increase in premature marriages is, speaking generally, a symptom indicative of the premature awakening of sexuality in our own time, a phenomenon which we shall discuss more fully later. Such an occurrence as the elopement of a girl aged fourteen with a boy aged fifteen, the pair having already for some time been engaged in an intimate love-relationship, and having finally come to the conclusion that they could no longer live apart, is by no means a greatrarity.[176]No detailed argument is needed to show that persons completely wanting mental and moral maturity are not suited for marriage, which can only be regarded as offering some security for endurance and life happiness, when it is the union of two fully-developed personalities. In this respect it seems to me that the regulations of the Civil Code are not at present sufficiently strict.
A second notable factor in the causation of unhappy marriagesis an excessivedifference between the agesof husband and wife, and in this respect it is quite an old experience, that a marked excess of age on the part of the husband has a less unfavourable influence than a similar excess on the part of the wife. This observation harmonizes with the fact that men can preserve sexual potency up to the most advanced age—even in a centenarian active spermatozoa have beenfound[177]—that such old men can have complete sexual intercourse, and can procreate children; whereas in women, at the age of forty-five to fifty years, with the cessation of menstruation the procreative capacity is extinguished, though not, indeed, the capacity for sexual intercourse and for voluptuous sensation. Naturally, in this connexion we are not alluding to quite abnormal cases, such as a premature impotence in the husband, or other morbid conditions in either husband or wife. We are considering merely the normal physical difference in age. Metchnikoff lays great stress upon this physical disharmony between husband and wife. He insists upon the fact that in the man sexual excitability generally begins much earlier than in woman, and that at a time when the woman stands at the acme of her needs the sexual activity in the man has already begun to decline; but this is only the case when the husband was notably older than the wife when the marriage was contracted. A difference of five or ten years in this respect is a small matter; but a difference of ten or twenty years may be of serious significance. Generally speaking, in the case of marriages which are intended to be of lifelong duration, the difference of age should never exceed ten years.
With increasing civilization, the average age at marriage has continually advanced (in Western Europe the average age at marriage is for men twenty-eight to thirty-one years, and for women twenty-three to twenty-eight years), whilst the number of persons who do not marry until late in life, and of those who do not marry at all, is continually increasing. This is partly the result of spiritual differentiation and of the ever-increasing difficulty in finding a suitable life-partner, and partly it is the result of the increasing economic difficulty in providing for the support of a household.
Schmoller has calculated that under normal conditions about 50 per cent.—one-half, that is to say—of the population of the country must be either married or widowed. In Europe, however, a much smaller proportion is in this condition. Thus, taking only persons over fifty years of age, in Hungary3 per cent., in Germany 9 per cent., in England 10 per cent., in Austria 13 per cent., in Switzerland 17 per cent., were unmarried.
The number of married and widowed persons among those over fifty years of age varies in the different countries between 56 per cent. (in Belgium) and 76 per cent. (in Hungary). In England, in the years 1886 to 1890, the number was 60 per cent., in Germany 61 per cent., in the United States 62 per cent., in France 64 per cent. If we enumerate the married only, excluding the widowed, we find 8 or 10 per cent. fewer. When we compare the number of married with the entire population, we find, instead of the above-mentioned 50 per cent., no more than 37 to 39 per cent. And this percentage appears likely to undergo a continual further decline. We must, at any rate, in the future reckon with this fact, although, of course, isolated oscillations in the marriage frequency may continue to occur. In these oscillationseconomicanddomesticfactors play a great part.
It is, however, quite erroneous to regard our own time as one especially characterized by “mercenary marriages,” one in which the union between man and wife has become a simple affair of commerce. There are not wanting reformers who attribute to mammonism all the blame for the disordered love-life of the present day, and who describe very vividly and dramatically Amor’s dance round the golden calf.
The facts of the history of civilization and folk-lore completely contradict the view that this mammonistic character of marriage is a product of our modern civilization. It is, on the contrary, avestigeof early primitive civilization, in which economic factors always had a far greater importance for marriage than spiritual sympathies. Thus, Heinrich Schurtz proves that among the majority of savage races marriage is rather an affair of business than of inclination. And where are money marriages more frequent than they are among our sturdy German peasants, with whom everything conventional has the freest possibleplay?[178]
It is first the higher, refined spiritual civilization which brings with it a higher conception of marriage as the realization of the ideal, individual only-love. As Ludwig Stein justly remarks:
“It was not in our own time that marriage first began to degenerate to the level of an economic idea. The converse, indeed, is true; the economic background of marriage, as it so clearly manifests itself among savage races,first began to disappear in the course of thedevelopment of our own system of civilization, and therewith began also the liberation of mankind from the burden of metallicshackles.”[179]
“It was not in our own time that marriage first began to degenerate to the level of an economic idea. The converse, indeed, is true; the economic background of marriage, as it so clearly manifests itself among savage races,first began to disappear in the course of thedevelopment of our own system of civilization, and therewith began also the liberation of mankind from the burden of metallicshackles.”[179]
At the same time, it cannot be denied that even at the present day the economic factor plays a very extensive part in the determination of marriage, although certainly not to the degree maintained by Buckle, who held that there was a fixed and definite relationship between the number of marriages and the price ofcorn.[180]Beyond question, economic considerations have a great influence upon the frequency of marriage. Many marriages, even to-day, are purely mercenary marriages; but still at the present time the qualities of intellect and emotion, quite apart from physical characteristics, have at least an equal share in the production of marriage. Only among the classes who feel it their duty to keep up a particular kind of appearance, among the upper-middle classes, the aristocracy, and among officers in the army, is the economic question the main determining influence in marriage. Well known, also, is the predominance of mercenary marriages among the Jews.
One may be an enemy of mammonism, and still see the necessity for an economic regulation of conjugal relations in view of the expected offspring, of the altered conditions of life, of the increase in the household, and of the necessity for safeguarding personal independence and free development. Such economic considerations can harmonize perfectly with the demand for personal sympathy, and with the most intimate physical and spiritual harmony between husband and wife.
Schmoller rightly places the most important advance of the modern family in this, that it becomes more and more transformed from a productive and business institute into an institute of moral life in common; that by thelimitationof its economic purposes the nobler ideal must become more predominant, and the family become a richer soil for the cultivation of sympatheticsentiments.[181]
More especially among the upper classes of modern European and American society is there apparent an increasing disinclination to marriage, or, to employ a phrase of the moral statistician Drobisch, there is a decline in the intensity of the marriage impulse. Although the often burning money question no doubtplays its part, that part is, on the whole, much smaller than the part played by the ever-increasing difficulties of individual spiritual harmony, difficulties dependent on differences in age, character, education, views of life, and individual development during marriage. This disinclination to marry is nourished by certain tendencies of the time to be subsequently described, and by certain changes in the relations between the sexes.
To many also the idea of “conjugal rights,” as established by law, appears a horrible compulsion, an assignment to physical and spiritual prostitution. The modern consciousness of free personality, in fact, no longer harmonizes with that stoical conception of duty in marriage such as, for example, is described by B. Chateaubriand in his memoirs, although, of course, every one who enters on marriage ought to be aware that by doing so he assigns to the other party certain rights, the non-fulfilment of which actually destroys the character and the idea of marriage. Thus, the conduct of a schoolmistress of Berlin, who persistently refused physical surrender to her husband, on the ground that she had wished merely to contract an “ideal” marriage (of the same kind as the mystical “reformed marriage” of the American woman Alice Stockham), demands emphatic condemnation. But an abominablemisuseof “conjugal rights” is unquestionably made by inconsiderate husbands, who demand from their wives unlimited, excessively frequent, gratification of their sexual desire, without any regard to the wife’s physical and spiritual condition at the time. That in this respect the idea of “conjugal rights” is greatly in need of revision has been convincingly proved by Dorothee Goebeler in an essay entitled “Conjugal Rights,” published in theWelt am Montagof August 6, 1906.
Too frequently, also, it happens that the husband simply transfers into his married life previous customs of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, and makes use in marriage of the experience he has gained in intercourse with prostitutes or with priestesses of the love of the moment; he treats his wife as an object of sensual lust, without paying any regard to her individuality and to her more delicate erotic needs.
This physical dissonance is not even the worst. Too often it is simply boredom which kills love in married life. Like Nora in “A Dolls’ House,” one waits for the “wonderful,” and the wonderful does not happen. Instead of this the years pass by; sexual passion, greatly influenced as it is by the spiritual environment, gradually disappears, and with it disappears also the last possibility of spiritual sympathy. Thus, the character of mostmarriages issolitude. They represent the tragedy of desolation, of the eternal self-seeking of husband and wife.
What disastrous consequences, finally, may result from the part played in marriage bydisease, what tragic conflicts may here rise, can be studied in the great book “Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State” (Rebman, 1906), an encyclopædic work edited by H. Senator and S. Kaminer, discussing in detail the relation between disorders of health and the married state.
The calamities of modern marriage are strikingly illuminated in the following psychologically interesting account given by the alienist Heinrich Laehr (“Concerning Insanity and Lunatic Asylums,” p. 44et seq.; Halle, 1852):
“How, as a matter of fact, do marriages come about? In heaven certainly a very small number indeed, if by that phrase we understand marriages undertaken with the full understanding of the nature of the sacrifice involved, under the impulsion of an inner necessity, and based upon deep mutual inclination founded upon self-respect and respect for each other; in social circles, and not in heaven, on the other hand, the majority of marriages are made. The question upon which ultimately so many marriages depend is, what each will gain by it, whilst inner sensations and mutual liking are regarded as subordinate matters.... A man is fully informed about such matters in early years; a woman is full of dark perceptions, uncertain as to what she is to receive and what she is to give. She is naturally impelled by her sense of inward weakness to yield to anyone more powerful than herself, and, in the intoxication of sensual excitement, under conditions in which both, in order to please, tend to show the best side only to each other, she is far less able than man to weigh beforehand the significance of such a step. Later, indeed, when, in the trodden path of marriage, the current of love runs more slowly, her eyes are opened, naked reality takes the place of the pictures of imagination, which formerly caused self-deception, and what appeared to be love, but was not love, takes flight for ever. What has not been hidden under the name of love! It conceals the pretence of egoistic impulses, vanity it may be, the life of pleasure, avarice, indolence; and what a number of marriages are entered into on the part of the woman in order to escape from the oppression of repugnant domestic conditions, because the imagined future appears to them more pleasant in contrast with the actual present.“There are in the course of marriage so many periods of misunderstood depression, sadness, trouble; and mankind so readily forgets the golden rule, that these periods have to be got through by means of mutual aid, and that in married life husband and wife should do all that is possible to help one another onwards, and not to thrust one another back—so easily is this forgotten, that only too readily the mirth and gladness with which married life was begun vanish away. The intense pain which attacks us with violence, but only at long intervals, has a far less depressing influence on our organismthan much less severe, but frequently repeated, emotional disturbances, especially such as arise out of the wretchedness of life. They give rise in us to irritability of the nervous system, by which sensitiveness is increased; and repeated misunderstandings in married life soon make both husband and wife feel that marriage is rather a burden than a joy.”
“How, as a matter of fact, do marriages come about? In heaven certainly a very small number indeed, if by that phrase we understand marriages undertaken with the full understanding of the nature of the sacrifice involved, under the impulsion of an inner necessity, and based upon deep mutual inclination founded upon self-respect and respect for each other; in social circles, and not in heaven, on the other hand, the majority of marriages are made. The question upon which ultimately so many marriages depend is, what each will gain by it, whilst inner sensations and mutual liking are regarded as subordinate matters.... A man is fully informed about such matters in early years; a woman is full of dark perceptions, uncertain as to what she is to receive and what she is to give. She is naturally impelled by her sense of inward weakness to yield to anyone more powerful than herself, and, in the intoxication of sensual excitement, under conditions in which both, in order to please, tend to show the best side only to each other, she is far less able than man to weigh beforehand the significance of such a step. Later, indeed, when, in the trodden path of marriage, the current of love runs more slowly, her eyes are opened, naked reality takes the place of the pictures of imagination, which formerly caused self-deception, and what appeared to be love, but was not love, takes flight for ever. What has not been hidden under the name of love! It conceals the pretence of egoistic impulses, vanity it may be, the life of pleasure, avarice, indolence; and what a number of marriages are entered into on the part of the woman in order to escape from the oppression of repugnant domestic conditions, because the imagined future appears to them more pleasant in contrast with the actual present.
“There are in the course of marriage so many periods of misunderstood depression, sadness, trouble; and mankind so readily forgets the golden rule, that these periods have to be got through by means of mutual aid, and that in married life husband and wife should do all that is possible to help one another onwards, and not to thrust one another back—so easily is this forgotten, that only too readily the mirth and gladness with which married life was begun vanish away. The intense pain which attacks us with violence, but only at long intervals, has a far less depressing influence on our organismthan much less severe, but frequently repeated, emotional disturbances, especially such as arise out of the wretchedness of life. They give rise in us to irritability of the nervous system, by which sensitiveness is increased; and repeated misunderstandings in married life soon make both husband and wife feel that marriage is rather a burden than a joy.”
That women as well as men recognize the danger to love entailed by marriage is shown by Frieda von Bülow in “Einsame Frauen,” pp. 93, 94 (1897):
“During this period I have often considered the question of such continued life in common. Is it not inevitable that this unceasing, intimate association must always give rise to mutual hatred? Husband and wife learn to know one another through and through. The veil of white lies which plays so important a part in ordinary social intercourse is here impossible. The characters are seen naked in all their weakness, all their incapacity for love, all their vanity, all their egoism. In such circumstances, phrases intended to conceal appear simply untruths, and instead of producing illusion they repel. Just as in the first awakening of love, all the powers of the soul are directed towards the discovery of the excellences of the beloved one, so here the soul is for ever upon a voyage of discovery seeking for faults. In both cases alike, a sufficiency of that which one seeks is found.”
“During this period I have often considered the question of such continued life in common. Is it not inevitable that this unceasing, intimate association must always give rise to mutual hatred? Husband and wife learn to know one another through and through. The veil of white lies which plays so important a part in ordinary social intercourse is here impossible. The characters are seen naked in all their weakness, all their incapacity for love, all their vanity, all their egoism. In such circumstances, phrases intended to conceal appear simply untruths, and instead of producing illusion they repel. Just as in the first awakening of love, all the powers of the soul are directed towards the discovery of the excellences of the beloved one, so here the soul is for ever upon a voyage of discovery seeking for faults. In both cases alike, a sufficiency of that which one seeks is found.”
The poets also give us an insight into the depths of the eternal contradiction between love and marriage. Who does not know the saying of the idealistic and optimistic Schiller: “Mit dem Gürtel, mit dem Schleier reisst der schöne Wahn entzwei”—“With the girdle, with the veil (of marriage), the beautiful illusion is torn to pieces”? Consider, also, the horribly clear characterization of the pessimistic Byron (in “Don Juan,” canto iii., stanzas 5-8):
V.“’Tis melancholy, and a fearful signOf human frailty, folly, also crime,That love and marriage rarely can combine,Although they both are born in the same clime.Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine—A sad, sour, sober beverage—by timeIs sharpen’d from its high, celestial flavour,Down to a very homely household savour.VI.“There’s something of antipathy, as ’twere,Between their present and their future state;A kind of flattery that’s hardly fairIs used until the truth arrives too late—Yet what can people do, except despair?The same things change their names at such a rate;For instance—passion in a lover’s glorious,But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.VII.“Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;They sometimes also get a little tired(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond;The same things cannot always be admired,Yet ’tis “so nominated in the bond,”That both are tied till one shall have expired.Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorningOur days, and put one’s servants into mourning.VIII.“There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis;Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,But only give a bust of marriages;For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,He would have written sonnets all his life?”
V.“’Tis melancholy, and a fearful signOf human frailty, folly, also crime,That love and marriage rarely can combine,Although they both are born in the same clime.Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine—A sad, sour, sober beverage—by timeIs sharpen’d from its high, celestial flavour,Down to a very homely household savour.VI.“There’s something of antipathy, as ’twere,Between their present and their future state;A kind of flattery that’s hardly fairIs used until the truth arrives too late—Yet what can people do, except despair?The same things change their names at such a rate;For instance—passion in a lover’s glorious,But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.VII.“Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;They sometimes also get a little tired(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond;The same things cannot always be admired,Yet ’tis “so nominated in the bond,”That both are tied till one shall have expired.Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorningOur days, and put one’s servants into mourning.VIII.“There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis;Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,But only give a bust of marriages;For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,He would have written sonnets all his life?”
V.
“’Tis melancholy, and a fearful signOf human frailty, folly, also crime,That love and marriage rarely can combine,Although they both are born in the same clime.Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine—A sad, sour, sober beverage—by timeIs sharpen’d from its high, celestial flavour,Down to a very homely household savour.
VI.
“There’s something of antipathy, as ’twere,Between their present and their future state;A kind of flattery that’s hardly fairIs used until the truth arrives too late—Yet what can people do, except despair?The same things change their names at such a rate;For instance—passion in a lover’s glorious,But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.
VII.
“Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;They sometimes also get a little tired(But that, of course, is rare), and then despond;The same things cannot always be admired,Yet ’tis “so nominated in the bond,”That both are tied till one shall have expired.Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorningOur days, and put one’s servants into mourning.
VIII.
“There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis;Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,But only give a bust of marriages;For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,He would have written sonnets all his life?”
It is significant that those who most praise marriage are young people who do not know marriage from experience, but have failed to find true happiness in celibacy. We think of the words of Socrates, that it is a matter of indifference whether a man marries or does not marry, for in either case he will regret it.
Our own time is certainly characterized by hostility to marriage. It is theformof modern marriage which frightens most people; the compulsion which has actually been rendered more stringent by the new Civil Code of 1900. Modern individualism draws back from the undeniableloss of freedomwhich legal marriage entails. The shadow which, according to a saying of E. Dühring, indissoluble marriage has thrown upon love and upon the nobler aspects of the sexual life, is darker to-day than ever before.
Hence the growing disinclination to marry, which, significantly enough, is increasingly manifest upon the part of women; hence, above all, theextraordinary increase in divorce.
According to a statement in theVossische Zeitung(No. 137, March 22, 1906), the number of divorces in Germany underwent amarkedincrease in the year 1904. In that year there were 10,882 divorces; in 1903, 9,932; in 1902, 9,074; thus in the year 1904 there was an increase of 590, or 9·6 per cent.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, a marked increase in the number of divorces was already discernible. For instance, in the years 1894-1899 the number rose from7,502 to 9,433. It was at that time believed that the increase depended upon the fact that in most of the countries of the German Confederation the new Civil Code made divorce more difficult, and that for this reason as many people as possible were seeking divorce before the new Code came into action. It is true that the number of divorces diminished after the Civil Code passed into operation. In the year 1900 the divorces numbered 7,922, and in the year 1901, 7,892.Since then, however, there has once more been a marked increase, so thatthe figure for the year 1904 is 2,990 in excess of that for the year 1901, an increase of 38 per cent. This increase is principally to be referred to the fact that the so-calledrelative grounds for divorce, enumerated in § 1568 of the CivilCode,[182]appear to have justified a great number of demands for divorce. The marked extensibility of the sections of this paragraph leaves the judge very wide discretion in its application.
To what an extent the increase in the number of divorces influences the existing marriages is seen as soon as we compare the number of divorces with the number of marriages. It appears that in the years 1900 and 1901, for every 10,000 marriages, there were 8·1 divorces; in 1902, 9·3 divorces; in 1903, 10·1 divorces; and in 1904, 11·1 divorces. Thus in the year 1904, there were 3 more divorces per 10,000 marriages than in the year 1901.
I have already referred to the enormous importance of divorce in relation to the recognition on the part of the State of the temporary character of every marriage, whereby, in principle, free love, which is no more than a temporary marriage, receives a civil justification, and is legitimized. This fact stands out still more clearly when we recognize the legal possibility ofrepeateddivorces on the part of one and the same person. Numerous actual examples of this can be given. Thus a well-known author was divorced no less thanfourtimes, and of his four wives one, on her side, had been divorced by other men. Two divorces on both sides are by no means rare. If we consider the matter openly and unemotionally, it must be admitted that this is nothing else than the much-opposed “free love,” the bugbear of allhonest Philistines,a free love which has already received the official sanction of the State.
When four or five divorces are possible to the same individual by official decree, when, that is to say, this procedure has received civil sanction, the number may for theoretical purposes be multiplied at discretion.
He who knows human nature, he who knows that the consciousness of freedom in mature human beings—and only such should enter upon marriage—strengthens and confirms theconsciousness of duty—such a one need not fear the introduction of free marriage. On the contrary, it may be assumed that divorces would be far less common than they are in the case of coercive marriage.
According to the Civil Code, divorces are obtainable on the ground of adultery, hazard to life, malicious abandonment, ill-treatment, mental disorder, legally punishable offences, dishonourable and immoral conduct, serious disregard of conjugal duties. As we saw, the last clause empowered the judge in difficult cases, by a humane, reasonable interpretation of the idea “disregard of conjugal duties,” to pronounce a divorce. It is obvious that in every divorce the interests of thechildrenof the marriage (if any) must be especially safeguarded.
Marriage in France, to which hitherto the clauses of the Code Napoléon, analogous to those of our Civil Code, have been applicable, is said to have recently undergone reform, both in respect of moral and of legal rights. In Paris there has been constituted a standing “Committee of Marriage Reform,” composed of well-known authors, jurists, and women, among the number being Pierre Louys, Marcel Prevost, Judge Magnaud, Octave Mirbeau, Maeterlinck, Henri Bataille, Henri Coulon, and Poincaré.
In an address to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate by the President of this Committee, Henri Coulon, in which he gives the reasons for desiring a change in the present marriagelaws,[183]he says: