Chapter 14

“Bachelorhood,” says Max Nordau, “is very far from being equivalent to sexual continence. The bachelor receives from society the tacit permission to indulge in the convenience of intercourse with woman, when and where he can; it calls his self-seeking pleasures ‘successes,’ and surrounds them with a kind of poetic glory; and the amiable vice of Don Juan arouses in society a feeling composed of envy, sympathy, and secretadmiration.”[186]

On the other hand,this sameconventional coercive marriage morality demands from the girl complete sexual continence and intactness until the time of her marriage!

But every reasonable and just man must ask the question, Where, then, are the unmarried men to gratify their sexual impulse if at the same time the unmarried girls are condemned to absolute chastity?

It is merely necessary to place these two factsside by sidein order to expose the utter mendacity and shamelessness of the coercive marriage morality, and to display the true cancer of our sexual life, the sole cause of the increasing diffusion ofprostitution, ofwild sexual promiscuity, and ofvenereal diseases.

When hereafter, before the judgment-seat of history, the dreadful “j’accuse” is uttered against the sexual corruption of our time, then there will be a good defence for those of us who, under the device, “Away with prostitution! away with the brothels! away with all ‘wild’ love! away with venereal diseases!” were the first to indicatefree loveas the one and only means of rescue from these miseries.

We are always told that men are not yet ready for the free, independent management of their sexual life; mankind is not yet ripe for the necessary responsibility. Our opponents point especially to the danger of such an opinion and such reforms for the lower classes.

But human beings are better than the defenders of the obsolete conventional morality would have us believe, and above all, it is the members of the lower classes whom we may quietly allow to follow the dictates of their own hearts. They, indeed, give us the example that freedom is not equivalent to immorality and pleasure-seeking; that, on the contrary, it is freedom that awakens and keeps active the consciousness of duty and the sense of responsibility.

Alfred Blaschko rightly draws attention to the fact that among the proletariat for a long time already the idea of free love has been actually realized. In a large majority of cases men and women of these classes have sexual intercourse with one another, especially between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, withoutmarrying.[187]

“Among the proletariat free love has never been regarded as sinful. Where there is no property which is capable of being left to a legitimate heir, where the appeal of the heart draws man and woman together, from the very earliest times people have troubled themselves little about the blessing of the priest; and had it not been that at the present day the civil form of marriage is so simple, whilst, on the other hand, there are so many difficulties placed in the path of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children,who can tell if the modern proletariat would not long ago, as far as they themselves are concerned, have abolishedmarriage?”[188]

Blaschko adduces proofs that in all places in which free love is not possibleprostitution takes its place.

This fact affords a striking proof of the necessity of free love. For there can be no doubt as to the correct answer to the question which is better, prostitution or free love.

Max Marcus and other physicians have recently discussed the question whether the medical man is justified in recommending extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. I myself, as a physician, and as an ardent supporter of the efforts for the suppression of venereal diseases, in view of the enormous increase of professional prostitution (both public and private), and in view also of the extraordinarily wide diffusion of venereal diseases, feel compelled to answer this question, generally speaking,in the negative. Yet I look to the introduction of free love, and in association with free love of a new sexual morality, in accordance with which man and woman are regarded as two free personalities, with equal rights and also equal responsibilities, as the onlypossible rescue from the misery of prostitution and of venereal disease.

Place the free woman beside the free man, inspire both with the profound sense ofresponsibilitywhich will result from the activity of the love of two free personalities, and you will see that to them and to their children such love will bring true happiness.

Before going further into this problem of free love, I will give a brief account of the history of the question during the nineteenth century. We shall see that quite a number of leading spirits, morally lofty natures, were occupied with the question, because they were deeply impressed with the intolerable character of existing conditions in the sexual sphere, and were convinced that help was only to be found in a relaxation of those conditions in the sense of afreerconception of sexual relationships.

In addition to the romanticists (vide supra,pp. 169and175) in the beginning of the nineteenth century in England, William Godwin, the lover and husband of Mary Wollstonecraft (the celebrated advocate of woman’s rights), in his “Political Justice,” declared the conventional coercive marriage to be an obsolete institution, by which the freedom of the individual was seriously curtailed. Marriage is a question of property, and one person ought not to become the property of another. Godwin maintained that the abolition of marriage would have no evil consequences. The free love and subsequent marriage of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft deserves a short description. Godwin was of opinion that the members of a family should not see too much of one another. He also believed that they would interfere with one another’s work if they lived in the same house. For this reason he furnished some rooms for himself at a little distance from Mary Wollstonecraft’s dwelling, and often first appeared at her house at a late lunch; the intervening hours were spent by both in literary work. They exchanged letters also during theday.[189]

Doubtless under the influence of the views of Godwin, Shelley, in the notes to “Queen Mab,” writes a violent polemic against coercive marriage. He says:

“Love withers under constraint; its very essence is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve. How long, then, ought the sexual connexion to last? What law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wifeought to continue so long united as they love each other; any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerabletyranny.”[190]

He then proceeds to attack the conventional morality so intimately associated with coercive marriage, and concludes with the words:

“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage. I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connexion would result.I by no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous; on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked above all others with generosity andself-devotion.”[191]

Here, also, we find the expression of the firm conviction that in the freedom of love is to be found an assured guarantee for its durability!

Later, also, the English Pre-Raphaelites, especially John Ruskin, advocated free love, and maintained that the sacredness of these natural bonds lay in their very essence. It is love which first makes marriage legal, not marriage which legalizes love (cf.Charlotte Broicher, “John Ruskin and his Work,” vol. i., pp. 104-106; Leipzig, 1902).

In Germany, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, a lively discussion of the problems of love and marriage ensued upon the publication of Friedrich Schlegel’s “Lucinde” and Goethe’s “Wahlverwandtschaften”—“Elective Affinities” (1809).

Goethe, in his very rich amatory life, especially in his relationship to Charlotte von Stein and to Christiane Vulpius, with the latter of whom he lived for eighteen years in a free “marriage ofconscience,”[192]and whose son, August, the offspring of this union, he adopted long before the marriage was legitimized, realized the ideal of free love more than once. Although in his book “Wahlverwandtschaften” (“Elective Affinities”) he at length gave the victory to the moral conception of monogamic marriage,and propounded it as an illuminating ideal for civilization (which “ideal standpoint” we ourselves, as we have shown in the previous chapters, fully share), yet in this novel he has represented conjugal struggles, from which it appears how profoundly he was impressed by the importance of a transformation of amatory life in the direction of freedom. It is especially by the mouth of the Count in this work that he gives utterance to such ideas. The latter records the advice of one of his friends that every marriage should be contracted for the term of five years only.

“This number,” he said, “is a beautiful, sacred, odd number, and such a period of time would be sufficient for the married pair to learn to know one another, for them to bring a few children into the world, to separate, and, what would be most beautiful of all, to come together again.”

Often he would exclaim:

“How happily would the first portion of the time pass! Two or three years at least would pass very happily. Then very likely one member of the pair would wish that the union should be prolonged; and this desire would increase the more nearly the terminus of the marriage approached. An indifferent, even an unsatisfied, member of such a union would be pleased by such a demeanour on the part of the other. One is apt to forget how in good society the passing of time is unnoticed; one finds with agreeable surprise, when the allotted time has passed away,that it has been tacitly prolonged. It is precisely this voluntary, tacit prolongation of sexual relationship, freely undertaken by both parties without any extraneous compulsion, to which Goethe ascribesa profound moral significance.”

I should like to draw the attention of students of Goethe to the fact that this recommendation of a temporary marriage for the term of five years, with tacit prolongation of the term, is a very ancient Japanese custom, or, at any rate, was so thirty years ago.

Wernich, who for several years was Professor of Medicine at the Imperial University of Japan, remarks:

“Marriages were concluded for a term only: in the case of persons of standing forfiveyears; among the lower classes for a shorter term. It wasvery rare, however, only in cases in which the marriage was manifestly unhappy, for a separation to take place when the term expired. If there were healthy living children such a separation hardly ever occurred—most of these temporary marriages were, in fact, extremely happy, and the same is true of Jewish marriages, in which divorce is easily effected by a very simple ceremonial, closely resembling that of theJapanese.”[193]

In view of the remarkable coincidence between the proposal in Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” and the Japanese custom, we are probably justified in assuming that Goethe was acquainted with the latter.

“Lucinde” gave expression to the feelings and moods of the time in respect of love and marriage on behalf of a circle far wider than that of the romanticists. At no time were the ideals of free love so deeply felt, so enthusiastically presented, as then; above all, by the beautiful Karoline, who, after long “marriage wanderings,” especially with A. W. Schegel, finally found the happiness of her life in a free marriage with Schelling, which subsequently became a legally recognized union.

“In her letters,” says Kuno Fischer, “she praises again and again the man of her choice and of her heart, in whose love she had really attained the goal which she had longed and sought in labyrinthine wanderings.... And that Schelling was the man who was able completely to master the heart of this woman and to make her his own, gives to his features also an expression which beautifiesthem.”[194]

Rahel, Dorothea Schlegel, and Henriette Herz, extolled, under the influence of “Lucinde,” the happiness of free love. For this period of genius in Jena and Berlin, as Rudolph von Gottschall calls it, the free-love relationship of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and Frau Pauline Wiesel was typical. This relationship is more intimately known to us from the letters exchanged between the two, published by Alexander Büchner in 1865. In these letters, to quote a saying of Ludmilla Assing, we find “the most passionate expression of all that it is possible to express in writing.”

In France the discussion of the question of free love was to an important extent associated with the communistic-socialistic ideas of Saint Simon, Enfantin, and Fourier. Before this, Rétif de la Bretonne, in his “Découverte Australe” (a work which exercised a great influence upon CharlesFourier),[195]demanded that the duration of marriage should be in the first instance two years, with which period the contract should spontaneously terminate. Saint Simon and Barrault proclaimed the “free wife,” PèreEnfantin proclaimed the “free union,” and Fourier proclaimed “free love” in the phalanstery.

A reflection of this idea is to be found in the novels of George Sand, especially “Lelia” and “Jacques,” these tragedies of marriage; in “Jacques,” for example, we find the following passage:

“I continue to believe that marriage is one of the most hateful of institutions. I have no doubt whatever that when the human race has advanced further towards rationality and the love of justice, marriage will be abolished.A human and not less sacred unionwould then replace it, and the existence of the children would be not less cared for and secured, without therefore binding in eternal fetters the freedom of the parents.”

We must mention Hortense Allart de Méritens (1801-1879) as a contemporary of the much-loving George Sand, and, like her, a theoretical and practical advocate of free love. She was cousin to the well-known authoress Delphine Gay, and herself wrote aroman à clef, published in 1872, “Les Enchantements de Prudence,” in which she records the history of her own life, devoted to free love. First the beloved of a nobleman, she ran away when she discovered she was pregnant, and then lived successively with the Italian statesman Gino Capponi (1826-1829); with the celebrated French author Chateaubriand (1829-1831); with the English novelist and poet Bulwer (1831-1836); the Italian Mazzini (1837-1840); the critic Sainte-Beuve (1840-1841); these being all free unions. From 1843 to 1846 she was the perfectly legitimate and extremely unhappy wife of an architect named Napoléon de Méritens, whereas with her earlier lovers she had lived most happily. Léon Séché, in theRevue de Parisof July 1, 1907, has recently described the life of this notable priestess of free love, to whose above-mentioned romance George Sand wrote a preface (cf.Literarisches Echoof August 1, 1907, pp. 1612, 1613).

In Sweden at about the same time the celebrated poet C. J. L. Almquist was a powerful advocate for free love. In the numbers for July and August, 1900, of the monthly review,Die Insel, Ellen Key has published a thoughtful essay, containing an analysis of Almquist’s views on this subject.

In the novel “Es Geht An” Almquist advocates the thesis that true love needs no consecration by a marriage ceremony. On the contrary, a ceremony of this kind belies the very nature of marriage, for it forms and cements false unions; and any relationship concluded on the lowest grounds, if it has only beenpreceded by a marriage ceremony, is regarded as pure, whilst a union based upon true love without marriage is regarded as unchaste. In the sense of free love Lara Widbeck, in “Es Geht An,” arranges her own life and that of her husband Albert. Both are to be masters of their respective persons and of their respective property; they are to live for themselves, the work of each is to be pursued independently of the other, and in this way it will be possible to preserve a lifelong love, instead of seeing love transformed into lifelong indifference or hate.

Even at the present day in Sweden the idea of free love is known, after this romance of Almquist’s, as the “Es-geht-an idea” and also as “briar-rose morality.” It was, above all, Ellen Key who revived Almquist’s idea, and enlarged it to the extensive programme of marriage reform in the direction of free love, which we shall consider more fully below.

In his last writings Schopenhauer occupied himself at considerable length with the problems of love, but entirely from the standpoint of misogyny and of duplex sexual morality. Still, he recognized the great dangers and disasters which the traditional coercive marriage entails upon society, and rightly regarded this formal marriage as the principal source of sexual corruption.

In his essay “Concerning Women” (“Parerga and Paralipomena,” vol. xi., pp. 657-659), ed. Grisebach, he writes:

“Whereas among the polygamist nations every woman is cared for, among monogamic peoples the number of married women is limited, and there remains an enormous number of unsupported superfluouswomen.[196]Among the upper classes these vegetate as useless old maids; among the lower classes they are forced to earn their living by immeasurably severe toil, or else they become prostitutes. These latter lead a life equally devoid of pleasure and of honour; but in the circumstances they are indispensable for the gratification of the male sex, and hence they constitute a publicly recognized profession, the especial purpose of which is to safeguard against seduction those women more highly favoured by fortune, who have found husbands, or may reasonably hope to do so. In London alone there are 80,000 such women.What else are these women than human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy—sacrifices rendered inevitable by the very nature of the monogamic institution?All the women to whom we now allude—women in this miserable position—form the inevitable counterpoise to the ladies of Europe, with their pretension and their pride. For the female sex, regarded as a whole, polygamy is a real benefit. On the other hand, from the rationalistic point of view, it is impossible to see why a man whose wife is suffering from a chronic disease, or remains unfruitful, or has gradually become too old forhim, should not take a second wife. That which produces so many converts to Mormonism appears to be the rejection by the Mormons of the unnatural institution of monogamy. In addition, moreover, the allotment to the wife of unnatural rights has imposed upon her unnatural duties, whose neglect, nevertheless, makes her unhappy. To many a man considerations of position, of property, make marriage inadvisable, unless the conditions are exceptionally favourable. He would then wish to obtain a wife of his own choice, under conditions which would leave him free from obligations to her and her children. However economical, reasonable, and suitable these conditions may be, if she agrees to them, and does not insist upon the immoderate rights which marriage alone secures to her, she will, because marriage is the basis of every society, find herself compelled to lead an unhappy life, one which, to a certain degree, is dishonourable; because human nature involves this, that we assign a quite immeasurable value to the opinion of others. If, on the other hand, she does not comply, she runs the danger either of being compelled to belong as a wife to a man repulsive to her, or else of withering as an old maid, for the period in which she can realize her value is very short. In relation to this aspect of our monogamic arrangement, the profoundly learned treatise of Thomasius,De Concubinatu, is of the greatest possible value, for we learn from itthat among all cultured people, and in all times, until the date of the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted, and even to a certain extent legally recognized, and was an institution not involving any dishonour. From this position it was degraded only by the Lutheran Reformation, for the degradation of concubinage was regarded as a means by which the marriage of priests could be justified; and, on the other hand, after the Lutheran denunciation of concubinage, the semi-official recognition of that institution by the Roman Catholic Church was no longer possible.“Regarding polygamy there need beno dispute, for it is a universally existing fact, and the only question is regarding itsregulation. Where are the true monogamists? We all liveat leastfor a time, but most of us continually, in a state of polygamy. Since, consequently, every man makes use of many wives, nothing could be more just than to leave him free, and even to compel him, to provide for many wives.”

“Regarding polygamy there need beno dispute, for it is a universally existing fact, and the only question is regarding itsregulation. Where are the true monogamists? We all liveat leastfor a time, but most of us continually, in a state of polygamy. Since, consequently, every man makes use of many wives, nothing could be more just than to leave him free, and even to compel him, to provide for many wives.”

Just as are these views of Schopenhauer’s regarding the necessity of a freer conception and a freer configuration of sexual relations, and regarding the shamefulness of exposing to infamy the unmarried mother and the illegitimate child, so much the more dangerous is his view of the part to be played by women in this reform of marriage. Woman as an inferior being, without freedom, is once more to lose all her rights, instead of standing beside man as a free personality with equal rights and equal duties. The result of a rearrangement of amatory life on this basis would inevitably be a new and a worse sexual slavery.

As Julius Frauenstädt records, Schopenhauer, in a separate manuscript found amongst his papers, has described the evil conditions of monogamy, and has recommended, as a step toreform, the practice of “tetragamy.” This peculiar and unquestionably very interesting essay has not found its way into the Royal Library of Berlin. With regard to the whereabouts of the manuscript we are uncertain; perhaps Frauenstädt destroyed it.

However, we find a brief, hitherto unpublished, extract from this essay in Schopenhauer’s manuscript book, “Die Brieftasche,” written in 1823, which is preserved in the Royal Library inBerlin.[197]

I publish here, for the first time, the summary account of tetragamy contained on pp. 70-77 of the aforesaid manuscript book:

“Inasmuch as Nature makes the number of women nearly identical with that of men, whilst women retain only about half as long as men their capacity for procreation and their suitability for masculine gratification, the human sexual relationship is disordered at the very outset. By the equal numbers of the respective sexes, Nature appears to point to monogamy; on the other hand, a man hasonewife for the satisfaction of his procreative capacity only for half the time for which that capacity endures; he must, then, take a second wife when the first begins to wither; but for each man only one woman is available. The tendency exhibited by woman in respect of the duration of her sexual capacity is compensated, on the other hand, by the quantity of that capacity: she is capable of gratifying two or three vigorous men simultaneously, without suffering in any way. In monogamy, woman employs only half of her sexual capacity, and satisfies only half of her desires.“If, now, this relationship were arranged in accordance with purely physical considerations (and we are concerned here with a physical, extremely urgent need, the satisfaction of which is the aim of marriage, alike among the Jews and among the Christians), if matters were to be equalized as completely as possible, it would be necessary for two men always to have one wife in common: let them take her when they are both young. After she has become faded, let them take another young woman, who will then suffice for their needs until both the men are old. Both women are cared for, and each man is responsible for the care of one only.“In the monogamic state, the man has for a single occasion too much, and for a permanency too little; with the woman it is the other way about.“If the proposed institution were adopted in youth, a man, at thetime when his income is usually smallest, would have to provide only for half a wife, and for few children, and those young. Later, when he is richer, he would have to provide for one or two wives and for numerous children.“Since this institution has not been adopted—for half their life men are whoremongers, and for the other half cuckolds; and women must be correspondingly classified as betrayed and betrayers—he who marries young is tied later to an elderly wife; he who marries late in youth acquires venereal disease, and in age has to wear the horns. Woman must either sacrifice the bloom of her youth to a man already withered; or else must discover that to a still vigorous man she is no longer an object of desire. The institution we propose would cure all these troubles; the human race would lead happier lives. The objections are the following:“1. That a man would not know his own children. Answer: This could, as a rule, be determined by likeness and other considerations; in existing conditions it is not always a matter of certainty.“2. Such amenage à troiswould give rise to brawls and jealousy. Answer: Such things are already universal; people must learn to behave themselves.“3. What is to be done as regards property? Answer: This will have to be otherwise arranged; absolutecommunio bonorumwill not occur. As we have already said, Nature has arranged the affair badly. It will, therefore, be impossible to overcome all disadvantages.“As matters are at present, Duty and Nature are continually in conflict. For the man it is impossible from the beginning to the end of his career to satisfy his sexual impulse in a legal manner. Imagine his condition if he is widowed quite young. For the woman, to be limited to asingleman during the short period of her full bloom and sexual capacity, is an unnatural condition. She has to preserve for the use of one individual what he is unable to utilize, and what many others eagerly desire from her; and she herself, in thus refusing, must curb her own desires. Just think of it!“More especially we have to remember that always the number of men competent for sexual intercourse is double the number of functionally capable women, for which reason every woman must continually repel advances; she prepares for defence immediately a man comes near her.”

“If, now, this relationship were arranged in accordance with purely physical considerations (and we are concerned here with a physical, extremely urgent need, the satisfaction of which is the aim of marriage, alike among the Jews and among the Christians), if matters were to be equalized as completely as possible, it would be necessary for two men always to have one wife in common: let them take her when they are both young. After she has become faded, let them take another young woman, who will then suffice for their needs until both the men are old. Both women are cared for, and each man is responsible for the care of one only.

“In the monogamic state, the man has for a single occasion too much, and for a permanency too little; with the woman it is the other way about.

“If the proposed institution were adopted in youth, a man, at thetime when his income is usually smallest, would have to provide only for half a wife, and for few children, and those young. Later, when he is richer, he would have to provide for one or two wives and for numerous children.

“Since this institution has not been adopted—for half their life men are whoremongers, and for the other half cuckolds; and women must be correspondingly classified as betrayed and betrayers—he who marries young is tied later to an elderly wife; he who marries late in youth acquires venereal disease, and in age has to wear the horns. Woman must either sacrifice the bloom of her youth to a man already withered; or else must discover that to a still vigorous man she is no longer an object of desire. The institution we propose would cure all these troubles; the human race would lead happier lives. The objections are the following:

“As matters are at present, Duty and Nature are continually in conflict. For the man it is impossible from the beginning to the end of his career to satisfy his sexual impulse in a legal manner. Imagine his condition if he is widowed quite young. For the woman, to be limited to asingleman during the short period of her full bloom and sexual capacity, is an unnatural condition. She has to preserve for the use of one individual what he is unable to utilize, and what many others eagerly desire from her; and she herself, in thus refusing, must curb her own desires. Just think of it!

“More especially we have to remember that always the number of men competent for sexual intercourse is double the number of functionally capable women, for which reason every woman must continually repel advances; she prepares for defence immediately a man comes near her.”

When we consider this suggestion of tetragamy of Schopenhauer’s from our own standpoint, we find an accurate exposition of the evils arising from monogamic coercive marriage, and a clear-sighted presentation of the physiological disharmonies of the sexual life arising from the difference between man and woman, upon which recently Metchnikoff also has laid so much stress. In other respects Schopenhauer’s views are for us not open to discussion, for, as already pointed out, he regards woman from the first simply as a chattel, and denies to her anyindividuality or soul; and, secondly, because he rejects the principle of theonly-love—a principle so intimately associated with the idea of woman as individual. For the watchword of the future must be: Free love, based upon the only-love! and, indeed, the only-love manifesting itself reciprocally in the full struggle for existence.

For this reason, also, the characteristic free love of the Bohemians of Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century, and more especially during the period 1830 to 1860, can only be regarded as a truly poetic love-idyll, when compared with that grand and earnest love consecrated wholly towork, and to theinward spiritual developmentwhich presents itself to modern humanity as an ideal love, as the united conquest of existence. Grisette love, which Sebastian Mercier described with great force, and which found its classic representation in Henry Murger’s “Vie de Bohème,” was characterized by the enduring life-in-common of the loving couples, who belonged for the most part to the circle of artists and students. Thus it stood high as heaven above our modern “intimacy,” which, for the most part, has a quite transitory character; and yet the Bohemian free love corresponded in no way to the conception and ideal of free love as a community of spirit and of life.

The development of modern civilization, in association with the awakening of individualism, and with the economic revolution of our time, has created entirely new foundations for sexual relationships, and has made continually more apparent the injurious and destructive effects of our long outworn sexual morality. These changes have taught us to understand that in the so-called social question the sexual problem possesses as much importance as the economic problem—perhaps more. They have shown us the necessity for a new love of the future, for the reason that to cling to the old, outlived forms would be equivalent to a continuous increase in sexual corruption in the widest sense of the word, combined with a general disease contamination of civilized nations—as the threatening spread of prostitution, and more especially of secret prostitution, and the increased diffusion of venereal diseases, demonstrate before our eyes.

Almost at the same time, during recent years, among the various civilized nations of Europe there have originated efforts for a radical transformation of conventional sexual morality, and for a reform, adapted to modern conditions, of marriage and of the entire amatory life. In France, England, Sweden, and Germany, writers have appeared, producing books, many ofwhich have been important, full of matter, and comprehensive, entirely devoted to this object. Societies for marriage reform and sexual reform have been founded in North America, France, Austria, and Germany; parliamentary commissions for the investigation of these questions have been established. Several newspapers have been founded for the reform of sexual ethics. In short, a general interest has been aroused in this central question of life, and theoretical and practical activity have been directed towards its solution.

All at once, as if by general agreement, civilized humanity asked itself the earnest and solemn question, How was it possible that to hundreds and thousands the simple right to love was refused, so that they were condemned to a joyless existence, in which all the beautiful blossoms of life withered away; that hundreds of thousands of others were condemned to the hideous misery of prostitution; that, finally, thecommunity at largewas delivered up in ever-increasing degree to devastation by venereal diseases and their consequences?

How is it possible, asks Karl Federn, in the preface to his translation of Carpenter’s “Wenn die Menschen reif zur Liebe werden” (“Love’s Coming-of-Age”)—how is it possible that we sing love-songs, and yet have an amatory life like that which we lead to-day, and have a moral doctrine such as that which is dominant to-day?

All honour to the men and women who have dared to give an answer to these questions, who have opposed conventional lies with the truth of love, and who point out the new way along which mankind will go—will go, because itmust.

It is impossible here to mention by name all the writings dealing with the reform of sexual relationships which have appeared within recent years. Their name is legion. We must content ourselves with an allusion to those books which most of all deserve the name of epoch-making, which have aroused the interest of the community, and which may probably be said to have first stimulated the discussion of the problem, and to have been principally effective in starting the flowing current of reform.

In France, Charles Albert has treated the problem of free love from the communisticstandpoint.[198]In the first two chapters of his book, he describes the development of the primitive sexualimpulse, to become the most supreme individual love, and then gives an interesting account of the struggle of middle-class society against love, which to-day is endangered to an equal extent both by thestateand bycapital.

“Capitalistic society represents one fact, love another. It suffices to place them one beside the other in order to notice how sharp a contrast there is between them, an eternal state of war.”

It is only money that dominates the thought and feeling of modern humanity; for love and its idealism there is no longer any room; social economy recognizes only a sexual relationship, but not the higher feeling of love. Capital subjects the whole of the sexual life to its laws. In prostitution this great social crime finds its conclusion. The majority of marriages are nothing more than “sexual bargains.”

Free love is simply love liberated from the dominion of the state and of capital. It can, therefore, be realized only by an economic revolution, which will put an end to the economic struggle for existence. Free love means the independence of the sexual from the material life.Economic reformis the only way to the higher love. This is the author’s conviction. But he is not subject to any deceptive delusion that with this all will become beautiful and good; with this all problems will be solved, all incompleteness at an end.

“We do not,” Albert continues, “regard the province of the sexual life in the society of the future as an Eden, wherein those individuals best suited one to the other will come together with mathematical certainty, to lead a cloudless existence. Just as to-day, there will be unrequited love, uncertain search and endeavour, errors and deceptions, misunderstandings, satiety, aberrations, and sorrows. However great the material prosperity may be which mankind in the future will enjoy, the life of feeling will always remain the source of incalculable disturbances, and love will not be the rarest cause of such disturbances; but still a large proportion of the existing causes of pain can and must disappear.”

The indispensable preliminary to free love is the complete equality of man and woman. This, however, can only be attained by means of communism—that is to say, by that ordering of society in which property and wages cease to exist, in which not only the means of production, but also all the articles of consumption, are appropriated to the common use, and woman will no longer possess a commercial value, as she does at the present day.

Like Albert, LadislausGumplowicz[199]also believes that free love can only be realized in a collectivist community.

However important it is to draw attention to the economic point of view, as was done before Albert and Gumplowicz by Bebel, in his celebrated “Woman and Socialism” (thirty-fourth edition, Stuttgart, 1903), still, it appears to me that the communistic solution is not the only possible solution, and that free love can very well be associated with the preservation of privateproperty.[200]

While the progressive changes in the economic structure of society powerfully influence sexual relationships and lay down the rules for their existing forms, still, physiological individual factors play a great part also in the matter. The first to insist on this fact were the Englishman Carpenter and the Swedish writer EllenKey.[201]

EdwardCarpenter,[202]at one time a priest in the Anglican Church, in his study of the question of free love, without ignoring the economic factor, lays stress above all on the psychical factor, the inward spiritual relationship between man and wife.

He writes (op. cit., p. 120):

“It is in the very nature of Love that as it realizes its own aim it should rivet always more and more towards a durable and distinct relationship, nor rest till the permanent mate and equal is found. As human beings progress, their relations to each other must become muchmoredefinite and distinct, instead of less so—and there is no likelihood of society in its onward march lapsing backwards, so to speak, to formlessness again.”

Above all, Carpenter has introduced into the discussion of free love an element which to me appears of great importance fromthe medical standpoint: the question of relative asceticism, ofself-control. He rightly considers that the duty of the love of the future does not subsist merely in the common physical union, but also inspiritual procreation. From the intimate spiritual contact between two differentiated personalities, the highest spiritual values proceed. Only self-control leads us to this highest love.

“It is a matter of common experience that the unrestrained outlet of merely physical desire leaves the nature drained of its higher love-forces.... Any one who has once realized how glorious a thing Love is in its essence, and how indestructible, will hardly need to call anything that leads to it a sacrifice” (op. cit., pp. 7, 8).

The indispensable prerequisites to the reform of love and marriage are, according to Carpenter, the following (op. cit., p. 100):

(1) The furtherance of the freedom and self-dependence of women. (2) The provision of some rational teaching, of heart and of head, for both sexes during the period of youth. (3) The recognition in marriage itself of a freer, more companionable, and less pettily exclusive relationship. (4) The abrogation or modification of the present odious law which binds people together forlife, without scruple, and in the most artificial and ill-assorted unions.

Carpenter accepts Letourneau’s view, that, in a more or less distant future, the institution of marriage will undergo transformation into monogamic unions, freely entered on, and when necessary freely dissolved, by simple mutual consent, as is already done in several European countries—in Canton Geneva, in Belgium, in Roumania, as regards divorce; and in Italy as regards separation. State and society should take part in the matter only so far as the safety of the children demands, concerning whommore extensive dutiesshould be expected from the parents. Carpenter also points out, as was shown seventy years ago by Gutzkow, that, as regards the development of the children, it is better, in unhappy marriages, that their parents should separate than that the children should grow up amid the miseries of such marriages.

“Love”—thus Carpenter concludes his dissertation on marriage in the future—“is doubtless the last and most difficult lesson that humanity has to learn; in a sense, it underlies all the others. Perhaps the time has come for the modern nations when, ceasing to be children, they may even try to learn it” (op. cit., p. 113).

A greater vogue even than Carpenter’s book had was obtained by the essays of the Swedish writer Ellen Key, “Love and Marriage,” which in 1894 appeared in a Germantranslation,[203]and had an unusual success in the book-market. It is without exception the most interesting and pregnant work on the sexual question which has ever appeared. Written from the heart, and inspired by the observations of a free and lofty spirit, it avoids none of the numerous difficulties and by-paths in this department of thought; and the reproach of libertinism which has been cast at the author must be emphatically rejected. Ellen Key is the most outspoken realist of all the writers on the subject of free love. She takes her arguments from actual life; she associates her ideas of reform always with the real; she writes as an earnest evolutionist. Thus, in her book, her first aim is to establish “the course of the evolution of sexual morality” and the “evolution of love.”

Ellen Key starts from the fact that no one has ever offered any proof that monogamy is that form of the sexual life which isindispensableto the vital force and civilization of the nations. Even among the Christian nationsit has never yet really existed, and its legalization as the only permissible form of sexual morality has hitherto been rather harmful than helpful to general morality.

The writer then develops the idea, no less beautiful than true, that the genuine character of love can be proved only by the lovers actually living together for a considerable time; only thus is it possible to demonstrate that it is moral for them to live together, and that their union will have an elevating influence on themselves and their generation. Consequently, of no conjugal relationship can webeforehandaffirm or deny its success. Every new pair, whatever form they may have chosen for their common life,must first of all prove for themselves that they are morally justified in living together.

Ellen Key then proceeds to maintain a view, which I myself also regard as an integral constituent of the programme of the love of the future, and one which I have advanced in earlier writings: that love is not merely, as Schopenhauer thought, an affair of thespecies, but is, at least in equal degree, the concern of the lovingindividuals. This is the result and the meaning of civilization, which, as I have proved in earlier chapters, exhibits aprogressiveindividualization and an increasing spiritual enrichment of love (the “spiritualized sensuality” of Ellen Key), andthus gives to love a thoroughly independent importance for each individual.

Back to Index Next