Sex--The Unknown Quantity Part 5

Inspired by the thirst for further invasions, the male gradually acquired not only one, but many wives, which const.i.tuted his "possessions," from the fact that he had earned them by right of conquest, conquest being not only the savage but also the civilized idea of "earning."

Indeed, our modern marriages reveal a degree of savagery in this respect, which is not suspected by the casual observer. The almost general observance of what has come to be known in legal jurisprudence as "the unwritten law," which permits a man to go unpunished when he kills another man whom he believes to have been on terms of intimacy with his wife, is a tacit admission of a man's vested rights in his wife's person.

In innumerable instances, which have been given world-wide publicity within very recent times, the man who has been guilty of homicide under these circ.u.mstances has been exalted to the plane of a martyr-hero, and one woman writer, whose hysterical effusions are given considerable s.p.a.ce in the public print, defended a man who had taken advantage of this "unwritten law" to shoot his rival, in the following words: "You, Mister, would shoot a man whom you found prowling through your house with the intention of stealing your silver; your jewelry; your property of whatever kind or value. How much more, then, should you guard the honor of your wife, from these pestilential marauders?"

Of course we question the right of human beings to kill each other in defense of mere property; but that is not the point here. The inference here is obvious that this woman, who represents at least the average degree of intelligence, placed her s.e.x in the category of man's possessions, utterly ignoring the woman's right, or power of free-will.

Mention is here made of this incident to show how deeply rooted is the possessive idea of marriage, which had its origin in nothing more ideal than the animal instinct of the dog with the bone.

Nor would we give the impression that this one-sided idea of what const.i.tutes a monogamous marriage is confined to the male. The same idea of possession as of a piece of property, representing so much investment of time and money, and service of one kind or another, actuates the female also although the rights of the woman in the male are not so generally defended and she seldom resorts to such violent methods of defense or of revenge for loss of her property. Perhaps she has a keener sense of values. Necessity has subst.i.tuted "support" for "outraged honor," and modern woman avenges the loss of her possessions through the safer channels of the law-courts.

The feeling of possession, so ingrained in human nature, and so much a part of our modern marriage relation, is not grounded upon a moral code, which has for its basic principle fidelity to one's partner.

This is proven by the fact that men have for some time abrogated to themselves the right of promiscuity, the main clause of their defense being that their conduct does not deprive their wife and family of satisfactory maintenance. Many a woman today, irreproachably respectable and church-going, will admit to herself if not to her neighbors, that she closes her eyes to her husband's laxity in s.e.xual matters, "as long as he provides well for me."

When we come, as we will later, to a consideration of what const.i.tutes morality, we will see that, like all our evolving ideals, it is governed by immediate conditions, both individual and social.

It is easy to see why polygamy has been practiced, as a necessary expedient, and why women have been held so cheaply, when we realize the centuries of devastating wars, both of conquest and of defense, which besmirch the path of Evolution.

Thus the tendency to aesthetic selection, always more p.r.o.nounced in the female than in the male, has been swallowed up in the false valuation put upon the male, because of his relative scarcity.

In America, in the early sixties, fear of the epithet "old maid" drove many a woman to marriage with a man whom, personally, she did not like, but as he represented a more or less "rara avis" and as her claim to attractiveness rested upon her success in trapping this rare bird, she permitted herself to become a victim of conditions; and we may safely conclude that no higher motive actuated the average woman of the last century than that of submission to conditions, for the "virtues of fidelity and devotion to the home and fireside" which critics of present-day morals are fond of reminding us characterized our grandmothers.

Briefly, then, we may review the history of marriage and of mating, everywhere, and at all times, as variable, controlled by expediency; and always based on the egoistic idea of possession, expressed by the right of the parents to dispose of their children; the right by capture; the right by purchase; and the right by consent.

One or all of these customs have been tried in various parts of the world and at various times, and seldom has the condition of woman approached even so enviable a place as that of the female animal, except in the comparatively short periods when women have been the gens of the family.

These periods have become more and more infrequent, until the legal status of women has been, as it is now, no more than what the evolving consciousness of the male permitted to her.

It is a question whether, under our pretended monogamy, which is, per se, a more ideal condition than polygamy, all women have been either better conditioned or more moral. The answer depends largely upon our idea of what const.i.tutes morality. Certainly, the condition of women in Christian countries has been, and is now, far from ideal; which would, judging from surface appearances, indicate that monogamy, as it has been practiced in the past, served only as an ideal, and at best has been of first aid to the male, primarily because of a question of personal health and cleanliness; secondly, as a means of developing in him the latent qualities of altruism, manifested selfishly enough at first in protecting his possessions; among which he egotistically conceded _his children at least_ first place; although the wife was hardly more than a convenience and an incubator.

Of the conditions that have prevailed under the monogamous custom and among the so-called superior races, Letourneau, in his _Evolution of the Family_, says: "The Hebrews seem to have been alone, among the Semites, in adopting monogamy, at least in general practice. Doubtless the subjection of the Jewish woman was not extreme as it is in Kabyle; it was, however, very great. Her consent to marriage, it is true, was necessary when she had reached majority, but she was all the same sold to her husband. We find hardly more than the portrait of a laborious servant, busy and grasping. We shall see that the wife, though she might gain much money, which seems to have been the ideal of the Hebrew, according to the Proverbs, was repudiable at will, with no other reason than the caprice of the master who had bought her.

Finally, and this is much more severe, she was always obliged to be able to prove, _cloths in hand_, that she was a virgin at the moment of her marriage, and this under pain of being stoned."

The same state of affairs or worse existed in India and in Persia, although in Persia there seems to have been an attempt to enjoin the same fidelity upon the husband as upon the wife, according to the Zend-Avesta; the only severe restriction to marriage being that neither should marry an infidel. In India, where there has been for centuries an alleged monogamy (except among the privileged cla.s.ses, where concubinage held sway), the ethical condition of the women has been, and still is, deplorable.

In ancient Greece and Rome the position of the woman was most inferior. She was generally purchased, or given for service. Her husband's word was law, and mothers were compelled to obey their male children as uncomplainingly as though they were slaves. The wife and mother was not permitted to attend festivities and neither was she allowed the selection of her friends, her husband deciding this choice for her.

This, of course, applied to the respectable, or so-called virtuous woman, which const.i.tuted the average. Then, as now, two cla.s.ses of women were to some extent exempt from this rigid custom. One cla.s.s was formed by those women whose wealth conferred upon them a degree of power, because the possessors of great wealth have always been a law unto themselves. The other cla.s.s was formed by the women who practiced prost.i.tution, and who, by reason of their mode of life, met men on terms of at least temporary social equality.

Thus it is evident that the path of the virtuous woman without the independence that accompanies the possession of her own money, was in ancient days much more th.o.r.n.y than that of the concubine or the prost.i.tute; and it is because of this fact that parental love, the most powerful of all levers employed by the Cosmic Law to lift love out of degradation, inst.i.tuted the custom of the "dowry," and although this, too, has at various times become a source of degradation, inspiring impoverished aristocrats to loveless marriages with so-called inferiors, yet it has after all been a factor in the evolution of women and the preservation of the races. It has served two purposes. It has made women, in theory at least, more independent; and it has resulted in an admixture of blood which has saved the aristocratic cla.s.s from extinction through decadence.

As might well be expected in those instances where women did enjoy a degree of liberty that was due to financial and social advantages, they took a mean delight in ruling it over their male relatives, and, as we may note in our own time, men who yielded to the seduction of wealth, and married women to whom they were forced to accord the freedom and the deference which wealth confers, complained bitterly of their lot; as witness the following complaint of a Roman husband: "I have married a witch with a dowry; I took her to have her fields and houses, and that, O Apollo, is the worst of evils."

One dominant idea controlled the status of marriage in early Greece and Rome--an idea in full accord with the materialistic phase of their civilization; this was the idea of procreation; an idea that logically was inevitable, since continuous warfare resulted in a population in which women predominated, and we are told that in the interest of procreation both childlessness and celibacy were severely punished.

Thus the situation of women was that best described by the phrase "between the devil and the deep sea."

Regarding the "ideal of marital fidelity," Plutarch is authority for the story that Cato loaned his wife to his friend Hortensius and took her back on the death of the latter, plus a rich inheritance from the transaction. However, should Martha have yielded herself voluntarily to Hortensius, from motives of affection, the chances are that she would have met death at the hands of her "justly outraged" spouse.

In Europe, similar conditions prevailed, and although monogamy was the rule, concubinage and prost.i.tution in all its forms existed. The wife was subject to the husband in every wish and whim, and after him to the eldest son. This is true today in Germany and among the Saxons in a degree whose modifications do not accord with other advances in our social ethics.

It is a mistake to claim that religious systems have had any direct influence in the emanc.i.p.ation of women during the nineteen hundred years of Christian civilization among the white races.

Religious systems have only reflected the race-thought; they have not molded it. This is true, despite the fact that true religion, when esoterically understood, has always aimed at union, and union means equality along all lines, s.e.x-equality; social equality; race equality.

We must here digress from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with ident.i.ty, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the idiotic observation that "if women expect to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car," is not, alas!

confined to the lout, but is quite often voiced by the professional man.

The same silly idea prevails with regard to race-equality. It is judged by a similarity to our own in matters of dress; or choice of foods; by inconsequential differences, rather than by an estimate of what a given race may contribute to the variety of human knowledge; and yet it is evident that nature aims at variety; at a multiplicity of ideas and customs and creations.

Differentiation is the primal attempt.

Woman's claim to equality should be based upon the fact that first of all she is different from, rather than identical with, men.

The woman who dons male attire and eschews all so-called "feminine frivolity" in her efforts to prove herself man's equal, is confessing that in her natural environment she does not consider herself his equal, and is masquerading as man, in the vain hope that she may deceive herself and others into thinking she is.

An individual is important to Society in proportion to his originality; in proportion as he contributes some new idea; some hitherto unfamiliar view.

Returning to the point of what const.i.tutes true religion, namely, a consciousness of our unity with all life, we find that although religious ethics have included this ideal, it has not been emphasized in the ratio of its importance. The result is that where unity should have been established, segregation has been the rule, and it is without any desire to reflect discredit upon the ideal of the Church that we point to the fact that woman's emanc.i.p.ation, and her co-operation in all departments of life, as a hope, if not a consummated reality, has but now made its initial bow to the world.

That this initial bow comes side by side with, if not actually in the wake of, disruption of the old theologic dogmas; dissatisfaction with religious systems; and a determined disregard for what has been presented as religion; cannot be denied. The fact is that religious creeds never save anyone; never really elevate nations. At best they have been but a "consolation prize" or a narcotic. Love of freedom is the great liberator.

The influence of Rationalism, as inaugurated by Ingersoll in America and Bradlaugh in England, was the opening wedge. Christian Science, mothered by a woman, incorporated the phrase "Father-Mother-G.o.d" into its literature, and unity has been the avowed ideal of all the variety of new cults and philosophies presented under so great a variety of names that we cannot here enumerate them.

Nevertheless, we are still many leagues short of realizing this ideal, despite the preachments in its favor. Politically, the ideal of unity is presented, more or less imperfectly, of course, as Socialism, and Suffrage. Commercially, still more imperfectly in the merchants' "let us get together on this," and in efforts at legislation that shall control corporation dividends and labor schedules, and regulate hours of work. In fact, all along the line we see the shadow cast by the rising sun of unity.

We have thus briefly traced the history of marriage and of mating, in order that we may discuss with sane impartiality the questions: What does marriage symbolize? What is its function in the life of the social body; in the existence of the sphere itself; of the entire Cosmos?

Has it any real place and purpose beyond that of procreation, or any more spiritual function than the perpetuation of the human species?

CHAPTER V

THE SYMBOLISM OF MARRIAGE AND OF s.e.x-UNION

Notwithstanding the patent fact that the inst.i.tution of monogamous marriage has not resulted in an ideal condition, it is also plain that any other ideal of s.e.x-union is impossible to a highly developed race.

Monogamy, despite its present unsatisfactory condition, is a promise of the highest ideal to which mortals can aspire; it is the imperfect image of that ideal state which human nature has always striven for.

That we have striven for the most part blindly; that we have fallen far short of the ideal aimed at, should not deter us from realizing that the ideal is right.

Monogamy, as a type of the perfect marriage, symbolizes the meeting and the consequent union of a man and a woman who are perfect complementaries.

In order to be a perfect and lasting union, they must be spiritual counterparts. Without this counterpartal affinity as the base of union, no power on earth can force them to unite, although all the laws of men be employed to keep them tied to each other in the body.

If two persons belong to each other by the inviolable law of spiritual counterpart, no mult.i.tudinous set of man-made laws can keep their souls apart, although these codes may temporarily separate them in the flesh. The bonds of true matrimony are "holy"--the word meaning whole; entire; complete; but these bonds are of an interior nature; they may be judged only from the interior nature of two persons; and any attempt to decide this all-important question from the standpoint of exterior judgment must fail.

The perfect union of the one man and the one woman is the highest ideal of marriage of which we can conceive; but shall we for that reason insist that marriage as a social inst.i.tution is always complete and holy? When two immature persons come together under the stimulus of no more complementary impulse than the blind force of chemical attraction and cohesion--an instinct, which we share in common with every form of life, from the lowest insect to man--shall they be compelled to abide by that act "as long as they both shall live" in the physical body?