Sex and Common-Sense

by A. Maude Royden

V

THE MORAL STANDARD OF THE FUTURE: WHAT SHOULD IT BE?

"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

"Again ye have heard that it has been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shall perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne; nor by the earth; for it is his footstool; neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communications be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh from evil." (Matthew v., 27-28; 31-37.)

I have tried to reach those realities of human nature on which human morality must be based. I believe that the fundamental things which we must take into account are, first, the complex nature of human beings, who having body, soul, and spirit to reckon with cannot neglect any one of these without insincerity; and, secondly, the solidarity of the human race, which makes it futile to act as though the "morals" of any one of us could be his own affair alone.

It is because of this solidarity that marriage has always been regarded as a matter of public interest, to be recognized by law, celebrated by some public ceremony, protected by a legal contract. All are concerned in this matter, for it affects the race itself, through the children that may be born.

Human children need what animals do not, or not to the same extent. They need two parents: they need a stable and permanent home: they need a spiritual marriage, a real harmony between their parents, as well as a physical one. A child is not provided for when you have given it a home and food and clothing, since it is a spirit as well as a body—a soul and a spirit, a being craving for love, and needing to live in an atmosphere of love. The young of no other species need this as children do, and therefore, it is the concern of the community to see that the rights of these most helpless and most precious little ones are safeguarded. I cannot believe that any State calling itself civilized can ever disregard the duty of safeguarding the human rights of the child, and I repeat its human rights are not sufficiently met when its physical necessities are guaranteed. But I go further. I claim that it is really the concern of all of us that people who love should do so honestly, faithfully, responsibly. Marriage should be permanent; that is true in a sense that makes it important to all of us that it should succeed. Those who have loved and ceased to love have not failed for themselves only but for all. They have shaken the faith of the world. They have inclined us to the false belief that love is not eternal. They have, so far as they could, destroyed a great ideal, injured a great faith. People—and some of these are my personal friends, and people for whom I have a very great respect—who affirm that a legal or religious marriage is not necessary because their relations to one another are not the concern of the community, may have, it seems to me, a morality that is lofty, but not one that is broad, not one that is truly human. It is not true (and, therefore, it is not moral) to say that marriage is not the concern of other people. No one can fail in love, no one can take on himself so great a responsibility and fail to fulfil it, without all of us being concerned. Humanity is solidaire. The community is and must be concerned in the love of men and women in marriage. But what should be the nature of that concern? What should we—the community—hold up as the right standard of sex-relationship, and what methods should we use to impose it on others? I think you will have gathered from what I have said already that, to my mind, marriage should be a union that looks forward to being permanent, faithful, monogamous. It should be the expression of a union of spirit so perfect that the union of the bodies of those who love follows as a kind of natural necessity. It should be the sacrament of love, "the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." And something of this perfection is to be found in many marriages that seem (and are) far from complete. I often hear of the lives of married people where there has been very much to overcome, where perhaps the marriage has been entered into in ignorance and error; where the passion that brought the two together has been very evanescent; where it has soon become evident that their temperaments do not "fit"; where it might easily be said that they were not really "married" at all: yet there has been in these two such a stubborn loyalty to responsibilities undertaken, such a magnificent sense of faithfulness, such a determination to make the best out of what they have rather lightly undertaken; sometimes even only on one side, there has been such faith, such honour, such loyalty, such a refusal to admit a final failure, that a relationship poor in promise has become beautiful and sacred. In face of such loyalty, the theory that sex-relationships can rightly be brief, evanescent, thrown aside as soon as passion has gone, seems to me very cheap and shoddy, very unworthy of human beings. Marriage should be all that—shall I say?—the Brownings made of it. But when it is not, there is still often much that is left. Men and women, you cannot enter into one another's lives in this deep and intimate way and go on your way as though nothing had happened. You cannot tear asunder people so united without bleeding. You cannot make a failure of it without immeasurable loss.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight."

Who that has once heard this can easily take anything less? Or who, having loved in any of these ways, will lightly break the bond? I think that one of the most profoundly moral relationships I have ever met between a man and a woman was, in spite of all that I have said up till now, the relationship of a man to a woman to whom at first he was not legally married. It was her wish, not his, but they were not legally married. They had no children, and she was unfaithful to him more than once, and yet this man—and he did not call himself a Christian—this man felt that he had taken the responsibility of that woman's life, and though he could easily have put her away, and though, at last, she killed in him all that you would normally call love between a man and woman, and he learned to care for another woman, yet he would not abandon her because now she had grown to need him, and he felt he could not take so great a human responsibility as the life of another person and then cast it away as though it had never been. That is morality. To such a sense of what human relationships demand my whole soul gives homage. That seems to me a perfectly humane and, therefore, truly moral idea of what love involves. Such a sense of responsibility should go with all love. Passion cannot last, in the nature of things, and, therefore, those who marry do so, if they know anything at all of love—and, God help them, many of them do not—but if they know anything at all of love, they know that it is physically impossible for this particular bond always to unite them. They must be aware that there is something more than that, something that must in the end transcend that physical union.

Looking at marriage from that point of view, can one desire that it should be anything less than permanent, indissoluble? That which God made, and, therefore, which no man should put asunder? Let the community—both Church and State—teach this. Let us make it clear that men and women should not marry unless they do sincerely believe that their love for each other is of this character. Let them understand that physical union should be the expression of a spiritual union. Let them learn that love, though it includes passion, is more than passion, and must transcend and outlive passion. And let us insist that all should learn the truth about themselves—about their own bodies and about their own natures—so that they may understand what they do, and may have all the help that knowledge can give in doing it. I hold that on such knowledge and such understanding the community should insist, if it is to uphold the high and difficult standard of indissoluble monogamous marriage. So only can it be rightly upheld.

I urge also that when a marriage takes place the State has a right and a duty with regard to it. For the sake of every citizen, and most of all for the sake of the children, it should "solemnize" marriage, and should do so on the understanding—clearly expressed—that those who come to be married intend to be faithful to each other "as long as they both shall live."

In doing this I believe the State does all—or nearly all—that it usefully can to uphold the dignity of marriage and a high standard of morality. I do not believe that it should seek to penalize those whose sex-relationships are not of this character, except so far as legislation for the protection of the immature or the helpless is concerned. And I do not think it should compel—or seek to compel, for compulsion is, in fact, impossible—the observance of a marriage which has lost or never had the elements of reality.

Is this to abandon the ideal I have been upholding? I do not think so. Let us refer again to the greatest of Teachers and the loftiest of Idealists—Jesus Christ. See what He teaches in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. Everywhere He emphasizes the spiritual character of virtue and of sin. To be a murderer it is not necessary to kill: to hate is, in itself, enough. If you hate you are essentially a murderer. To be an adulterer it is not necessary to commit adultery: to look on a woman lustfully is already to have committed adultery with her in your heart. It is the spirit that sins. So keep your spirit pure. It is not enough to keep your oaths: you should be so utterly and transparently sincere that there is no need and no sense in supporting your words by great oaths. "Yea" and "Nay" should be sufficient.

You will notice that the Sermon on the Mount has been divided in this chapter into a number of paragraphs, each of which begins by a reference to the old external law of conduct, and goes on to demand a more searching, more spiritual and interior virtue. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time…. But I say unto you."

"Ye have heard that it was said: 'Thou shalt not kill' … but I say unto you that whosoever is angry shall be in danger of the judgment. Ye have heard that it was said: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' but I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart…. Ye have heard that it was said: 'Thou shalt not forswear thyself,' but I say unto you: 'Swear not at all.'"

What is the significance of such teaching? Surely that we are not to be satisfied with keeping the letter of the law, but are to keep it in our hearts. So clear is this that the Church has completely abandoned the letter of the last precept. No one except a Quaker refuses to take an oath. Every bishop on the bench has done so, and every incumbent of a living. Nowhere throughout the Sermon on the Mount have Christians felt themselves bound to a literal or legal interpretation of its teaching. No one wants a man to be tried for murder and hanged for hating his brother. No judge grants a divorce because a man or woman has "committed adultery in his heart." Christ Himself did not literally "turn the other cheek" when struck by a soldier. His disciples everywhere pray in places quite as public as the street-corners forbidden in the next chapter of St. Matthew, and give their alms publicly or in secret as seems to them best.

It may be contended that in this spiritual interpretation of Christ's commands it is very easy to go too far and "interpret" all the meaning out of them. It is certain, however, that the danger must be incurred, since nothing could make sense out of an absolutely literal interpretation. It would mean a reductio ad absurdum.

Apply such a literalism, for example, to the point at which for centuries the Church has sought to apply it—the indissolubility of marriage. It is admitted that since a phrase, of however doubtful authority, does make an exception in favour of divorce for adultery, the Church can recognize a law in this sense. But if we are to be literalists, it seems that a lustful wish is adultery! Is this to be a cause for divorce? And if not, why not? Obviously because we can no more apply such spiritual teaching literally than we can take a man out and hang him because he hates his brother! There we cease to be literal: how then can we fall back on a literal interpretation at another point?

I claim that there is no ground whatever for a more rigid and legal interpretation of our Lord's teaching about marriage than about taking oaths or praying in public. I believe that Christ held that marriage should be permanent and indissoluble, that only those people should marry who loved each other with a love so pure, so true, so fine as to be regarded rightly as a gift from God, who accepted their union as a great trust as well as a great joy, whose marriage might indeed be said to be "made in heaven" before it was solemnized on earth; but that He should insist on a legal contract from which all reality had departed, or regard as a marriage a union of which the most cynical could only say that it was made in hell, merely because the Church or the State had chosen to bless or register it, seems to me as unlike the whole of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount and as far from the spirit of Christ as east is from west. It surely is not conceivable that He to Whom marriage meant so much that He spoke of it as being made by God, Who conceived of the union of a man and woman as being the work of God Himself "Those whom God has joined together"—would have cared for the shell out of which the kernel had gone, for the mere legal bond out of which all the spirit had fled. Marriage should be indissoluble; but what is marriage? I heard a little while ago of a girl of 19 who was married to a man of 56. He was immoral in mind and diseased in body, and at the end of a year she left him with another man. He divorced her, and she is now married to that other man, and there are people who say that this marriage, which, so far as one can judge, is a moral, faithful, and a responsible union, blest with children who are growing up in a good home, is no marriage because the wife went through a ceremony with this other man before, and marriage is indissoluble. Marriage is indissoluble: "Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder." Did God join those two together? They were married in a church. It is the Church that should repent in sackcloth and ashes for permitting such a mockery of marriage. Let the Church by all means do what it has so long failed to do, emphasize the sanctity of human relationships, make men and women realize how deep a responsibility they take in marriage, how sacred a thing is this creative love, from which future generations will spring, which brings into the world human bodies and immortal souls; which, even if it is childless, is still the very sacrament of human love. Let the Church teach all that it can to make marriage sacred and divine, but when it preaches that such a marriage as that is a marriage at all it does not uphold our moral standard but degrades it.

I have said enough before, I hope, to make you realize that I do not think that when passion has gone marriage is dead. I have seen marriages which seemed unequal, difficult, unblest, made into something lovely and sacred by the deep patience and loyalty of human nature, and believe it is the knowledge of such possibilities which makes Christian people, and even those who would not call themselves Christians, generally desire some religious ceremony when they are married. They know that for such love human nature itself is hardly great enough. They desire the grace of God to inspire their love for each other with something of that eternal quality which belongs to the love of God. I have seen husbands love their wives, and wives their husbands, with a divine compassion, an inexhaustible pity, which goes out to the most unworthy and degraded. Yes, I would even go so far as to say that unless you feel that you are able to face the possibility of change in the one you love, that you can love so well that even if they alter for the worse your love would no more disappear than the love of God for you would disappear when you change or fail, you have not attained to the perfect love which justifies marriage. But this is a hard saying, and, therefore, those of us who believe in God in any sense instinctively desire the blessing of God to rest on the undertaking of so great a responsibility. We want our love to be divine before we can undertake the whole happiness of another human being. Let the Church by all means teach this, and I believe that future generations will conceive more nobly and more responsibly of marriage for her teaching. But do not seek to hold together those between whom there is no real marriage at all. When seriously and persistently a man and a woman believe that their marriage never was or has now ceased to be real, surely their persistent and considered opinion ought to be enough for the State to act upon. Let no one be allowed to give up in haste. Let no one fling responsibility aside easily. Let it always be a question of long consideration, of advice from friends, perhaps even from judges. But I cannot help feeling that when through years this conviction that there is no reality in a marriage persists, this is the one really decent and sufficient reason for declaring that that marriage is dissolved. Let us have done with the infamous system now in force, by which a man and woman must commit adultery or perjury before they can get us to admit the patent fact that their marriage no longer exists as a reality. Let us have done with a system which makes a mockery of our divorce courts. I have the utmost sympathy with those who denounce the light way in which men and women perjure themselves to obtain release, but I affirm that the whole system is, in the main, so based on legalisms, so divorced from morality, that the resultant adulteries and perjuries are what every student of human nature must inevitably expect, however much he may regret and hate them. It will be in vain that laws are devised to prevent divorce by collusion, in vain that King's proctors or judges detect and penalize here and there the less wary and ingenious offenders. The law will continue to be evaded or defied. And the reason is fundamental: it is that the law is not based on reality. It affirms that a marriage still exists when it does not exist. It demands that two human beings should give to each other what they cannot give. And—the essence of marriage being consent—it makes the fact that both parties desire its dissolution the final reason for denying them! To force a woman to demand the "restitution of conjugal rights" when such "rights" have become a horrible wrong; to compel a man to commit, or perjure himself by pretending he has committed, adultery, before he can get the State to face the fact that his marriage is no longer a reality—is this to uphold morality? Is this the ideal of the Sermon on the Mount? Let us once for all abandon the pretence that all the marriages made in churches or in registrars' offices are, therefore, necessarily made in heaven. Let us get to work instead to see that the marriages of the future shall be made in heaven, and, above all, let us abolish the idea that a marriage is a real marriage which is based on ignorance, on fraud, on exploitation, on selfishness. Let us not dream that we can raise our standard of morals, by affirming that every mistake that men and women make in a matter in which mistaking is so tragically easy ought to imprison them in a lie for the rest of their lives. But let us take the ideal of Christ, in all its grandeur and all its reality, with our eyes fixed upon the ideal, but with that respect for human personality, that respect for reality and truth, which makes us refuse to accept the pretence that all the marriages we have known have been made by God. Let us, at least, in perpetuating such blasphemies as are some of the marriages on which we have seen the blessing of the Church invoked, cease to drag in the name of Christ to the defence of a system which has laid all its weight upon a legal contract, and kept a conspiracy of silence about the sacred union of body and soul by which God makes man and woman one.