CHAPTER XI

The problem of “free love” is the burning question of our time. Upon its proper solution depends the future of civilization, and our ultimate liberation from the ignominious conditions of the amatory life of the present day, dependent as these are upon coercive marriage. This is our firm conviction, our profound belief, one which we share with many, and those not the worst minds of our day.

Free love is neither, as malevolent opponents maintain, the abolition of marriage, nor is it the organization of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. Free love and extra-conjugal sexual intercourse have nothing whatever to do one with the other. Indeed, I go so far as to maintain that true free love, as it must and will prevail, will limit casual and unregulated extra-conjugal sexual intercourse to a far greater extent than coercive marriage has ever succeeded in doing. Above all, free love will ennoble sexual intercourse.

For the longer, in existing economic conditions, we cling to the antiquated “coercive marriage,” which has so long been in need of reform, the smaller is the number of those who desire to marry, the more advanced becomes the age of marriage, the greater becomes the general sexual wretchedness, the deeper shall we sink into the mephitic slough of prostitution, towards which the increasing promiscuity of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse inevitably leads us.

For this is the peculiar, hypocritical, and absurd mode of argument of those who uphold conventional marriage; they despise and brand with infamy every sexual relationship of two adult independent persons based upon free love, and sanction quite openly casual transitory extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, devoid of all personal relationships, not only with prostitutes, but also with respectable women.

“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 secret admiration.”[186]

On the other hand, this same conventional 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 facts side by side in 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 of prostitution, of wild sexual promiscuity, and of venereal 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 indicate free love as 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, without marrying.[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 abolished marriage?”[188]

Blaschko adduces proofs that in all places in which free love is not possible prostitution 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 only possible rescue from the misery of prostitution and of venereal disease.

Place the free woman beside the free man, inspire both with the profound sense of responsibility which 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 a freer conception of sexual relationships.

In addition to the romanticists (vide supra, [pp. 169] and [175]) 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 the day.[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 wife ought 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 intolerable tyranny.”[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 and self-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 of conscience,”[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 ascribes a 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 for five years; among the lower classes for a shorter term. It was very 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 the Japanese.”[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 beautifies them.”[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 Charles Fourier),[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,” Père Enfantin 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 union would 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 a roman 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 the Revue de Paris of 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 Echo of 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 been preceded 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 superfluous women.[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 for him, 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 it that 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 be no dispute, for it is a universally existing fact, and the only question is regarding its regulation. Where are the true monogamists? We all live at least for 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 to reform, 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 in Berlin.[197]

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

SKETCH OF SCHOPENHAUER’S “TETRAGAMY”
(Hitherto Unpublished).

“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 has one wife 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 the time 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 a single man 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 any individuality or soul; and, secondly, because he rejects the principle of the only-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 to work, and to the inward spiritual development which 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 of which 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, the community at large was 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 it must.

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 communistic standpoint.[198] In the first two chapters of his book, he describes the development of the primitive sexual impulse, 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 the state and by capital.

“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 reform is 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, Ladislaus Gumplowicz[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 private property.[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 Ellen Key.[201]

Edward Carpenter,[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 much more definite 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 from the medical standpoint: the question of relative asceticism, of self-control. He rightly considers that the duty of the love of the future does not subsist merely in the common physical union, but also in spiritual 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 for life, 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 whom more extensive duties should 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 German translation,[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 is indispensable to the vital force and civilization of the nations. Even among the Christian nations it 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 we beforehand affirm 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 the species, but is, at least in equal degree, the concern of the loving individuals. This is the result and the meaning of civilization, which, as I have proved in earlier chapters, exhibits a progressive individualization and an increasing spiritual enrichment of love (the “spiritualized sensuality” of Ellen Key), and thus gives to love a thoroughly independent importance for each individual.

“In view of the manner in which civilization has now developed personal love, this latter has become so composite, so comprehensive and far-reaching, that not only in and by itself—independently of the species—does it constitute a great life-value, but it also increases or diminishes all other values. In addition to its primitive importance, it has gained a new significance: to carry the flame of life from sex to sex. No one names that person immoral who, deceived in his love, abstains in his married life from procreating the species; that husband and wife also we shall not call immoral, who continue their married life rendered happy by love, although their marriage has proved childless. But in both cases these human beings follow their subjective feelings at the expense of the future generations, and treat their love as an independent aim. The right already recognized in these individual cases, as belonging to the individual at the expense of the species, will continue to undergo enlargement in proportion as the importance of love continues to increase. On the other hand, the new morality will demand from love an ever-increasing voluntary limitation of rights at those times when the growth of a new life renders it necessary. It will also demand a voluntary or enforced renunciation of the right to procreate new life under conditions which would make this new life deficient in value.”

Ellen Key terms this new, modern love “erotic monism,” because it comprehends the entire unitary personality, including the spiritual being, not merely the body. George Sand gave the first definition of this love as being of such a kind that “neither had the soul betrayed the senses, nor had the senses betrayed the soul.”

This erotic monism proclaims as its indestructible foundation the unity of marriage and love.

The idea of unity gives to the human being the right to arrange his sexual life according to his personal wishes, subject to the condition that he does not consciously injure the unity, and therewith, mediately or immediately, the right, of possible posterity.

Thus, according to Ellen Key, love “will continually become to a greater extent a private affair of human beings, whilst children, on the contrary, will become more and more a vital problem of society.” From this it follows that the two “most debased and socially sanctioned manifestations of sexual subdivision (of dualism), coercive marriage and prostitution, will gradually become impossible, because, after the victory of the idea of unity, they will cease to correspond to human needs.”

Ellen Key rightly insists that among the young men of the present day there is an increasing hostility to socially protected immorality (both in the form of coercive marriage and in that of prostitution); whilst they increasingly exhibit a monistic yearning for love. The general diffusion, which we shall describe at length in a special chapter, of ascetic moods and of misogyny among men and of misandry among women, is partly connected with the feeling that the present social forms of the sexual relationship limit to an equal extent the worth and the freedom of mankind.

To-day the “purity fanatics and the frantic sensualists” meet in common mistrust of the developmental possibilities of love, because they do not believe in the possible ennoblement of the blind natural impulse. In contrast to these, Ellen Key reminds us of the fact of the “mystical yearning for perfection, which in the course of evolution has raised impulse to become passion, and passion to become love, and which is now striving to raise love to an ever greater love.”

We must recognize love as the spiritual force of life. Love, like the artist, like the man of science, has a right to the peculiar, original activity of its own poietic force, to the production of new spiritual values. The more perfect race that is to come must, in the fullest meaning of the words, be brought forth by love.

For this, however, the indispensable preliminary is the inward freedom of love; the free-love union is the watchword of the future. Ellen Key also shows that among the lower classes free love has long been customary, and that there the dangerous utilization of prostitution is far more limited than among the higher classes, with which view Blaschko’s statistical data regarding the far greater diffusion of venereal diseases among the higher classes of society are in substantial agreement.

No less indispensable to free love, however, is the full, mature development of the loving individual. For this reason, Ellen Key demands self-control and sexual continence at least until the age of twenty years. She regards the indiscriminate sexual intercourse which is to-day an established custom among all young men as the murder of love. But too early marriages are no less dangerous. She demands for the woman at least an age of twenty; for the man, an age of twenty-five years; and until these respective ages are attained, sexual continence should be observed as fully as possible by both sexes.

This self-command is good for the physical development, “steels the will, gives the joy of power to the personality; and these qualities are later of importance in all other spheres of activity.”

With wonderful beauty, Ellen Key describes the happiness of the power of waiting in love, and quotes in this connexion the lovely phrases of the Swedish poet Karlfeldt:

“There is nothing on earth like the times of waiting,
The days of springtime, the days of blossoming;
Not even May can diffuse a light
Like the clear light of April.”

On the other hand, it is a demand of true morality that healthy men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty years should enjoy the possibility of marriage—of free marriage. This possibility can, however, be secured only by economic reforms.

The author then considers the very important point of love’s choice, and demands above all the compulsory provision of a medical certificate of health before entering on marriage.

“It is absolutely beyond question that the healthy self-seeking which wishes to safeguard the personal ego, in conjunction with the increasing valuation of a healthy posterity, will hinder the contraction of many unsuitable marriages. In other cases, love might overcome these considerations, as far as husband and wife are themselves concerned; but they must then renounce parentage. In those cases, on the contrary, in which the law would distinctly forbid marriage, one could naturally not prevent the sick persons from procreating independently of marriage; but the same is true of all laws: the best do not need them, the worst do not obey them, but the majority are guided by them in the formation and development of their ideas of what is right.”

As immoral, Ellen Key indicates:

“Parentage without love.

“Irresponsible parentage.

“Parentage on the part of immature or degenerate human beings.

“Voluntary unfertility on the part of a married pair who are competent to reproduce their kind.

“All manifestations of the sexual life resulting from force or seduction, or from the disinclination or the incapacity for the proper fulfilment of sexual intercourse.”

It is interesting to note that Ellen Key prophesies as the result of the progressive improvement of the species by love’s selection, the attainment of a state wherein every man and every woman will be suited for the reproduction of the species. Then would the ideal of monogamy, one husband for one wife, one wife for one husband, be for the first time realized.

Very beautifully, and with a prudent insight into the actual relationships, Ellen Key discusses the question of the “right to motherhood,” where she finds occasion to describe the new and very various types of women which the evolution of modern life has brought into being. She recognizes only with reservation the general right to motherhood, but she does not regard it as a desirable example to follow when a woman becomes a mother without love, either in marriage or out of it. It is not right to do what is generally done to-day by the man-haters—namely, to demand from the majority of unmarried women that they should produce a child without love. This should not even happen when love exists, but a permanent life-in-common with the father of the child is impossible. An unmarried woman who determines on motherhood should be fully mature, and already have behind her “the second springtime” of her life; she must “not only be pure as snow, pure as fire, but also must be possessed of the full conviction that with the child of her love she will produce a radiance in her own life and will endow humanity with new wealth.”

Such an unmarried woman really makes a present of her child to humanity, and is quite different from the unmarried woman who “has a child.”

Indeed, for the majority, the ideal always remains that of the ancient proverb, that man is only half a human being, woman only half; and only the father and the mother with their child become a whole one!

With regard to divorce, Ellen Key demands that it should be perfectly free, and should depend only upon the definite desire, held for a certain lapse of time, of either or both parties. The dissolution of marriage must be no less easy than the breaking off of an engagement.

“Whatever drawbacks,” she says, “free divorce may involve, they can hardly be worse than those which marriage has entailed, and still continues to entail. Marriage has been degraded to the coarsest sexual customs, the most shameless practices, the most distressing spiritual murders, the most cruel ill-treatment, and the grossest impairment of personal freedom, that any province of modern life has exhibited! One need not go back to the history of civilization; one need simply turn to the physician and magistrate, in order to learn for what purpose the ‘sacrament of marriage’ is employed, and frequently employed by the very same men and women who are professed enthusiasts as to its moral value!”

Just as little as the relations between friends, between parents and children, or between brothers and sisters, necessarily give rise to lasting sentiments of affection, is it possible to expect this of two lovers. The “marriage fetters,” described with such horrible truth by John Stuart Mill and Björnstjerne Björnsen, are to-day felt to be intolerable. The love of the modern man flourishes only in freedom.

“The delicate erotic sentiment of the present day shrinks from becoming a fetter; it shuns the possibility of becoming a hindrance.”

Free divorce, in a case of unhappy marriage, is no less necessary when there are children to the marriage. The duties of the parents to the children remain in such cases unaltered, without, however, thus rendering it necessary that the parents should continue to live together. For the sorrows of such a union, and the harm done thereby to the children, are greater than those that would result from divorce.

Human love has its phases of development. It does not remain for ever the same, but it alters pari passu with the evolution of the individual. Lifelong love is an ideal, but it is not a duty. Such a demand would as inevitably destroy personality as would the demand for the unconditional belief in a doctrine, or for the unconditional pursuit of a profession.

Very interesting is Ellen Key’s description of the numerous disillusions of love, which become still more perceptible in a coercive marriage. There is a whole series of “typical unhappy fates” in marriage, often with no blame properly attaching to either party, dependent merely upon incompatibility of temperament, but also upon faults of one or both parties to the marriage.

Frequently a man or a woman of a thoroughly sympathetic temperament lives with a woman or a man of such faultless excellence that the home seems filled with icicles. One day the husband or the wife runs away because the air has become so thin as to be irrespirable. The general sentiment is one of commiseration for the—superlatively excellent man or woman!

In the case of earnest, mature human beings, free divorce will not increase the number of dissolutions of marriage. On the contrary, the obligations imposed by a free relationship are greater than those of legal coercive marriage. The fear also that with the granting of free divorce every one will enter upon numerous free marriages one after another is groundless. It is precisely those who are united in free love to whom such a separation, when it does become necessary, is so profoundly painful, that life itself forbids the frequent repetition of such unhappiness.

Very beautiful, and based upon lofty ethical conceptions, are the writer’s views regarding the necessity for divorce precisely in view of the existence of children. She says:

“Men and women of earlier times went on patching up for ever and ever. The psychologically developed generation of to-day is more inclined to let the broken remain broken. For, except in those cases in which objective misfortunes, or a retarded evolution, gave rise to a rupture, patched-up marriage, like patched-up engagements, seldom prove durable. Often it was owing to profound instincts that the rupture became inevitable; reconciliations fortify these instincts, and sooner or later they once more find free vent.

“Thus it happens that even an exceptional nature is strained by the burden it has to bear, and the children are not then witnesses of their parents living together, but of their dying together.

“Neither religion nor law, neither society nor a family, can determine what it is that marriage is killing in a man, or what he finds it possible to rescue in that state—he himself alone knows the one and suspects the other. He alone can delineate the boundaries, can decide whether he is satisfied to regard his own existence as closed, and to remain contented in the life of his children; whether he is able so to endure the sorrows of a continued married life with such fortitude as to make it increase his own powers and those of his children.”

The conviction of the rights of love, and the consciousness of the rights of the children, are to-day unmistakably on the increase. There is no danger that the latter right, the right of the children, will suffer in comparison with the rights of love. It is, on the contrary, characteristic, that out of the very same feeling by which the freer configuration of the amatory life is demanded, there has also arisen a new programme of the rights of children. This same Ellen Key who proclaims the inalienable rights of free love, speaks also of the “century of the child,” and devotes to this subject an admirable book.

The most important point with regard to free divorce, in respect to the children, is that the father and the mother must not separate from one another in hatred, but in friendship, and that, in the interest of the children, they should continue to meet one another from time to time. Ellen Key here rightly condemns the conduct of the good friends and relatives who simply lay down the law that the separated pair must hate one another, and must in every relationship torment and cheat one another. It is precisely such “enmity” of the parents after divorce that is so full of bad consequences in respect of the children.

We also have to consider this point of view, that sometimes the new husband or the new wife has a better influence over the children than their own parents, and that in this way divorce may have brought the children greater happiness, may have been for them a true blessing.

The closing chapter of her work is devoted by Ellen Key to the formulation of practical recommendations regarding the new marriage laws. She indicates as a starting-point of her dissertation that the ideal form of marriage is the perfectly free union between a man and a woman. But this ideal can in the meanwhile only be attained through transitional forms. In this the opinion of society regarding the morality of the sexual relationship must find expression, and thus remain as the support for undeveloped personalities; but at the same time, these transitional forms must be sufficiently free to favour a progressive development of the higher erotic consciousness of the present day.

There always remains, therefore, the necessity for laws, to some extent limiting individual freedom; but these laws must admit of an advance towards perfection in respect of the freer gratification of individual needs. The sense of solidarity demands a new marriage law adapted to new modern erotic needs, since the majority are not yet prepared for complete freedom. But it is only the needs of modern civilized human beings, and not abstract theories concerning the idea of the family or the “historic origin” of marriage, that should be determinative in this matter.

In the marriage of the future, above all, the economic and legal subordination of woman must be abolished. Woman must supervise her own property and arrange her own work, and she must in the main care for herself in so far as this is compatible with her maternal duties. She must, however, have this assurance—that during the first years of the life of every child she shall be cared for by society, and this under the following conditions:

She must be of full age.

She must have performed her feminine “military service” by a one year’s course of instruction in the care of children, in the general care of health, and, whenever possible, in sick-nursing.

She must either care for her child herself or provide another thoroughly competent nurse.

She must bring proof that she does not possess sufficient personal property, or sufficient income from her work, in order to provide for her own support and half of her child’s support, or else that the care for her children compels her to discontinue her professional occupation.

Only in exceptional cases should this support of motherhood be provided for a longer time than during the three first and most important years of the life of the child.

The funds for this most necessary of all kinds of insurance must be provided in the form of a graduated income tax, graduated so as to make the wealthier classes pay the most, and the unmarried should pay just as much as the married.

In every community the central authorities of this insurance should consist of “boards for the care of children.” The members of these boards should be two-thirds women and one-third men; they should distribute the funds and supervise the care of the infants and older children; in cases in which the mother was not properly fulfilling her duties to the child, they could cut off supplies, or remove the child from the mother’s care.

The mother should receive yearly the same sum, but, in addition, she should receive for each child half of the cost of its support, as long as the number of children is not exceeded which the society has laid down as desirable. Children born in excess of this number would be a private concern of the parents. Every father must, from the time of birth until the child attains the age of eighteen years, provide one-half of the money needed for its support.

The existing immoral distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children is practically equivalent to freeing unmarried fathers from their natural responsibility, and drives unmarried mothers to death, prostitution, or infanticide.

All this would be done away with by a law ensuring from the State support for the mother during the first, most difficult years, and ensuring the child a right to support from both parents, a right also to the name of both, and to inheritance from both.

Legal expression is also demanded for the right of each member of a married couple to possess his or her property; those who wish to make any other arrangement can do so by special contract after a definite valuation of their property. And in respect of the right of inheritance, the domestic work of the wife (housekeeping and the care of the children) must receive due economic consideration—a matter hitherto ignored. Not only in respect of her property, but also in respect of all civil rights, and of the right of control over her own person, the married woman must be placed in the same position as the unmarried.

Ellen Key’s remarks on the removal of the coercion exercised at present on husband and wife in respect of living together are very interesting. She writes:

“There are persons who would have continued to love one another throughout the whole of their life had they not been compelled—day after day, year after year—to adapt their customs, their volitions, and their inclinations entirely according to one another’s tastes. So much unhappiness depends, indeed, upon matters of almost no importance, difficulties which two human beings endowed with moral courage and insight would easily have overcome, had it not been that the instinct towards happiness was overpowered by regard for ordinary opinion. The more personal freedom a woman (or man) has had before marriage, the more does she (or he) suffer in a home in which she does not possess an hour or a corner for her own undisturbed use. And the more the modern human being gains an increase in his individual freedom of movement, the more he feels the need for privacy in other relations, the more also will man and wife need these things in the married state....

“But at present custom (and law) demand from the married pair that they should lead a life in common, which often ends in a permanent separation, merely because conventional considerations prevented them from living apart!

“Also for those otherwise constituted, the narrow dependence, the compulsory belonging each to the other, the daily adaptation, the unceasing mutual consideration, may become oppressive. In continually increasing numbers people are beginning quietly to transform conjugal customs, so that they may correspond to the new needs. For instance, each goes for a journey by himself, when he feels the need for privacy; one of the pair seeks alone pleasures which the other does not value; in former times both would have ‘enjoyed’ them together, against the will of one, or both would have renounced what one could have genuinely enjoyed. More and more married people have separate bedrooms, and after a generation, it is probable that separate dwelling-houses for husband and wife will be sufficiently common to arouse no particular attention.”

With regard to the question of personal freedom in marriage, Ellen Key takes into account the possibility of marriage being kept secret on urgent grounds; also the introduction of new forms of divorce, the present procedure giving rise to such detestable practices in the law-courts—for example, the detailed statement of the grounds for divorce, or an account of the refusal or the misuse of “conjugal rights,” or an account of the malicious desertion of one party by the other.

The author, therefore, makes proposals for a new marriage law and a new divorce law.

As conditions preliminary to marriage, the new law should insist—

That man and wife should be of full age;

That neither should be more than twenty-five years older than the other;

That neither should be closely related or connected with the other, as the present law already forbids. The new law must in this respect be modified in the sense either of greater severity or of relaxation, according as the scientific knowledge of the future may direct.

Finally, neither party should simultaneously enter upon another marriage. On both parties will be imposed the duty of providing a medical certificate regarding the state of their health; a proposed marriage must be forbidden when either party is suffering from a disease transmissible to the children (also when suffering from a disease which would infect the other party?). With regard to other illnesses, the matter may be left to the free judgment of those wishing to be married.

Marriage will take place before the marriage assessor of the commune, and before four other witnesses, without any special ceremony; the contracting parties will enter their names in the register, and their signatures will be witnessed by those present. When for any reason the marriage is to be kept secret, the witnesses will, of course, be bound to secrecy.

This civil marriage is all that the law will direct; the religious ceremony will be a voluntary affair, and will have no legal force.

In marriage, husband and wife will retain all the personal rights which they had before marriage, over their bodies, their names, their property, their work, their wages, also the right to choose their own place of residence, and all other civil rights. For common expenses and debts they will have a common responsibility; whilst each will be personally responsible for personal expenditure and debts. In case of divorce, each will retain his or her property. In the event of death, the widower or widow will inherit half the property, the remainder going to the children.

For divorce, Ellen Key suggests there should be a “council of divorce,” consisting of four persons, men or women. The first aim of this council will be, somewhat like that of a court of honour before a duel, to attempt to reconcile the parties, to adjust any cause of quarrel. If this attempt fails, the matter must go before the marriage assessor of the commune; but this cannot take place until the expiration of six months from the time when it was brought before the council of divorce. The council of divorce must testify before the assessor that six months before each party was fully informed regarding the wish of the other that the marriage should be dissolved, and regarding the reasons for that wish. If there are no children, if a division of the property has been arranged, and if husband and wife have lived completely apart for one year, the divorce will be effected one year after the commencement of proceedings. When there are children to the marriage, there will be needed a special “jury for the care of children” to deal with the custody of the children. If either party is found by the jury and the judge to be unworthy for or incapable of the custody of the children, on the ground of his (or her) morals or character, he (or she) loses his (or her) rights. If either father or mother is deprived of the custody of the children, a guardian must be appointed—a man to represent the father, a woman to represent the mother—and this guardian will supervise the education of the children in association with the remaining parent. If both parents are found to be unfitted for the custody of the children, the education of the latter must be supervised by a guardian only. If both parents are equally fitted and worthy for the custody of the children, the latter should remain with the mother until the age of fifteen, and would then have the right to choose between their parents.

Ellen Key demands severe laws against the seduction and abandonment of girls under age, on the part of unconscientious men; and she considers that the witting transmission of any infective disorder by means of sexual intercourse should be punished by imprisonment for a minimum term of six months. Speaking generally, the law should always come to the assistance of the weaker party, above all, to the assistance of the children, and in most cases to the assistance of the mother.

Although the new marriage law is to give to adult citizens complete freedom to arrange their erotic relationships at their own responsibility and risk, with or without marriage, it remains necessary that double marriages (bigamy), sexual relationships within forbidden degrees, or on the part of persons suffering from transmissible disease, which the law has declared to be a hindrance to marriage, and also intercourse with persons under eighteen years of age, should be regarded as punishable offences. The same is true of homosexual and other perverse manifestations. The trial in such cases will be conducted by a judge, with the assistance of a jury of physicians and crimino-psychologists.

The writer does not believe that marriage will be transformed by legal changes in the way outlined above, but she is of opinion that what will happen is that “men and women will refuse to submit themselves to the unworthy forms of marriage, which will remain established by law, and will form free unions, the so-called ‘marriage of conscience,’” such as those which the Belgian sociologist Mesnil has recommended in his work, “Le Libre Mariage.”

It is, in fact, in Sweden, Ellen Key’s fatherland, in which these free marriages of conscience appear to have first obtained adherents. She records the free union of the professor of national economics at Lund, Knut Wicksell. Additional reports of free marriages in Sweden are given by the Swedish physician Anton Nyström.[204] He mentions among those who have formed free unions, without legal or ecclesiastical ceremony, but simply by public notification, in addition to the already mentioned university professor, also the editor of a leading newspaper, a physician and doctor of philosophy, and a candidate of philosophy. The latter is engaged in study with his wife at the high school at Göteborg. In February, 1904, they made a public announcement in the newspaper that they were entering on a “marriage of conscience,” since they had a conscientious objection to the ecclesiastical form of marriage. The principal of the college wrote an address to the young couple, stating that, although this union was not entered upon on immoral grounds, and therefore could not be regarded as a punishable offence, still, such a free union, unrecognized by the State, between man and woman, was not compatible with the good order of society, that it was injurious to the general ethical conception of the sacramental character of marriage, and also constituted a dangerous example, which others might be led to imitate. The principal therefore urged the young people most earnestly “to place their union as soon as possible on a legitimate footing.” This exhortation, however, led to no result.

Moreover, the University of Upsala was more free-thinking than that of Göteborg, for the above-mentioned professor and his wife were, for a long time after they had become united in free love, matriculated students at the University of Upsala, and the university authorities favoured them with no attention with regard to this matter.

In recent years, the public declaration of “free marriages” has also found observance in other European countries. Thus, not long ago the author who writes under the pseudonym of “Roda-Roda” announced in the newspapers his free union with the Baroness von Zeppelin; and in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 410, September 2, 1906, we find the following announcement:

“Dr. Alfred Rahmer
Wilhelmine Ruth Rahmer
geb. Prinz-Flohr
Frei-Vermählte”
(Free-Wedlock).

Similar public announcements are reported from Holland. Moreover, according to Nyström, it has since 1734 been legally established in Sweden, that in certain cases engagement is equivalent to marriage—namely, when the engaged woman becomes pregnant. “When a man impregnates his fiancée, the engagement becomes a marriage.... If the man refuse to go through the ceremony of marriage, and wishes to break off the engagement, the woman is legally declared to be his wife, and enjoys full conjugal rights in his house.” So runs this law.

We can predict with certainty that the adherents of free marriage, the number of “marriage protestants,” as Ellen Key happily calls them, will continue to increase. To such will belong all those who have an equal antipathy to coercive marriage, to the debasing intercourse with prostitutes, and to the transient casual love, such as is experienced in ordinary extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, the true “wild” love.

“It is only a question of time”—thus Ellen Key concludes her remarks on marriage reform—“when the respect felt by society for the sexual union will not depend upon the form of the life in common, by which two human beings become parents, but only on the worth of the children which these two are producing as new links in the chain of the generations. Men and women will then devote to their spiritual and physical preparation for sexual intercourse the same religious earnestness that the Christians devote to the welfare of their souls. No longer will divine laws regarding the morality of sexual relationships be considered the mainstay of morality; in place of these the desire to elevate the human race and a sense of personal responsibility will be the safeguards of conduct. But the conviction on the part of the parents that the purpose of life is also their own proper life—that is, that they do not exist only for the sake of children—should free them from certain other duties of conscience which at present bind them in respect of children—above all, from the duty of maintaining a union in which they themselves are perishing. The home will perhaps become more than it is at present; something at unity with the mother, something which—far from excluding the father—carries within itself the germ of a new and higher ‘family right.’...

“A greater and healthier will-to-live in respect of erotic feelings and demands—this it is that our time needs! Here from the feminine side real dangers threaten; and one of several ways in which these dangers must be averted is by the construction of new forms of marriage.

“Human material of ever higher worth and capable of higher evolution—it is this which in the first place we have to create. If we preserve coercive forms of the sexual life, the possibility of doing this is a diminishing one; if we adopt free forms of the sexual life, the possibility of doing it will increase. Not only because the present time asks for more freedom are its demands full of promise, but because those demands approximate ever more closely to the central point of the problem—to the conviction that love is the principal condition upon which depends the vital advance of the individual and of humanity at large.”

I have given such a lengthy analysis of Ellen Key’s book because, in the first place, in no other work do we find so lucid an exposition of all the points needed for the consideration of the question of free love—an exposition based upon the richest experience of life and a really astonishing psychical knowledge of mankind, combined with the finest understanding of the subtle activities and sentiments of the loving soul; and, in the second place, because as an actual fact—at any rate, in Germany—this book has formed the true starting-point of all endeavours towards the reform of sexual morality. Ellen Key’s “Ueber Liebe und Ehe” (“Love and Marriage”) is a demonstration of human rights in the matter of love; it is the evangel for those who have determined to harmonize love with all the changes and advances attendant on the evolution of civilization, and have resolved not to allow the forcible retardation of progress by conditions which were perhaps still tolerable one hundred or two hundred years ago, but to-day are unconditionally hostile to civilization.

In Germany these endeavours have been centralized in the Bund für Mutterschutz (the Association for the Protection of Mothers), founded in the beginning of 1906, whose purpose it is to protect unmarried mothers and their children from economic and moral dangers, to counteract the dominant condemnation of such mothers, and thereby also indirectly to bring about the reform of the existing views on sexual morality. Those who initiated this most important movement were indeed high-minded women. I mention, among many, only the names of Ruth Bré, Helene Stöcker, Maria Lischnewska, Adele Schreiber, Gabriele Reuter, and Henriette Fürth.

By the preparatory committee to which Maria Lischnewska, Dr. Borgius, Dr. Max Marcuse, Ruth Bré, and Dr. Helene Stöcker belonged, a committee meeting was called on January 5, 1905, and the Association for the Protection of Mothers was founded, its programme having already received the support of a number of leading personalities from all parts of the German Empire.

In addition to this committee, to which, besides the above-named members of the preparatory committee, there belonged Lily Braun, Georg Hirth, and Werner Sombart, a further committee was formed, the members of which were: Alfred Blaschko, Iwan Bloch, Hugo Böttger, Lily Braun, Gräfin Gertrud Bülow von Dennewitz, M. G. Conrad, A. Damaschke, Hedwig Dohm, Frieda Duensing, Chr. v. Ehrenfels, A. Erkelenz, W. Erb, A. Eulenburg, Max Flesch, Flechsig, A. Forel, E. Francke, Henriette Fürth, Agnes Hacker, Hegar, Willy Hellpach, Clara Hirschberg, Georg Hirth, Graf Paul von Hoensbroech, Bianca Israel, Josef Kohler, Landmann, Hans Leuss, Maria Lischnewska, R. von Liszt, Lucas, Max Marcuse, Mensinga, Bruno Meyer, H. Meyer, Metta Meinken, Klara Muche, Moesta, A. Moll, Müller, Friedrich Naumann, A. Neisser, Franz Oppenheimer, Pelman, Alfred Ploetz, Heinrich Potthoff, Lydia Rabinowitsch, Gabriele Reuter, Karl Ries, Adele Schreiber, Heinrich Sohnrey, Werner Sombart, Helene Stöcker, Marie Stritt, Irma von Troll-Borostyani, Max Weber, Bruno Wille, L. Wilser, L. Woltmann.

In the programme which the newly founded Association for the Protection of Mothers speedily published, we are told:

One hundred and eighty thousand illegitimate children are born in Germany every year, approximately one-tenth of all births. This important source of our strength as a people, children who at the time of birth are usually endowed with powerful vitality (for their parents are commonly in the bloom of youth and health), we allow to go to ruin because a rigorous moral view bans unmarried mothers, undermines their economic existence, and compels them to entrust their children for payment to strange hands.

The momentous consequences of this state of affairs are shown by the fact that the average number of still-births, in the case of illegitimate children, amounts to 5 per cent., as compared with 3 per cent. of still-births among the total number of births; the mortality of illegitimate children during the first year of life is 28·5 per cent., as compared with 16·7 per cent. for the mortality of all children born. And whilst only a diminishing percentage of illegitimate children ever become fitted for military service, the world of criminals, prostitutes, and vagabonds, is recruited to an alarming extent from their ranks. Thus, by unfounded moral prejudices, we produce artificially an army of enemies to society. At the same time the birth-rate of Germany is relatively declining. In the year 1876 the number of births per 1,000 living was 41; in the year 1900 it was only 351⁄2!

To put an end to this robbery of the strength of our people is the aim of the

Association for the Protection of Mothers.

The attempt has already been made by means of crèches, foundling institutions, and the like, to deal with this matter. But the protection of children without the protection of mothers is, and must remain, no more than patchwork; for the mother is the principal source of life for the child, and is indispensable to the child’s prosperity. Whatever ensures rest and care to the mother in her most difficult hours, whatever secures her economic existence for the future, and protects her from the contempt of her fellow-beings, by which her health is endangered and her life embittered, will serve to provide a secure foundation for the bodily and mental prosperity of the child, and will simultaneously give the mother herself a stronger moral hold. Therefore the Association for the Protection of Mothers will, above all, make the mothers’ position safe, by assisting them to the attainment of

Economic Independence

—especially such as are prepared to bring up their own children—by the formation in country and in town of

Homes for Mothers,

in which, in addition, arrangements will be made for the necessary care and upbringing of the children, the granting of legal protection, and the provision of medical aid. Experience has shown that such provision also corresponds to the wish of many of the fathers, and assists in retaining their help and interest for mother and child.

The Association will, however, above all, close the sources from which the present poverty of unmarried mothers arises, and these are more especially the moral prejudices which at the present day defame them socially, and the legal regulations which burden them almost exclusively with the economic care and responsibility for the child, and which entail on the father not at all, or in a quite insufficient degree, his contribution to the burden.

The Moral Defamation

of unmarried mothers would, perhaps, be comprehensible if we lived in economic and social conditions rendering it possible for every one to marry soon after attaining sexual maturity, so that the involuntary celibacy of adult persons was an abnormal state. In such a time as ours, however, in which no less than 45 per cent. of all women competent to bear children are unmarried, and those who actually marry do so for the most part at a comparatively late age, we must regard as untenable the view which considers the unmarried woman giving birth to a child to be an outcast, thrusts her out of society like the basest criminal, and gives her up to despair. Equally untenable appears

The Present-Day Legal View,

which, when the actual father has not gone through the forms prescribed by the State for a marriage, does not regard him as father in the legal sense, ascribes to him no relationship with the child procreated by him, and imposes on him no responsibility for the child or its mother, although in the majority of cases the mother is economically the weaker, and he himself economically the stronger party. There must, therefore, be a legal reform in the direction of equalizing as far as possible the position of the illegitimate and the legitimate child in relation to the father.

Finally, however, motherhood—legitimate and illegitimate alike—is a factor of such profound importance to society, that it appears urgently desirable not to leave it exclusively to private care, with all the results that private care entails. In the interest of the community it is desirable that there should be

A General Insurance of Motherhood,

the cost of which should be defrayed by contributions from both sexes, as well as supplemented by grants from public sources. This assurance must not only suffice to provide for every woman sufficient medical assistance and skilled care during pregnancy and delivery, but should also furnish a provision for the education of the child until it is of an age to earn its own living.

In order to propagate these views and endeavours methodically and upon the widest possible foundation, the active assistance and participation of every class in the population is indispensable. We therefore urge on all those who share our views the pressing demand

to join the Association for the Protection of Mothers,

and thus to assist in securing and accelerating the attainment of these ends.

As the official organ of the Association, was chosen the monthly magazine, edited by Dr. Phil. Helene Stöcker, Mutterschutz: Zeitschrift zur Reform der Sexuellen Ethik (The Protection of Mothers: a Journal for the Reform of Sexual Ethics)—hitherto published in the year 1905 twelve numbers, in the year 1906 twelve numbers, and in the year 1907 three numbers.

The foundation of the Association was followed on February 26, 1905, by the holding of its first public meeting, in the Architektenhaus, under the presidency of Helene Stöcker; and the meeting was extensively attended by the general population of Berlin. The aims and endeavours of the new union were explained, in longer and shorter speeches, by Ruth Bré, Max Marcuse, Maria Lischnewska, Justizrat Sello, Helene Stöcker, Ellen Key, Lily Braun, Adele Schreiber, Iwan Bloch, and Bruno Meyer; and from the standpoint of the advocates of woman’s rights, of jurists, of physicians, of sociologists, and of moralists, in equal degree, a radical transformation and reform of the present untenable conditions was demanded.[205]

Soon afterwards, the Association proceeded to form local groups. The first was formed in Munich, where on March 28, 1905, the first local meeting took place. Frau Schönfliess, Margarethe Joachimsen-Böhm, Alfred Scheel, and Friedrich Bauer belonged to this committee. Further local groups were founded in Berlin (May 20, 1905—members of this committee, as distinct from the committee of the general Association: Finkelstein, Galli, Agnes Hacker, Albert Kohn, Bruno Meyer, Adele Schreiber), and in Hamburg (president, Regina Ruben).[206]

The first general meeting (cf. Helene Stöcker, “Our First General Meeting,” published in Mutterschutz, 1907, No. 2) took place in Berlin, January 12 to 14. After speeches on the practical protection of mothers (Maria Lischnewska), the present-day form of marriage (Helene Stöcker), prostitution and illegitimacy (Max Flesch), limitation of marriages by economic conditions (Adele Schreiber), limitation of marriage by hygienic factors (Max Marcuse), the position of the illegitimate child (Böhmert and Ottmar Spann), the insurance of motherhood (Mayet), there followed animated discussions, and various important resolutions were passed, dealing with the equality of husband and wife in married life, the legal recognition of free marriages, and of the offspring of such marriages, the necessity for the provision of certificates of health before the conclusion of marriage, the means to be employed in the care of illegitimate children, and the insurance of motherhood. Especially noteworthy was the address of the leading medical statistician, Professor Mayet, regarding the introduction and management of the insurance of motherhood. At his suggestion, proposals followed regarding the enrolling of working-class members in the societies for insurance against illness and for the insurance of motherhood, the necessity for contributions on the part of the State, the inclusion of the agricultural and forest labourers, and of domestic servants of all kinds, in the schemes of insurance against illness and the insurance of motherhood, the possibility of a voluntary insurance of all women, what could be effected by the insurance of motherhood (free provision of midwives and medical assistance, free lodging in case of need, the provision of premiums for mothers suckling their own children, the institution of places where advice could be given to mothers, of homes for women during pregnancy and child-birth, and homes for women and infants), and the further development of factory legislation with regard to nursing mothers. The committee for 1907 was chosen: it consisted of Helene Stöcker, Maria Lischnewska, Adele Schreiber, Wilhelm Brandt, Iwan Bloch, Max Marcuse, Heinrich Finkelstein.

In the end of January, 1907, an Austrian Association for the Protection of Mothers was founded in Vienna, under the presidency of Dr. Hugo Klein. To the committee of this Society there belong, Siegmund Freud, Rosa Mayreder, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Professor Schauta, and about forty other well-known persons, physicians, lawyers, schoolmasters, and many women. In the meeting at which the Association was founded, Dr. Ofner spoke regarding the legal rights of illegitimate mothers and children, and Dr. Friedjung regarding the protection of nursing infants.

In the United States also an Association for sexual reform has been founded, the so-called “Umwertungsgesellschaft” (Revaluation Society), the principal aim of which is the complete re-estimation of all values in the amatory life, and the introduction of a more ideal view of love. The President of this American Association is Emil F. Ruedebusch; the secretary, Mrs. Lina Janssen; the meeting-place of the society is Mayville, in the State of Wisconsin. Regular evenings of discussion are fixed, on which questions of especial interest are debated.

[In Holland also an Association for the Protection of Mothers has been founded; its name is “Vereeniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming.”]

In the newspaper Mutterschutz (1905, No. 9, pp. 375, 376), we find a report of the meeting of the American Association held on October 8, 1905, when the topic of discussion was:

What is the true nature of marriage?

The answer ran as follows:

Is it the family (parental) relationship?—No; for a married couple may have no children, may not desire to have children, and can, none the less, be thoroughly married.

Is it the common home, domestic life?—No; for husband and wife may live their whole life in a hotel, and, none the less, be thoroughly married.

Is it the lifelong community of material interests?—No; for man and wife can keep their property separate, if they wish to do so.

Is it mutual assistance and a state of comradeship throughout life?—No. When a conjugal union is the exact opposite to this, we speak of a bad husband and a bad wife; they are, none the less, man and wife.

Does it signify a contract for a lifelong exclusive love?—Certainly not; if marriage signified that, all Christians would be opposed to this institution. And yet these are the things which, according to the common estimation, make up the nature of marriage, whenever the question is discussed in a manner which is regarded as “respectable” and “decent.”—As a matter of fact, there is nothing respectable or decent in this mystification.

What is it, then, in which the true nature of marriage is to be found?—It is the possession of a human being for lifelong exclusive sexual service.

Very various views have prevailed on the question how many human beings it is legitimate for one human being to employ for his exclusive sexual gratification, and among different nations, and at various times, the most widely divergent rules and regulations have prevailed regarding the mode of sexual possession, and, on the other hand, regarding the duties towards this sexual property; but wherever marriage has existed, it has signified a right of property in respect of sexual utilization.

If we oppose marriage, we mean that we oppose that which actually constitutes marriage according to morality, and according to written law, that which even the most enthusiastic advocates of this institution regard as so debasing that they are ashamed to name it openly.

But, with the exception of the matters relating to sexual service, we hold fast to and defend everything which is publicly considered as marriage, and we expect that in this case we shall be “faithful,” “constant,” and “trustworthy” in all circumstances. For, according to our view, these most important imponderabilia, and these intimate associations of interest between husband and wife, are not the inevitable result of the longing for physical enjoyment in common, but are the much-to-be-desired result of a well-considered longing for any one or all of the relations entering into the question. According to our view, however, the duration of this union, and constancy while it lasted, would not be dependent upon the activity of sexual desires.

A special Association for Sexual Reform was founded in Berlin in the year 1906, at the instance of the editor of the Die Schönheit, Karl Vanselow. It is an Association of cultured men and women who also have in view the formation of local groups, and the delivery of artistic and scientific lectures in furtherance of their movement for reform.

In the above-mentioned monthly magazine, Mutterschutz, edited by Helene Stöcker, all the modern problems of love, marriage, friendship, parentage, prostitution, and all the associated problems of morality, and of the entire sexual life, are discussed from their philosophical, historical, legal, medical, social, and ethical aspects.

The editor herself, a talented disciple of Nietzsche, has since the year 1893 been chiefly occupied in the study of the psychological and ethical aspects of the problems of higher love, and has recently published her collected writings on this subject in a single volume.[207]

It is an interesting literary physiognomy which is offered to us in this book; we encounter here a lofty, free, and pure conception of the love of the future. After the first spiritual wanderings and confusions, which no one in emotional pursuit of the ideal can escape, we see this courageous and undismayed advocate of the eternal, inalienable rights of love, ultimately insisting on the recognition of the lofty mission of love, in accordance with the saying of Nietzsche, which she lovingly quotes: “Ye shall not propagate onwards, but upwards!” (“Nicht fort sollt Ihr Euch pflanzen, sondern hinauf!”). She especially insists on the duty and responsibility of individual love. No one can take a more earnest view of love than is taken here. Helene Stöcker is throughout no radical revolutionist, but an evolutionist and reformer. She sees quite clearly that to-day there is no panacea, no unfailing solution of sexual problems. While she energetically contests the old sexual morality, and demands its replacement by a new freer conception of sexual relationships, she, none the less, recognizes throughout the significance and the value of self-command, of relative asceticism, the wonderful influence of which, in the deepening of emotional life, she has most rightly emphasized. Especially the soul of woman, she believes, has by the asceticism imposed on women by conventional morality, gained in a high degree, depth, fulness, and comprehensiveness. The inward development of woman will be greatly advantaged by the newer valuation of love. This will be characterized, neither by an arid renunciation and denial of life, nor by a coarse, egoistic search for pleasure, but by a joyful affirmation of life and all its healthy powers and impulses.

Whilst Helene Stocker has laid especial stress upon the psychological and ethical relationships of free love, its equal importance from economical and social points of view has been discussed by Friedrich Naumann,[208] W. Borgius,[209] Lily Braun,[210] Maria Lischnewska,[211] and Henriette Fürth.[212]

Naumann rightly draws attention to the fact that our purely monetary economic system is favourable to the production of sterility, for the reason that in this system motherhood is equivalent to loss of money, because the wife ceases to earn money in a degree proportionate to the extent to which she becomes a mother. The burden of the upbringing of children must be made an affair of the community. At the present time, on the contrary, the producer of human beings is burdened upon all sides. He who has children has more rent to pay, and increased school expenses. Therefore, Naumann demands, as a first step to the recognition of the fact that it is a public duty to educate children, that school expenses shall no longer be demanded from the individual parent. Above all, however, it must be made easier to the wife to be a mother.

The wife as a personality demands her right to work, and her right to motherhood. The fact of the compulsory celibacy of an ever-increasing number of women competent to become mothers is the problem which here demands solution. According to the census of 1900, there were in Germany no less than 4,210,955 women between the ages of eighteen and forty years unmarried, the total number of women of corresponding age being 9,568,659—that is, 44 per cent. were unmarried. Among these there were 2,830,538 between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years, the period most suitable to child-bearing, the total number of women of corresponding age being 3,593,644—that is, no less than 78 per cent. According to Lily Braun, there remain from 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 German women permanently unmarried; and we may expect the number of female celibates to increase. The economic conditions, the previously described unhealthy conditions of coercive marriage, and the efforts of women for emancipation, have a combined influence hostile to marriage. On the other hand, law and conventional morality co-operate in making life a martyrdom for the unmarried mother and for the illegitimate child.[213]

The woman who becomes a mother, when united only in the bonds of free love, is at the present day defamed, despised, a being without rights. The question of “maintenance” is a scandal of our time! It is the proof of the degree to which most men are devoid of conscience. An experienced lawyer has very forcibly described the intolerable conditions which at present obtain in this matter.[214] He published the following characteristic letter from a young master-butcher, which shows how meanly even a simple-minded man may endeavour to escape the duty of maintenance. The letter runs:

“Dear Dora,

“I wanted to come round to-day, and wished to deal with the matter by word of mouth, but I can’t do it, and so I must write to tell you that we cannot marry, for, in fact, I have now less money even than when I was a journeyman. The few hundred marks that I had I have put into the business; and, in fact, I really cannot marry; if I did, I couldn’t exist at all. I should have to shut up the shop. What should we do then? I shouldn’t be able to show my face in H—— again; besides, at best, the business is not worth very much. So, my dear Dora, write to me now how we can settle matters; you mustn’t draw the string too tight, or ask too much; if you do, you see, you will have to find your own way out of the trouble. Of course, I shall be glad enough to do what’s right, because I am as much to blame as you are. If after a while I get on as well as my brothers have done, I can do more for you. But just now I can’t help you much. Let’s hope you may find some other man with whom you may live more happily than you have lived with me. Dear Dora, don’t make such a fuss about it: there are plenty more in the same case, up and down the world; you are not the only one. Now, write to me directly what you want to do; let’s get the matter settled quietly; that’ll be better for you. Your mother won’t leave you in the lurch, and you will find it will all come right.

“Best love.

“Fritz H.

“P.S.—Write soon.”

Let us imagine the state of mind of the young woman who receives this letter, characterized as it is by such crafty heartlessness! And yet this heartlessness is no greater than that of modern European society, which simultaneously makes fun of the “old maid” and condemns the unmarried mother to infamy. This double-faced, putrescent “morality” is profoundly immoral, it is radically evil. It is moral and good to contest it with all our energy, to enter the lists on behalf of the right to free love, to “unmarried” motherhood. Let us make a clearance of this medieval bugbear of coercive marriage morality, which is a disgrace in respect of our state of civilization and economical development. Two million women in a condition of compulsory celibacy and—coercive marriage morality. It is merely necessary to place these two facts side by side, in order to display before our eyes the complete ethical bankruptcy of our time in the province of sexual morality.

In addition to this necessity for a radical alteration in sexual morality, we must, in the second place, enunciate the demand for a general insurance of motherhood, for the foundation of homes for pregnant women, for women in child-birth, and for infants. The fulfilment of these demands alone will bring us a great step forward in the restoration to health of our sexual life, and in the preparation of a more beautiful future.[215]

If it be true, as W. B. Stevenson reports,[216] that King Charles IV. decreed that all foundling children in Spanish America were to be regarded as of noble birth, in order that all professions might be open to them, we cannot but consider that this mode of thought and action, on the part of a ruler in the country of the Inquisition, was a shining example for our own time.

“Society,” says Eduard Reich, “as well as the Church, sins against the laws of morality, as long as it stands in the way of the advancement of illegitimate children, either by the maintenance of miserable prejudices against these poor beings, or by positive decrees. We shall never be able, even should the human race enter Paradise, to make it impossible for extra-conjugal procreation to occur: love-children will always exist. Since, then, it is not the fault of the latter that their parents have brought them into the world; and, further, since, even if all men were married, one could not impute it to a man as a moral transgression, if he, in the plenitude of his procreative powers, had intercourse with a beautiful girl, instead of with his wife (suffering, for example, from cancer, or some other serious disease); and since, on the other hand, a wife still in the full bloom of youth could not be blamed for unfaithfulness if, her elderly husband having been impotent for several years, she now has intercourse with a vigorous and healthy young man—for such reasons, let us throw the veil of forgetfulness over all well-intentioned human weaknesses, and no longer ask whether a citizen of the world has been engendered in the marriage-bed, or has sprung from the well-spring of love. To the reasonable being it is the man himself who is of value; and only blockheads, simpletons, and donkeys will inquire as to his origin.”[217]

And yet one more question I will address in conclusion to the adherents of coercive marriage morality. How many free-love relationships, how many illegitimate children have there not been at all times among the cultured classes, even among the pillars of the throne and the altar, precisely among those who, on account of their higher spiritual development, ought to possess a stronger ethical sensibility (nota bene, from the standpoint of coercive marriage morality). It would be an interesting task to collect statistics relating to such free unions, and the resulting “illegitimate” offspring, in the case of notable men and women! The marriage fanatics would be horrified! Quite apart from the innumerable secret relationships of this nature, and their consequences, a short observation and enumeration of the illegitimate loves and parentage of men and women of high standing, alike spiritual and moral, would alone suffice to illuminate the actual conditions, and would enable us to draw remarkable conclusions regarding coercive marriage. It is my intention, as soon as possible, to represent in a brief work the rôle of free love in the history of civilization, and to adduce proofs that free love is very well compatible with a moral life. Who would venture to reproach with immorality a Bürger, a Jean Paul, a Gutzkow, a Karoline Schlegel, a George Sand, or even a Goethe?[218]

It is a simple evolutionary necessity that free love, in association with progressive differentiation and with the reshaping of economic conditions, will find its moral justification also for those who at present judge and condemn it from the point of view of long outworn social conditions.

[186] M. Nordau, “The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization.” See also P. Näcke, “Einiges zur Frauenfrage und zur sexuellen Abstinenz”—“A Contribution to the Woman’s Question and to the Question of Sexual Abstinence.” Näcke condemns this duplex morality, and demands for the woman in principle the same sexual freedom that is granted to the man.

[187] One of the most remarkable instances of free love as a popular institution was the “island custom” of the (so-called) Isle of Portland. Here, until well on into the nineteenth century, experimental cohabitation was universal, and marriage did not take place until the woman became pregnant. But if, as a result of this experimental cohabitation, “the woman does not prove with child, after a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by Providence for each other; they therefore separate; and as it is an established maxim, which the Portland women observe with great strictness, never to admit a plurality of lovers at one time, their honour is in no way tarnished. She just as soon gets another suitor (after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if she had been left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she had remained an immaculate virgin” (Hutchins, “History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset,” vol. ii., p. 820, 1868). So faithfully was this “island custom” observed that, on the one hand, during a long period no single bastard was born on the “island,” and, on the other, every marriage was fertile. But when, for the further development of the Portland stone trade, workmen from London, with the “wild love” habits of the large town, came to reside in Portland, these men took advantage of the “island custom,” and then refused to marry the girls with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer intercourse with the “civilized” world, the “Portland custom” has gradually fallen into desuetude. But the words I have emphasized in the quotation show how faithfully the conditions of “free love,” as defined in this work, were observed in Portland. An account of Portland, with allusions to the local practice of “free love,” will be found in Thomas Hardy’s novel, “The Well Beloved.”—Translator.

[188] A. Blaschko, “Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 12 (Berlin, 1902).

[189] Cf. Helen Zimmern, “Mary Wollstonecraft” in Deutsche Rundschau, 1889, vol. xv., Heft 11, pp. 259-263. Consult also C. Kegan Paul, “William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries,” 2 vols. (London, 1876).

[190] “Shelley’s Poetical Works,” edited by Edward Dowden, p. 42 (Macmillan, 1891).

[191] Ibid., p. 44.

[192] Cf. the admirable critical investigation by Georg Hirth, “Goethe’s Christiane,” published in “Ways to Love,” pp. 323-366, containing new and valuable aids to our judgment of this relationship.

[193] A. Wernich, “Geographical and Medical Studies, based upon Experiences obtained in a Journey Round the World,” p. 137 (Berlin, 1878). Among the Malays of the Dutch Indies divorce is very easy; it costs only a few gulden, and is often carried out “very much to the advantage of husband and wife who are not held together by love. But it is by no means rare for a divorced couple to remarry after a certain time” (Ernst Haeckel, “Aus Insulinde, Malayische Reisebriefe”—“From the Indian Archipelago, Malay Letters of Travel”), p. 242 (Bonn, 1901).

[194] Kuno Fischer, “History of Recent Philosophy,” vol. vii., p. 135 (Heidelberg, 1898).

[195] Cf. in this connexion my pseudonymous work, “Rétif de la Bretonne: the Man, the Author, and the Reformer,” p. 500 (Berlin, 1906).

[196] Cf. George Gissing’s powerful novel, “The Odd Women.”—Translator.

[197] A brief sketch of tetragamy is also given by Schopenhauer in the fragments of his “Lecture on Philosophy” (“Schopenhauer’s Legacy,” ed. Grisebach, vol. iv., pp. 405, 406), also in the manuscript books, “Pandektä” and “Spicilegia” (op. cit., pp. 418, 419).

[198] Charles Albert, “Free Love.”—We may also allude to the more generally philosophic work by Armand Charpentier, “L’Évangile du Bonheur. Mariage. Union Libre. Amour Libre” (Paris, 1898).

[199] L. Gumplowicz, “Marriage and Free Love” (Berlin, 1902, second edition).

[200] In this connexion English readers will do well to consult Karl Pearson’s admirable “The Ethic of Freethought.” In the third or sociological section of that book there are numerous references to the subject of free love in relation to the economic structure of society. One of these will, however, for the present, suffice for quotation: “The economic independence of women will, for the first time, render it possible for the highest human relationship to become again a matter of pure affection, raised above every suspicion of restraint and every taint of commercialism.” It will be seen that Karl Pearson, like Albert, Gumplowicz, Bebel, and Socialists in general, believes that collectivism and the economic independence of women are indispensable preliminaries to a far-reaching reform of our sex relationships in the direction of free love.—Translator.

[201] I must here call attention to the fact that the celebrated philosopher Eugen Dühring, in his notable work, “The Value of Life,” pp. 155-158 (Leipzig, 1881, third edition), made a violent attack on the coercive marriage system, and demanded on ethical grounds a transformation of our amatory life in the direction of freedom and of personal love.

[202] Edward Carpenter, “Love’s Coming-of-Age,” third edition, London, 1902.

[203] Ellen Key, “Love and Marriage,” translated into German by Francis Maro (Berlin, 1904).

[204] Anton Nyström, “The Sexual Life and its Laws,” pp. 244-247 (Berlin, 1904).

[205] The speeches on this occasion were published by Helene Stöcker in her pamphlet, “The Association for the Protection of Mothers” (No. 4 of “Modern Questions of the Day,” edited by Dr. Hans Landsberg; Berlin, 1905).

[206] Unfortunately, Ruth Bré, who has played such a leading part in the history of the movement for the protection of mothers and for sexual reform, has recently gone her own way, and has founded an association of her own for the protection of mothers, which we may hope will soon be reabsorbed into the general Association. Above all, in such a province of reform as this, open as it is to attacks of every kind, unity is essential.

[207] Helene Stöcker, “Die Liebe und die Frauen”—“Love and Women” (Minden, 1906).

[208] Fr. Naumann, “Women in the New Economic Life,” published in Mutterschutz, 1906, No. 4, pp. 133-149.

[209] W. Borgius, “Mutterschafts-Rentenversicherung,” ibid., pp. 149-154.

[210] Lily Braun, “Die Mutterschaftsversicherung,” ibid., 1906, Nos. 1-3, pp. 18-24, 69-76, 110-124.

[211] M. Lischnewska, “The Economic Reform of Marriage,” ibid., No. 6, pp. 215-236.

[212] H. Fürth, “Motherhood and Marriage,” ibid., 1905, Nos. 7, 10-12, pp. 165-169, 389-395, 427-435, 483-489.

[213] The facts to which we have alluded throw a peculiar light upon the ever-renewed attack, made by certain writers who will not see, against the emancipation of women, whilst at the same time they advocate motherhood! A typical example of this is the book written by the gynecologist Max Runge, “Woman in her Sexual Individuality” (Berlin, 1896), the objectivity of which, in comparison with other hostile writings, must, however, be expressly recognized.

[214] “Office Consultations of a Solicitor,” by Severserenus, p. 70 et seq. (Hanover, 1902).

[215] The question of unmarried motherhood, sociologically of such profound importance, has recently been treated by Max Marcuse in an admirable monograph, “Unmarried Mothers” (Berlin, 1907, vol. xxvii. of the “Documents of Great Towns,” edited by Hans Ostwald). Herein we find exact data regarding the number, religion, position, profession, and characteristics of unmarried mothers, also the social and psychological causes of unmarried motherhood, and the existing and future means of caring for women in this position. The same author, in the newspaper Soziale Medizin und Hygiene, 1906, vol. i., pp. 657-667, discusses the important question of the adoption of illegitimate children. Valuable monographs concerning illegitimate children are those of Hugo Neumann, “The Illegitimate Children of Berlin,” Jena, 1900; Ottomar Spann, “Investigations Regarding the Illegitimate Population of Frankfurt-on-the-Main,” Dresden, 1906; Frieda Duensing, “The Legal Position of Illegitimate Children,” and Taube, “Illegitimate Children,” published in “The Book of the Child,” edited by Adele Schreiber, vol. ii., div. 2, pp. 57-61, 62-69 (Leipzig, 1907); the practical work hitherto effected—already extensive, but still far less than we could wish—by the Association for the Protection of Mothers has been detailed by Maria Lischnewska, in her excellent pamphlet, “The Practical Protection of Mothers” (Berlin, 1907).

[216] W. B. Stevenson, “Travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Columbia, in the years 1804-1823,” vol. i., p. 174 (Weimar, 1826).

[217] Eduard Reich, “Immorality and Excess, from the Point of View of the Medical, Hygienic, Political, and Moral Sciences,” p. 127 (Neuwied and Leipzig, 1866).

[218] Apart from the study of the numerous free-love relationships of the poet Goethe, it would be interesting to make an investigation regarding his illegitimate children. Only a few years ago there died in Stützerbach one of the last illegitimate grandchildren of Goethe, a wood-cutter, a man of tall stature and proud gait, resembling in appearance and demeanour the beloved of all women. Cf. A. Trinius, “From the Mountain-World of Goethe,” published in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, No. 453, of September 6, 1906.

CHAPTER XII
SEDUCTION, THE SENSUAL LIFE (GENUSSLEBEN), AND WILD LOVE (WILDE LIEBE)

“In the sensual life, imponderabilia play a leading part, and many an effort towards improvement, many a reform, has been shattered against them, simply because the would-be reformer has overlooked the finer threads which connect the human soul with the institutions and customs of the material world.”—Willy Hellpach.