CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X
The disputed question of sexual promiscuity — The fact of its existence — Westermarck’s defective criticism of the doctrine of promiscuity — Persistence of promiscuity until the present day — Ethnological proofs of this fact — The researches of Friedrich S. Krauss — Marriage an artificial product — Group-marriage — A form of limited promiscuity — Diffusion of group-marriage — Connexion of polygamy and group-marriage — The loan and the exchange of wives — Matriarchy and patriarchy — Progress from lower to higher social forms of sexual relationship — Transition from matriarchy to patriarchy — Formation of the patriarchal family — Marriage by capture and marriage by purchase — The bright side of patriarchy — Patriarchal forms of marriage — Polygamy and the patriarchal family — Levitical marriage — Monogamic marriage — Coexistence with monogamic marriage of a facultative polygamy — The conventional lie of marriage — Hegel’s definition of marriage — Criticism of this definition — Combination of the matriarchal and the patriarchal forms of the sexual relationship — Revival of the idea of matriarchy — Transformation of the ancient patriarchal form of marriage to freer forms — Introduction of civil marriage and divorce — Chief grounds for marriage reform — Duplex sexual morality — Its origin — Criticism thereof — Relationship between prostitution and the conventional coercive marriage — Necessity of, and justification for, freer forms of marriage — Lecky’s views on this subject — Roman concubinage, and the morganatic marriage — Significance of the sacramental character of marriage — Sanction by the State of a freer form of marriage (civil marriage, mixed marriage, divorce) — Psychology of love in the marriage problem — Inconstancy of human love — The eternity lie — Transient character of youthful love — Gutzkow, Kierkegaard, and Rétif de la Bretonne on this subject — The poetical character of the first stages of every love — The sexual need for variety as an anthropologico-biological phenomenon — This simply an explanatory principle, not an ideal — Rarity of the “only” love — The psychologist Stiedenroth on this subject — The possibility of love felt simultaneously for several persons — Explanation of this fact — Examples — Difficulty of complete harmony between man and wife — The ideal of the “one” love — Schleiermacher on the necessity for experiments in love — The examples of Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient and Caroline Schelling — The need for love unaffected by disillusion — Dangers of habituation — The double rôle of habituation in marriage — Danger of intimate life in common — The common bedroom — Unfavourable conditions with regard to the relative ages of husband and wife — Increase in premature marriages — Connexion of this phenomenon with the premature awakening of sexuality — Too great a difference in age between husband and wife — Consequent physiological disharmony — Postponement of marriage in consequence of civilization — Diminution of marriages in various European countries — Economical factors — Mercenary marriage a vestige of earlier times — Disappearance of the economic background to marriage with the further advance of civilization — Marriage and the price of corn — Part played by mercenary marriage in various classes — Importance of economic factors in marriage — Summary of the causes of the diminution of the “marriage impulse” — “Conjugal rights” — Justification and misuse of these — Boredom in married life — Marriage and disease — Opinion of an alienist on the calamities of marriage — Statements of a wife — Schiller and Byron upon love and marriage — A dictum of Socrates — Growing disinclination to the coercive character of the marriage bond — Great increase in the number of divorces in recent years — § 1568 of the Civil Code — Legal possibility of several successive divorces on the part of the same individual — A kind of civil sanction of free love — Dependence of the consciousness of duty upon freedom — Grounds for divorce — Marriage reform in France — Composition and programme of the French committee for marriage reform — The idea of sexual responsibility.
Appendix: Report of one hundred typical marriages, and twelve characteristic more detailed pictures of married life, after Gross-Hoffinger.