In speaking of the effect of ungratified sexual impulse on unmarried women, Dr. H. Ploss says: “It is a noteworthy fact, of interest not only to the physician but to the anthropologist as well, that an infallible remedy exists whereby the process of fading bloom, so manifest in old maids, cannot only be arrested, but the already vanished bloom of youth can even be reinstated, partly at least, if not in its entire charm. Unfortunately our social conditions rarely permit its application. This remedy is a regular, orderly, sexual intercourse. We can often observe that when an elderly girl is still fortunate enough to attain matrimony, a marked change in her appearance takes place shortly after her marriage. Her shape obtains its former roundness, the roses return to her cheeks, and her eyes regain their former brightness. Marriage then is a real fountain of youth to the female sex. Thus nature has its fixed laws that inexorably demand obedience, and every unnatural mode of life, every attempt to adapt the organism to conditions of life that are not in keeping with the laws of nature, inevitably leaves marked traces of degeneration. This is true of both the animal and the human organism.”
The question now presents itself: Does society fulfill the demands for a rational mode of life, especially in the woman’s case? If it does not, we are confronted by a second question: Can society fulfill them? If this question also must be answered in the negative, a third question ensues: How can they be fulfilled?
[45] Dr. G. Schnapper-Arndt: “Social Statistics,” Leipsic, 1908.
[46] H. Krose, “Causes of the Frequency of Suicide.” Freiburg, 1906.
[47] Text-book of Psychiatry—Stuttgart 1883.
[CHAPTER VIII.
Modern Marriage.]
[1.—Marriage as a Profession.]
“Marriage and the family are the foundations of the state. Whoever, therefore, attacks marriage and the family, is attacking society and the state and undermining both.” Thus exclaim the defenders of the present order. Monogamic marriage as has been sufficiently shown, is the outcome of the system of gain and property that has been established by bourgeois society, and therefore undoubtedly forms one of its basic principles. But whether it is adapted to natural needs and to a healthy development of human society is a different question. We will show that this marriage, which depends upon the bourgeois system of property, is a more or less forced relation, having many disadvantages, and frequently fulfilling its purpose only insufficiently or not at all. We will, furthermore, show that it is a social institution which is and remains inattainable to millions of persons, instead of being a free union founded on love, the only union suited to nature’s purposes.
John Stuart Mill says in regard to modern marriage: “Marriage is the only real bondage recognized by law.” According to Kant’s conception man and woman together constitute the perfect human being. Upon a normal union of the sexes the healthy development of mankind depends. Satisfaction of the sexual impulse is essential to the sound physical and mental development of both man and woman. But man has gone beyond the animal stage, and so is not contented by the mere physical satisfaction of his sexual impulse. He requires intellectual attraction as well, and the existence of a certain harmony between himself and the person with whom he enters into union. Where such intellectual harmony fails to exist, the sexual intercourse is purely mechanical and thereby becomes immoral. Men and women of refinement demand a mutual attraction that extends beyond their sexual relations, and that shall have an ennobling effect upon the new beings which may spring from their union.[48] The fact that such a standard of ideals fails to exist in countless present-day marriages caused Varnhagen von Ense to write: “Whatever we saw about us both of marriages already contracted, and of marriages about to be contracted, was not likely to implant in us a good opinion of such unions. On the contrary; the entire institution which is supposed to be founded on mutual love and respect and is instead founded on anything but that, seemed coarse and despicable to us, and we fully agreed with Friedrich Schlegel, whose opinion on this subject we found expressed in the fragments of ‘Atheneum’: Almost all marriages are concubinages; they are at best remote approaches to the true marriage, which should be a blending of two persons into one.” This is quite in keeping with the views of Kant.