If the marriage is sterile, the conjoints will adopt orphans or children from other large families. In certain cases, of which we have spoken, concubinage may be preferred which, with such a change in social organization, will amount to bigamy; but here everything will be done openly and by mutual agreement. In such cases any one who cannot overcome jealousy will be divorced.
If, in spite of everything, a marriage is not happy, owing to incompatibility of character, the marriage (or sexual contract) will be dissolved, after legal provision for the children and their education. After this each of the conjoints will be free to marry again. This last contingency will probably not be more frequent than it is as present, possibly less, especially when there are children, for divorce is always painful when there are children to be brought up.
Work, and the effort of striving toward the ideal of social life, are the best and most healthy distractions for the sexual appetite. It is the idleness, luxury and corruption of large cities which cause it to degenerate. Moreover, work revives love and leaves little time for family disputes.
With a little independence of character, and abandonment of old prejudices, we can even now realize our scheme to a great extent.
The Art of Loving Long.—The ideal true love often only shows itself after the first amorous intoxication has subsided. In order to remain harmonious, love requires above all things the higher psychic irradiation of intimate sympathetic sentiments associated with the sexual appetite, with which they should always remain intimately connected, or at any rate as long as the duration of the active sexual life of man. Later on, in the evening of life, the first are sufficient.
The great error into which most men fall who marry is to rely on the civil and religious bonds of matrimony. As soon as the union is sealed, they return to their usual habits and mode of life. Each expects much from the other and gives as little as possible. When amorous sexual intoxication is over, the husband no longer finds any charm in his wife, he becomes enamored of other women to whom he devotes his attention, reserving his bad temper for his wife, while the latter takes no more trouble to please him.
I agree that a man cannot for long conceal his true nature; we are what we are by heredity. Nevertheless, the art of being amiable may be acquired by habit and education, an art which the poorest may employ. Education should never cease during life. Along with the higher sentiments of love and mutual respect, lasting sexual attraction is a link of inestimable value in maintaining a long and happy union between man and woman in marriage.
The married couple should, therefore, avoid everything which may rupture this link. The wife should devote herself to making the home attractive to her husband. The latter, on his part, should neither regard his wife as a mere housekeeper, nor only as an object for the satisfaction of his sexual appetite. Such a conception of woman and marriage is unfortunately very common and is incompatible with true conjugal happiness.
On the other hand, it is not enough for the husband to esteem and respect his wife as a faithful companion, to whom he is united in a purely intellectual way. For the couple to find lasting and complete happiness in marriage, love, however ideal it may be, should be accompanied by sexual enjoyment. In short, intellectual and sentimental harmony should be combined with sensual harmony in a single and sublime symphony. The husband should not only regard his wife as the incarnation of all the domestic virtues, but should also continue to imagine her as the Venus of his early love.
This condition may be realized even when youth has passed away, provided the deep sympathetic sentiments of an ideal love have truly existed and are maintained. The wife will then continue to be for her husband the goddess she has always been. But if this condition is not realized it is not always easy for the husband, with his polygamous disposition, to remain insensible to the charms of other women. However, habit and imagination may do much to correct this tendency.