The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Let us look now at the practical direction of the present. We have reached these conclusions as a starting-point—

(1) We have inherited marriage as a social, nay more, a racial institution.

(2) The practical moral end of marriage, whether we regard it from the wider biological standpoint or from the narrower standpoint of society, is a selection of the sexes by means of love, having as its social object the carrying on of the race, and as its personal object a mutual life of complete physical, mental, and psychical union.

(3) The first of these, the racial object, is the concern of the State; the second, the personal need of love, is the concern of the individual woman and man.

(4) It is the business of the State to make such laws that the interests of the race, i.e. the children, are protected.

From this it would seem to follow that beyond such care the State has nothing to do with the sexual relationship. Here I am placed in a difficulty. I cannot accept this view. I do not believe that the loves of women and men, even apart from children being born from such union, can ever be merely a personal matter between the two individuals concerned. For this reason any woman and man is a potential mother or father, and may become so in a later union. We cannot break the links which bind the individual to the race. I am very clear in my mind, however, of the need of recognising this perpetual duality in the objects of love. It is not necessary to bring forward any proof of the profound significance of the individual side of the sexual passion in the progress of civilisation. We may accept what is really proved by all of us in our acts, that love and love's embrace are not exercised only, or indeed chiefly, for the purpose of procreation, but are of quite equal importance to the parents, necessary for the complete life—the physical and mental development and the joy of the woman and the man.

It may seem, then, that we are thus faced by two opposing forces. That is not the case. There is real harmony underlying the apparent opposition of these two interests, and each is, indeed, the indispensable complement of the other. Both the personal and the further-reaching racial objects of love alike belong to the great synthesis of life. I do not, of course, deny, what every one knows, that there is at present an opposition and even conflict in certain individual cases. This is but one sign of chaos and the wastage of love. But this does not change the truth; there can be no gain for the individual in the personal ends of love unless there is also a corresponding gain to the wider racial end. The element of self-assertion in our loves must be brought into correlation with the universal and immortal development of life. This is so evident that I will not wait to elaborate it further. I will only point out that all the good, as also all the evil, that the individual is able to gain from love must ultimately react also for the benefit, or the wastage, of the race. Thus we have to get every good that we can out of our sexual experiences for ourselves for this very reason that we do not stand alone. It is because the race flows through us that we have to make the utmost of our individual opportunities and powers, so that, understanding our position as guardians to the generations yet unborn, we may use to the very full, but refrain from any misuse of love's possibilities of joy. We know that all we gain for ourselves we gain in trust for the race, and what we lose for ourselves we waste for the life to come. This has, of course, been said before by numberless people, but it seems to me it has been realised by very few, and until it is realised to the fullest extent it will never begin to be practised. We shall continue at a crossed purpose between our own interests and desires and the interests of the race, and shall go on wasting the forces of love needlessly and riotously.

Armed with these conclusions I shall now attempt to examine our existing marriage in its relation (1) to the needs of the children, (2) to the individual needs apart from parentage. The extent of the problems involved is almost illimitable, thus all that I can do is to touch very briefly and insufficiently on a few facts.

As we question in turn the various systems of marriage it becomes clear that monogamy is the form which has most widely prevailed, and will be likely to be maintained, because of its superior survival value. In other words, because it best serves the interests of the race by assuring to the woman and her children the individual interest and providence of the father. I believe further that monogamy of all the sexual associations serves best the personal needs of the parents; and, moreover, that it represents the form of union which is in harmony with the instincts and desires of the majority of people. The ideal of permanent marriage between one woman and one man to last for the life of both must persist as an ideal never to be lost. I wish to state this as my belief quite clearly. The higher love in true marriage is the veritable law of the life to be; and beside it all experiments in sensation will rot in their emptiness and their self-love.

But this faith of mine in an ideal and lasting union does not lessen at all my scepticism in the moral inefficacy of our present marriage system. It is not the particular form of marriage practised that, after all, is the main thing, but the kind of lives people live under that form. The mere acceptance of a legally enforced monogamy does not carry us very far in practical morality; we must claim something much deeper than this.