Let there be no mistake here. I have been told that I wish to destroy permanent marriage, that I do not consider the welfare of children and the best interests of the race. I deny these charges; they are untrue.
My ideal of marriage is one that many will call old-fashioned. It demands the consecration of the mother in service to her husband, to their children, and the home. That is why I advocate the recognition and regulation of other forms of union, not because I have a low ideal, but to prevent the degradation of marriage by forcing into it those who do not desire, and, therefore, are unsuited for, its binding duties.
The immense failure of marriage to-day arises from the confusion of our desires and our ceaseless search for individual happiness. We have no firm ideal, no fixed standard of conduct either for women or for men. And the existence of many standards of what ought to be done; the liberty permitted to the man, the liberty permitted to the woman; if the wife shall continue her work or profession or remain at home dependent on the husband’s earnings; whether the marriage shall be fruitful or sterile—these are but a few of the questions left undecided. And thus to leave men and women unguided, with their own ideas of what is good to do and what is evil, is the dry-rot very surely destroying the ideal of marriage.
Every couple starts anew and alone, and the way is too difficult for solitary experiments.
This modern delusion of looking at marriage as an individual affair is of course, the essence of the selfish, egocentric habit of life—it focuses desire on personal adventure and personal needs. With more courage to face the realities of love we should have a surer ideal. There would be less sentimentality, but much deeper feeling about marriage.
This, then, is what I would teach: No longer must marriage be regarded solely as a personal relationship. Marriage is a religious duty.
“To be mothers were women created, and to be fathers, men.”
This was the ideal which gave the breath of life to marriage among the men and women in our earlier England, who were more fixed in character and less selfish than we are to-day.
It is this ideal we have lost.