Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

The new sexual morality—where the light, as in Correggio’s Night, will radiate from the child—may, however, continue to uphold single love as the ideal for the highest happiness and development both of the lovers and of the children. It has already been contended that this is the direction in which the evolution of love is moving. But we must likewise admit—and always for the well-being of the race as well as of the individual—that love may take lower as well as higher forms without our being obliged to regard the former as immoral. When the point of view of the ennobling of the race has penetrated the ethical ideas of mankind, the following may be described as immoral, with a force at present unsuspected:

All parentage without love;

All irresponsible parentage;

All parentage of immature or degenerate persons;

All voluntary sterility of married people fitted for the mission of the race; and finally

All such manifestations of sexual life as involve violence or seduction, and entail unwillingness or incapacity to fulfil the mission of the race.

But, on the other hand, society will admit, with a freedom wholly different from that now existing, the union of people, not only in their best years, but also in their best feelings; it will perceive the present hindrances to be an injustice which falls not only upon the individuals but upon society itself—since connubial unhappiness not only interferes with the highest development of many people’s powers for the good of all, but it also deprives society of the children to whom life might have been given by a new happiness.

It is through its view of the social importance of love’s selection that the new morality will be a transforming force.

That a pioneer of reform who puts his ideas into practice may be a dangerous example is certain. It is possible to be fully convinced of the future of, for instance, the art of flying, without therefore denying the dangers of experiment or encouraging people to jump off church-towers with nothing but a pair of goose-wings on their shoulders.