London, September, 1910.
Love and Marriage
CHAPTER I
THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF SEXUAL MORALITY
All thoughtful persons perceive that the ideas of the morality of sexual relations upheld by the religions and laws of the Western nations are in our time undergoing a radical transformation.
Like all other such changes, this one is opposed by the distrust of the guardians of society, a distrust which is based upon the view that human beings lack the power of themselves directing their development on an upward course. According to these critics, this direction is the concern of transcendental reason, which expresses itself in the real and thus causes the real to become rational. Marriage as it exists is a historically produced reality, and therefore also rational. Historical continuity—as well as religious and ethical needs—must entail the permanence of the actual institution of marriage as an indispensable condition of the existence of society.
The reformers leave transcendental reason on one side. But they too acknowledge the connection between the real and the rational to this extent, that what has been real, has also been rational—so long as in certain given sociological and psychological conditions it has answered best the needs of humanity in some particular direction. They acknowledge the necessity of fixed laws and customs, since these alone intensify the feelings into sources of impulse, strong enough to be translated into action. They perceive that the conservative, tenacious emotions have the same importance for the soul as the skeleton for the body.