Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

Society means human beings—men, women, and children, dead, living, and unborn—neither more nor yet less; human beings banded together in order thus the higher to enhance the life of the individual and of all. This combination takes at first simple, then more and more complicated forms of organisation: simple, so long as their needs are so, since only his needs move man to organise. An increasing civilisation means a more and more perfect satisfaction of increasingly complicated and higher needs. But as it is our needs that set us in motion, any hindrance of movement will also produce immediate suffering through our not being able to get rid of the cause of our displeasure; and indirect suffering through our losing the sense of pleasure that movement might have brought.

When the aim of society is seen to be that each of its members shall employ and develop his powers to the highest possible extent for the highest possible ends, then it will no longer be in abstract constructions of constitutional law, but rather in the laws of human life, that the criteria of social well-being will be sought.

The order of society must then favour the life-enhancement of the individual; the limitation of individual liberty must favour the life-enhancement of the whole—this will be to the evolutionist the motive for now extending, now limiting, the freedom of movement of the individual.

The parallelism with the human organism is evident. The formation and activity of the individual cells determine the structure of the whole; the degree in which their needs are satisfied determines the well-being of the organism. The total vital needs of the organism limit the cells’ expansion of force and self-determination, for without the health of the whole organism the cells would also languish.

Every powerful movement of society—and the demand for women’s suffrage is already such a one—is brought about by the will of many individuals to modify society in some respect, in order better to satisfy their own needs and therewith those of the whole community. Such a movement is always opposed in the beginning from the point of view of the agreement, equilibrium, and health of the community. And since a transformation in a society never occurs uniformly in time or degree; since the need of new forms is thus for a long time not widely spread, the conservatives, as a rule, are right at the beginning of their opposition; they are right even until the transformation has been taking place so long that the health of the whole organism demands that the class of society, religious body, or group of opinion in question should be given the freedom of activity without which it is ill at ease; for the uneasiness of many injures all. Conservatism is thus finally in the wrong by reason of the ever-repeated experience, that when the vital force is increased in any important organ, it is also increased in the whole organism.

Woman’s suffrage ought above all to be demanded from the point of view of the social value, and consequent right to freedom of movement, of woman’s powers. Its opponents answer: “We never thought of disputing either one or the other. Woman has already the same power as man in degree, though not in kind, just as truly as the heart is an organ equally essential to life as the brain. But the whole organism would go under, if the heart insisted on usurping the functions of the brain. Woman has become the organ of the emotions in human life—but the emotions cannot have a leading mission in public affairs. In that field woman must either be untrue to herself or lose her significance. It would be an immense loss to civilisation if she were forced into the paths of masculine egoism, instead of putting her whole strength into the rearing of future men. Thus new generations of great-minded and far-seeing men would reform society in accordance with woman’s ideals, and woman would not lose her ideals in party strife, where the chief thing is victory by any means and the end is lost sight of.” “If,” it was thus said by a thoughtful young working woman,—“if the child saw both its father and mother striving for power, with all the hardness and relentlessness this implies, then idealism would soon become extinct, whereas, on the other hand, women, by unequivocally making the highest ideal demands upon fathers and brothers, husbands and sons, could bring about by degrees an ideal condition of things.”

This view, which gives to woman the function of one central organ in the social organism and to man the other, does not, however, correspond to the reality. Just as the individual is determined from head to foot by his sex, so also is society from top to bottom bi-sexual; every function of government affects, therefore, all women just as much as all men. At present, however, only the latter possess the power of directly remedying what hinders and furthering what enhances their life, through also taking part in the functions by which they are affected.

Since every “cell,” which indirectly or directly makes up the social organism, is male or female, it is unthinkable that a higher organisation of society would not finally of necessity manifest this its bi-sexual character. Like the family—the first “State”—it is probable that the final State will appear as a unity combining the male and female principles. Or, in other words, it will be a “State-marriage,” not as hitherto merely a State-celibacy! Simply by performing the functions themselves, instead of allowing the male cells to do so on their behalf, the female cells may now as members of society experience their highest possible life-enhancement. So long as women were content to let men represent them, woman’s non-enfranchisement did not disturb the well-being of the organism. Now, on the other hand, the disturbance has set in and can be removed only by change. But what the health of the organism demands in the highest degree, is that—when the female cells begin to perform their social functions—they should preserve their sexual character, for otherwise no higher form of development would be attained. Not the male sex, but the government of society may with truth be likened to its brain, as representation may be compared with its nervous system. The society of the present day suffers from one-sided paralysis, so long as half of it is excluded from the possibility of making known its needs through the nervous system. And society suffers from this condition just as much as the body would from a corresponding state. We can best see this by observing that society where the whole body is paralysed and only the head acts, namely Russia. There only the wounds bear witness that the organism as a whole is alive. But all the societies of Europe now include within themselves a Russia, that part of the community which Camilla Collet rightly called “the Camp of Silence.” From the same inner necessity that prompted a number of the men in those countries whose condition once was like that of Russia to shake off the care of a parental government and take upon themselves the liberty of making known their own needs, of themselves deciding the conditions for their well-being, must women—and the labouring classes—win this right. This does not mean that the female half will work more perfectly or with less danger than the male. But it means that the whole organism will work more, will fare better, and will be developed to a higher condition. Those at present in possession are challenged by women as by working men, when they assert that they fully secure the interests of the unrepresented and direct their forces satisfactorily. And it may not be they, contented as they are with their power and with themselves, but the discontented that we should listen to, if higher conditions are to be attained.

To these general considerations must be added, in the case of the smaller nations, this: that the more alive and thoroughly active the whole social body is, the more power of resistance it will possess in the struggle for its existence. Those nations, in which every person can protect his own interests in and with those of the community, will—other conditions being equal—surpass the others, as an army of athletes would overcome one of invalids.