“Inasmuch as Nature makes the number of women nearly identical with that of men, whilst women retain only about half as long as men their capacity for procreation and their suitability for masculine gratification, the human sexual relationship is disordered at the very outset. By the equal numbers of the respective sexes, Nature appears to point to monogamy; on the other hand, a man has one wife for the satisfaction of his procreative capacity only for half the time for which that capacity endures; he must, then, take a second wife when the first begins to wither; but for each man only one woman is available. The tendency exhibited by woman in respect of the duration of her sexual capacity is compensated, on the other hand, by the quantity of that capacity: she is capable of gratifying two or three vigorous men simultaneously, without suffering in any way. In monogamy, woman employs only half of her sexual capacity, and satisfies only half of her desires.
“If, now, this relationship were arranged in accordance with purely physical considerations (and we are concerned here with a physical, extremely urgent need, the satisfaction of which is the aim of marriage, alike among the Jews and among the Christians), if matters were to be equalized as completely as possible, it would be necessary for two men always to have one wife in common: let them take her when they are both young. After she has become faded, let them take another young woman, who will then suffice for their needs until both the men are old. Both women are cared for, and each man is responsible for the care of one only.
“In the monogamic state, the man has for a single occasion too much, and for a permanency too little; with the woman it is the other way about.
“If the proposed institution were adopted in youth, a man, at the time when his income is usually smallest, would have to provide only for half a wife, and for few children, and those young. Later, when he is richer, he would have to provide for one or two wives and for numerous children.
“Since this institution has not been adopted—for half their life men are whoremongers, and for the other half cuckolds; and women must be correspondingly classified as betrayed and betrayers—he who marries young is tied later to an elderly wife; he who marries late in youth acquires venereal disease, and in age has to wear the horns. Woman must either sacrifice the bloom of her youth to a man already withered; or else must discover that to a still vigorous man she is no longer an object of desire. The institution we propose would cure all these troubles; the human race would lead happier lives. The objections are the following:
- “1. That a man would not know his own children. Answer: This could, as a rule, be determined by likeness and other considerations; in existing conditions it is not always a matter of certainty.
- “2. Such a menage à trois would give rise to brawls and jealousy. Answer: Such things are already universal; people must learn to behave themselves.
- “3. What is to be done as regards property? Answer: This will have to be otherwise arranged; absolute communio bonorum will not occur. As we have already said, Nature has arranged the affair badly. It will, therefore, be impossible to overcome all disadvantages.
“As matters are at present, Duty and Nature are continually in conflict. For the man it is impossible from the beginning to the end of his career to satisfy his sexual impulse in a legal manner. Imagine his condition if he is widowed quite young. For the woman, to be limited to a single man during the short period of her full bloom and sexual capacity, is an unnatural condition. She has to preserve for the use of one individual what he is unable to utilize, and what many others eagerly desire from her; and she herself, in thus refusing, must curb her own desires. Just think of it!
“More especially we have to remember that always the number of men competent for sexual intercourse is double the number of functionally capable women, for which reason every woman must continually repel advances; she prepares for defence immediately a man comes near her.”
When we consider this suggestion of tetragamy of Schopenhauer’s from our own standpoint, we find an accurate exposition of the evils arising from monogamic coercive marriage, and a clear-sighted presentation of the physiological disharmonies of the sexual life arising from the difference between man and woman, upon which recently Metchnikoff also has laid so much stress. In other respects Schopenhauer’s views are for us not open to discussion, for, as already pointed out, he regards woman from the first simply as a chattel, and denies to her any individuality or soul; and, secondly, because he rejects the principle of the only-love—a principle so intimately associated with the idea of woman as individual. For the watchword of the future must be: Free love, based upon the only-love! and, indeed, the only-love manifesting itself reciprocally in the full struggle for existence.
For this reason, also, the characteristic free love of the Bohemians of Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century, and more especially during the period 1830 to 1860, can only be regarded as a truly poetic love-idyll, when compared with that grand and earnest love consecrated wholly to work, and to the inward spiritual development which presents itself to modern humanity as an ideal love, as the united conquest of existence. Grisette love, which Sebastian Mercier described with great force, and which found its classic representation in Henry Murger’s “Vie de Bohème,” was characterized by the enduring life-in-common of the loving couples, who belonged for the most part to the circle of artists and students. Thus it stood high as heaven above our modern “intimacy,” which, for the most part, has a quite transitory character; and yet the Bohemian free love corresponded in no way to the conception and ideal of free love as a community of spirit and of life.