CHAPTER X
THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP—MARRIAGE
“The individualistic tendency, in the most decisive and characteristic form peculiar to our system of civilization, is most happily represented in the monogamic form of marriage; for here, on the woman’s side also, the development of individuality is gently and imperceptibly accomplished.”—Ludwig Stein.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X
The disputed question of sexual promiscuity — The fact of its existence — Westermarck’s defective criticism of the doctrine of promiscuity — Persistence of promiscuity until the present day — Ethnological proofs of this fact — The researches of Friedrich S. Krauss — Marriage an artificial product — Group-marriage — A form of limited promiscuity — Diffusion of group-marriage — Connexion of polygamy and group-marriage — The loan and the exchange of wives — Matriarchy and patriarchy — Progress from lower to higher social forms of sexual relationship — Transition from matriarchy to patriarchy — Formation of the patriarchal family — Marriage by capture and marriage by purchase — The bright side of patriarchy — Patriarchal forms of marriage — Polygamy and the patriarchal family — Levitical marriage — Monogamic marriage — Coexistence with monogamic marriage of a facultative polygamy — The conventional lie of marriage — Hegel’s definition of marriage — Criticism of this definition — Combination of the matriarchal and the patriarchal forms of the sexual relationship — Revival of the idea of matriarchy — Transformation of the ancient patriarchal form of marriage to freer forms — Introduction of civil marriage and divorce — Chief grounds for marriage reform — Duplex sexual morality — Its origin — Criticism thereof — Relationship between prostitution and the conventional coercive marriage — Necessity of, and justification for, freer forms of marriage — Lecky’s views on this subject — Roman concubinage, and the morganatic marriage — Significance of the sacramental character of marriage — Sanction by the State of a freer form of marriage (civil marriage, mixed marriage, divorce) — Psychology of love in the marriage problem — Inconstancy of human love — The eternity lie — Transient character of youthful love — Gutzkow, Kierkegaard, and Rétif de la Bretonne on this subject — The poetical character of the first stages of every love — The sexual need for variety as an anthropologico-biological phenomenon — This simply an explanatory principle, not an ideal — Rarity of the “only” love — The psychologist Stiedenroth on this subject — The possibility of love felt simultaneously for several persons — Explanation of this fact — Examples — Difficulty of complete harmony between man and wife — The ideal of the “one” love — Schleiermacher on the necessity for experiments in love — The examples of Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient and Caroline Schelling — The need for love unaffected by disillusion — Dangers of habituation — The double rôle of habituation in marriage — Danger of intimate life in common — The common bedroom — Unfavourable conditions with regard to the relative ages of husband and wife — Increase in premature marriages — Connexion of this phenomenon with the premature awakening of sexuality — Too great a difference in age between husband and wife — Consequent physiological disharmony — Postponement of marriage in consequence of civilization — Diminution of marriages in various European countries — Economical factors — Mercenary marriage a vestige of earlier times — Disappearance of the economic background to marriage with the further advance of civilization — Marriage and the price of corn — Part played by mercenary marriage in various classes — Importance of economic factors in marriage — Summary of the causes of the diminution of the “marriage impulse” — “Conjugal rights” — Justification and misuse of these — Boredom in married life — Marriage and disease — Opinion of an alienist on the calamities of marriage — Statements of a wife — Schiller and Byron upon love and marriage — A dictum of Socrates — Growing disinclination to the coercive character of the marriage bond — Great increase in the number of divorces in recent years — § 1568 of the Civil Code — Legal possibility of several successive divorces on the part of the same individual — A kind of civil sanction of free love — Dependence of the consciousness of duty upon freedom — Grounds for divorce — Marriage reform in France — Composition and programme of the French committee for marriage reform — The idea of sexual responsibility.
Appendix: Report of one hundred typical marriages, and twelve characteristic more detailed pictures of married life, after Gross-Hoffinger.