Ethics

by John Dewey; James Hayden Tufts

Effects of Father Right.—This family of "father right" is also likely to encourage a theory that the man should have greater freedom in marriage than the woman. In the lowest types of civilization we often find the marital relations very loose from our point of view, although, as was noted in Chapter II., these peoples usually make up for this in the rigidity of the rules as to who may marry or have marriage relations. With some advance in civilization and with the father right, we are very apt to find polygamy permitted to chiefs or those who can afford it, even though the average man may have but one wife. In certain cases the wives may be an economic advantage rather than a burden. It goes along with a family in which father and children are of first importance that a wife may even be glad to have her servant bear the children if they may only be reckoned as hers. The husband has thus greater freedom—for polyandry seems to have been rare among civilized peoples except under stress of poverty. The greater freedom of the husband is likely to appear also in the matter of divorce. Among many savage peoples divorce is easy for both parties if there is mutual consent, but with the families in which father right prevails it is almost always easier for the man. The ancient Hebrew might divorce his wife for any cause he pleased, but there is no mention of a similar right on her part, and it doubtless did not occur to the lawgiver. The code of Hammurabi allows the man to put away the mother of his children by giving her and her children suitable maintenance, or a childless wife by returning the bride price, but a wife who has acted foolishly or extravagantly may be divorced without compensation or kept as a slave. The woman may also claim a divorce "if she has been economical and has no vice and her husband has gone out and greatly belittled her." But if she fails to prove her claim and appears to be a gadder-about, "they shall throw that woman into the water." India and China have the patriarchal family, and the Brahmans added the obligation of the widow never to remarry. Greater freedom of divorce on the part of the husband is also attended by a very different standard for marital faithfulness. For the unfaithful husband there is frequently no penalty or a slight one; for the wife it is frequently death.

The Roman Family.—The modern family in western civilization is the product of three main forces: the Roman law, the Teutonic custom, and the Christian Church. Early Roman law had recognized the extreme power of the husband and father. Wife and children were in his "hand." All women must be in the tutela of some man. The woman, according to the three early forms of marriage, passed completely from the power and hand of her father into that of her husband. At the same time she was the only wife, and divorce was rare. But by the closing years of the Republic a new method of marriage, permitting the woman to remain in the manus of her father, had come into vogue, and with it an easy theory of divorce. Satirists have charged great degeneracy in morals as a result, but Hobhouse thinks that upon the whole the Roman matron would seem to have retained the position of her husband's companion, counselor, and friend, which she had held in those more austere times when marriage brought her legally under his dominion.[249]

The Germanic Family.—The Germanic peoples recognized an almost unlimited power of the husband. The passion for liberty, which Cæsar remarked as prevalent among them, did not seem to require any large measure of freedom for their women. In fact, they, like other peoples, might be said to have satisfied the two principles of freedom and control by allotting all the freedom to the men and all, or nearly all, the control to the women. Hobhouse thus summarizes the conditions:

"The power of the husband was strongly developed; he might expose the infant children, chastise his wife, dispose of her person. He could not put her to death, but if she was unfaithful, he was, with the consent of the relations, judge and executioner. The wife was acquired by purchase from her own relatives without reference to her own desires, and by purchase passed out of her family. She did not inherit in early times at all, though at a later period she acquired that right in the absence of male heirs. She was in perpetual ward, subject, in short, to the Chinese rule of the three obediences, to which must be added, as feudal powers developed, the rule of the king or other feudal superior. And the guardianship or mundium was frankly regarded in early law rather as a source of profit to the guardian than as a means of defense to the ward, and for this reason it fetched a price in the market, and was, in fact, salable far down in the Middle Ages. Lastly, the German wife, though respected, had not the certainty enjoyed by the early Roman Matron of reigning alone in the household. It is true that polygamy was rare in the early German tribes, but this, as we have seen, is universally the case where the numbers of the sexes are equal. Polygamy was allowed, and was practiced by the chiefs."

Two Lines of Church Influence.—The influence of the church on marriage and family life was in two conflicting lines. On the one hand, the homage and adoration given to Mary and to the saints, tended to exalt and refine the conception of woman. Marriage was, moreover, treated as a "sacrament," a holy mystery, symbolic of the relation of Christ and the church. The priestly benediction gave religious sacredness from the beginning; gradually a marriage liturgy sprang up which added to the solemnity of the event, and finally the whole ceremony was made an ecclesiastical instead of a secular function.[250] The whole institution was undoubtedly raised to a more serious and significant position. But, on the other hand, an ascetic stream of influence had pursued a similar course, deepening and widening as it flowed. Although from the beginning those "forbidding to marry" had been denounced, it had nearly always been held that the celibate life was a higher privilege. If marriage was a sacrament, it was nevertheless held that marriage made a man unfit to perform the sacraments. Woman was regarded as the cause of the original sin. Marriage was from this standpoint a concession to human weakness. "The generality of men and women must marry or they will do worse; therefore, marriage must be made easy; but the very pure hold aloof from it as from a defilement. The law that springs from this source is not pleasant to read."[251] It must, however, be noted that, although celibacy by a selective process tended to remove continually the finer, more aspiring men and women, and prevent them from leaving any descendants, it had one important value for woman. The convent was at once a refuge, and a door to activity. "The career open to the inmates of convents was greater than any other ever thrown open to women in the course of modern European history."[252]

Two important contributions to the justice of the marriage relation, and therefore to the better theory of the family, are in any case to be set down to the credit of the church. The first was that the consent of the parties was the only thing necessary to constitute a valid marriage. "Here the church had not only to combat old tradition and the authority of the parents, but also the seignorial power of the feudal lord, and it must be accounted to it for righteousness that it emancipated the woman of the servile as well as of the free classes in relation to the most important event of her life."[253] The other was that in maintaining as it did the indissolubility of the sacramental marriage, it held that its violation was as bad for the husband as for the wife. The older theories had looked at infidelity either as an injury to the husband's property, or as introducing uncertainty as to the parenthood of children, and this survives in Dr. Johnson's dictum of a "boundless" difference. The feelings of the wife, or even of the husband, aside from his concern for his property and children, do not seem to have been considered.

The church thus modified the Germanic and Roman traditions, but never entirely abolished them, because she was divided within herself as to the real place of family life. Protestantism, in its revolt from Rome, opposed both its theories of marriage. On the one hand, the Reformers held that marriage is not a sacrament, but a civil contract, admitting of divorce. On the other hand, they regarded marriage as the most desirable state, and abolished the celibacy of the clergy. The "subjection of women," especially of married women, has, however, remained as the legal theory until very recently. In England it was the theory in Blackstone's time that "The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything." According to the old law, he might give her "moderate correction." "But with us in the politer reign of Charles II., this power of correction began to be doubted." It was not until 1882, however, that a married woman in England gained control of her property. In the United States the old injustice of the common law has been gradually remedied by statutes until substantial equality in relation to property and children has been secured.

§ 2. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE FAMILY

The psychology of family life may be conveniently considered under two heads: that of the husband and wife, and that of parents and children, brothers and sisters.

1. The complex sentiment, love, which is found in the most perfect family life, is on the one hand (1) a feeling or emotion; on the other (2) a purpose, a will. Both these are modified and strengthened by (3) parenthood and (4) social and religious influences.