Take for instance this Western civilization of ours which bases its social institutions of marriage, property, and inheritance on the monogamic principle, but persists in moral judgments and practices whose only possible justification is to be found in the rather divergent theory that the male is naturally polygamous and the female monogamous.
These two ideals, or social practices, make mutually discrediting claims the one against the other. I am not concerned to say which I think is right. But on one side or the other we are blinking facts, and are behaving as though they had not a determining effect upon conduct and character which Society ought straightforwardly to recognise.
The man who maintains that it is impossible for the male to live happily and contentedly in faithful wedlock with one wife and then goes and does so, commits himself by such matrimonial felicity to discreditable conduct—discreditable to his professions, I mean. And it is, of course, the same if his inconsistency takes him the other way about.
There may, however, be an alternative and more honest solution to this conflict of claims; both may contain a measure of truth. It may be true that monogamy—or single mating—faithfully practised by man and woman alike, is ideally by far the best solution of the sex-relations, and the best for the State to recognise and encourage by all legitimate means; just as vegetarianism and total abstinence may be the best solution of our relation to food, or non-resistance of our relation to government, or abject submission of our relation to theological teaching. But though these may be ideals to strive for, it does not follow that human nature is so uniformly constructed upon one model as to justify us in making them compulsory, or in turning round and denouncing as moral obliquity either plural mating or the eating of meat, or the drinking of wine, or rebellion against civil authority, or free thought in matters of religion.
If the community deliberately decides that one of these courses gives the better social results, it is within its power to discourage the other course, without descending to compulsion; and I am inclined to think that this may, in the majority of cases, be done by treating the desires and appetites of resistant minorities as taxable luxuries. If the State finds, for instance, that alcoholism increases the work of its magistrates and police, and diminishes the health and comfort of home-conditions, it may quite reasonably tax beer, wine and spirits, not merely to produce revenue but to abate a nuisance. But it would be foolish, were it to go on to say that everybody who incurred such taxes was guilty of moral obliquity.
In the same way, if the State wishes to discourage vegetarianism and temperance, it will tax sugar, currants, raisins, tea, cocoa and coffee, and will continue to tax them till it has diminished the consumption; and incidentally it will let meat go free. But it will not pass moral judgments—having the fear of human nature before its eyes—on those who conscientiously bear the burden of those taxes rather than give up what they think good for them.
I could imagine the State, in its wisdom, seeking to discourage luxury and the accumulation of wealth into the possession of the few, by imposing a graduated income tax of far more drastic severity than that which is now depleting the pockets of our millionaires—but not therefore saying that all who incurred income tax above a certain scale were guilty of moral obliquity.
We have seen a State which required an increase of its population setting a premium on children so as to encourage parents to produce them; and I can imagine a State which required a diminution in the increase of its population setting a tax on children, but not therefore joining in the cry of the Neo-Malthusians that every married couple who produced more than four children were guilty of a kind of moral depravity. And further, I can imagine a State which wished to encourage pure and unadulterated monogamy putting a graduated tax, practically prohibitive in price, on any other course of conduct productive of second or third establishments. But I do not see why the State, as State, should concern itself further, or why Society should concern itself more deeply about sexual than it does about commercial and trade relations, wherein it allows far more grievous defections from the ideal of human charity to exist.
Leaving it to the individual is not to say that your views as to the desirability of such conduct will not influence your social intercourse, and perhaps even affect your calling list. A great many things affect our calling lists, without any necessity for us to be self-righteous and bigoted about the principle on which we make our own circle select. There are some people who will call upon the wives of their doctors, but not of their dentists; there are others who will not call upon the organist who conducts them to the harmonies of Divine Service on Sunday, but would be very glad to call upon Sir Henry Wood, who conducts their popular concerts for them during the week. We make our selection according to our social tastes and aspirations, and sometimes those social tastes may include a certain amount of moral judgment. But that moral judgment need not make us interfere; if it keeps us at a respectful and kindly distance from those whom we cannot regard with full charity, it keeps us sufficiently out of mischief.