You must also comprehend that "marriage is a function of humanity, outside of which love becomes a scourge, the distinction of the sexes has no longer any meaning, the perpetuation of the species becomes a real injury to the living, justice is contrary to nature and the plan of the creation is absurd."—Id.
AUTHOR. The plan of the creation absurd, and justice contrary to nature without marriage! What does this mean in plain language?
PROUDHON. What! Is your intellect so feeble that it does not comprehend that, without marriage, there is not, there cannot be justice?
AUTHOR. Then marriage is necessary to all?
PROUDHON. No; but "all participate in it and receive its influence through filiation, consanguinity, adoption which, universal in its essence, in order to act, has no need of cohabitation.... In the animic or spiritual point of view, marriage is to each of us a condition of felicity.... Every adult, healthy in mind and body, whom solitude or abstraction has not sequestered from the rest of mankind, loves, and by virtue of this love, contracts marriage in his heart.... Justice, which is the end of love, and which can be obtained either by domestic initiation, by civic communion, or, lastly, by mystical love," suffices "for happiness in every condition of age and fortune."—Id.
And do not confound marriage with any other union, with concubinage, for example, "which is the mark of a feeble conscience." I do not however condemn the concubinary, for "society is not the work of a day, virtue is difficult to practise, without speaking of those to whom marriage is inaccessible."—Id.
In my opinion, it is for the interest of woman, of children, and of morals, that concubinage should be regulated by legislation. Every child should bear the name of the concubinary father, who should provide for his subsistence and for the expenses of his education; "the forsaken concubine should also have a right to an indemnity, unless she has been the first to enter into another concubinage."—Id.
But it is not from concubinage, but from marriage that all justice, all right proceeds. This is so true, that if you "take away marriage, the mother is left with her tenderness, but without authority, without rights: she can no longer do justice to her son; there is illegitimacy, a first step backward, a return to immorality."—Id.
AUTHOR. All that you have just said concerning love, marriage, justice and right, contains so many equivocations, errors, sophisms, and so much pathos, that nothing less than a huge volume would suffice to refute, after first explaining you. We will content ourselves, therefore, with dwelling on the principal points.
VI.