83.
“En vérité l’amour ne saurait être profond, s’il n’est pas pur.”
Christianity, he says, “a favorisé l’essor de la véritable passion, tandisque le polythéisme consacrait surtout les appétits.”
He is speaking here as teacher, philosopher, and legislator, not as poet or sentimentalist. Perhaps it will come to be recognised sooner or later, that what people are pleased to call the romance of life is founded on the deepest and most immutable laws of our being, and that any system of ecclesiastical polity, or civil legislation, or moral philosophy, which takes no account of the primal instincts and affections, which are the springs of life and on which God made the continuation of his world to depend, must of necessity fail.
I have just read a volume of Psychological Essays by one of the most celebrated of living surgeons, and closed the book with a feeling of amazement: a long life spent in physiological experiences, dissecting dead bodies, and mending broken bones, has then led him, at last, to some of the most obvious, most commonly known facts in mental philosophy? So some of our profound politicians, after a long life spent in governing and reforming men, may arrive, at last, at some of the commonest facts in social morals.
84.
He contends for the indissolubility of marriage, and against divorce; and he thinks that education should be in the hands of women to the age of ten or twelve, “Afin que le cœur y prévale toujours sur l’esprit:” all very excellent principles, but supposing a hypothetical social and moral state, from which we are as yet far removed. What he says, however, of the indissolubility of the marriage bond is so beautiful and eloquent, and so in accordance with my own moral theories, that I cannot help extracting it from a mass of heavy and sometimes unintelligible matter. He begins by laying it down as a principle that the “amélioration morale de l’homme constitue la principale mission de la femme,” and that “une telle destination indique aussitôt que le lien conjugal doit être unique et indissoluble, afin que les relations domestiques puissent acquérir la plénitude et la fixité qu’exige leur efficacité morale.” This, however, supposes the holiest and completest of all bonds to be sealed on terms of equality, not that the latter end of a man’s life, la vie usée et la jeunesse épuisée, are to be tacked on to the beginning of a woman’s fresh and innocent existence; for then influences are reversed, and instead of the amelioration of the masculine, we have the demoralisation of the feminine, nature. He supposes the possibility of circumstances which demand a personal separation, but even then sans permettre un nouveau mariage. In such a case his religion imposes on the innocent victim (whether man or woman) “une chasteté compatible d’ailleurs avec la plus profonde tendresse. Si cette condition lui semble rigoureuse, il doit l’accepter, d’abord, en vue de l’ordre général; puis, comme une juste conséquence de son erreur primitive.”
There would be much to say upon all this, if it were worth while to discuss a theory which it is not possible to reduce to general practice. We cannot imagine the possibility of a second marriage where the first, though perhaps unhappy or early ruptured, has been, not a personal relation only, but an interfusion of our moral being,—of the deepest impulses of life—with those of another; these we cannot have a second time to surrender to a second object;—but this might be left to Nature and her holy instincts to settle. However, he goes on in a strain of eloquence and dignity, quite unusual with him, to this effect:—“Ce n’est que par l’assurance d’une inaltérable perpetuité que les liens intimes peuvent acquérir la consistance et la plénitude indispensable à leur efficacité morale. La plus méprisable des sectes éphémères que suscita l’anarchie moderne (the Mormons, for instance?) me parait être celle qui voulut ériger l’inconstance en condition de bonheur.”.... “Entre deux êtres aussi complexes et aussi divers que l’homme et la femme, ce n’est pas trop de toute la vie pour se bien connaître et s’aimer dignement. Loin de taxer d’illusion la haute idée que deux vrais époux se forment souvent l’un de l’autre, je l’ai presque toujours attribuée à l’appréciation plus profonde que procure seule une pleine intimité, que d’ailleurs développe des qualités inconnues aux indifférents. On doit même regarder comme très-honorable pour notre espèce, cette grande estime que ses membres s’inspirent mutuellement quand ils s’étudient beaucoup. Car la haine et l’indifférence mériteraient seules le reproche d’aveuglement qu’une appréciation superficielle applique à l’amour. Il faut donc juger pleinement conforme à la nature humaine l’institution qui prolonge au-delà du tombeau l’indentification de deux dignes époux.”
He lays down as one of the primal instincts of human kind “l’homme doit nourrir la femme.” This may have been, as he says, a universal instinct; perhaps it ought to be one of our social ordinations; perhaps it may be so at some future time; but we know that it is not a present fact; that the woman must in many cases maintain herself or perish, and she asks nothing more than to be allowed to do so.