It results from the foregoing that the ideal form of marriage is considered to be the perfectly free union of a man and a woman, who through mutual love desire to promote the happiness of each other and of the race.

But as development does not proceed by leaps no one can hope that the whole of society will attain this ideal otherwise than through transitional forms. These must preserve the property of the old form: that of expressing the opinion of society on the morality of sexual relations—and thus providing a support for the undeveloped—but at the same time must be free enough to promote a continued development of the higher erotic consciousness of the present time. The modern man considers himself supreme in the sense that no divine or human authority higher than the collective power of individuals themselves can make the laws that confine his liberty. But he admits the necessity of a legal limitation of freedom, when this prepares the way for a more perfect future system for the satisfaction of the needs of the individual and a more complete freedom for the use of his powers. Insight into the present erotic needs and powers of individuals must thus be the starting-point of a modern marriage law, but not any abstract theories about the “idea of the family” or juridical considerations of the “historical origin” of marriage.

Since, as already pointed out, society is the organisation which results when human beings set themselves in motion to satisfy their needs and exercise their powers in common, it must also be in a condition of uninterrupted transformation according as new needs arise and new powers are developed. This has now taken place in the erotic sphere, especially since those emotional needs and powers of the soul, which formerly were nourished by and directed towards religion, have been nourished by and directed towards love. Love itself is thus becoming more and more a religion, and one which demands new forms for its practice.

But while the individualist can only be satisfied with the full freedom of love, he is compelled by the sense of solidarity, at least for the present, to demand a new law for marriage, since the majority is not yet ready for perfect freedom.

The sense of solidarity and individualism have equally weighty reasons for condemning the existing institution of marriage. It forces upon human beings, who are seldom ideal, a unity which only an ideal happiness renders them capable of supporting. It fulfils one of its missions—that of protecting the woman—in a way that is now humiliating to her human dignity. It performs its second function—that of protecting the children—in an extremely imperfect fashion. Its third—that of setting up an ideal of the morality of sexual relations—it performs in such a way that this ideal is now a hindrance to the further development of morality.

From a realistic point of view, what is the value of matrimony to a woman? That the present law compels the husband to provide for his wife and for the children born in wedlock, and that at the death of the husband it secures to her the widow’s share in his estate and to the legitimate children their inheritance. But she pays for these economical advantages by resigning the right over her children, her property, her work, her person, which she possessed when unmarried. Even when there is a marriage settlement the husband—as guardian and administrator of his wife’s property—may squander this, as well as the proceeds of her work; he can forbid her exercise of a calling or sell the implements of its exercise. In the eyes of the law, she is placed on a footing with her children who are under age: her husband has to sue and to answer for her, and there are certain functions of a citizen which she cannot perform at all, while others, which she could perform if unmarried, she can fulfil only with her husband’s consent.

As concerns the children, the law leaves those born outside wedlock entirely without rights, except for an insufficient contribution to their bringing-up, if the father does not free himself from this by oath. The law provides very imperfectly for the welfare of the new generation by limiting the right of marriage to certain degrees of affinity, refusing it in the case of certain diseases, and fixing the age for lawful marriage at fifteen to seventeen for the woman and twenty-one years for the man.8

Finally, marriage binds the wife to the husband and him to her, by the fact that neither can obtain a divorce without the other’s consent unless certain acts of ill-treatment or misconduct can be proved. Even when married people agree to a divorce, it entails a painful procedure for both of them and poor guarantees for the children’s welfare. If the man refuses a divorce, the woman—owing to the above-mentioned obligation of proof, frequently impossible—is forced to remain with a man she despises, since only thus can she keep her children and receive support. If the husband is no longer capable of providing this; if, perhaps, he has squandered means belonging to her which would have provided it; nay, if the wife, by her own work, is keeping him, herself, and the children, he still retains the same authority over her and them.

The unmarried woman, on the other hand, who has given her love “freely”—that is, without legal compensation in the form of a right of maintenance—retains full authority over her children, as well as personal liberty, responsibility, and civil rights. In other words, she retains all that gives her a dignified position as a human being in society—but loses the respect of society and economic security. The married woman, on the other hand, loses all that is important to a member of society of full age, but retains the respect of society, her right of inheritance, and her support.

Truly, society has not made it easy for woman to fulfil her “natural mission”! That she nevertheless—under one or other of these two alternatives—still gladly performs it, is strong evidence that it must be the most powerful demand of her nature. If other needs become stronger—as is already the case with some women—then the conditions of either alternative will be unacceptable. And as the new women are still less likely to content themselves with the two other extremes—lifelong asceticism or prostitution—a new marriage has become for them a condition of life.

The marriage law now in force is a geological formation, with stratifications belonging to various phases of culture now concluded. Our own phase alone has left few and unimportant traces in it.

It has been perceived in our time that love ought to be the moral ground of marriage. And love rests upon equality. But the law of marriage dates from a time when the importance of love was not yet recognised. It, therefore, rests upon the inequality between a lord and his dependent.

Our time has given to the unmarried woman the opportunity of making her own living, a legal status, and civil rights. But the marriage law dates from a time when women had none of these things. The married woman, thus, under this law, now occupies a position in sharp contrast to the independence of the unmarried, which has been acquired since that time.

Our time has displaced the ancient division of labour, by which the wife cared for the children and the husband provided maintenance. But the law of marriage dates from a time when this division held full sway and when it was, therefore, almost impossible for a woman to receive protection for herself and her child otherwise than in matrimony. Now society has begun to provide such protection for unmarried mothers, and the renunciation of liberty by which the wife purchases the protection of marriage is seen to be not only more and more unworthy, but also unnecessary.

Our time has recognised more and more the importance of every child as a new member of society and the right of every child to be born under healthy conditions. But the law of marriage was framed at a time when this aspect had not presented itself to the consciousness of mankind; when the illegitimate child was regarded as worthless, however superior in itself, and the legitimate child as valuable, whatever might be its hereditary defects.

Our time has recognised the value to morality of personal choice. It admits as really ethical only such acts as result from personal examination and take place with the approval of the individual conscience.

The marriage system came into being when this sovereignty of the individual was scarcely suspected, much less recognised; when souls were bound by the power of society, and when compulsion was society’s only means of attaining its ends. Marriage was the halter with which the racial instinct was tamed, or, in other words, the instinct of nature was ennobled by being brought into unity with social purpose.

Now love has been developed, the human personality has been developed, and woman’s powers have been liberated.

On account of woman’s present independent activity and self-determination outside marriage, the law must provide that the married woman shall retain her freedom of action by giving her full authority over her person and property.

On account of the individual’s dislike of being forced into religious forms that have no meaning for him, the legal form of marriage must be a civil one.

On account of the individual’s desire of personal choice in actions that are personally important, the continuance of marriage—as well as its inception—must depend upon either of the parties and divorce be thus free; and this all the more, since the new idea of purity implies that compulsion in this direction is a humiliation.

These are the claims the people of the present day make upon the form of marriage, if it is to express their personal will and further the growth of their personality. The actual institution of marriage, on the other hand, involves forms that have become meaningless and therefore repulsive, and places the parties under the law in a position with regard to one another which, looked at ideally, is as far beneath the merits and dignity of the modern man as it actually is beneath those of the modern woman.

While thus the development of the ideas of personality and of love have resulted in these demands of increased liberty for the individual within marriage, the idea of solidarity and evolutionism, on the other hand, demand great limitations of individual freedom. The knowledge that every new being has a right to claim that its life shall be a real value—as well as knowledge of the right of society that the new life shall be a valuable one—has involved the demand of prohibiting marriages which would be dangerous to the children, and of better protecting the children where there is no marriage or where a marriage has been dissolved.

The economic factor has in modern society an importance for marriage which is felt to be more and more degrading as marriage becomes established on the basis of love.

Marriages inwardly dissolved are now often held together because both the parties would be in a worse financial position after divorce. The husband can not or will not make his wife a sufficient allowance; he is, perhaps, unable to realise her fortune, which he has invested in his business, or perhaps he has spent it; the wife at marriage has abandoned an occupation which she cannot now take up again in order to support herself—and so on to infinity.

But even happy marriages suffer through the wife’s subordinate position, economically as well as judicially.

It is, therefore, of great importance both in happy and unhappy marriages that the wife should retain control over her property and her earnings; that she should be self-supporting in so far as she can combine this with her duties as a mother, and that she should be maintained by the community during the first year of each child’s life. Similar proposals have been made from the socialist side, but also in other quarters.

A woman ought to be able to claim this subsidy if she can prove:

That she is of full legal age;

That she has performed her equivalent of military service by undergoing a one year’s training in the care of children and in hygiene, and—if possible—in nursing the sick;

That she will, herself, care for the children or provide other efficient care;

That she is without sufficient personal means or earnings to provide for her own and half of the children’s support, or that she has given up work for the sake of looking after the children.

Those who are unwilling to conform to the above conditions will not apply for the subsidy, which naturally cannot be greater than what is strictly necessary, and which will only in exceptional cases be distributed for longer than a child’s three first and most important years.

Those who renounced the subsidy would thus be as a rule the well-to-do, or those who wished to devote themselves to self-support and thus gave up, either altogether or after the first year, this help from the community. The arrangement would fulfil its purpose in those classes of society where at present the mother’s outdoor work, both in country and town, involves equally great dangers to herself and the children. The charges for this most important of defensive taxes ought, like other similar ones, to be graduated and thus to fall most heavily upon the rich, but upon the unmarried in the same degree as the married.

Inspection should be carried out by commissioners to be appointed in every commune, varying in number according to the size of the commune, but always composed of two-thirds women and one-third men. These would distribute the subsidy and supervise the care not only of young children but also of older ones. The mother who neglected her child would, after three cautions, be deprived of the subsidy and the child would be taken from her. The same would also apply to other parents who subjected their children to bodily or mental ill-treatment.

The mother’s maintenance would always amount to the same sum per annum, but for every child she would receive in addition the half of its maintenance, until the number of children was reached that the community might consider desirable from its point of view. Any children born beyond that number would be the affair of the parents. Every father would have to contribute a corresponding half of the child’s maintenance from its birth up to the age of eighteen. At present the community affords a man help as breadwinner for a family in the form of higher wages calculated to that end and a rising scale according to age, which, however, he receives whether he is married or single, childless or the father of a family. But by paying the subsidy to the mother, all need of unequal wages for the two sexes would cease, and the subsidy would really further the purpose that is of importance to the community: the rearing of the children.

The present system, on the other hand, maintains that most crude injustice, the difference between legitimate and illegitimate children; it frees unmarried fathers from their natural responsibility; it drives unmarried mothers to infanticide, to suicide, to prostitution.

All these conditions would be altered by a law which prescribed that every mother has a right, under certain conditions, to the support of the community during the years in which she is bearing the burden most important to the community; and that every child has a right to maintenance by both its parents, to the name of both and—so far as there may be property—to the inheritance of both.

Since the mother must now, with increasing frequency, be a breadwinner as well as the husband, it is just, even from this point of view, that she should share with him authority over the children. But since, furthermore, she has suffered more for them, thus loves them more and understands them better—and thus, as a rule, not only does more for them but also means more to them—it is likewise just that, whereas the mother now has to be satisfied with what power the father allows her, the conditions should be reversed, so that the mother should receive the greatest legal authority.

When the husband is not alone in bearing the burden of breadwinner, there will be a possibility of his duty as educator being realised. He will then have time to develop his qualities in this direction and the growing value of his fatherly care and fatherly love will lighten for the mother the task of education which at present often overwhelms her, since with a growing consciousness of its responsibility this task is becoming more and more difficult to perform with her increasing need of personal freedom of movement.

The mother and child would, therefore, not have to look exclusively to the father for the necessaries of life, and they could not become entirely destitute through his incapacity or downfall. But he would, nevertheless, continue to bear his half of the responsibility and the family would still be dependent on the father and his voluntary contributions for a great part of the pleasures of life, while he would, moreover, be freed from the often unbearable burdens under which his spiritual worth as a father and his family joys now suffer to so great a degree. Far from its being the case—as one has heard certain women declare—that the majority of men are nothing but egoists, countless numbers of them have borne and still bear burdens of slavery, not only for wife and children but also for the support of other female relations. On the other hand, the prevailing system of society has prompted fathers still more to enslave themselves in order to create an advantageous position for their children. The existing rights and duties of a father stand in immediate connection with the right of inheritance, one of the greatest dangers of our system of society. For inheritance often keeps inefficiency in a leading position, but efficiency in a dependent one; it favours the possibility of the degenerate propagating the race, above all if the parents have died early, although—as it has been asserted—it is precisely such children that are the least apt to have offspring. It is unfavourable to the chances of the efficient in this as in every other direction, where birth in poor circumstances involves hindrances to education and the use of personal powers which wealth permits. On the other hand, poverty favours natural talent, in so far as it braces the capabilities, while it is often one of the misfortunes of heirs not to experience this inciting and pleasurable tension. It is only the strongest or the finest natures that become stronger and finer through the advantages and the sense of responsibility that inherited wealth brings with it. In the main, the productive sources of society would be multiplied upwards as well as downwards, if wealth became personal in the fullest sense of the word, depending on each person’s contribution of efficient force, but the goad of acquisitiveness would be broken, through the limited possibility of increasing one’s wealth and the needlessness of thereby securing the existence of one’s children. A new system would do away with the necessity of applying to the state for increase of salary for the education of children as befits their class. For if all children were placed in an equal position by the community providing everything—from school materials to travelling scholarships—for the complete education of the bodily and mental powers of individuals, an education in which a true circulation of the classes would take place by consideration being given only to ability; if each thus had the same position when all entered upon their different careers; if each had the same chances of there attaining to the right use of his special powers, since he had had every means of training them; if society gave—as a right, not as a charity—to every worker full care during sickness and full support in old age, then the desire to favour one’s own children at the cost of the rest would disappear. The father whose activity had procured him a position of power, which during his lifetime made his children’s circumstances more favourable than those of a number of others, would certainly thus be able—and to the advantage of the whole community—to allow his children to enjoy that differentiation and refinement which, for instance, the richer culture of their home might give. But when the right of inheritance disappeared—or at least was greatly limited and heavily taxed—he could not exempt them from permanently securing by the exercise of their own powers the advantages of a higher or lower kind that they had learned to value at home.

When the difference between legitimate and illegitimate children is abolished in every respect, the paternal home, as in classical and Scandinavian antiquity, may include more often than at present the children of more than one living mother; sometimes even a mother’s home may include children of more than one living father. In either case this would be a recognition of the children’s rights which would leave present day customs with respect to children born out of wedlock a long way behind.

No relation shows better than marriage how morals and emotions may be centuries in advance of the laws within whose limits they have been developed.

Many men now show their wives a delicacy of feeling and allow them a freedom of action which render these fortunate wives unconscious of the fact that—in the eyes of the law—they possess these only by the grace of their husbands. It is not until relations become unhappy that the wife discovers that all the legal power is placed in the hands of one, who thus has judicial support if he wishes to use his power alone, to the exclusion of his wife, or if he wishes to misuse it, to the detriment of her and the children.

That, in spite of these circumstances, married men so often voluntarily place themselves in a position of equality with their wives in regard to authority in the home and with the children is the best proof of the power of the feelings to protect essential values. And that men, in spite of these marriage laws, have become more and more considerate, redounds as much to their credit as their success in becoming human beings—in spite of all hindrances—redounds to that of royal personages. Just as the latter have more excuse than others when they abuse their position, so the same is true of the husband, who must be a very fair-minded person if an I will is not to be the conclusion of a difference of opinion between himself and his wife; for not even the tenderest love will hinder the sense of mastery from flaring up in the face of her obstinate resistance in one direction or another.

To the majority of men, however—and this is the more the case the lower they are in other respects—the present marriage law still forms the great hindrance in the way of their development to a higher humanity. To have wife and child in his power makes of the wicked man a torturer, of the low-minded a wretch. There is no exaggeration in Stuart Mill’s words, that so long as the family is based upon laws which are at variance with the first principles of social life in other things, the law will be favouring what education and civilisation are counteracting in other spheres, namely, the right of force instead of that of personality. Everywhere—in morals as in politics—it is now held that not what a man becomes through being born in a certain sex or class, but what he is personally worth determines the respect he should enjoy; that only his conduct and merits can be the source of his power and authority. But marriage reverses the whole of this principle of modern constitutional law and, therefore, the social application of the principle of personality has not yet gone beyond the surface.

That the law continues to sanction what reality has begun to transform is, as we have said, of comparatively little weight, since the law is—in the better sense of the words—a dead letter. But the immediate danger to the individual and the indirect danger to society become greater in proportion as the possessor of uncontrolled power is worse, or the life less ideal in which this authority is decisive. And even when circumstances are favourable, the authority of the husband is the more painful to the modern woman in proportion as she is more conscious of being able to attain only through perfect equality a satisfactory co-operation with her husband in every direction. It is this profound vexation of the modern woman with her dependence which, amongst other things, makes many women, even when they do not need it, wish to remain at least self-supporting after marriage.

The labour market has hitherto favoured this desire of theirs. It can, however, only be a question of time when the unmarried women will begin to thrust out the married ones—owing to the conditions of competition being more favourable to the former—when legislation has begun to deal with the present disproportionate state of things, where the wives lower the wages of the husbands, the children those of the parents, and the result is the neglect of the homes and the physical and moral degeneration of the children.

But when married women’s labour has been limited by legal “protection for mothers”—especially if this takes the form proposed above—and when, further, the married and the unmarried are protected by the fixing of a minimum wage, an eight hours’ day, and prohibition of working at night and in certain industries dangerous to health, then the mothers will still be able—when their children have passed the age of infancy—to take part in several occupations. This will be still more the case if a collective system of dwellings sets them free from the work of the kitchen and renders possible a good collective superintendence of the children while their mothers are absent.

But the best thing for the children—especially if by the prohibition of home work they were rescued from earning a livelihood to the advantage of their school and home life—would be the liberation of married women from outside labour through the higher wages of their husbands, while in return their home work would acquire the character of spiritual care. This would be brought about in the fullest sense by the mothers being allowed the above-mentioned subsidy from the community for bringing up the children. In such an arrangement, approved by the community, the majority might find that agreement between their occupation and their powers which constitutes the true joy of work. For it can scarcely be doubted that even now the wife, as a rule, finds more employment in her home work, however heavy, for her special talents, and thus finds a greater satisfaction than the husband, who often slaves, not at the work he has chosen, but at that he has been able to obtain.

But what, in spite of this, now makes women more and more unwilling to undertake the duties of the home and to prefer outside work, is that they carry out their domestic work under conditions derogatory to themselves.

First and foremost, women are determined to enjoy the facilities in their domestic work which here and there are already beginning to be provided. These, however, will probably not become general until women make more use of their capacity for thinking out the most convenient and agreeable methods, both for labour-saving co-operation and for the performance of domestic duties, which will in any case always remain; and this again necessitates their educating themselves to a real knowledge of the questions of consumption and other details of modern household management. This will be the more necessary as the servant problem within a short time will have reached that point at which women of all classes will have to choose between doing the work themselves and the complete dissolution of the home. Woman’s domestic work and the care of children will be facilitated for all women only in so far as the educated agree in making new and higher demands in the matter of domestic arrangements as well as in practical and ornamental appliances. They would thus not only further their own work, but also evoke a higher culture as regards beauty and appropriateness, both in architecture and industry.

But this is not enough to enable domestic work to regain its dignity.

This will not take place until society shows such appreciation of woman’s domestic work as shall remove her present sense of being kept by her husband to perform a subordinate work, a work which does not receive the appreciation which at the present time has become the absolute standard of the economical value of labour, that of a money wage.

The existing institution of marriage came into being when woman had no real field of employment outside the home, since its income was for the most part received in kind, and the wife was thus indispensable for turning it to account. Her domestic activity was of great value from the point of view of national economy, and under these circumstances the joint estate was natural. Furthermore, the mistress of the house possessed at this time—as manager of the consumption of the commodities she had prepared from raw materials—a freedom of action and an authority which she now quite naturally lacks in her own eyes and those of her husband. It is of no avail that she has a legal right to be supported by her husband according to his position and circumstances; for if her task frequently consists simply in asking her husband for money and keeping an account of its expenditure through the cook and the needlewoman, she has reason to feel herself kept in a humiliating way. Neither indirectly nor directly is it through her work that the food comes to the table or the clothes are fitted to the body, since the husband alone earns the means wherewith she—efficiently or otherwise—keeps house.

For this reason wives are becoming increasingly desirous of personally earning a livelihood. They see how their husbands are developed through devotion to a profession, through the patience, the accumulation, and tension of forces which this demands. And only professional training, in the opinion of modern woman, can give her the same energy, only a direct income can give her the same certainty of her fitness for work.

But there is another expedient which would afford these advantages without, however, driving women away from home, namely, that their special training for, and their work in, the field of housekeeping and the care of children should be as serious as in any other occupation. Not until she has a sense of the new value of her domestic work will the wife be able to demand that it shall be economically estimated like any other efficient work.

When wives speak of the humiliation of being kept by their husbands—since they have more and more frequently been self-supporting before marriage—their husbands always become profoundly idealistic. They use fine words about the wife’s important mission, the adapting power of love, until one asks some particular man: whether any love could make it pleasant for him, instead of drawing his own income, to be obliged to ask his wife for what she considered necessary for their joint expenditure or for his own. In spite of the consciousness of having herself brought wealth, or in spite of the knowledge of constantly making important contributions of work in the home, the necessity of asking for money is the wife’s unbearable torment. For the husband in his heart has often the same feeling as she; that work nowadays means earning money outside, since the management of an income—in spite of its immense importance to the strength, health, and comfort of the workers and thus indirectly to the whole national economy—is more and more overlooked. In part this idea of the husband is due to the very fact that women have not acquired the new kind of domesticity which is necessary for the efficient conduct of expenditure, and that the husband is, therefore, often right in thinking that his wife neither works nor saves, but only wastes.

However touchingly idealistic a girl may be in this question before marriage; however confidingly she allows her husband to handle her fortune, after a few years of married life experience will turn her into a complete realist. However happy she has otherwise been, she will, nevertheless, remember more than one occasion when she has bitterly regretted the absence of the freedom of action a separate income gives; when, for instance, her husband has refused to allow her to use—for some ideal purpose or other—the means which in many cases she herself brought him, and how perhaps this for the first time really made a division between them.

The dependence of woman can only be abolished through the economic appreciation of her domestic work. This appreciation is an easy matter when she has left a salaried employment for her domestic duties, for the performance of the latter must be regarded as worth at least as much as her occupation formerly brought her. Where there is no such measure of value, she ought to receive the same amount as a stranger in corresponding circumstances would receive in salary and cost of keep.

The wife would thus be able to meet her personal expenditure, her share in the joint housekeeping and in the maintenance of the children, when the subsidy for this purpose came to an end but the couple were agreed that the wife’s work at home was of such value that she ought rather to continue it than to try to earn money outside.

The carrying out of this arrangement need not cause any dislocation of existing conditions. The wife would continue to manage the domestic funds to which each would contribute according to agreement, but she would probably be better able to solve the problem of making them suffice for their joint expenses. She would be perfectly free to forego her allowance, as her husband would be to increase it according to need and ability. The direct economical appreciation of her domestic work would transform her own and her husband’s respect for it and thus give wives, on the one hand, a sense of independence which even the conscientious are now without, on the other, a sense of duty which in the case of the less conscientious is doubtless in need of strengthening; for the existing arrangement favours not only domestic tyranny on the part of the husbands, but also inefficiency on the part of certain wives. But the fact that a small number of women of the upper class now do no work at all in the home, or that a number of others do it badly, must not obscure the truth that innumerable women are constantly expending in their homes great sums of working power, without being able legally to claim any corresponding income of their own. This applies not only to the wives but also to the daughters of the house, who often work from morning till night, but are nevertheless obliged to accept as gifts from their parents all that they personally need, and thus also have to do without anything that their parents consider unnecessary. The same is true of the wife in relation to her husband. When unmarried—whether she was in private or public service, a factory hand or a clerk—she had the chance of in some measure providing for her own interests. When married, every present she gives, every contribution she makes for a public purpose, every book she buys, every amusement she allows herself, has to be taken from her husband’s money. The wife who, in a farmer’s home perhaps, saves thousands—both by economy and by the direct contribution of her labour—frequently has not a silver piece at her disposal.

This dependence, as we have said, now drives wives and daughters from their homes to earn a livelihood, which often does not by any means compensate economically for the loss of their work at home. But they simply cannot endure to be without the personal income, which to them has become a more and more important value, according as their general freedom of movement and their needs in other directions have increased—above all, through increase of education and social interests.

Woman’s present unpaid position in domestic work is an obsolete survival from earlier conditions of housekeeping and production, as from the ecclesiastical doctrine that woman was created to be man’s helpmate and he to be her head. Women have thus often received worse heads than nature gave them—and thereby man has had less valuable help than life intended for him.

Not until an incorruptible realism establishes the principle within the family as elsewhere, that each retains his own head and that every labourer is worthy of his hire, will idealism find there a full field for unforced generosity in the free will of mutual help.

While what is said above applies to all women who wish to work at home, it need not apply to those who are able through the fortune they brought with them to meet their household expenses and those of the children and who wish in return to be free from the trouble of domestic work.

Every attempt at mediation in the question of married women’s property—such as an obligatory marriage settlement and similar proposals—only introduces endless complications. It will be simple and clear only when—as in Russia even from the time of Catherine II—the woman simply retains her fortune. The law ought to express the great principle, that either party owns what is his or hers, while those, on the other hand, who desire to introduce another arrangement, must decide by contract how much of the property is to be held jointly.

Only a separation of property carried out as a principle will be able to form the new and clear ideas of justice that the present time demands. A separate estate places two individuals side by side, co-operating with the freedom that is enjoyed by a brother and sister or two friends. Both parties retain full right of decision and full responsibility. Either leaves transactions to the other only in that degree that the other’s qualities have won his confidence. Both show each other mutual consideration in the planning of joint undertakings and neither can be drawn into such without a personal examination. The rights of a third party are, in these circumstances, equally well protected as when brothers and sisters or friends work or live together. For the mutual transactions of married people must to this end have the same publicity as all other similar transactions between business partners.

Not only as regards her property, but also in her full civil rights and the disposition of her person, the married woman must be placed on an equal footing with the unmarried. It is true that the law is not so favourable as many people believe to “conjugal rights.” But this belief has survived for centuries and in turn influences morals; moreover, it is not without a certain legal support, in case such a question is brought into court. As a rule, of course, this does not happen, but, on the other hand, the idea of legality—which is further encouraged by the Bible—influences the husband’s sense of right and the wife’s sense of duty. So long as the law maintains even a shadow of “rights” in that relation which ought to be the most voluntary of all, it involves a gross violation of love’s freedom.

This—like all other obsolete laws—is meaningless to the erotically refined, who live above the law’s standpoint. But the lower the level, the more certainly does the husband enforce his “right” under circumstances the most repulsive or most dangerous to the wife, just as—contrary to his present right—he extorts from her the earnings of her labour.

No law will be able to hinder the wife from continuing voluntarily to allow her husband to violate her person, squander her property, or ruin her children; for the law cannot seal up the sources of weakness and conflict which arise from the human being’s own nature.

But what we have a right to demand of the marriage law is that it shall cease itself to extend these sources.

The law must be so contrived that it leaves to happiness the greatest possible freedom for its own formative power, while, on the other hand, it limits as far as possible the consequences of unhappiness; and this can be brought about only by each party’s complete independence of the other.

It is, therefore, not sufficient that the husband’s guardianship and the wife’s legal incapacity should cease. Every provision also which has for its object to bind the wife by her husband’s condition and circumstances must be revoked.

The majority of men now cherish the belief that a wife who leaves her husband’s house can be brought back with the aid of the law. This is, doubtless, a mistake. But even if the letter of the law in this case also is better than the popular idea of it, the whole spirit of the law, nevertheless, entails the obligation of married people to live together.

The more personality is developed, however, the more uncertain it becomes that every person’s erotic needs are answered by this arrangement. There are, on the contrary, such natures as would have loved for life, if they had not, day after day, year after year, been forced to adapt their wills, their habits, and their opinions to one another. Nay, many misfortunes depend upon pure trifles, which two people with courage and foresight might easily have dealt with, if the instinct of happiness had not been silenced by consideration for convention. The more a woman has enjoyed personal liberty before marriage, the less she can endure not to have a moment or a corner in her home which she can call her own. And the more the people of the present day enlarge their individual freedom of movement, their need of solitude in other respects, the more will both man and woman enlarge them in marriage.

But even if those desiring solitude remain in the minority, they must still be granted both by the law and by public opinion full liberty to shape their married life according to their own requirements.

Conventionality and mental inertness pronounce this unheard-of, even immoral. On the other hand, it is regarded as equally natural and moral that the majority of sailors and commercial travellers should live for the greater part of the year apart from their wives; that journeys for scientific or artistic purposes should separate married people for years, or that—in exceptional cases—one of them, for instance, should spend the winters as a gymnast in England while the other is a teacher in Sweden.

All these things, it is thought, are nothing but external necessities. And to these one always submits! Ought we not, nevertheless, to find room for the thought that there may also be necessities of the soul?

Our time, for instance, tends more and more to bring together artists who work at different, or, still more often, at the same art. The nerves of both are worn in the same way; both need the same freedom of movement and the same undisturbed quiet. But in the claims of everyday life for mutual sympathy and mutual consideration, nearly all their spiritual energy is used up. They see that, if they are not to consume one another’s mental resources, they must adopt a system of spiritual separation, which is possible only at a certain distance. The holiday happiness of these natures may be rapturous, the sympathetic union of their souls richer than any others. But each feels for the other what is expressed by one of Shakespeare’s joyous young women, when she calls a suitor “too costly for every day’s wear.” Each is tempted at times to exclaim, like another young woman in a modern book: “I want to be able to say, let me now for three weeks be altogether free from loving you”—since each knows that this freedom would only renew the feeling. But now married people are bound by custom to a common life, which often ends in their separating for ever, simply because conventional considerations prevented their living apart.

Natures of other types may also feel the constraint of narrow dependence, enforced association, the daily accommodations and constant considerations. More people ought, therefore, quietly to begin reforming matrimonial customs, so that they may more nearly correspond to the need of renewal just alluded to. Let each, for instance, travel separately, if he or she feels the desire of solitude; let one visit by himself the entertainment the other does not care for, but formerly either forced herself to, or kept the other from visiting. More and more married people have separate bedrooms. And in another generation perhaps separate dwellings will have ceased to attract attention.

Companionship on week-days as on holidays, co-operation in the satisfaction of everyday claims as well as of life’s highest purposes, will, nevertheless, continue to be the form of married life chosen by the majority, even when public opinion has left room for other systems of living. But full freedom for the latter will not be won till the law ceases to place any limit to the self-determination of each partner in marriage.

Another matter that ought to be left to personal decision is the degree of publicity that is to be given to a matrimonial union. An otherwise conservative father of a family once put forward the weighty reasons which might be in favour of keeping secret a marriage that was, nevertheless, intended to be fully legal. Amongst the reasons which now frequently cause the postponement of a marriage are, for instance, the necessity of completing studies, or reluctance to hasten, through sorrow, the death of parents or others. The possibility of not having to publish the union in these or similar cases would spare the lovers unnecessary waiting without in any way encroaching on the rights of others.

Further, to personal determination belong not only free divorce but also new forms of divorce. As divorce itself has been treated in the last chapter, we will speak here only of the method of it. The wife’s infidelity, as well as the husband’s right to refuse divorce, at present frequently affords an opportunity for blackmail on the part of the husband from his wife, who, in the latter case, has to buy her freedom, and in both cases often has to buy permission to keep her children. The husband, too, may be exposed to blackmailing by a wife who refuses divorce or who can prove his infidelity and tries to take from him the children, whom he knows to be exposed to corruption in her hands. But, since society and nature favour the man’s infidelity, while both are against that of the woman, it is in the nature of the case that the wife often has difficulty in proving the husband’s infidelity, while he can prove hers easily. His repeated acts of unfaithfulness have, perhaps, been the cause of her single one. But it is, nevertheless, he—since there is no valid evidence against him—who has the children assigned to him, or, it may be, sells them to his wife.

The same applies to divorce on account of “hatred and ill-will.” Before a court which cannot test the reasons that have most spiritual weight, but only the evidence that has most to say, all the details of married life have to be dragged forth, all its wounds inspected. The evidence which, as a rule, is decisive is that of servants! The profoundest spiritual concerns of educated people are thus made to depend upon the opinion of uneducated persons on all the complicated circumstances of an unhappy marriage. And not only this: the result in most cases is determined by the indelicacy with which the husband and wife have drawn their servants and their acquaintances into the conflict. If husband or wife has summoned the servants to witness violent behaviour, then that party is in a much better position in an action for divorce than the one who has sought to the utmost to preserve the dignity of their marriage. There are, moreover, some sufferings of which no proof can be produced. Such, for instance, is misuse of “conjugal rights”; another is the power of either party, under forms of outward politeness, to make life entirely worthless to the other; a third, the constant opposition of two conflicting views of life.

It is only in the case of the grossest and most palpable evils that it is now possible to furnish the necessary evidence without such difficulties as—both in the granting of divorce and in the disposal of the children—may give rise to the grossest injustice. And all this is only a part of the humiliations and sufferings which now—especially for the wife—attend a divorce. Finally, an action for divorce is sufficiently expensive to render it on this account alone a matter of great difficulty for many people in poor circumstances to obtain justice.

Such a system of divorce—which makes either partner dependent on the worst qualities of the other; which calls forth all that is indelicate in the nature of both; which drags their weaknesses and sufferings before the eyes of strangers, and which, nevertheless, provides no real protection for the children—such a system ought to give no thoughtful person peace until its degrading and deteriorating influence is abolished and a new system, which shall protect both personal dignity and the children, introduced.

In looking back upon the preceding, it would seem to result clearly that nothing that has been said here contemplates the establishment of a single form—recognised as the only moral one—for sexual life. But since only the fixity possessed by the law is capable of transforming in a profound and permanent manner the feelings and customs of the majority, there is need, for the present, of a new law to support the growth of the higher feelings which will finally render any marriage law unnecessary.

In connection with the course of development of sexual morality it was pointed out that the ecclesiastical and legal establishment of the ideal of monogamy as the only form of sexual morality has had for its result the unconditional acquiescence in the idea that the claims of evolution are in complete agreement with existing laws and customs; with the further result that we are now—through the want of a recognised right to manifold experience—almost in the same position of ignorance as to the form of sexual morality most favourable to the development of the race, as we were a thousand years ago, and that, therefore, the vital needs of the race as well as the individual’s demands of happiness speak for a more extended right to such experiences.

No one knows whether, at the end of the new paths, we shall not again be confronted by the riddle of the sphinx: how the parents are to avoid being sacrificed for the children or the children for the parents. The one thing certain is that on the path we have hitherto followed we have arrived at the sphinx. And all those who have been torn to pieces at its feet are witnesses that on this path mankind did not arrive at the solution of the riddle.

The point of view which has here, throughout, been the leading one is, that in the same degree as life itself becomes the meaning of life human beings will also in all their sensations and all their undertakings become more and more conscious of regard for the race. It is thus only a question of time when the respect of society for a sexual union shall not depend upon the form of cohabitation that makes a couple of human beings become parents, but only upon the value of the children they thus create as new links in the chain of generations. Men and women will then dedicate to their mental and bodily fitness for the mission of the race the same religious earnestness that Christians devote to the salvation of their souls. Instead of divine codes of the morality of sexual relations, the desire of, and responsibility for, the enhancement of the race will be the support of morals. But the knowledge of the parents that the meaning of life is also in their own lives, that they thus do not exist solely for the sake of their children, may liberate them from other duties of conscience which at present bind them in respect of the children, above all that of keeping up a union in which they themselves perish. The home may then more than at present be synonymous with the mother, which—far from excluding the father—contains the germ of a new and higher “right of the family.”

When every life is regarded as an end in itself from the point of view that it can never be lived again; that it must, therefore, be lived as completely and greatly as possible; when every personality is valued as an asset in life that has never existed before and will never occur again, then also the erotic happiness or unhappiness of a human being will be treated as of greater importance, and not to himself alone. No, it will be so also to the whole community—through the life and the work his happiness may give the race or his unhappiness deprive it of.

For himself, as well as for others, the individual will then examine the right of renouncing happiness as conscientiously as he now submits to the duty of bearing unhappiness. The importance to children of their parents’ life together will depend upon the kind of life it is, when it has been seen that when all is said the new generation has most to gain by love being always and everywhere set up as the condition of the highest worth of cohabitation.

This is the rich promise that the new path offers; but the majority cannot see the promise on account of the possible new dangers. It is this dread that still paralyses the courage to dare the untried, in order to win the valuable.

It is astonishing that those who tremble for the future never seek consolation in the past. They would there find, for example, that when the family ceased to be the match-maker, when the guardian could no longer keep a woman in a position of legal incapacity and prevent her marrying—then there were prophecies of exactly the same “dissolution of society and of the family” as are now dreaded in freer forms of matrimony. But the same people who now laugh at the former forebodings are convinced that the latter will be realised; for man believes in nothing so reluctantly as in his own nature’s power of replacing outward bonds with inner ones. And yet, long before the new forms are ready, there is an abundance of the new feelings which are to fill them. Nothing is more certain than that, if feelings were no better than laws, we should never have new laws (Mill). But human beings will never believe in the possibilities of development of their own feelings until they leave off seeking their strength from above. They will never have faith in themselves as pathfinders until they no longer believe themselves “guided.” As soon as a change has taken place, it is regarded “historically,” as a given consequence of “rational” causes and “divine” guidance. But to look historically at the future; to trust in regard to what has not yet happened to the given consequences—for good and evil—of the same constantly operating causes, this does not occur to the guardians of society. Their belief in God’s guidance is always—retrospective.

The believers in Life, on the other hand, know that vital needs were the productive soil of the feelings that gave the pith to those laws, whereof now only the straw remains. But the earth has not exhausted its powers of fertility, any more than the feelings have lost their creative force. The believers in Life, therefore, attach small importance to the old straw, but consider the increasing of the earth’s productiveness of supreme significance.

A great and healthy will to live is what our time needs in the matter of the erotic emotions and claims. It is here that there is a menace of real dangers from the woman’s side; and it is, amongst other things, to avert these dangers that new forms of marriage must be created.

A human material increasing in value and in capacity for development—this is what the earth will produce. The chances of obtaining this may be decreased under fixed, but favoured under freer, forms of sexual life. It is not only because the present day demands more freedom that these claims are full of promise. They are so because the claims are coming nearer and nearer to the kernel of the question—the certainty that love is the most perfect condition for the life-enhancement of the race and of the individual—and because the present time acknowledges the necessity of temporarily limiting freedom, though only by means of laws which will form an education in love.

Such a law must, for the sake of woman’s liberty, deprive man of certain of his present rights; for the sake of the children, limit the present liberty both of man and woman. But these limitations will all be to the final profit of love.

Those who believe in the perfectibility of mankind for and through love must, however, learn to reckon not in hundreds of years, and still less in tens, but in thousands.