Part 25

It is a queer baby, covered perhaps with reddish hair, its brow no higher than a rat's. Its jaw protrudes; its tiny, grimy hands clutch with monkey power all things within reach.

Along comes the father, full of plans to kill a mammoth or a cave bear; interested in his stone-tipped club, but caring nothing for the mother, who has been for some time only a whining nuisance.

He stops for a second to look at the small creature which he has added to earth's animal life.

Its misshapen skull, ferret eyes, miniature shoulders--something about it reminds him of his royal self, as studied in the pool. He stoops to look closer. His bristly hairs are grabbed, and a weird, insane, toothless grin lights up the little monkey face.

Then the savage takes a new view of life; there the marriage institution and the marriage problem are born simultaneously.

Says the mammoth hunter, with whistling words and hoarse throat sounds half articulated:

"I like this baby. He's like me. Let me hold him. Don't you go out with him looking for food, and don't leave him alone while I'm gone. I've got a bear located. No one can beat me killing bears. I'll bring the bear's heart to you this evening. You can give this baby some of the blood. It will do him good. Don't have anything to say to that mammoth hunter in the next swamp. I want you to stick to me. I'll look after you. I have taken a fancy to that baby. He looks very much like me."

Off goes the father, and that savage mother, in a primitive way, is a wife. Hereafter she is to be cared for. Bears will be killed for her, even while she has children to keep her busy and unattractive. Society takes a new turn and the red-haired baby has done it.

To childhood, helpless and beautiful, we owe marriage and all that growth of morality which is gradually making us really civilized.

The basis of all real growth is altruism; and altruism, the inclination to think more of others than of yourself, came into the world through the cradle.

We owe such civilization as we have acquired to children.

"A softened pressure of an uncouth hand, a human gleam in an almost animal eye, an endearment in an inarticulate voice--feeble things enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope of the human race." ----

The influence of childhood has transformed mere animal attraction into unselfish affection. It has substituted family life for savage life. The interests of childhood demand that marriage and its responsibilities be held sacred.

Duty to future generations demands that divorce be made difficult and considered a misfortune.

Marriage, brought into the world through the influence of children, should be dissolved only with due regard for the interests of children. ----

An unhappy marriage is earth's worst affliction. Quite true. But it is not affliction wasted.

Examples are needed to warn the young against the matrimonial recklessness which underlies most unhappy marriages.

Unhappy wives and husbands are human light-houses--lonely, but useful.

If a gentle little Alderney calf should marry a sleek young zebra and afterward get kicked to death for her pains, we should all sympathize with her. But we should expect other mild-eyed Alderneys after that to beware of zebras.

As a matter of fact, this present divorce talk, which sets the good to fluttering, really interests a very unimportant class.

The man who spends his life spending what he didn't earn, feeding his physical senses, who goes from rum to the races, from the races to the opera, and from the opera to roulette, wears out his nervous sensations.

He then thinks that he is unhappily married. He has possibly driven his wife to being seven kinds of a fool.

But that is not her fault.

A man who marries a woman undertakes to make her happy and keep her busy. If he keeps his contract, she will keep hers.

If he fails, he has no right to experiment on another unfortunate. The divorce class is a self-indulgent, malformed class, not worth notice. ----

Professor Cope, an earnest man and serious thinker, believed that marriages should be contracted on probation--say for five years, with the right on both sides to refuse a renewal.

Theoretically, this would be beautiful. It would make courtship permanent, abolish curl-papered wives in the morning, and tipsy, bragging husbands at night.

But it wouldn't work. It would be all right for women. They are only too willing to be faithful and permanent.