SECTION CCL.. Influence of the Profanation of Marriage on Population.

INFLUENCE OF THE PROFANATION OF MARRIAGE ON POPULATION.

D. In the preceding paragraphs, we treated of the wild shoots of the tree of population. But the roots of the tree are still more directly attacked by all those influences which diminish the sacredness of the marriage bond. It is obvious how heartless marriages de convenance,[250-1] inconsiderate divorces and frequent adulteries mutually promote one another. And the period of Roman decline also is the classic period of this evil. I need only cite the political speculation in which Caesar gave his only daughter to the much older Pompey, or the case of Octavia, who when pregnant was compelled to marry the libertine Antonius.[250-2] Instead of the Lucretias and Virginias of older and better times, we now find women of whom it was said: non consulum numero, sed maritorum annos suos computant.[250-3] In the numerous class of young people who live without the prospect of any married happiness of their own, we find a multitude of dangerous persons who ruin the married happiness of others, especially where marriage has been contracted between persons too widely separated by years. Corrumpere et corrumpi sæculum vocatur. (Tacitus).[250-4] It is easy to understand how all this must have diminished the desire of men to marry. Even Metellus Macedonicus (131 before Christ) had declared marriage to be a necessary evil.[250-5] [250-6]

In such ages young girls are kept subject to a convent-like discipline, that their reputation may be protected and that they may be able to get husbands; but once married they are wont to be all the more lawless. In a pure moral atmosphere, precisely the opposite course obtains.[250-7]

And so it has been frequently observed, that among declining nations the social differences between the two sexes are first obliterated and afterwards even the intellectual differences. The more masculine the women become, the more effeminate become the men. It is no good symptom when there are almost as many female writers and female rulers as there are male. Such was the case, for instance, in the Hellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Cæsars.[250-8] What to-day is called by many the emancipation of woman would ultimately end in the dissolution of the family, and, if carried out, render poor service to the majority of women. If man and woman were placed entirely on the same level, and if in the competition between the two sexes nothing but an actual superiority should decide, it is to be feared that woman would soon be relegated to a condition as hard as that in which she is found among all barbarous nations. It is precisely family life and higher civilization that have emancipated woman. Those theorizers who, led astray by the dark side of higher civilization, preach a community of goods, generally contemplate in their simultaneous recommendation of the emancipation of woman a more or less developed form of a community of wives. The grounds of the two institutions are very similar. The use of property and marriage is condemned because there is evidence of so much abuse of both. Men despair of making the advantages that accompany them accessible to all, and hence would refuse them to every one; they would improve the world without asking men to make a sacrifice of their evil desires. The result, also, would be about the same in both cases. (§ 81.) So far would prostitution and illegitimacy be from disappearing that every woman would be a woman of the town and every child a bastard. There would, indeed, be a frightful hinderance under such circumstances to the increase of population. The whole world would be, so to speak, one vast foundling asylum.[250-9]

But there is another sense to the expression emancipation of woman. It should not be ignored that, in fully peopled countries, there is urgent need of a certain reform in the social condition of woman. The less the probability of marriage for a large part of the young women of a country becomes, the more uncertain the refuge which home with its slackened bonds offers them for old age, the more readily should the legal or traditional barriers which exclude women from so many callings to which they are naturally adapted be done away with.[250-10] This is only a continuation of the course of things which has led to the abolition of the old guardianship of the sex. It may be unavoidable not to go much farther sometimes; but such a necessity is a lamentable one.[250-11] The best division of labor is that which makes the woman the glory of her household, only it is unfortunately frequently impossible.

Similar contrast in antiquity between Ionian and Dorian women. Wives were more rigidly excluded from entering gymnasia for males in Sparta than young girls. (Pausan., V, 6, 5; VI, 20, 6; Plato, De Legg., VII, 805; Xenoph., De Rep. Laced., I.) Compare K. O. Müller, Dorier, II, 276 ff.]

In our days, the theory inimical to the family is based rather on misconceived ideas of freedom and science. The Christian mortification of the flesh is, it is said, one-sidedness; and that the flesh no less than the spirit is of God. Hence it is that Saint Simonism would reconcile the two, and "emancipate" the flesh. (Enfantin, Economie politique, 2d ed., 1832.) Fourier, in his Harmonie, allows each woman to have one époux and two children by him; one géniteur and one child by him; one favori and as many amants with no legal rights as she wishes. His "harmonic" world he would protect against over-population by four organic measures: the régime gastrosophique, the object of which is by first-class food to oppose fecundity; la vigeur des femmes, because sickly women have most children; l'exercise intégral, since by the exercise of all the organs of the body the organs of generation are latest developed; lastly the moeurs phanérogames, the minuter description of which Fourier's disciples omitted in the later editions. (N. Monde, 377, ff.) Fourier was of opinion that only one-eighth of the mothers should be occupied with the bringing up of the children, and that a child's own parents were least adapted to bringing it up, as is proved by the natural aversion of the child to mind the advice or obey the injunctions of its own parents. (186 ff.) If all were left free to choose their employment, two-thirds of all men would devote themselves to the sciences, and one-third of all women; the fine arts would be cultivated by one-third of the men and two-thirds of the women. In agriculture, two-thirds of the men and one-third of the women would take to large farming, and to small farming one-third of the men and two-thirds of the women.

The Communistic Journal, L'Humanitaire, is in favor of a community of wives proper, while Cabet leaves the question an open one. Compare, besides, Godwin on Political Justice, 1793, VIII, ch. 8. In beautiful contrast to this are J. G. Fichte's (compare, supra, § 2) views on marriage and the family in the appendix to his Naturrecht, although he, too, would largely facilitate divorce.]