Part 2

For instance, a man with a calm temperament, but not a cold heart, will be the best of friends for an impulsive woman, and render her the greatest services that life can give.

Let us look at this loving friendship, so much discussed, so often described and cried down.

I said that friendship between man and woman was a form of disinterested love; it is a love based on mental sympathy, on respect for moral qualities, on admiration for certain actions or certain thoughts expressive of a character. In this kind of friendship, affection, which springs from the heart, governs love, which springs from the senses.

This form of friendship is not to be despised, dangerous though it may seem in the eyes of severe moralists or of hypocrites. Take such a case. If either of the friends needs advice on some matter he or she has deeply at heart, such advice will not be well considered, unbiased, and to the point, unless free from all jealousy--coming from the heart and not from the nerves.

Then, and then only, can this friendship be a precious resource, a deep, protective affection claiming not possession as its reward.

DIVORCE

Marriage, considered by society as a necessary mode of union, is a contract governed by law.

In the eyes of Roman Catholics, marriage being a sacrament, which renders it indissoluble, divorce does not exist. According to this principle we must accept as a sacrament an earthly tie which touches more nearly on material than on spiritual questions. But it seems strange that the Church of Rome should teach men, by the voice of her servants, that human perfection consists in the acceptance of _all the sacraments_, and then forbid marriage--which would be, from a practical point of view, the most useful to them--to her representatives. In so doing, the Church creates an illogical exception to her imperious rule.

“From the psychological point of view,” says Dr. Toulouse, “marriage is the union, first through passion, then through sympathy, of two beings; from the social point of view, it represents a mutual effort towards reproduction.

“The union of feeling between two beings has not been too highly exalted by the poets. It manifests in the highest degree that selection which purifies the instinct of sex.

“This selection is in itself a proof of the free will which works--with restraining effect--on the tyranny of passion. Again, the woman, in giving herself to one only, demonstrates in the most striking manner that she belongs to, and can dispose of, herself.

“Sex freedom, then, which is a condition of evolution, is manifested most clearly in a marriage entered upon willingly by both parties. But the corollary to this is, that divorce should also be possible simply at the wish of both.”

Let us study divorce from the point of view of its utility. Divorce offers an advantage in preventing marriage from being regarded as an endless chain, a crushing yoke, or a prison deliberately chosen as a livelihood. It means, in fact, that people need not be tightly bound together who cannot bear so to live; it would put an end to what is sometimes extreme mental suffering, abolish dangers which sometimes lead to murder; in a word, it means escape from “the sentimental and emotional results of the indissolubility of marriage.”

The termination of miserable “marriages of convenience” would ensure for many a new life, the production of healthier children under normal conditions; from the social point of view, it would increase the value of the man and the woman.

How many live together for long years who are strangers to each other in body and soul! How many slaves of marriage there are, whose union is unnatural, childless, and made hideous by mutual hatred!

Why should one see, in the name of a religious principle, these infernos--whose tortures are as varied as they are crushing--perpetuated? Why should not reason, individual rights, be allowed to correct ill-chance, false calculations, and disappointed hopes?

Why should a woman, who no longer finds in her husband the moral support she needs, submit to the horrors of a long agony without defence, of perpetual strife in which she is miserably vanquished; on the other hand, why should the man who does not find in his wife the companion--or even the slave--he desired, see the way to happiness closed to him for ever?

Marriage is based on a contract. Every contract can be rectified, modified, or broken. In a compact, there must be mutual agreement; from the moment when the agreement ceases to be respected by either of the parties, it is naturally dissolved.

Before the establishment of divorce the husband and wife who lived on bad terms had to endure suffering worse than death, for nothing, I repeat, is to be compared with the torment of being tied, body and soul, in hatred, contempt, or even merely in indifference.

In former days, the independent-minded, those who feared not public opinion, or thought little of social conventions, went each their way, to live in a different dwelling--as happens still in certain countries (in Spain, for instance, where divorce does not exist; where legal separation is not even recognised); but though they might live apart, the marriage contract held none the less, and the question of fortune remained a grave problem for solution. It is the same to-day when, through worldly expediency, or weakness, an ill-assorted couple share a miserable life or seek solace in separation. The woman, married under the Napoleonic Code, cannot dispose of her dowry, and the man, on his side, cannot sell without his wife’s signature. The _société d’acquêts_ (common property of married people) is a constant menace in a situation of this kind; one comes to think that it is of no use for a couple to economise for the sake of their heirs, for, when one of the two parties dies, the common property goes to the other. Another case, also serious, may occur. If either husband or wife incurs debts, these, under the law, become common to both, and it comes about that the one who has not run into debt finds him or herself compelled to meet the liabilities of the other!

What manifold complications, what openings for dissension, what accumulated vexations! Widowhood, widowerhood, seems the only deliverance from a desperate situation.

But there is something worse still. In a household completely at variance, weary with strife, the children have to look on at scenes which wound their belief in the love between husband and wife. In such a case they suffer through the absence of divorce, both from the moral standpoint and because they are deprived of property which should fall to them, since through the _société d’acquêts_--that stern claimant--the children’s capital cannot be increased.

If we pass from this array of facts to another, which concerns this unnatural life of two people, the evil is no less great.

From the time when life together has become impossible, the husband more or less openly substitutes illicit union for marriage, and most frequently takes to live with him the woman he has chosen as his new companion. Because the marriage contract remains unbroken, this is an insult to the wife, for his house is still her home by law.

Although in a case of separation, the wife almost always acts with greater circumspection and caution, she will find it difficult to prevent the echo of any attention she may accept from reaching the ears of her husband, or his knowledge that she gives willingly to another what she has yielded with such aversion to himself.

Divorce prevents this gratuitous insult to marriage. The advantages it offers exceed by far the disadvantages cited by the defenders of an institution which to-day has grown weak because it has remained unchanged in the midst of social evolution.

The enemies of divorce assert that it is the destroyer of the family. That is not so, for there are no more families to destroy. Frankly, honestly, where is the family of old, since the law of the majority has freed the child, since compulsory education has lessened the moral authority of parents, without perceptibly improving the mass of the people; since in the vast field of higher education boys and girls, through school life, become strangers to the authors of their being and are mainly indebted to the State for their training?

If hypocrisy were not at the bottom of the whole matter, it would be quickly seen that nothing remains of the family as a sacred institution.

Authority on the one side, submission on the other, are the exception; the sacrifices, too, which parents made in the past, to the point of forgetting their own well-being, have to-day no longer any reason for existing.

Yes, divorce is useful, necessary, moral. But it may, it should, become more so, and undergo modification. Divorce by mutual consent must become the remedy for evils which dishonour the human soul; victims of unhappy marriages should be able to dissolve their union without the most intimate details of two lives--poisoned by misunderstanding, incompatibility of temper, excess, cruelty, and insult--being made a prey to public curiosity, the malice of barristers, and the opinions of judges. Those liberated from their matrimonial prison, and ripened by experience, must be allowed to marry the beloved one who has loved, consoled, and helped them through the battle of their days.

Nine times out of ten, these new marriages would be happy, because the husband and wife would have had time to appreciate each other’s qualities, because they would have obeyed the law of love, escaped convention and not been guided, generally speaking, by interest, that chief and pernicious element in conflict between the sexes.

Divorce, as at present established, does not afford enough solutions for the melancholy problems resulting from marriage. It is inadmissible, inhuman, even immoral, that one who has suffered patiently twenty years “for the children’s sake” should be condemned, because he or she has left the torture-chamber, to pass the remainder of life without the right to create a new home and consecrate by marriage the affection and devotion which have healed the old wounds, given back joy in living, and created for him or her obligations at once moral and social.

The day when divorce shall become a law of justice, and no longer--as it sometimes is now--a tacit agreement covering wrongdoing; the day when divorce shall exist by the will of him or her who gives valid reasons for it, and also by mutual consent; the day, finally, when lover and beloved, under normal conditions, may marry, then true and rightful solutions will have been brought to impossible situations, and a noble work done for the individual and society at large.

THE FAMILY

The conditions of the modern family, in the northern countries particularly, have in reality become almost artificial; and it seems probable that, in the near future, the family will be completely disintegrated.

In France, especially amongst the _bourgeoisie_, the family appears to me likely to remain for a long time what it has been heretofore, because it constitutes an association the members of which, closely grouped, protect their common interests, whether commercial or industrial.

This family, representing a society in the possession of property, will exist as long as its members, in virtue of their fellowship, preserve intact their old social conditions, each of them continuing to have an interest in the success of their common enterprise.

In Spain, where the Moorish government has left so many traces of its primitive organisation, the family still continues in a state of slavery, a state wherein the woman glories.

But the question here is not of these two particular cases, where the maintaining of the family group serves the interests of the man, the head, the master; for the family differs according to different centres, countries, customs, and castes.

To come to more general statements, we must first go back to the fountain-head, and consider the family in its evolution through the course of civilisation.

The family, as it first appears in the history of humanity, was a patriarchal association formed of the father, mother and children. There was no binding marriage, but repeated unions. The conditions were such that the women were for all men indiscriminately, and the children knew no father in particular. This state of things in many cases continued so long that the Christian Church was obliged, at its birth, to wink at this communism. Herodotus tells us that the children of the Lycians bore the name of their mother; Varro assures us that it was the same in Athens, and that the woman, being the producer of wealth, was the only one to inherit.

When polygamy began, the woman was reduced to a state of seclusion and often of slavery. Her part consisted principally in bringing children into the world, and her care of them was more through instinct than love.

As for the man, he sought nothing, as regarded the woman, but his own gratification, and concerned himself not at all about fatherhood.

Later on, through the growth of civilisation, monogamy decided the limits of the family and formed class groups; but gradually, these groups becoming mixed and losing their old characteristic of brotherhood, the conditions of the family became much modified.

The causes of this slow process of breaking up accumulated, according to the particular centre and to social degrees. In one place primogenitureship began to take to itself privileges; in another the paternal power lessened the mother’s authority over her daughters; everywhere there was a tendency towards emancipation, and, finally, in our own day, at the two poles of society, family conditions have become almost artificial.

The home peace is troubled, and even where there is no rupture between the husband and wife, there is mental friction between parents and children, between brothers and sisters, through the clash of opinion, mutual intolerance, and the collision of personal interests; it is rarely that harmony prevails in the household.

It must be said that the reasons for marriage are not the same as they were in the old days, when the bond was indissoluble, based on the instinct of ownership, on the government of a community. Besides, the marriage for love, the only one worthy of respect, has destroyed the original idea of the association, and, unable to guarantee its own continuance, calls for an adjustment of responsibilities by means of the law, so that the man shall no longer be the brutal master, and the woman--though she be more moral, more virtuous, and more temperate than he--humiliated and degraded. It has been said that it is enough for a woman to be beautiful and to be a mother. That is altogether absurd nonsense. The woman has a right to the complete development of her faculties, a right to bring into play all the resources of her being. Noble women have proved that, quite apart from maternity, they are fit to walk in the immortal footsteps of heroes, artists and thinkers, and every day we see women

becoming, in talent, energy, and patient determination, rivals of scientists, poets, and all who devote themselves to enterprise in the world of mind.

But, it may be said, such claims are contrary to the idea of the family. Not at all. The family, essentially modified, each member subject to the determinism of thought and ensuring the observance of mutual rights and duties, will only become a more beautiful institution than before, its children born of sincere love and no longer the product of undesirable or questionable unions based upon the interests of the strongest.

THE COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE OF WOMAN

To this question squarely put: “Why does a man arrogate to himself the right to live as he chooses, and why should a woman submit to a prohibitive moral code?”--men answer that in marriage the virtue of the wife and the legitimacy of her children are absolutely and supremely essential.

This touches one point merely, and only applies to married women. In all that concerns “free” women, by what right are they condemned to abstain from making full use of their independence, as most men do? “Woman’s life, like man’s,” says Miramont, “is a harmonious evolution, by which every phase is developed, and which thus brings into play a succession of forms and aspects of existence. Daughter, mother and grandmother; dreamer, fighter, thinker--woman, like man, passes through many transformations in the course of life, and is always progressive.”

By the same fact of social evolution, thanks to her participation in the battle of life, and also to a rational education, it has long been proved that woman is not an inferior creature, of no use save for the propagation of the species.

We are far removed, happily, from the theories of Schopenhauer, who declared that woman was afflicted with intellectual shortness of sight, that she was childish, futile and narrow, inferior to man in everything concerning rectitude and scrupulous honesty; that she was lacking in sense and reflection, incapable of taking any unbiased view, etc. etc.

If woman’s characteristic feature be that nature has destined her for motherhood, it is none the less true that, just as she has a fine skin and quick sensibilities, her intellect is prompt to seize details, and that she possesses a brain as well furnished as that of man.

Her apparent inferiority comes from the fact that woman is oppressed by the law and ill-treated by the moralist, whence result her native timidity and diffidence. The truth is that man, desiring to keep the supremacy attributed to him, does not care to see in woman the qualities of courage and independence. He will not admit the immanent struggle between two beings inspired by the same needs and the same desires. Men would like women to remain tied down to household cares, while thinking women who have ceased to resign themselves to this wish their sex to profit by all the rights of men.

The partisans of absolute feminism desire that there should be no difference between men and women, in the name of biological equality which incites them to claim social equality.

Without going so far as this, it is certain that women should now enjoy more independence and be authorised, without losing caste in the eyes of moralists, to prove the strength of their personal faculties.

Unfortunately, as a modern thinker has observed: “Kept apart from magnificent realities ... maintained continually in a state of moral independence worse than physical slavery, only quitting the maternal yoke to fall under that of a husband, trained entirely with a view to marriage, which is to transform at a stroke the child into the wife, the wife into the mother, educated according to the prejudices of their set at the sacrifice of expansion of their own personality, women do not develop normally, except by finding a kindred soul, according to the ideal formed in their dim consciousness. And as social conventions do not permit them to seek this ideal, which is falsified and made vague, too, by novel-reading, enlightenment usually comes to them too late to destroy the effect of a narrow existence accepted through timidity, ignorance, or chagrin, and moulded by the dictates of society; so they live, for the most part, either like children broken in to their destiny, or like rebels in search of visionary compensations: in any case misunderstood.”

I have nothing better to add. For centuries, man has denied to woman her finest qualities, which are _fearlessness_ and _presence of mind_, and the majority of women have come to be convinced themselves that these qualities are unwomanly and to be reckoned faults.

Now, if tenderness be woman’s most beautiful attribute, it should be recognised that true tenderness is especially found amongst those women who are courageous, strong and endowed with shrewd sense. The acceptance of servitude does not admit of real tenderness, such as influences, for instance, the conception and carrying out of works of art, as incites to noble action, and produces wonderful results in every degree of the social scale.

For years, in many countries, the attention of thinkers has been fixed upon the liberation of woman. Many mistakes have been made. Against one John Stuart Mill a crowd of philosophers like Nietzsche have arisen, but the idea is gaining ground in scientific centres, and, with the help of rational Socialism, the work of woman’s emancipation is being steadily pursued.

Reverting to old times, we find that in many primitive races, the males were chosen by the females for their valour, physical strength, or natural beauty. This selection having led to the progressive development of the male in the majority of races, resulted in an ideal female type also.

But when the woman became the “property” of the man, the slave destined to work for the male, the development of the race stopped short; the salutary effect of the woman’s free choice having ceased.

In a new state of society, when woman, duly trained for her part, shall recover her complete freedom, we shall see the triumph of affinities, and the power of a feminine ideal will ensure for the future a new and vigorous race.

THE WAR AGAINST FEMINISM

It is incomprehensible that so many intellectual, sensible men, claiming to be logical, should be hostile to modern feminism. I say “modern” to mark the actual state of conflict, for _eternal feminism_ is contemporaneous with the _eternal feminine_, as Lucien Muhlfeld says. Following Schopenhauer and Strindberg, who strove to demonstrate the inferiority of woman, our detractors, in making war upon feminism, show themselves to be very inconsistent. As woman, is, in their eyes, an inferior being, they are either fighting what they have no reason to fear, which shows lack of courage on their part; or, by admitting that under present conditions woman plays an important part in everyday life, they recognise in her a certain value, which shows a lack of sincerity.

On the day woman first recognised the fact that she could earn her living by taking up the employments hitherto reserved for men, she made good her claim to a share of instruction and training by means of which to put an end to her mental inequality.

Unable to escape from the subordinate position in the family thrust upon her by the Civil Code, she determined to free her mind first, and gain recognition of her rights in the domain of intellect. This seemed inadmissible, even in respect of the principles of science.

Now, in times gone by, women worked as much as, and often more than, men, thus gaining recognition of their physical strength. When man was still a barbarian, hunting and fighting for mere subsistence, woman hunted and fought with him; just as his comrade, she carried the slain beast over her shoulder. Later, she spun flax to clothe her family; she was obliged, in her enslaved condition, to turn to common uses her intellect and devotion, and when, later still, the family was placed on a legal footing, she was obliged to give all her faculties to manual labour.