Marriage and Morals/Chapter V

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Marriage,” says Westermarck, “is rooted in family rather than family in marriage.” This view would have been a truism in pre-Christian times, but since the advent of Christianity it has become an important proposition needing to be stated with emphasis. Christianity, and more particularly St. Paul, introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed not primarily for the procreation of children, but to prevent the sin of fornication.

The views of St. Paul on marriage are set forth, with a clarity that leaves nothing to be desired, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Corinthian Christians, one gathers, had adopted the curious practice of having illicit relations with their stepmothers (I Cor. v. 1), and he felt the situation needed to be dealt with emphatically. The views which he set forth are as follows:^[1]

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1. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
2. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
3. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.
4. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
5. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.
6. But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment,
7. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.
8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

It will be seen that in this passage St. Paul makes no mention whatever of children; the biological purpose of marriage appears to him wholly unimportant. This is quite natural, since he imagined that the Second Coming was imminent and that the world would soon come to an end. At the Second Coming men were to ​be divided into sheep and goats, and the only thing of real importance was to find oneself among the sheep on that occasion. St. Paul holds that sexual intercourse, even in marriage, is something of a handicap in the attempt to win salvation (I Cor. vii. 32–34). Nevertheless it is possible for married people to be saved, but fornication is deadly sin, and the unrepentant fornicator is sure to find himself among the goats. I remember once being advised by a doctor to abandon the practice of smoking, and he said that I should find it easier if, whenever the desire came upon me, I proceeded to suck an acid drop. It is in this spirit that St. Paul recommends marriage. He does not suggest that it is quite as pleasant as fornication, but he thinks it may enable the weaker brethren to withstand temptation; he does not suggest for a moment that there may be any positive good in marriage, or that affection between husband and wife may be a beautiful and desirable thing, nor does he take the slightest interest in the family; fornication holds the center of the stage in his thoughts, and the whole of his sexual ethics is arranged with reference to it. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread ​is to prevent people from stealing cake. St. Paul does not deign to tell us why he thinks fornication so wicked. One is inclined to suspect that, having thrown over the Mosaic law, and being therefore at liberty to eat pork, he wishes to show that his morality is nevertheless quite as severe as that of orthodox Jews. Perhaps the long ages during which pork had been prohibited had made it seem to the Jews as delicious as fornication, and therefore he would need to be emphatic as regards the ascetic elements in his creed.

Condemnation of all fornication was a novelty in the Christian religion. The Old Testament, like most codes of early civilization, forbids adultery, but it means by adultery intercourse with a married woman. This is evident to any one who reads the Old Testament attentively. For example, when Abraham goes to Egypt with Sarah he tells the king that Sarah is his sister, and the king, believing this, takes her into his harem; when it subsequently transpires that she is Abraham’s wife, the king is shocked to find that he has unwittingly committed sin, and reproaches Abraham for not having told him the facts. This was the usual code of antiquity. A woman who had inter​course outside marriage was thought ill of, but a man was not condemned unless he had intercourse with the wife of another, in which case he was guilty of an offence against property. The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.

St. Paul’s views were emphasized and exaggerated by the early Church; celibacy was considered holy and men retired into the desert to wrestle with Satan while he filled their imaginations with lustful visions.

The Church attacked the habit of the bath on the ground that everything which makes the body more attractive tends towards sin. Dirt was praised, and the odour of sanctity became more and more penetrating. “The purity of the body and its garments,” said St. Paula, ​“means the impurity of the soul.”^[2] Lice were called the pearls of God, and to be covered with them was an indispensable mark of a holy man.

“St. Abraham, the hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly refused from that date to wash either his face or his feet. He was, it is said, a person of singular beauty, and his biographer somewhat strangely remarks, that ‘his face reflected the purity of his soul.’ St. Ammon had never seen himself naked. A famous virgin, named Silvia, though she was sixty years old, and though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. St. Euphraxia joined a convent of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed their feet, and who shuddered at the mention of a bath. An anchorite once imagined that he was mocked by an illusion of the devil, as he saw gliding before him through the desert a naked creature black with filth and years of exposure, and with white hair floating to the wind. It was a once beautiful woman, St. Mary of Egypt, who had thus, during forty-seven years, been expiating her sins. The occasional decadence of the monks into habits of decency was a subject of much reproach. ‘Our fathers,’ said the abbot Alexander, looking mournfully back to the past, ‘never washed their faces, but we frequent the public baths.’ It was related of one monastery in the desert, that the monks suffered greatly from want ​of water to drink; but at the prayer of the abbot Theodosius a copious stream was produced. But soon some monks, tempted by the abundant supply, diverged from their old austerity, and persuaded the abbot to avail himself of the stream for the construction of the bath. The bath was made. Once, and once only, did the monks enjoy their ablutions, when the stream ceased to flow. Prayers, tears, and fastings were in vain, A whole year passed. At last the abbot destroyed the bath, which was the object of the Divine displeasure, and the waters flowed afresh.”^[3]

It is evident that, where such views concerning sex prevailed, sexual relations when they occurred would tend to be brutal and harsh, like drinking under Prohibition. The art of love was forgotten and marriage was brutalized.

“The services rendered by the ascetics in imprinting on the minds of men a profound and enduring conviction of the importance of chastity, though extremely great, were seriously counterbalanced by their noxious influence upon marriage. Two or three beautiful descriptions of this institution have been culled out of the immense mass of the patristic writings; but in general, it would be difficult to conceive anything more coarse or more repulsive than the manner in which they regarded it. The relation which nature has designed for the noble purpose of repairing the ravages of death, and which, as Linnæus has shown, extends even through the world of flowers, was invariably treated as a consequence of the fall of Adam, and marriage was regarded almost exclusively in its lowest aspect. The ​tender love which it elicits, the holy and beautiful domestic qualities that follow in its train, were almost absolutely omitted from consideration. The object of the ascetic was to attract men to a life of virginity, and as a necessary consequence, marriage was treated as an inferior state. It was regarded as being necessary, indeed, and therefore justifiable, for the propagation of the species, and to free men from greater evils; but still as a condition of degradation from which all who aspired to real sanctity could fly. To ‘cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage,’ was, in the energetic language of St. Jerome, the end of the saint; and if he consented to praise marriage, it was merely because it produced virgins. Even when the bond had been formed, the ascetic passion retained its sting. We have already seen how it embittered other relations of domestic life. Into this, the holiest of all, it infused a tenfold bitterness. Whenever any strong religious fervour fell upon a husband or a wife, its first effect was to make a happy union impossible. The more religious partner immediately desired to live a life of solitary asceticism, or at least, if no ostensible separation took place, an unnatural life of separation in marriage. The immense place this order of ideas occupies in the hortatory writings of the fathers, and in the legends of the saints, must be familiar to all who have any knowledge of this department of literature. Thus—to give but a very few examples—St. Nilus, when he had already two children, was seized with a longing for the prevailing asceticism, and his wife was persuaded, after many tears, to consent to their separation. St. Ammon, on the night of his marriage, proceeded to greet his bride with an harangue upon the evils of the married state, and they ​agreed, in consequence, at once to separate. St. Melania laboured long and earnestly to induce her husband to allow her to desert his bed, before he would consent. St. Abraham ran away from his wife on the night of his marriage. St. Alexis, according to a somewhat later legend, took the same step, but many years after returned from Jerusalem to his father’s house, in which his wife was still lamenting her desertion, begged and received a lodging as an act of charity, and lived there despised, unrecognized, and unknown till his death.”^[4]

The Catholic Church, however, has not remained so unbiological as St. Paul and the hermits of the Thebaid. From St. Paul one gathers that marriage is to be regarded solely as amore or less legitimate outlet for lust. One would not gather from his words that he would have any objection to birth control: on the contrary, one would be led to suppose that he would regard as dangerous the periods of continence involved in pregnancy and child-birth. The Church has taken a different view. Marriage in the orthodox Christian doctrine has two purposes: one, that recognized by St. Paul, the other, the procreation of children. The consequence has been to make sexual morality even more difficult than it was made by ​St. Paul. Not only is sexual intercourse only legitimate within marriage, but even between husband and wife it becomes a sin unless it is hoped that it will lead to pregnancy. The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual intercourse. But this motive always justifies it, no matter what cruelty may accompany it. If the wife hates sexual intercourse, if she is likely to die of another pregnancy, if the child is likely to be diseased or insane, if there is not enough money to prevent the utmost extreme of misery, that does not prevent the man from being justified in insisting on his conjugal rights, provided only that he hopes to beget a child.

Catholic teaching on this subject has a twofold basis; it rests, on the one hand, upon the asceticism which we already find in St. Paul, on the other, upon the view that it is good to bring into the world as many souls as possible, since every soul is capable of salvation. For some reason which I do not understand, the fact that souls are equally capable of damnation is not taken into account, and yet it seems quite as relevant. Catholics, for example, use their political influence to prevent Protestants ​from practising birth control, and yet they must hold that the great majority of Protestant children whom their political action causes to exist will endure eternal torment in the next world. This makes their action seem somewhat unkind, but doubtless these are mysteries which the profane cannot hope to understand.

The recognition of children as one of the purposes of marriage is very partial in Catholic doctrine. It exhausts itself in drawing the inference that intercourse not intended to lead to children is sin. It has never gone so far as to permit the dissolution of a marriage on the ground of sterility. However ardently a man may desire children, if it happens that his wife is barren, he has no remedy in Christian ethics. The fact is that the positive purpose of marriage, namely procreation, plays a very subordinate oart, and its main purpose remains, as with St. Paul, the prevention of sin. Fornication still holds the center of the stage, and marriage is still regarded essentially as a somewhat less regrettable alternative.

The Catholic Church has tried to cover up this low view of marriage by the doctrine that marriage is a sacrament. The practical efficacy of this doctrine lies in the inference that mar​riage is indissoluble. No matter what either of the partners may do, if one of them becomes insane or syphilitic, or an habitual drunkard, or lives openly with another partner, the relation of the two remains sacred, and although in certain circumstances a separation a mensa et toro may be granted, the right to remarry can never be granted. This causes, of course, in many cases a great deal of misery, but since this misery is God’s will it must be endured.

Along with this extremely rigid theory, Catholicism has always had a certain degree of toleration for what it held to be sin. The Church has recognized that ordinary human nature could not be expected to live up to its precepts, and has been prepared to give absolution for fornication provided the sinner acknowledged his fault and did penance. This practical toleration was a method of increasing the power of the clergy, since they alone could pronounce absolution, and but for absolution fornication would entail eternal damnation.

The outlook of Protestantism has been somewhat different, in theory, less severe, but in practice, in some ways more so. Luther was much impressed by the text “It is better to ​marry than to burn,” and was also in love with a nun. He inferred that in spite of vows of celibacy, he and the nun had a right to marry, indeed one might almost say a duty to marry, since otherwise, given the strength of his passions, he would have been led into mortal sin. Protestantism accordingly abandoned the praise of celibacy, which had been characteristic of the Catholic Church, and wherever it was vigorous it also abandoned the doctrine that marriage is a sacrament, and tolerated divorce in certain circumstances. But Protestants were more shocked than Catholics by fornication, and altogether more rigid in their moral condemnations. The Catholic Church expected a certain amount of sin, and arranged methods for dealing with it; the Protestants, on the contrary, abandoned the Catholic practices of confession and absolution, and left the sinner in a much more hopeless position than he occupies in the Catholic Church. One sees this attitude in both its aspects in modern America, where divorce is exceedingly easy, but adultery is condemned with far more severity than in most Catholic countries.

It is clear that the whole system of Christian ethics, both in the Catholic and in the Protes​tant form, requires to be re-examined, as far as possible without the preconceptions to which a Christian education predisposes most of us. Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious, and many of us who imagine that our attitude towards orthodoxy is quite emancipated are still, in fact, subconsciously controlled by its teachings. We must ask ourselves quite frankly what led the Church to condemn all fornication. Do we think that it had valid grounds for this condemnation? Or, if we do not, are there grounds, other than those adduced by the Church, which ought to lead us to the same conclusion? The attitude of the early Church was that there is something essentially impure in the sexual act, although this act must be excused when it is performed after fulfilling certain preliminary conditions. This attitude in itself must be regarded as purely superstitious; the reasons which led to its adoption were presumably those which were considered in the last chapter as liable to cause an anti-sexual attitude, that is to say, those who first inculcated such a view must have suffered from a diseased condition of body or ​mind, or both. The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd: indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. The Pelew Islanders believe that the perforation of the nose is necessary for winning eternal bliss.^[5] Europeans think that this end is better attained by wetting the head while pronouncing certain words. The belief of the Pelew Islanders is a superstition; the belief of Europeans one of the truths of our holy religion.

Jeremy Bentham made a table of the springs of action, where every human desire was named in three parallel columns, according as men wish to praise it, to blame it, or to treat it neutrally. Thus we find in one column “gluttony,” and opposite it, in the next column, “love of the pleasures of the social board.” And again, we find in the column giving eulogistic names to impulses, “public spirit,” and opposite to it, in the next column, we find “spite.” I recommend anybody who wishes to think clearly on any ethical topic to imitate Bentham in this particular, and after accustoming him​self to the fact that almost every word conveying blame has a synonym conveying praise, to acquire a habit of using words that convey neither praise nor blame. Both “adultery” and “fornication” are words conveying such immensely strong moral reprobation that so long as they are employed it is difficult to think clearly. There are, however, other words used by those lascivious writers who wish to corrupt our morals; such writers will speak of “gallantry,” of “love unfettered by the cold bonds of law.” Both sets of terms are designed to arouse prejudices; if we wish to think dispassionately, we must eschew the one set just as much as the other. Unfortunately this must inevitably ruin our literary style. Both words of praise and words of blame are colourful and interesting. The reader can be carried along by an invective or panegyric, and with a little skill his emotions can be aroused by the author in any desired direction. We, however, wish to appeal to reason, and we must therefore employ dull neutral phrases, such as “extra-marital sexual relations.” Yet perhaps this is too austere a precept, for after all we are dealing with a matter in which human emotions are very strongly involved, and if we eliminate emotion ​too completely from our writing, we may fail to convey the nature of the subject matter with which we are dealing. In regard to all sexual matters there is a polarity according as they are described from the point of view of the participants or from that of jealous outsiders. What we do ourselves is “gallantry”; what others do is “fornication.” We must, therefore, remember the emotionally coloured terms, and we may employ them on occasion, but we must do so sparingly, and, in the main, we must content ourselves with neutral and scientifically accurate phraseology.

The Christian ethics inevitably, through the emphasis laid upon sexual virtue, did a great deal to degrade the position of women. Since the moralists were men, woman appeared as the temptress; if they had been women, man would have had this role. Since woman was the temptress, it was desirable to curtail her opportunities for leading men into temptation; consequently respectable women were more and more hedged about with restrictions, while the women who were not respectable, being regarded as sinful, were treated with the utmost contumely. It is only in quite modern times that women have regained the degree of free​dom which they enjoyed in the Roman Empire. The patriarchal system, as we saw, did much to enslave women, but a great deal of this was undone just before the rise of Christianity. After Constantine, women’s freedom was again curtailed under the pretence of protecting them from sin. It is only with the decay of the notion of sin in modern times that women have begun to regain their freedom.

The writings of the Fathers are full of invectives against Woman.

“Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual penance, on account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be ashamed of her dress, for it is the memorial of her fall. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of the demon. Physical beauty was indeed perpetually the theme of ecclesiastical denunciations, though one singular exception seems to have been made; for it has been observed that in the middle ages the personal beauty of bishops was continually noticed upon their tombs. Women were even forbidden by a provincial Council, in the sixth century, on account of their impurity, to receive the Eucharist into their naked hands. Their essentially subordinate position was continually maintained.”^[6]

​The laws of property and inheritance were altered in the same sense against women, and it was only through the freethinkers of the French Revolution that daughters recovered their rights of inheritance.