“The transformation of coercive marriage into a free and equal
marriage, one more closely approaching perfection, both naturally
and morally, can only be effected in conjunction with social arrangements
providing for the complete economic independence of woman,
and giving security for her material means of subsistence. Unless
this indispensable preliminary is fulfilled, the highest ideal of free
morality will be debased to the level of a gross caricature.”—E.
Dühring.
Free love as a burning question of our time — Definition — Free love not equivalent
to extra-conjugal sexual intercourse — Defamation of free love and
sanction of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse by the coercive-marriage-morality — The
immoral duplex morality for man and woman — Its momentous
influence upon the sexual corruption of the present day — Free love as
the only source of help — Actual realization of free love among the proletariat — Strengthening
of the sense of responsibility in consequence of
free love.
History of free love in the nineteenth century — William Godwin’s fight
against coercive marriage — His free union with Mary Woolstonecraft — Shelley’s
polemic against conventional sexual morality — John Ruskin on
free love — Goethe’s marriage of conscience — His “Wahlverwandtschaften”
(“Elective Affinities”) — The remarkable proposal for a temporary marriage
in this romance — Perhaps based upon a Japanese custom — Malayan temporary
marriage — Influence of Schlegel’s “Lucinde” — Karoline’s marriage
wanderings — Free love in Jena and Berlin — Communistic-socialistic ideas
regarding free love — Rétif de la Bretonne, Saint-Simon, Enfantin, and
Fourier — George Sand’s “Jacques” — The “Es-geht-an-Idea” of the
Swedish author Almquist — Schopenhauer’s fight against coercive marriage — His
one-sided standpoint — His description of the disastrous effects of
monogamic coercive marriage — His apology for concubinage — Criticism of
his view of the rôle of women in marriage reform — His theory of tetragamy — First
communication of a hitherto unpublished note of Schopenhauer’s
on tetragamy — Criticism of this theory.
Free love based upon only-love, the watchword of the future — Bohemian
love — Does not correspond to the ideal of free love — Importance of social
and economic factors in the sexual relationships of the present day — Efforts
for sexual reform — The literature of free love — Charles Albert’s
communistic foundation of free love — Liberation of love from the dominion
of the state and of capital — Ladislaus Gumplowicz — Bebel’s “Die
Frau und der Sozialismus” (“Woman and Socialism”) — The psychologico-individual
foundation of free love — Eugen Dühring — Edward
Carpenter’s “Love’s Coming of Age” — His ideas regarding self-control
and spiritual procreation — Ellen Key’s work, “Ueber Liebe und Ehe”
(“Love and Marriage”) — Detailed analysis of this work — Her critique of
nominal “monogamy” — Her idea of “spiritualized sensuality” — “Erotic
monism” — The unity of marriage and love — Sexual dualism owing to
coercive marriage and prostitution — General diffusion of erotic scepticism — Recognition
of love as the spiritual force of life — Importance of relative
asceticism — Love’s choice — Medical certificates of fitness for marriage — Immoral
love — The right to motherhood — Preliminary conditions — Necessity
for free divorce — Unfortunate marriages — Importance of divorce to
children — New programme of the rights of children — Ellen Key’s new
marriage law — Endowment of motherhood — Authorities for the protection
of children — Division of the property of husband and wife — Discontinuance
of the coercion to live together — Secret marriages — Conditions
under which marriage is to be contracted — Divorce — Council of Divorce — Jury
for the care of children — Sexual responsibility — “Marriages of conscience” — Examples
from Sweden — Public notification of “free” unions — Legal
recognition of “free” unions in Sweden — Increase in the number of
“marriage protestants” — Importance of free love to the vital advance of
humanity — General characterization of Ellen Key’s book — Its importance
in connexion with sexual reform in Germany — Formation of
“The Association for the Protection of Mothers” — Directors and committee
of this society — Preliminary appeal and programme of the association — The
periodical Mutterschutz — The formation of local groups — The
“Umwertungs-Gesellschaft” (Revaluation Society) of the United States — Its
characterization of modern marriage — The Berlin “Union for Sexual
Reform” — Helene Stöcker’s “Love and Woman” — Conception of the
sexual problem in the sense of Nietzsche — No revolution, but evolution
and reform — Deepening of woman’s soul by means of the older love — The
affirmation of life of the new love — The economic and social grounds for
the necessity of social reform — Friedrich Naumann, Lily Braun, and
others, on this subject — Increase in enforced abstinence from marriage — The
“maintenance question” a crying scandal of our time — A characteristic
letter — The radical evil of conventional morality — Insurance of
motherhood — Homes for pregnant women and for infants — The rights of
the “illegitimate” child — Suggestions regarding a statistical inquiry relating
to free love and illegitimate offspring in the upper classes — Examples
of celebrated personalities.
The problem of “free love” is the burning question of our time.
Upon its proper solution depends the future of civilization, and
our ultimate liberation from the ignominious conditions of the
amatory life of the present day, dependent as these are upon
coercive marriage. This is our firm conviction, our profound
belief, one which we share with many, and those not the worst
minds of our day.
Free love is neither, as malevolent opponents maintain, the
abolition of marriage, nor is it the organization of extra-conjugal
sexual intercourse. Free love and extra-conjugal sexual intercourse
have nothing whatever to do one with the other. Indeed,
I go so far as to maintain that true free love, as it must and will
prevail, will limit casual and unregulated extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse to a far greater extent than coercive marriage has ever
succeeded in doing. Above all, free love will ennoble sexual
intercourse.
For the longer, in existing economic conditions, we cling to the
antiquated “coercive marriage,” which has so long been in need
of reform, the smaller is the number of those who desire to marry,
the more advanced becomes the age of marriage, the greater
becomes the general sexual wretchedness, the deeper shall we sink
into the mephitic slough of prostitution, towards which the
increasing promiscuity of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse
inevitably leads us.
For this is the peculiar, hypocritical, and absurd mode of
argument of those who uphold conventional marriage; they
despise and brand with infamy every sexual relationship of two
adult independent persons based upon free love, and sanction
quite openly casual transitory extra-conjugal sexual intercourse,
devoid of all personal relationships, not only with prostitutes, but
also with respectable women.
“Bachelorhood,” says Max Nordau, “is very far from being equivalent
to sexual continence. The bachelor receives from society the
tacit permission to indulge in the convenience of intercourse with
woman, when and where he can; it calls his self-seeking pleasures
‘successes,’ and surrounds them with a kind of poetic glory; and the
amiable vice of Don Juan arouses in society a feeling composed of
envy, sympathy, and secret
admiration.”[186]
On the other hand, this same conventional coercive marriage
morality demands from the girl complete sexual continence and
intactness until the time of her marriage!
But every reasonable and just man must ask the question,
Where, then, are the unmarried men to gratify their sexual
impulse if at the same time the unmarried girls are condemned to
absolute chastity?
It is merely necessary to place these two facts side by side in
order to expose the utter mendacity and shamelessness of the
coercive marriage morality, and to display the true cancer of our
sexual life, the sole cause of the increasing diffusion of prostitution,
of wild sexual promiscuity, and of venereal diseases.
When hereafter, before the judgment-seat of history, the
dreadful “j’accuse” is uttered against the sexual corruption of
our time, then there will be a good defence for those of us who,
under the device, “Away with prostitution! away with the
brothels! away with all ‘wild’ love! away with venereal
diseases!” were the first to indicate free love as the one and only
means of rescue from these miseries.
We are always told that men are not yet ready for the free,
independent management of their sexual life; mankind is not yet
ripe for the necessary responsibility. Our opponents point
especially to the danger of such an opinion and such reforms for
the lower classes.
But human beings are better than the defenders of the obsolete
conventional morality would have us believe, and above all, it is
the members of the lower classes whom we may quietly allow to
follow the dictates of their own hearts. They, indeed, give us
the example that freedom is not equivalent to immorality and
pleasure-seeking; that, on the contrary, it is freedom that awakens
and keeps active the consciousness of duty and the sense of
responsibility.
Alfred Blaschko rightly draws attention to the fact that among
the proletariat for a long time already the idea of free love has
been actually realized. In a large majority of cases men and
women of these classes have sexual intercourse with one another,
especially between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, without
marrying.[187]
“Among the proletariat free love has never been regarded as
sinful. Where there is no property which is capable of being left to
a legitimate heir, where the appeal of the heart draws man and woman
together, from the very earliest times people have troubled themselves
little about the blessing of the priest; and had it not been that at the
present day the civil form of marriage is so simple, whilst, on the
other hand, there are so many difficulties placed in the path of unmarried
mothers and illegitimate children, who can tell if the modern
proletariat would not long ago, as far as they themselves are concerned,
have abolished
marriage?”[188]
Blaschko adduces proofs that in all places in which free love is
not possible prostitution takes its place.
This fact affords a striking proof of the necessity of free love.
For there can be no doubt as to the correct answer to the question
which is better, prostitution or free love.
Max Marcus and other physicians have recently discussed the
question whether the medical man is justified in recommending
extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. I myself, as a physician,
and as an ardent supporter of the efforts for the suppression
of venereal diseases, in view of the enormous increase of
professional prostitution (both public and private), and in view
also of the extraordinarily wide diffusion of venereal diseases, feel
compelled to answer this question, generally speaking, in the
negative. Yet I look to the introduction of free love, and in
association with free love of a new sexual morality, in accordance
with which man and woman are regarded as two free personalities,
with equal rights and also equal responsibilities, as the only
possible rescue from the misery of prostitution and of venereal
disease.
Place the free woman beside the free man, inspire both with the
profound sense of responsibility which will result from the activity
of the love of two free personalities, and you will see that to them
and to their children such love will bring true happiness.
Before going further into this problem of free love, I will give a
brief account of the history of the question during the nineteenth
century. We shall see that quite a number of leading spirits,
morally lofty natures, were occupied with the question, because
they were deeply impressed with the intolerable character of
existing conditions in the sexual sphere, and were convinced that
help was only to be found in a relaxation of those conditions in
the sense of a freer conception of sexual relationships.
In addition to the romanticists (vide supra, pp. 169 and 175) in
the beginning of the nineteenth century in England, William
Godwin, the lover and husband of Mary Wollstonecraft (the
celebrated advocate of woman’s rights), in his “Political Justice,”
declared the conventional coercive marriage to be an obsolete
institution, by which the freedom of the individual was seriously
curtailed. Marriage is a question of property, and one person ought
not to become the property of another. Godwin maintained that
the abolition of marriage would have no evil consequences.
The free love and subsequent marriage of Godwin and Mary
Wollstonecraft deserves a short description. Godwin was of
opinion that the members of a family should not see too much of
one another. He also believed that they would interfere with one
another’s work if they lived in the same house. For this reason
he furnished some rooms for himself at a little distance from Mary
Wollstonecraft’s dwelling, and often first appeared at her house
at a late lunch; the intervening hours were spent by both in
literary work. They exchanged letters also during the
day.[189]
Doubtless under the influence of the views of Godwin, Shelley,
in the notes to “Queen Mab,” writes a violent polemic against
coercive marriage. He says:
“Love withers under constraint; its very essence is liberty; it is
compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there
most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence,
equality, and unreserve. How long, then, ought the sexual
connexion to last? What law ought to specify the extent of the
grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife
ought to continue so long united as they love each other; any law
which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the
decay of their affection would be a most intolerable
tyranny.”[190]
He then proceeds to attack the conventional morality so
intimately associated with coercive marriage, and concludes with
the words:
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe
to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes
at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half
of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according
to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously
hostile to human happiness than marriage. I conceive that from the
abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connexion
would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would
be promiscuous; on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of
parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and
marked above all others with generosity and
self-devotion.”[191]
Here, also, we find the expression of the firm conviction that
in the freedom of love is to be found an assured guarantee for its
durability!
Later, also, the English Pre-Raphaelites, especially John
Ruskin, advocated free love, and maintained that the sacredness
of these natural bonds lay in their very essence. It is love which
first makes marriage legal, not marriage which legalizes love
(cf. Charlotte Broicher, “John Ruskin and his Work,” vol. i.,
pp. 104-106; Leipzig, 1902).
In Germany, at the commencement of the nineteenth century,
a lively discussion of the problems of love and marriage ensued
upon the publication of Friedrich Schlegel’s “Lucinde” and
Goethe’s “Wahlverwandtschaften”—“Elective Affinities”
(1809).
Goethe, in his very rich amatory life, especially in his relationship
to Charlotte von Stein and to Christiane Vulpius, with the
latter of whom he lived for eighteen years in a free “marriage of
conscience,”[192]
and whose son, August, the offspring of this union,
he adopted long before the marriage was legitimized, realized the
ideal of free love more than once. Although in his book
“Wahlverwandtschaften” (“Elective Affinities”) he at length
gave the victory to the moral conception of monogamic marriage,
and propounded it as an illuminating ideal for civilization (which
“ideal standpoint” we ourselves, as we have shown in the
previous chapters, fully share), yet in this novel he has represented
conjugal struggles, from which it appears how profoundly he was
impressed by the importance of a transformation of amatory life
in the direction of freedom. It is especially by the mouth of the
Count in this work that he gives utterance to such ideas. The
latter records the advice of one of his friends that every marriage
should be contracted for the term of five years only.
“This number,” he said, “is a beautiful, sacred, odd number, and
such a period of time would be sufficient for the married pair to learn
to know one another, for them to bring a few children into the world,
to separate, and, what would be most beautiful of all, to come together
again.”
Often he would exclaim:
“How happily would the first portion of the time pass! Two or
three years at least would pass very happily. Then very likely one
member of the pair would wish that the union should be prolonged;
and this desire would increase the more nearly the terminus of the
marriage approached. An indifferent, even an unsatisfied, member
of such a union would be pleased by such a demeanour on the part of
the other. One is apt to forget how in good society the passing of
time is unnoticed; one finds with agreeable surprise, when the allotted
time has passed away, that it has been tacitly prolonged. It is precisely
this voluntary, tacit prolongation of sexual relationship, freely
undertaken by both parties without any extraneous compulsion, to
which Goethe ascribes a profound moral significance.”
I should like to draw the attention of students of Goethe to
the fact that this recommendation of a temporary marriage for
the term of five years, with tacit prolongation of the term, is a
very ancient Japanese custom, or, at any rate, was so thirty
years ago.
Wernich, who for several years was Professor of Medicine at
the Imperial University of Japan, remarks:
“Marriages were concluded for a term only: in the case of persons
of standing for five years; among the lower classes for a shorter
term. It was very rare, however, only in cases in which the marriage
was manifestly unhappy, for a separation to take place when the term
expired. If there were healthy living children such a separation
hardly ever occurred—most of these temporary marriages were, in
fact, extremely happy, and the same is true of Jewish marriages, in
which divorce is easily effected by a very simple ceremonial, closely
resembling that of the
Japanese.”[193]
In view of the remarkable coincidence between the proposal in
Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” and the Japanese custom, we are
probably justified in assuming that Goethe was acquainted with
the latter.
“Lucinde” gave expression to the feelings and moods of the
time in respect of love and marriage on behalf of a circle far
wider than that of the romanticists. At no time were the ideals
of free love so deeply felt, so enthusiastically presented, as then;
above all, by the beautiful Karoline, who, after long “marriage
wanderings,” especially with A. W. Schegel, finally found the
happiness of her life in a free marriage with Schelling, which
subsequently became a legally recognized union.
“In her letters,” says Kuno Fischer, “she praises again and again
the man of her choice and of her heart, in whose love she had really
attained the goal which she had longed and sought in labyrinthine
wanderings.... And that Schelling was the man who was able completely
to master the heart of this woman and to make her his own,
gives to his features also an expression which beautifies
them.”[194]
Rahel, Dorothea Schlegel, and Henriette Herz, extolled,
under the influence of “Lucinde,” the happiness of free love.
For this period of genius in Jena and Berlin, as Rudolph von
Gottschall calls it, the free-love relationship of Prince Louis
Ferdinand of Prussia and Frau Pauline Wiesel was typical.
This relationship is more intimately known to us from the letters
exchanged between the two, published by Alexander Büchner
in 1865. In these letters, to quote a saying of Ludmilla Assing,
we find “the most passionate expression of all that it is possible
to express in writing.”
In France the discussion of the question of free love was to an
important extent associated with the communistic-socialistic
ideas of Saint Simon, Enfantin, and Fourier. Before this, Rétif
de la Bretonne, in his “Découverte Australe” (a work which
exercised a great influence upon Charles
Fourier),[195] demanded that
the duration of marriage should be in the first instance two years,
with which period the contract should spontaneously terminate.
Saint Simon and Barrault proclaimed the “free wife,” Père
Enfantin proclaimed the “free union,” and Fourier proclaimed
“free love” in the phalanstery.
A reflection of this idea is to be found in the novels of George
Sand, especially “Lelia” and “Jacques,” these tragedies of
marriage; in “Jacques,” for example, we find the following
passage:
“I continue to believe that marriage is one of the most hateful of
institutions. I have no doubt whatever that when the human race
has advanced further towards rationality and the love of justice,
marriage will be abolished. A human and not less sacred union
would then replace it, and the existence of the children would be not
less cared for and secured, without therefore binding in eternal fetters
the freedom of the parents.”
We must mention Hortense Allart de Méritens (1801-1879) as
a contemporary of the much-loving George Sand, and, like her,
a theoretical and practical advocate of free love. She was
cousin to the well-known authoress Delphine Gay, and herself
wrote a roman à clef, published in 1872, “Les Enchantements de
Prudence,” in which she records the history of her own life,
devoted to free love. First the beloved of a nobleman, she ran
away when she discovered she was pregnant, and then lived
successively with the Italian statesman Gino Capponi (1826-1829);
with the celebrated French author Chateaubriand (1829-1831);
with the English novelist and poet Bulwer (1831-1836);
the Italian Mazzini (1837-1840); the critic Sainte-Beuve (1840-1841);
these being all free unions. From 1843 to 1846 she was the
perfectly legitimate and extremely unhappy wife of an architect
named Napoléon de Méritens, whereas with her earlier lovers
she had lived most happily. Léon Séché, in the Revue de Paris
of July 1, 1907, has recently described the life of this notable
priestess of free love, to whose above-mentioned romance George
Sand wrote a preface (cf. Literarisches Echo of August 1, 1907,
pp. 1612, 1613).
In Sweden at about the same time the celebrated poet C. J. L.
Almquist was a powerful advocate for free love. In the numbers
for July and August, 1900, of the monthly review, Die Insel,
Ellen Key has published a thoughtful essay, containing an
analysis of Almquist’s views on this subject.
In the novel “Es Geht An” Almquist advocates the thesis
that true love needs no consecration by a marriage ceremony.
On the contrary, a ceremony of this kind belies the very nature
of marriage, for it forms and cements false unions; and any
relationship concluded on the lowest grounds, if it has only been
preceded by a marriage ceremony, is regarded as pure, whilst
a union based upon true love without marriage is regarded as
unchaste. In the sense of free love Lara Widbeck, in “Es Geht
An,” arranges her own life and that of her husband Albert.
Both are to be masters of their respective persons and of their
respective property; they are to live for themselves, the work
of each is to be pursued independently of the other, and in this
way it will be possible to preserve a lifelong love, instead of seeing
love transformed into lifelong indifference or hate.
Even at the present day in Sweden the idea of free love is
known, after this romance of Almquist’s, as the “Es-geht-an
idea” and also as “briar-rose morality.” It was, above all,
Ellen Key who revived Almquist’s idea, and enlarged it to the
extensive programme of marriage reform in the direction of free
love, which we shall consider more fully below.
In his last writings Schopenhauer occupied himself at considerable
length with the problems of love, but entirely from
the standpoint of misogyny and of duplex sexual morality.
Still, he recognized the great dangers and disasters which the
traditional coercive marriage entails upon society, and rightly
regarded this formal marriage as the principal source of sexual
corruption.
In his essay “Concerning Women” (“Parerga and Paralipomena,”
vol. xi., pp. 657-659), ed. Grisebach, he writes:
“Whereas among the polygamist nations every woman is cared
for, among monogamic peoples the number of married women is
limited, and there remains an enormous number of unsupported superfluous
women.[196]
Among the upper classes these vegetate as useless
old maids; among the lower classes they are forced to earn their
living by immeasurably severe toil, or else they become prostitutes.
These latter lead a life equally devoid of pleasure and of honour;
but in the circumstances they are indispensable for the gratification
of the male sex, and hence they constitute a publicly recognized profession,
the especial purpose of which is to safeguard against seduction
those women more highly favoured by fortune, who have found husbands,
or may reasonably hope to do so. In London alone there are
80,000 such women. What else are these women than human sacrifices
on the altar of monogamy—sacrifices rendered inevitable by the very
nature of the monogamic institution? All the women to whom we
now allude—women in this miserable position—form the inevitable
counterpoise to the ladies of Europe, with their pretension and their
pride. For the female sex, regarded as a whole, polygamy is a real
benefit. On the other hand, from the rationalistic point of view, it is
impossible to see why a man whose wife is suffering from a chronic
disease, or remains unfruitful, or has gradually become too old for
him, should not take a second wife. That which produces so many
converts to Mormonism appears to be the rejection by the Mormons of
the unnatural institution of monogamy. In addition, moreover, the
allotment to the wife of unnatural rights has imposed upon her unnatural
duties, whose neglect, nevertheless, makes her unhappy. To
many a man considerations of position, of property, make marriage
inadvisable, unless the conditions are exceptionally favourable. He
would then wish to obtain a wife of his own choice, under conditions
which would leave him free from obligations to her and her children.
However economical, reasonable, and suitable these conditions may
be, if she agrees to them, and does not insist upon the immoderate
rights which marriage alone secures to her, she will, because marriage
is the basis of every society, find herself compelled to lead an unhappy
life, one which, to a certain degree, is dishonourable; because human
nature involves this, that we assign a quite immeasurable value to
the opinion of others. If, on the other hand, she does not comply,
she runs the danger either of being compelled to belong as a wife to a
man repulsive to her, or else of withering as an old maid, for the period
in which she can realize her value is very short. In relation to this
aspect of our monogamic arrangement, the profoundly learned treatise
of Thomasius, De Concubinatu, is of the greatest possible value, for we
learn from it that among all cultured people, and in all times, until
the date of the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted,
and even to a certain extent legally recognized, and was an institution
not involving any dishonour. From this position it was degraded
only by the Lutheran Reformation, for the degradation of concubinage
was regarded as a means by which the marriage of priests could be
justified; and, on the other hand, after the Lutheran denunciation of
concubinage, the semi-official recognition of that institution by the
Roman Catholic Church was no longer possible.
“Regarding polygamy there need be no dispute, for it is a universally
existing fact, and the only question is regarding its regulation. Where
are the true monogamists? We all live at least for a time, but most
of us continually, in a state of polygamy. Since, consequently, every
man makes use of many wives, nothing could be more just than to
leave him free, and even to compel him, to provide for many wives.”
Just as are these views of Schopenhauer’s regarding the necessity
of a freer conception and a freer configuration of sexual relations,
and regarding the shamefulness of exposing to infamy the
unmarried mother and the illegitimate child, so much the more
dangerous is his view of the part to be played by women in this
reform of marriage. Woman as an inferior being, without freedom,
is once more to lose all her rights, instead of standing beside man
as a free personality with equal rights and equal duties. The
result of a rearrangement of amatory life on this basis would
inevitably be a new and a worse sexual slavery.
As Julius Frauenstädt records, Schopenhauer, in a separate
manuscript found amongst his papers, has described the evil
conditions of monogamy, and has recommended, as a step to
reform, the practice of “tetragamy.” This peculiar and unquestionably
very interesting essay has not found its way into
the Royal Library of Berlin. With regard to the whereabouts
of the manuscript we are uncertain; perhaps Frauenstädt
destroyed it.
However, we find a brief, hitherto unpublished, extract from
this essay in Schopenhauer’s manuscript book, “Die Brieftasche,”
written in 1823, which is preserved in the Royal Library in
Berlin.[197]
I publish here, for the first time, the summary account of
tetragamy contained on pp. 70-77 of the aforesaid manuscript
book:
“Inasmuch as Nature makes the number of women nearly identical
with that of men, whilst women retain only about half as long as men
their capacity for procreation and their suitability for masculine
gratification, the human sexual relationship is disordered at the very
outset. By the equal numbers of the respective sexes, Nature appears
to point to monogamy; on the other hand, a man has one wife for the
satisfaction of his procreative capacity only for half the time for which
that capacity endures; he must, then, take a second wife when the
first begins to wither; but for each man only one woman is available.
The tendency exhibited by woman in respect of the duration of her
sexual capacity is compensated, on the other hand, by the quantity
of that capacity: she is capable of gratifying two or three vigorous
men simultaneously, without suffering in any way. In monogamy,
woman employs only half of her sexual capacity, and satisfies only
half of her desires.
“If, now, this relationship were arranged in accordance with purely
physical considerations (and we are concerned here with a physical,
extremely urgent need, the satisfaction of which is the aim of marriage,
alike among the Jews and among the Christians), if matters were to be
equalized as completely as possible, it would be necessary for two
men always to have one wife in common: let them take her when
they are both young. After she has become faded, let them take
another young woman, who will then suffice for their needs until both
the men are old. Both women are cared for, and each man is responsible
for the care of one only.
“In the monogamic state, the man has for a single occasion too
much, and for a permanency too little; with the woman it is the other
way about.
“If the proposed institution were adopted in youth, a man, at the
time when his income is usually smallest, would have to provide only
for half a wife, and for few children, and those young. Later, when
he is richer, he would have to provide for one or two wives and for
numerous children.
“Since this institution has not been adopted—for half their life men
are whoremongers, and for the other half cuckolds; and women must
be correspondingly classified as betrayed and betrayers—he who
marries young is tied later to an elderly wife; he who marries late in
youth acquires venereal disease, and in age has to wear the horns.
Woman must either sacrifice the bloom of her youth to a man already
withered; or else must discover that to a still vigorous man she is no
longer an object of desire. The institution we propose would cure
all these troubles; the human race would lead happier lives. The
objections are the following:
- “1. That a man would not know his own children. Answer:
This could, as a rule, be determined by likeness and other
considerations; in existing conditions it is not always a
matter of certainty.
- “2. Such a menage à trois would give rise to brawls and jealousy.
Answer: Such things are already universal; people must
learn to behave themselves.
- “3. What is to be done as regards property? Answer: This
will have to be otherwise arranged; absolute communio
bonorum will not occur. As we have already said, Nature
has arranged the affair badly. It will, therefore, be impossible
to overcome all disadvantages.
“As matters are at present, Duty and Nature are continually in
conflict. For the man it is impossible from the beginning to the end
of his career to satisfy his sexual impulse in a legal manner. Imagine
his condition if he is widowed quite young. For the woman, to be
limited to a single man during the short period of her full bloom and
sexual capacity, is an unnatural condition. She has to preserve for
the use of one individual what he is unable to utilize, and what many
others eagerly desire from her; and she herself, in thus refusing, must
curb her own desires. Just think of it!
“More especially we have to remember that always the number of
men competent for sexual intercourse is double the number of functionally
capable women, for which reason every woman must continually
repel advances; she prepares for defence immediately a man
comes near her.”
When we consider this suggestion of tetragamy of Schopenhauer’s
from our own standpoint, we find an accurate exposition
of the evils arising from monogamic coercive marriage, and a
clear-sighted presentation of the physiological disharmonies of
the sexual life arising from the difference between man and
woman, upon which recently Metchnikoff also has laid so much
stress. In other respects Schopenhauer’s views are for us
not open to discussion, for, as already pointed out, he regards
woman from the first simply as a chattel, and denies to her any
individuality or soul; and, secondly, because he rejects the
principle of the only-love—a principle so intimately associated
with the idea of woman as individual. For the watchword of
the future must be: Free love, based upon the only-love! and,
indeed, the only-love manifesting itself reciprocally in the full
struggle for existence.
For this reason, also, the characteristic free love of the
Bohemians of Paris during the second half of the nineteenth
century, and more especially during the period 1830 to 1860, can
only be regarded as a truly poetic love-idyll, when compared
with that grand and earnest love consecrated wholly to work,
and to the inward spiritual development which presents itself to
modern humanity as an ideal love, as the united conquest of
existence. Grisette love, which Sebastian Mercier described
with great force, and which found its classic representation in
Henry Murger’s “Vie de Bohème,” was characterized by the
enduring life-in-common of the loving couples, who belonged
for the most part to the circle of artists and students. Thus it
stood high as heaven above our modern “intimacy,” which,
for the most part, has a quite transitory character; and yet the
Bohemian free love corresponded in no way to the conception
and ideal of free love as a community of spirit and of life.
The development of modern civilization, in association with
the awakening of individualism, and with the economic revolution
of our time, has created entirely new foundations for sexual
relationships, and has made continually more apparent the
injurious and destructive effects of our long outworn sexual
morality. These changes have taught us to understand that in
the so-called social question the sexual problem possesses as much
importance as the economic problem—perhaps more. They
have shown us the necessity for a new love of the future, for the
reason that to cling to the old, outlived forms would be equivalent
to a continuous increase in sexual corruption in the widest
sense of the word, combined with a general disease contamination
of civilized nations—as the threatening spread of prostitution,
and more especially of secret prostitution, and the increased
diffusion of venereal diseases, demonstrate before our eyes.
Almost at the same time, during recent years, among the
various civilized nations of Europe there have originated efforts
for a radical transformation of conventional sexual morality,
and for a reform, adapted to modern conditions, of marriage and
of the entire amatory life. In France, England, Sweden, and
Germany, writers have appeared, producing books, many of
which have been important, full of matter, and comprehensive,
entirely devoted to this object. Societies for marriage reform
and sexual reform have been founded in North America, France,
Austria, and Germany; parliamentary commissions for the
investigation of these questions have been established. Several
newspapers have been founded for the reform of sexual ethics.
In short, a general interest has been aroused in this central
question of life, and theoretical and practical activity have been
directed towards its solution.
All at once, as if by general agreement, civilized humanity
asked itself the earnest and solemn question, How was it possible
that to hundreds and thousands the simple right to love
was refused, so that they were condemned to a joyless existence,
in which all the beautiful blossoms of life withered away; that
hundreds of thousands of others were condemned to the hideous
misery of prostitution; that, finally, the community at large
was delivered up in ever-increasing degree to devastation by
venereal diseases and their consequences?
How is it possible, asks Karl Federn, in the preface to his
translation of Carpenter’s “Wenn die Menschen reif zur Liebe
werden” (“Love’s Coming-of-Age”)—how is it possible that
we sing love-songs, and yet have an amatory life like that which
we lead to-day, and have a moral doctrine such as that which is
dominant to-day?
All honour to the men and women who have dared to give an
answer to these questions, who have opposed conventional lies
with the truth of love, and who point out the new way along
which mankind will go—will go, because it must.
It is impossible here to mention by name all the writings
dealing with the reform of sexual relationships which have
appeared within recent years. Their name is legion. We must
content ourselves with an allusion to those books which most of
all deserve the name of epoch-making, which have aroused the
interest of the community, and which may probably be said to
have first stimulated the discussion of the problem, and to have
been principally effective in starting the flowing current of
reform.
In France, Charles Albert has treated the problem of free love
from the communistic standpoint.[198]
In the first two chapters of
his book, he describes the development of the primitive sexual
impulse, to become the most supreme individual love, and then
gives an interesting account of the struggle of middle-class society
against love, which to-day is endangered to an equal extent both
by the state and by capital.
“Capitalistic society represents one fact, love another. It suffices
to place them one beside the other in order to notice how sharp a contrast
there is between them, an eternal state of war.”
It is only money that dominates the thought and feeling of
modern humanity; for love and its idealism there is no longer
any room; social economy recognizes only a sexual relationship,
but not the higher feeling of love. Capital subjects the whole
of the sexual life to its laws. In prostitution this great social
crime finds its conclusion. The majority of marriages are nothing
more than “sexual bargains.”
Free love is simply love liberated from the dominion of the
state and of capital. It can, therefore, be realized only by an
economic revolution, which will put an end to the economic
struggle for existence. Free love means the independence of the
sexual from the material life. Economic reform is the only way
to the higher love. This is the author’s conviction. But he is
not subject to any deceptive delusion that with this all will become
beautiful and good; with this all problems will be solved,
all incompleteness at an end.
“We do not,” Albert continues, “regard the province of the sexual
life in the society of the future as an Eden, wherein those individuals
best suited one to the other will come together with mathematical
certainty, to lead a cloudless existence. Just as to-day, there will be
unrequited love, uncertain search and endeavour, errors and deceptions,
misunderstandings, satiety, aberrations, and sorrows. However great
the material prosperity may be which mankind in the future will
enjoy, the life of feeling will always remain the source of incalculable
disturbances, and love will not be the rarest cause of such disturbances;
but still a large proportion of the existing causes of pain can
and must disappear.”
The indispensable preliminary to free love is the complete
equality of man and woman. This, however, can only be attained
by means of communism—that is to say, by that ordering of
society in which property and wages cease to exist, in which not
only the means of production, but also all the articles of consumption,
are appropriated to the common use, and woman will
no longer possess a commercial value, as she does at the present
day.
Like Albert, Ladislaus Gumplowicz[199]
also believes that free
love can only be realized in a collectivist community.
However important it is to draw attention to the economic
point of view, as was done before Albert and Gumplowicz by
Bebel, in his celebrated “Woman and Socialism” (thirty-fourth
edition, Stuttgart, 1903), still, it appears to me that the communistic
solution is not the only possible solution, and that free
love can very well be associated with the preservation of private
property.[200]
While the progressive changes in the economic structure of
society powerfully influence sexual relationships and lay down
the rules for their existing forms, still, physiological individual
factors play a great part also in the matter. The first to insist
on this fact were the Englishman Carpenter and the Swedish
writer Ellen Key.[201]
Edward Carpenter,[202]
at one time a priest in the Anglican Church,
in his study of the question of free love, without ignoring the
economic factor, lays stress above all on the psychical factor, the
inward spiritual relationship between man and wife.
He writes (op. cit., p. 120):
“It is in the very nature of Love that as it realizes its own aim it
should rivet always more and more towards a durable and distinct
relationship, nor rest till the permanent mate and equal is found. As
human beings progress, their relations to each other must become
much more definite and distinct, instead of less so—and there is no
likelihood of society in its onward march lapsing backwards, so to
speak, to formlessness again.”
Above all, Carpenter has introduced into the discussion of free
love an element which to me appears of great importance from
the medical standpoint: the question of relative asceticism, of
self-control. He rightly considers that the duty of the love of
the future does not subsist merely in the common physical union,
but also in spiritual procreation. From the intimate spiritual
contact between two differentiated personalities, the highest
spiritual values proceed. Only self-control leads us to this
highest love.
“It is a matter of common experience that the unrestrained outlet
of merely physical desire leaves the nature drained of its higher love-forces....
Any one who has once realized how glorious a thing Love
is in its essence, and how indestructible, will hardly need to call anything
that leads to it a sacrifice” (op. cit., pp. 7, 8).
The indispensable prerequisites to the reform of love and
marriage are, according to Carpenter, the following (op. cit.,
p. 100):
(1) The furtherance of the freedom and self-dependence of women.
(2) The provision of some rational teaching, of heart and of head, for
both sexes during the period of youth. (3) The recognition in marriage
itself of a freer, more companionable, and less pettily exclusive relationship.
(4) The abrogation or modification of the present odious
law which binds people together for life, without scruple, and in the
most artificial and ill-assorted unions.
Carpenter accepts Letourneau’s view, that, in a more or less
distant future, the institution of marriage will undergo transformation
into monogamic unions, freely entered on, and
when necessary freely dissolved, by simple mutual consent,
as is already done in several European countries—in Canton
Geneva, in Belgium, in Roumania, as regards divorce; and in
Italy as regards separation. State and society should take part
in the matter only so far as the safety of the children demands,
concerning whom more extensive duties should be expected from
the parents. Carpenter also points out, as was shown seventy
years ago by Gutzkow, that, as regards the development of the
children, it is better, in unhappy marriages, that their parents
should separate than that the children should grow up amid the
miseries of such marriages.
“Love”—thus Carpenter concludes his dissertation on marriage
in the future—“is doubtless the last and most difficult lesson that
humanity has to learn; in a sense, it underlies all the others. Perhaps
the time has come for the modern nations when, ceasing to be children,
they may even try to learn it” (op. cit., p. 113).
A greater vogue even than Carpenter’s book had was obtained
by the essays of the Swedish writer Ellen Key, “Love and Marriage,”
which in 1894 appeared in a German
translation,[203] and had
an unusual success in the book-market. It is without exception
the most interesting and pregnant work on the sexual question
which has ever appeared. Written from the heart, and inspired
by the observations of a free and lofty spirit, it avoids none of
the numerous difficulties and by-paths in this department of
thought; and the reproach of libertinism which has been cast at
the author must be emphatically rejected. Ellen Key is the
most outspoken realist of all the writers on the subject of free
love. She takes her arguments from actual life; she associates
her ideas of reform always with the real; she writes as an earnest
evolutionist. Thus, in her book, her first aim is to establish
“the course of the evolution of sexual morality” and the “evolution
of love.”
Ellen Key starts from the fact that no one has ever offered any
proof that monogamy is that form of the sexual life which is
indispensable to the vital force and civilization of the nations.
Even among the Christian nations it has never yet really existed,
and its legalization as the only permissible form of sexual morality
has hitherto been rather harmful than helpful to general morality.
The writer then develops the idea, no less beautiful than true,
that the genuine character of love can be proved only by the
lovers actually living together for a considerable time; only
thus is it possible to demonstrate that it is moral for them to live
together, and that their union will have an elevating influence on
themselves and their generation. Consequently, of no conjugal
relationship can we beforehand affirm or deny its success. Every
new pair, whatever form they may have chosen for their common
life, must first of all prove for themselves that they are morally
justified in living together.
Ellen Key then proceeds to maintain a view, which I myself
also regard as an integral constituent of the programme of the
love of the future, and one which I have advanced in earlier
writings: that love is not merely, as Schopenhauer thought, an
affair of the species, but is, at least in equal degree, the concern
of the loving individuals. This is the result and the meaning of
civilization, which, as I have proved in earlier chapters, exhibits
a progressive individualization and an increasing spiritual enrichment
of love (the “spiritualized sensuality” of Ellen Key), and
thus gives to love a thoroughly independent importance for each
individual.
“In view of the manner in which civilization has now developed
personal love, this latter has become so composite, so comprehensive
and far-reaching, that not only in and by itself—independently of the
species—does it constitute a great life-value, but it also increases or
diminishes all other values. In addition to its primitive importance,
it has gained a new significance: to carry the flame of life from sex to
sex. No one names that person immoral who, deceived in his love,
abstains in his married life from procreating the species; that husband
and wife also we shall not call immoral, who continue their married
life rendered happy by love, although their marriage has proved childless.
But in both cases these human beings follow their subjective
feelings at the expense of the future generations, and treat their love
as an independent aim. The right already recognized in these individual
cases, as belonging to the individual at the expense of the
species, will continue to undergo enlargement in proportion as the
importance of love continues to increase. On the other hand, the new
morality will demand from love an ever-increasing voluntary limitation
of rights at those times when the growth of a new life renders it
necessary. It will also demand a voluntary or enforced renunciation
of the right to procreate new life under conditions which would make
this new life deficient in value.”
Ellen Key terms this new, modern love “erotic monism,”
because it comprehends the entire unitary personality, including
the spiritual being, not merely the body. George Sand gave the
first definition of this love as being of such a kind that “neither
had the soul betrayed the senses, nor had the senses betrayed
the soul.”
This erotic monism proclaims as its indestructible foundation
the unity of marriage and love.
The idea of unity gives to the human being the right to arrange
his sexual life according to his personal wishes, subject to the
condition that he does not consciously injure the unity, and
therewith, mediately or immediately, the right, of possible
posterity.
Thus, according to Ellen Key, love “will continually become
to a greater extent a private affair of human beings, whilst children,
on the contrary, will become more and more a vital problem of
society.” From this it follows that the two “most debased and
socially sanctioned manifestations of sexual subdivision (of
dualism), coercive marriage and prostitution, will gradually
become impossible, because, after the victory of the idea of
unity, they will cease to correspond to human needs.”
Ellen Key rightly insists that among the young men of the
present day there is an increasing hostility to socially protected
immorality (both in the form of coercive marriage and in that of
prostitution); whilst they increasingly exhibit a monistic yearning
for love. The general diffusion, which we shall describe at
length in a special chapter, of ascetic moods and of misogyny
among men and of misandry among women, is partly connected
with the feeling that the present social forms of the sexual
relationship limit to an equal extent the worth and the freedom
of mankind.
To-day the “purity fanatics and the frantic sensualists” meet
in common mistrust of the developmental possibilities of love,
because they do not believe in the possible ennoblement of the
blind natural impulse. In contrast to these, Ellen Key reminds
us of the fact of the “mystical yearning for perfection, which in
the course of evolution has raised impulse to become passion,
and passion to become love, and which is now striving to raise
love to an ever greater love.”
We must recognize love as the spiritual force of life. Love,
like the artist, like the man of science, has a right to the peculiar,
original activity of its own poietic force, to the production of new
spiritual values. The more perfect race that is to come must, in
the fullest meaning of the words, be brought forth by love.
For this, however, the indispensable preliminary is the inward
freedom of love; the free-love union is the watchword of the
future. Ellen Key also shows that among the lower classes free
love has long been customary, and that there the dangerous
utilization of prostitution is far more limited than among the
higher classes, with which view Blaschko’s statistical data regarding
the far greater diffusion of venereal diseases among the higher
classes of society are in substantial agreement.
No less indispensable to free love, however, is the full, mature
development of the loving individual. For this reason, Ellen
Key demands self-control and sexual continence at least until
the age of twenty years. She regards the indiscriminate sexual
intercourse which is to-day an established custom among all
young men as the murder of love. But too early marriages are
no less dangerous. She demands for the woman at least an age
of twenty; for the man, an age of twenty-five years; and until
these respective ages are attained, sexual continence should be
observed as fully as possible by both sexes.
This self-command is good for the physical development,
“steels the will, gives the joy of power to the personality; and
these qualities are later of importance in all other spheres of
activity.”
With wonderful beauty, Ellen Key describes the happiness of
the power of waiting in love, and quotes in this connexion the
lovely phrases of the Swedish poet Karlfeldt:
“There is nothing on earth like the times of waiting,
The days of springtime, the days of blossoming;
Not even May can diffuse a light
Like the clear light of April.”
On the other hand, it is a demand of true morality that healthy
men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty years
should enjoy the possibility of marriage—of free marriage. This
possibility can, however, be secured only by economic reforms.
The author then considers the very important point of love’s
choice, and demands above all the compulsory provision of a
medical certificate of health before entering on marriage.
“It is absolutely beyond question that the healthy self-seeking
which wishes to safeguard the personal ego, in conjunction with the
increasing valuation of a healthy posterity, will hinder the contraction
of many unsuitable marriages. In other cases, love might overcome
these considerations, as far as husband and wife are themselves concerned;
but they must then renounce parentage. In those cases, on
the contrary, in which the law would distinctly forbid marriage, one
could naturally not prevent the sick persons from procreating independently
of marriage; but the same is true of all laws: the best
do not need them, the worst do not obey them, but the majority are
guided by them in the formation and development of their ideas of
what is right.”
As immoral, Ellen Key indicates:
“Parentage without love.
“Irresponsible parentage.
“Parentage on the part of immature or degenerate human beings.
“Voluntary unfertility on the part of a married pair who are competent
to reproduce their kind.
“All manifestations of the sexual life resulting from force or
seduction, or from the disinclination or the incapacity for the proper
fulfilment of sexual intercourse.”
It is interesting to note that Ellen Key prophesies as the result
of the progressive improvement of the species by love’s selection,
the attainment of a state wherein every man and every woman
will be suited for the reproduction of the species. Then would
the ideal of monogamy, one husband for one wife, one wife for
one husband, be for the first time realized.
Very beautifully, and with a prudent insight into the actual
relationships, Ellen Key discusses the question of the “right to
motherhood,” where she finds occasion to describe the new and
very various types of women which the evolution of modern life
has brought into being. She recognizes only with reservation
the general right to motherhood, but she does not regard it as a
desirable example to follow when a woman becomes a mother
without love, either in marriage or out of it. It is not right to
do what is generally done to-day by the man-haters—namely, to
demand from the majority of unmarried women that they should
produce a child without love. This should not even happen when
love exists, but a permanent life-in-common with the father of
the child is impossible. An unmarried woman who determines
on motherhood should be fully mature, and already have behind
her “the second springtime” of her life; she must “not only be
pure as snow, pure as fire, but also must be possessed of the full
conviction that with the child of her love she will produce a
radiance in her own life and will endow humanity with new
wealth.”
Such an unmarried woman really makes a present of her child
to humanity, and is quite different from the unmarried woman
who “has a child.”
Indeed, for the majority, the ideal always remains that of the
ancient proverb, that man is only half a human being, woman
only half; and only the father and the mother with their child
become a whole one!
With regard to divorce, Ellen Key demands that it should be
perfectly free, and should depend only upon the definite desire,
held for a certain lapse of time, of either or both parties. The
dissolution of marriage must be no less easy than the breaking off
of an engagement.
“Whatever drawbacks,” she says, “free divorce may involve,
they can hardly be worse than those which marriage has entailed,
and still continues to entail. Marriage has been degraded to the
coarsest sexual customs, the most shameless practices, the most
distressing spiritual murders, the most cruel ill-treatment, and the
grossest impairment of personal freedom, that any province of modern
life has exhibited! One need not go back to the history of civilization;
one need simply turn to the physician and magistrate, in order
to learn for what purpose the ‘sacrament of marriage’ is employed,
and frequently employed by the very same men and women who are
professed enthusiasts as to its moral value!”
Just as little as the relations between friends, between parents
and children, or between brothers and sisters, necessarily give
rise to lasting sentiments of affection, is it possible to expect this
of two lovers. The “marriage fetters,” described with such
horrible truth by John Stuart Mill and Björnstjerne Björnsen,
are to-day felt to be intolerable. The love of the modern man
flourishes only in freedom.
“The delicate erotic sentiment of the present day shrinks from
becoming a fetter; it shuns the possibility of becoming a hindrance.”
Free divorce, in a case of unhappy marriage, is no less necessary
when there are children to the marriage. The duties of the
parents to the children remain in such cases unaltered, without,
however, thus rendering it necessary that the parents should
continue to live together. For the sorrows of such a union, and
the harm done thereby to the children, are greater than those
that would result from divorce.
Human love has its phases of development. It does not remain
for ever the same, but it alters pari passu with the evolution of
the individual. Lifelong love is an ideal, but it is not a duty.
Such a demand would as inevitably destroy personality as would
the demand for the unconditional belief in a doctrine, or for the
unconditional pursuit of a profession.
Very interesting is Ellen Key’s description of the numerous
disillusions of love, which become still more perceptible in a coercive
marriage. There is a whole series of “typical unhappy
fates” in marriage, often with no blame properly attaching to
either party, dependent merely upon incompatibility of temperament,
but also upon faults of one or both parties to the marriage.
Frequently a man or a woman of a thoroughly sympathetic
temperament lives with a woman or a man of such faultless
excellence that the home seems filled with icicles. One day the
husband or the wife runs away because the air has become so
thin as to be irrespirable. The general sentiment is one of commiseration
for the—superlatively excellent man or woman!
In the case of earnest, mature human beings, free divorce will
not increase the number of dissolutions of marriage. On the
contrary, the obligations imposed by a free relationship are
greater than those of legal coercive marriage. The fear also that
with the granting of free divorce every one will enter upon
numerous free marriages one after another is groundless. It is
precisely those who are united in free love to whom such a separation,
when it does become necessary, is so profoundly painful,
that life itself forbids the frequent repetition of such unhappiness.
Very beautiful, and based upon lofty ethical conceptions, are
the writer’s views regarding the necessity for divorce precisely
in view of the existence of children. She says:
“Men and women of earlier times went on patching up for ever and
ever. The psychologically developed generation of to-day is more
inclined to let the broken remain broken. For, except in those
cases in which objective misfortunes, or a retarded evolution, gave
rise to a rupture, patched-up marriage, like patched-up engagements,
seldom prove durable. Often it was owing to profound instincts
that the rupture became inevitable; reconciliations fortify
these instincts, and sooner or later they once more find free vent.
“Thus it happens that even an exceptional nature is strained by
the burden it has to bear, and the children are not then witnesses of
their parents living together, but of their dying together.
“Neither religion nor law, neither society nor a family, can determine
what it is that marriage is killing in a man, or what he finds it
possible to rescue in that state—he himself alone knows the one
and suspects the other. He alone can delineate the boundaries, can
decide whether he is satisfied to regard his own existence as closed,
and to remain contented in the life of his children; whether he is able
so to endure the sorrows of a continued married life with such fortitude
as to make it increase his own powers and those of his children.”
The conviction of the rights of love, and the consciousness of
the rights of the children, are to-day unmistakably on the increase.
There is no danger that the latter right, the right of the
children, will suffer in comparison with the rights of love. It is,
on the contrary, characteristic, that out of the very same feeling
by which the freer configuration of the amatory life is demanded,
there has also arisen a new programme of the rights of children.
This same Ellen Key who proclaims the inalienable rights of free
love, speaks also of the “century of the child,” and devotes to
this subject an admirable book.
The most important point with regard to free divorce, in respect
to the children, is that the father and the mother must not
separate from one another in hatred, but in friendship, and that,
in the interest of the children, they should continue to meet one
another from time to time. Ellen Key here rightly condemns
the conduct of the good friends and relatives who simply lay
down the law that the separated pair must hate one another,
and must in every relationship torment and cheat one another.
It is precisely such “enmity” of the parents after divorce that
is so full of bad consequences in respect of the children.
We also have to consider this point of view, that sometimes the
new husband or the new wife has a better influence over the
children than their own parents, and that in this way divorce
may have brought the children greater happiness, may have
been for them a true blessing.
The closing chapter of her work is devoted by Ellen Key to
the formulation of practical recommendations regarding the new
marriage laws. She indicates as a starting-point of her dissertation
that the ideal form of marriage is the perfectly free union
between a man and a woman. But this ideal can in the meanwhile
only be attained through transitional forms. In this the
opinion of society regarding the morality of the sexual relationship
must find expression, and thus remain as the support for
undeveloped personalities; but at the same time, these transitional
forms must be sufficiently free to favour a progressive
development of the higher erotic consciousness of the present day.
There always remains, therefore, the necessity for laws, to some
extent limiting individual freedom; but these laws must admit
of an advance towards perfection in respect of the freer gratification
of individual needs. The sense of solidarity demands a new
marriage law adapted to new modern erotic needs, since the
majority are not yet prepared for complete freedom. But it is
only the needs of modern civilized human beings, and not abstract
theories concerning the idea of the family or the “historic origin”
of marriage, that should be determinative in this matter.
In the marriage of the future, above all, the economic and legal
subordination of woman must be abolished. Woman must supervise
her own property and arrange her own work, and she must
in the main care for herself in so far as this is compatible with
her maternal duties. She must, however, have this assurance—that
during the first years of the life of every child she shall be
cared for by society, and this under the following conditions:
She must be of full age.
She must have performed her feminine “military service” by
a one year’s course of instruction in the care of children, in the
general care of health, and, whenever possible, in sick-nursing.
She must either care for her child herself or provide another
thoroughly competent nurse.
She must bring proof that she does not possess sufficient personal
property, or sufficient income from her work, in order to
provide for her own support and half of her child’s support, or
else that the care for her children compels her to discontinue her
professional occupation.
Only in exceptional cases should this support of motherhood
be provided for a longer time than during the three first and most
important years of the life of the child.
The funds for this most necessary of all kinds of insurance
must be provided in the form of a graduated income tax, graduated
so as to make the wealthier classes pay the most, and the unmarried
should pay just as much as the married.
In every community the central authorities of this insurance
should consist of “boards for the care of children.” The members
of these boards should be two-thirds women and one-third men;
they should distribute the funds and supervise the care of the
infants and older children; in cases in which the mother was not
properly fulfilling her duties to the child, they could cut off
supplies, or remove the child from the mother’s care.
The mother should receive yearly the same sum, but, in addition,
she should receive for each child half of the cost of its support,
as long as the number of children is not exceeded which the
society has laid down as desirable. Children born in excess of
this number would be a private concern of the parents. Every
father must, from the time of birth until the child attains the
age of eighteen years, provide one-half of the money needed for
its support.
The existing immoral distinction between legitimate and illegitimate
children is practically equivalent to freeing unmarried
fathers from their natural responsibility, and drives unmarried
mothers to death, prostitution, or infanticide.
All this would be done away with by a law ensuring from the
State support for the mother during the first, most difficult years,
and ensuring the child a right to support from both parents, a
right also to the name of both, and to inheritance from both.
Legal expression is also demanded for the right of each member
of a married couple to possess his or her property; those who
wish to make any other arrangement can do so by special contract
after a definite valuation of their property. And in respect
of the right of inheritance, the domestic work of the wife (housekeeping
and the care of the children) must receive due economic
consideration—a matter hitherto ignored. Not only in respect
of her property, but also in respect of all civil rights, and of the
right of control over her own person, the married woman must
be placed in the same position as the unmarried.
Ellen Key’s remarks on the removal of the coercion exercised
at present on husband and wife in respect of living together are
very interesting. She writes:
“There are persons who would have continued to love one another
throughout the whole of their life had they not been compelled—day
after day, year after year—to adapt their customs, their volitions, and
their inclinations entirely according to one another’s tastes. So
much unhappiness depends, indeed, upon matters of almost no importance,
difficulties which two human beings endowed with moral
courage and insight would easily have overcome, had it not been that
the instinct towards happiness was overpowered by regard for ordinary
opinion. The more personal freedom a woman (or man) has had
before marriage, the more does she (or he) suffer in a home in which
she does not possess an hour or a corner for her own undisturbed use.
And the more the modern human being gains an increase in his individual
freedom of movement, the more he feels the need for privacy
in other relations, the more also will man and wife need these things
in the married state....
“But at present custom (and law) demand from the married pair
that they should lead a life in common, which often ends in a permanent
separation, merely because conventional considerations prevented
them from living apart!
“Also for those otherwise constituted, the narrow dependence,
the compulsory belonging each to the other, the daily adaptation, the
unceasing mutual consideration, may become oppressive. In continually
increasing numbers people are beginning quietly to transform
conjugal customs, so that they may correspond to the new needs. For
instance, each goes for a journey by himself, when he feels the need
for privacy; one of the pair seeks alone pleasures which the other
does not value; in former times both would have ‘enjoyed’ them
together, against the will of one, or both would have renounced what
one could have genuinely enjoyed. More and more married people
have separate bedrooms, and after a generation, it is probable that
separate dwelling-houses for husband and wife will be sufficiently
common to arouse no particular attention.”
With regard to the question of personal freedom in marriage,
Ellen Key takes into account the possibility of marriage being
kept secret on urgent grounds; also the introduction of new
forms of divorce, the present procedure giving rise to such detestable
practices in the law-courts—for example, the detailed statement
of the grounds for divorce, or an account of the refusal or
the misuse of “conjugal rights,” or an account of the malicious
desertion of one party by the other.
The author, therefore, makes proposals for a new marriage law
and a new divorce law.
As conditions preliminary to marriage, the new law should
insist—
That man and wife should be of full age;
That neither should be more than twenty-five years older than
the other;
That neither should be closely related or connected with the
other, as the present law already forbids. The new law must in
this respect be modified in the sense either of greater severity or
of relaxation, according as the scientific knowledge of the future
may direct.
Finally, neither party should simultaneously enter upon
another marriage. On both parties will be imposed the duty
of providing a medical certificate regarding the state of their
health; a proposed marriage must be forbidden when either
party is suffering from a disease transmissible to the children
(also when suffering from a disease which would infect the other
party?). With regard to other illnesses, the matter may be left
to the free judgment of those wishing to be married.
Marriage will take place before the marriage assessor of the
commune, and before four other witnesses, without any special
ceremony; the contracting parties will enter their names in the
register, and their signatures will be witnessed by those present.
When for any reason the marriage is to be kept secret, the witnesses
will, of course, be bound to secrecy.
This civil marriage is all that the law will direct; the religious
ceremony will be a voluntary affair, and will have no legal force.
In marriage, husband and wife will retain all the personal rights
which they had before marriage, over their bodies, their names,
their property, their work, their wages, also the right to choose
their own place of residence, and all other civil rights. For
common expenses and debts they will have a common responsibility;
whilst each will be personally responsible for personal
expenditure and debts. In case of divorce, each will retain his
or her property. In the event of death, the widower or widow
will inherit half the property, the remainder going to the children.
For divorce, Ellen Key suggests there should be a “council of
divorce,” consisting of four persons, men or women. The first
aim of this council will be, somewhat like that of a court of
honour before a duel, to attempt to reconcile the parties, to adjust
any cause of quarrel. If this attempt fails, the matter must go
before the marriage assessor of the commune; but this cannot
take place until the expiration of six months from the time when
it was brought before the council of divorce. The council of
divorce must testify before the assessor that six months before
each party was fully informed regarding the wish of the other
that the marriage should be dissolved, and regarding the reasons
for that wish. If there are no children, if a division of the
property has been arranged, and if husband and wife have lived
completely apart for one year, the divorce will be effected one
year after the commencement of proceedings. When there are
children to the marriage, there will be needed a special “jury
for the care of children” to deal with the custody of the children.
If either party is found by the jury and the judge to be unworthy
for or incapable of the custody of the children, on the ground of
his (or her) morals or character, he (or she) loses his (or her)
rights. If either father or mother is deprived of the custody of
the children, a guardian must be appointed—a man to represent
the father, a woman to represent the mother—and this guardian
will supervise the education of the children in association with
the remaining parent. If both parents are found to be unfitted
for the custody of the children, the education of the latter must
be supervised by a guardian only. If both parents are equally
fitted and worthy for the custody of the children, the latter should
remain with the mother until the age of fifteen, and would then
have the right to choose between their parents.
Ellen Key demands severe laws against the seduction and
abandonment of girls under age, on the part of unconscientious
men; and she considers that the witting transmission of any
infective disorder by means of sexual intercourse should be
punished by imprisonment for a minimum term of six months.
Speaking generally, the law should always come to the assistance
of the weaker party, above all, to the assistance of the children,
and in most cases to the assistance of the mother.
Although the new marriage law is to give to adult citizens
complete freedom to arrange their erotic relationships at their
own responsibility and risk, with or without marriage, it remains
necessary that double marriages (bigamy), sexual relationships
within forbidden degrees, or on the part of persons suffering from
transmissible disease, which the law has declared to be a hindrance
to marriage, and also intercourse with persons under eighteen
years of age, should be regarded as punishable offences. The
same is true of homosexual and other perverse manifestations.
The trial in such cases will be conducted by a judge, with the
assistance of a jury of physicians and crimino-psychologists.
The writer does not believe that marriage will be transformed
by legal changes in the way outlined above, but she is of opinion
that what will happen is that “men and women will refuse to
submit themselves to the unworthy forms of marriage, which
will remain established by law, and will form free unions, the
so-called ‘marriage of conscience,’” such as those which the
Belgian sociologist Mesnil has recommended in his work, “Le
Libre Mariage.”
It is, in fact, in Sweden, Ellen Key’s fatherland, in which these
free marriages of conscience appear to have first obtained adherents.
She records the free union of the professor of national
economics at Lund, Knut Wicksell. Additional reports of free
marriages in Sweden are given by the Swedish physician Anton
Nyström.[204]
He mentions among those who have formed free
unions, without legal or ecclesiastical ceremony, but simply by
public notification, in addition to the already mentioned university
professor, also the editor of a leading newspaper, a physician
and doctor of philosophy, and a candidate of philosophy. The
latter is engaged in study with his wife at the high school at
Göteborg. In February, 1904, they made a public announcement
in the newspaper that they were entering on a “marriage
of conscience,” since they had a conscientious objection to the
ecclesiastical form of marriage. The principal of the college wrote
an address to the young couple, stating that, although this union
was not entered upon on immoral grounds, and therefore could
not be regarded as a punishable offence, still, such a free union,
unrecognized by the State, between man and woman, was not
compatible with the good order of society, that it was injurious
to the general ethical conception of the sacramental character of
marriage, and also constituted a dangerous example, which others
might be led to imitate. The principal therefore urged the young
people most earnestly “to place their union as soon as possible
on a legitimate footing.” This exhortation, however, led to no
result.
Moreover, the University of Upsala was more free-thinking
than that of Göteborg, for the above-mentioned professor and
his wife were, for a long time after they had become united in
free love, matriculated students at the University of Upsala, and
the university authorities favoured them with no attention with
regard to this matter.
In recent years, the public declaration of “free marriages”
has also found observance in other European countries. Thus,
not long ago the author who writes under the pseudonym of
“Roda-Roda” announced in the newspapers his free union with
the Baroness von Zeppelin; and in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 410,
September 2, 1906, we find the following announcement:
“Dr. Alfred Rahmer
Wilhelmine Ruth Rahmer
geb. Prinz-Flohr
Frei-Vermählte”
(Free-Wedlock).
Similar public announcements are reported from Holland. Moreover,
according to Nyström, it has since 1734 been legally established
in Sweden, that in certain cases engagement is equivalent
to marriage—namely, when the engaged woman becomes pregnant.
“When a man impregnates his fiancée, the engagement
becomes a marriage.... If the man refuse to go through the
ceremony of marriage, and wishes to break off the engagement,
the woman is legally declared to be his wife, and enjoys full conjugal
rights in his house.” So runs this law.
We can predict with certainty that the adherents of free
marriage, the number of “marriage protestants,” as Ellen Key
happily calls them, will continue to increase. To such will belong
all those who have an equal antipathy to coercive marriage, to
the debasing intercourse with prostitutes, and to the transient
casual love, such as is experienced in ordinary extra-conjugal
sexual intercourse, the true “wild” love.
“It is only a question of time”—thus Ellen Key concludes her
remarks on marriage reform—“when the respect felt by society for
the sexual union will not depend upon the form of the life in common,
by which two human beings become parents, but only on the worth
of the children which these two are producing as new links in the
chain of the generations. Men and women will then devote to their
spiritual and physical preparation for sexual intercourse the same
religious earnestness that the Christians devote to the welfare of their
souls. No longer will divine laws regarding the morality of sexual
relationships be considered the mainstay of morality; in place of
these the desire to elevate the human race and a sense of personal
responsibility will be the safeguards of conduct. But the conviction
on the part of the parents that the purpose of life is also their own
proper life—that is, that they do not exist only for the sake of children—should
free them from certain other duties of conscience which at
present bind them in respect of children—above all, from the duty of
maintaining a union in which they themselves are perishing. The
home will perhaps become more than it is at present; something at
unity with the mother, something which—far from excluding the
father—carries within itself the germ of a new and higher ‘family
right.’...
“A greater and healthier will-to-live in respect of erotic feelings
and demands—this it is that our time needs! Here from the feminine
side real dangers threaten; and one of several ways in which these
dangers must be averted is by the construction of new forms of
marriage.
“Human material of ever higher worth and capable of higher evolution—it
is this which in the first place we have to create. If we preserve
coercive forms of the sexual life, the possibility of doing this is
a diminishing one; if we adopt free forms of the sexual life, the possibility
of doing it will increase. Not only because the present time
asks for more freedom are its demands full of promise, but because
those demands approximate ever more closely to the central point of
the problem—to the conviction that love is the principal condition
upon which depends the vital advance of the individual and of
humanity at large.”
I have given such a lengthy analysis of Ellen Key’s book
because, in the first place, in no other work do we find so lucid
an exposition of all the points needed for the consideration of the
question of free love—an exposition based upon the richest
experience of life and a really astonishing psychical knowledge
of mankind, combined with the finest understanding of the
subtle activities and sentiments of the loving soul; and, in the
second place, because as an actual fact—at any rate, in Germany—this
book has formed the true starting-point of all endeavours
towards the reform of sexual morality. Ellen Key’s “Ueber
Liebe und Ehe” (“Love and Marriage”) is a demonstration of
human rights in the matter of love; it is the evangel for those
who have determined to harmonize love with all the changes and
advances attendant on the evolution of civilization, and have resolved
not to allow the forcible retardation of progress by conditions
which were perhaps still tolerable one hundred or two
hundred years ago, but to-day are unconditionally hostile to
civilization.
In Germany these endeavours have been centralized in the
Bund für Mutterschutz (the Association for the Protection
of Mothers), founded in the beginning of 1906, whose purpose
it is to protect unmarried mothers and their children from
economic and moral dangers, to counteract the dominant condemnation
of such mothers, and thereby also indirectly to bring
about the reform of the existing views on sexual morality.
Those who initiated this most important movement were indeed
high-minded women. I mention, among many, only the names
of Ruth Bré, Helene Stöcker, Maria Lischnewska, Adele Schreiber,
Gabriele Reuter, and Henriette Fürth.
By the preparatory committee to which Maria Lischnewska,
Dr. Borgius, Dr. Max Marcuse, Ruth Bré, and Dr. Helene Stöcker
belonged, a committee meeting was called on January 5, 1905,
and the Association for the Protection of Mothers was founded,
its programme having already received the support of a
number of leading personalities from all parts of the German
Empire.
In addition to this committee, to which, besides the above-named
members of the preparatory committee, there belonged
Lily Braun, Georg Hirth, and Werner Sombart, a further committee
was formed, the members of which were: Alfred Blaschko,
Iwan Bloch, Hugo Böttger, Lily Braun, Gräfin Gertrud Bülow
von Dennewitz, M. G. Conrad, A. Damaschke, Hedwig Dohm,
Frieda Duensing, Chr. v. Ehrenfels, A. Erkelenz, W. Erb, A.
Eulenburg, Max Flesch, Flechsig, A. Forel, E. Francke, Henriette
Fürth, Agnes Hacker, Hegar, Willy Hellpach, Clara Hirschberg,
Georg Hirth, Graf Paul von Hoensbroech, Bianca Israel,
Josef Kohler, Landmann, Hans Leuss, Maria Lischnewska, R. von
Liszt, Lucas, Max Marcuse, Mensinga, Bruno Meyer, H. Meyer,
Metta Meinken, Klara Muche, Moesta, A. Moll, Müller, Friedrich
Naumann, A. Neisser, Franz Oppenheimer, Pelman, Alfred Ploetz,
Heinrich Potthoff, Lydia Rabinowitsch, Gabriele Reuter, Karl
Ries, Adele Schreiber, Heinrich Sohnrey, Werner Sombart, Helene
Stöcker, Marie Stritt, Irma von Troll-Borostyani, Max Weber,
Bruno Wille, L. Wilser, L. Woltmann.
In the programme which the newly founded Association
for the Protection of Mothers speedily published, we are
told:
One hundred and eighty thousand illegitimate children are born in
Germany every year, approximately one-tenth of all births. This
important source of our strength as a people, children who at the time
of birth are usually endowed with powerful vitality (for their parents
are commonly in the bloom of youth and health), we allow to go
to ruin because a rigorous moral view bans unmarried mothers,
undermines their economic existence, and compels them to entrust
their children for payment to strange hands.
The momentous consequences of this state of affairs are shown by
the fact that the average number of still-births, in the case of illegitimate
children, amounts to 5 per cent., as compared with 3 per cent.
of still-births among the total number of births; the mortality of
illegitimate children during the first year of life is 28·5 per cent., as
compared with 16·7 per cent. for the mortality of all children born.
And whilst only a diminishing percentage of illegitimate children ever
become fitted for military service, the world of criminals, prostitutes,
and vagabonds, is recruited to an alarming extent from their ranks.
Thus, by unfounded moral prejudices, we produce artificially an army
of enemies to society. At the same time the birth-rate of Germany
is relatively declining. In the year 1876 the number of births per
1,000 living was 41; in the year 1900 it was only 351⁄2!
To put an end to this robbery of the strength of our people is the
aim of the
Association for the Protection of Mothers.
The attempt has already been made by means of crèches, foundling
institutions, and the like, to deal with this matter. But the protection
of children without the protection of mothers is, and must remain,
no more than patchwork; for the mother is the principal source of
life for the child, and is indispensable to the child’s prosperity. Whatever
ensures rest and care to the mother in her most difficult hours,
whatever secures her economic existence for the future, and protects
her from the contempt of her fellow-beings, by which her health is
endangered and her life embittered, will serve to provide a secure
foundation for the bodily and mental prosperity of the child, and
will simultaneously give the mother herself a stronger moral hold.
Therefore the Association for the Protection of Mothers will, above
all, make the mothers’ position safe, by assisting them to the attainment
of
Economic Independence
—especially such as are prepared to bring up their own children—by
the formation in country and in town of
Homes for Mothers,
in which, in addition, arrangements will be made for the necessary
care and upbringing of the children, the granting of legal protection,
and the provision of medical aid. Experience has shown that such
provision also corresponds to the wish of many of the fathers, and
assists in retaining their help and interest for mother and child.
The Association will, however, above all, close the sources from
which the present poverty of unmarried mothers arises, and these are
more especially the moral prejudices which at the present day defame
them socially, and the legal regulations which burden them almost
exclusively with the economic care and responsibility for the child,
and which entail on the father not at all, or in a quite insufficient
degree, his contribution to the burden.
The Moral Defamation
of unmarried mothers would, perhaps, be comprehensible if we lived
in economic and social conditions rendering it possible for every
one to marry soon after attaining sexual maturity, so that the involuntary
celibacy of adult persons was an abnormal state. In
such a time as ours, however, in which no less than 45 per cent. of all
women competent to bear children are unmarried, and those who
actually marry do so for the most part at a comparatively late age,
we must regard as untenable the view which considers the unmarried
woman giving birth to a child to be an outcast, thrusts her out of
society like the basest criminal, and gives her up to despair. Equally
untenable appears
The Present-Day Legal View,
which, when the actual father has not gone through the forms prescribed
by the State for a marriage, does not regard him as father in
the legal sense, ascribes to him no relationship with the child procreated
by him, and imposes on him no responsibility for the child or
its mother, although in the majority of cases the mother is economically
the weaker, and he himself economically the stronger party. There
must, therefore, be a legal reform in the direction of equalizing as far
as possible the position of the illegitimate and the legitimate child
in relation to the father.
Finally, however, motherhood—legitimate and illegitimate alike—is
a factor of such profound importance to society, that it appears
urgently desirable not to leave it exclusively to private care, with all
the results that private care entails. In the interest of the community
it is desirable that there should be
A General Insurance of Motherhood,
the cost of which should be defrayed by contributions from both
sexes, as well as supplemented by grants from public sources. This
assurance must not only suffice to provide for every woman sufficient
medical assistance and skilled care during pregnancy and delivery,
but should also furnish a provision for the education of the child until
it is of an age to earn its own living.
In order to propagate these views and endeavours methodically
and upon the widest possible foundation, the active assistance and
participation of every class in the population is indispensable. We
therefore urge on all those who share our views the pressing demand
to join the Association for the Protection of Mothers,
and thus to assist in securing and accelerating the attainment of
these ends.
As the official organ of the Association, was chosen the monthly
magazine, edited by Dr. Phil. Helene Stöcker, Mutterschutz:
Zeitschrift zur Reform der Sexuellen Ethik (The Protection of
Mothers: a Journal for the Reform of Sexual Ethics)—hitherto
published in the year 1905 twelve numbers, in the year 1906
twelve numbers, and in the year 1907 three numbers.
The foundation of the Association was followed on February 26,
1905, by the holding of its first public meeting, in the Architektenhaus,
under the presidency of Helene Stöcker; and the meeting
was extensively attended by the general population of Berlin.
The aims and endeavours of the new union were explained, in
longer and shorter speeches, by Ruth Bré, Max Marcuse, Maria
Lischnewska, Justizrat Sello, Helene Stöcker, Ellen Key, Lily
Braun, Adele Schreiber, Iwan Bloch, and Bruno Meyer; and
from the standpoint of the advocates of woman’s rights, of
jurists, of physicians, of sociologists, and of moralists, in equal
degree, a radical transformation and reform of the present
untenable conditions was demanded.[205]
Soon afterwards, the Association proceeded to form local groups.
The first was formed in Munich, where on March 28, 1905, the
first local meeting took place. Frau Schönfliess, Margarethe
Joachimsen-Böhm, Alfred Scheel, and Friedrich Bauer belonged
to this committee. Further local groups were founded in Berlin
(May 20, 1905—members of this committee, as distinct from
the committee of the general Association: Finkelstein, Galli,
Agnes Hacker, Albert Kohn, Bruno Meyer, Adele Schreiber), and
in Hamburg (president, Regina
Ruben).[206]
The first general meeting (cf. Helene Stöcker, “Our First
General Meeting,” published in Mutterschutz, 1907, No. 2) took
place in Berlin, January 12 to 14. After speeches on the practical
protection of mothers (Maria Lischnewska), the present-day form
of marriage (Helene Stöcker), prostitution and illegitimacy (Max
Flesch), limitation of marriages by economic conditions (Adele
Schreiber), limitation of marriage by hygienic factors (Max Marcuse),
the position of the illegitimate child (Böhmert and Ottmar
Spann), the insurance of motherhood (Mayet), there followed
animated discussions, and various important resolutions were
passed, dealing with the equality of husband and wife in married
life, the legal recognition of free marriages, and of the offspring
of such marriages, the necessity for the provision of certificates
of health before the conclusion of marriage, the means to be
employed in the care of illegitimate children, and the insurance
of motherhood. Especially noteworthy was the address of the
leading medical statistician, Professor Mayet, regarding the introduction
and management of the insurance of motherhood. At
his suggestion, proposals followed regarding the enrolling of
working-class members in the societies for insurance against illness
and for the insurance of motherhood, the necessity for contributions
on the part of the State, the inclusion of the agricultural and
forest labourers, and of domestic servants of all kinds, in the
schemes of insurance against illness and the insurance of motherhood,
the possibility of a voluntary insurance of all women, what
could be effected by the insurance of motherhood (free provision
of midwives and medical assistance, free lodging in case of need,
the provision of premiums for mothers suckling their own children,
the institution of places where advice could be given to mothers,
of homes for women during pregnancy and child-birth, and homes
for women and infants), and the further development of factory
legislation with regard to nursing mothers. The committee for
1907 was chosen: it consisted of Helene Stöcker, Maria Lischnewska,
Adele Schreiber, Wilhelm Brandt, Iwan Bloch, Max
Marcuse, Heinrich Finkelstein.
In the end of January, 1907, an Austrian Association for the
Protection of Mothers was founded in Vienna, under the presidency
of Dr. Hugo Klein. To the committee of this Society
there belong, Siegmund Freud, Rosa Mayreder, Marie Eugenie
delle Grazie, Professor Schauta, and about forty other well-known
persons, physicians, lawyers, schoolmasters, and many women.
In the meeting at which the Association was founded, Dr. Ofner
spoke regarding the legal rights of illegitimate mothers and
children, and Dr. Friedjung regarding the protection of nursing
infants.
In the United States also an Association for sexual reform has
been founded, the so-called “Umwertungsgesellschaft” (Revaluation
Society), the principal aim of which is the complete
re-estimation of all values in the amatory life, and the introduction
of a more ideal view of love. The President of this American
Association is Emil F. Ruedebusch; the secretary, Mrs. Lina
Janssen; the meeting-place of the society is Mayville, in the
State of Wisconsin. Regular evenings of discussion are fixed, on
which questions of especial interest are debated.
[In Holland also an Association for the Protection of Mothers
has been founded; its name is “Vereeniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming.”]
In the newspaper Mutterschutz (1905, No. 9, pp. 375, 376), we
find a report of the meeting of the American Association held on
October 8, 1905, when the topic of discussion was:
What is the true nature of marriage?
The answer ran as follows:
Is it the family (parental) relationship?—No; for a married couple
may have no children, may not desire to have children, and can,
none the less, be thoroughly married.
Is it the common home, domestic life?—No; for husband and wife
may live their whole life in a hotel, and, none the less, be thoroughly
married.
Is it the lifelong community of material interests?—No; for
man and wife can keep their property separate, if they wish to
do so.
Is it mutual assistance and a state of comradeship throughout
life?—No. When a conjugal union is the exact opposite to this,
we speak of a bad husband and a bad wife; they are, none the less,
man and wife.
Does it signify a contract for a lifelong exclusive love?—Certainly
not; if marriage signified that, all Christians would be opposed to this
institution. And yet these are the things which, according to the
common estimation, make up the nature of marriage, whenever the
question is discussed in a manner which is regarded as “respectable”
and “decent.”—As a matter of fact, there is nothing respectable or
decent in this mystification.
What is it, then, in which the true nature of marriage is to be
found?—It is the possession of a human being for lifelong exclusive
sexual service.
Very various views have prevailed on the question how many
human beings it is legitimate for one human being to employ for
his exclusive sexual gratification, and among different nations,
and at various times, the most widely divergent rules and regulations
have prevailed regarding the mode of sexual possession, and, on the
other hand, regarding the duties towards this sexual property; but
wherever marriage has existed, it has signified a right of property in
respect of sexual utilization.
If we oppose marriage, we mean that we oppose that which
actually constitutes marriage according to morality, and according to
written law, that which even the most enthusiastic advocates of this
institution regard as so debasing that they are ashamed to name it
openly.
But, with the exception of the matters relating to sexual service,
we hold fast to and defend everything which is publicly considered as
marriage, and we expect that in this case we shall be “faithful,”
“constant,” and “trustworthy” in all circumstances. For, according
to our view, these most important imponderabilia, and these intimate
associations of interest between husband and wife, are not the inevitable
result of the longing for physical enjoyment in common, but are the
much-to-be-desired result of a well-considered longing for any
one or all of the relations entering into the question. According to
our view, however, the duration of this union, and constancy
while it lasted, would not be dependent upon the activity of sexual
desires.
A special Association for Sexual Reform was founded in
Berlin in the year 1906, at the instance of the editor of the Die
Schönheit, Karl Vanselow. It is an Association of cultured men
and women who also have in view the formation of local groups,
and the delivery of artistic and scientific lectures in furtherance
of their movement for reform.
In the above-mentioned monthly magazine, Mutterschutz,
edited by Helene Stöcker, all the modern problems of love,
marriage, friendship, parentage, prostitution, and all the associated
problems of morality, and of the entire sexual life, are
discussed from their philosophical, historical, legal, medical, social,
and ethical aspects.
The editor herself, a talented disciple of Nietzsche, has since
the year 1893 been chiefly occupied in the study of the psychological
and ethical aspects of the problems of higher love, and has
recently published her collected writings on this subject in a
single volume.[207]
It is an interesting literary physiognomy which is offered to
us in this book; we encounter here a lofty, free, and pure conception
of the love of the future. After the first spiritual wanderings
and confusions, which no one in emotional pursuit of the
ideal can escape, we see this courageous and undismayed advocate
of the eternal, inalienable rights of love, ultimately insisting on
the recognition of the lofty mission of love, in accordance with
the saying of Nietzsche, which she lovingly quotes: “Ye shall
not propagate onwards, but upwards!” (“Nicht fort sollt Ihr
Euch pflanzen, sondern hinauf!”). She especially insists on the
duty and responsibility of individual love. No one can take a
more earnest view of love than is taken here. Helene Stöcker
is throughout no radical revolutionist, but an evolutionist and
reformer. She sees quite clearly that to-day there is no panacea,
no unfailing solution of sexual problems. While she energetically
contests the old sexual morality, and demands its replacement
by a new freer conception of sexual relationships, she, none the
less, recognizes throughout the significance and the value of self-command,
of relative asceticism, the wonderful influence of which,
in the deepening of emotional life, she has most rightly emphasized.
Especially the soul of woman, she believes, has by the
asceticism imposed on women by conventional morality, gained
in a high degree, depth, fulness, and comprehensiveness. The
inward development of woman will be greatly advantaged by the
newer valuation of love. This will be characterized, neither by
an arid renunciation and denial of life, nor by a coarse, egoistic
search for pleasure, but by a joyful affirmation of life and all its
healthy powers and impulses.
Whilst Helene Stocker has laid especial stress upon the psychological
and ethical relationships of free love, its equal importance
from economical and social points of view has been discussed by
Friedrich Naumann,[208]
W. Borgius,[209] Lily
Braun,[210]
Maria Lischnewska,[211]
and Henriette Fürth.[212]
Naumann rightly draws attention to the fact that our purely
monetary economic system is favourable to the production of
sterility, for the reason that in this system motherhood is equivalent
to loss of money, because the wife ceases to earn money in
a degree proportionate to the extent to which she becomes a
mother. The burden of the upbringing of children must be made
an affair of the community. At the present time, on the contrary,
the producer of human beings is burdened upon all sides.
He who has children has more rent to pay, and increased school
expenses. Therefore, Naumann demands, as a first step to the
recognition of the fact that it is a public duty to educate children,
that school expenses shall no longer be demanded from the individual
parent. Above all, however, it must be made easier to
the wife to be a mother.
The wife as a personality demands her right to work, and her
right to motherhood. The fact of the compulsory celibacy of an
ever-increasing number of women competent to become mothers
is the problem which here demands solution. According to the
census of 1900, there were in Germany no less than 4,210,955
women between the ages of eighteen and forty years unmarried,
the total number of women of corresponding age being 9,568,659—that
is, 44 per cent. were unmarried. Among these there were
2,830,538 between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years,
the period most suitable to child-bearing, the total number of
women of corresponding age being 3,593,644—that is, no less
than 78 per cent. According to Lily Braun, there remain
from 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 German women permanently
unmarried; and we may expect the number of female celibates
to increase. The economic conditions, the previously described
unhealthy conditions of coercive marriage, and the efforts of
women for emancipation, have a combined influence hostile to
marriage. On the other hand, law and conventional morality
co-operate in making life a martyrdom for the unmarried mother
and for the illegitimate child.[213]
The woman who becomes a mother, when united only in the
bonds of free love, is at the present day defamed, despised, a
being without rights. The question of “maintenance” is a
scandal of our time! It is the proof of the degree to which most
men are devoid of conscience. An experienced lawyer has very
forcibly described the intolerable conditions which at present
obtain in this matter.[214]
He published the following characteristic
letter from a young master-butcher, which shows how meanly
even a simple-minded man may endeavour to escape the duty
of maintenance. The letter runs:
“Dear Dora,
“I wanted to come round to-day, and wished to deal with the
matter by word of mouth, but I can’t do it, and so I must write to tell
you that we cannot marry, for, in fact, I have now less money even
than when I was a journeyman. The few hundred marks that I had
I have put into the business; and, in fact, I really cannot marry; if
I did, I couldn’t exist at all. I should have to shut up the shop.
What should we do then? I shouldn’t be able to show my face in
H—— again; besides, at best, the business is not worth very much.
So, my dear Dora, write to me now how we can settle matters; you
mustn’t draw the string too tight, or ask too much; if you do, you
see, you will have to find your own way out of the trouble. Of course,
I shall be glad enough to do what’s right, because I am as much to
blame as you are. If after a while I get on as well as my brothers
have done, I can do more for you. But just now I can’t help you
much. Let’s hope you may find some other man with whom you
may live more happily than you have lived with me. Dear Dora,
don’t make such a fuss about it: there are plenty more in the same
case, up and down the world; you are not the only one. Now, write
to me directly what you want to do; let’s get the matter settled
quietly; that’ll be better for you. Your mother won’t leave you in
the lurch, and you will find it will all come right.
“Best love.
“Fritz H.
“P.S.—Write soon.”
Let us imagine the state of mind of the young woman who
receives this letter, characterized as it is by such crafty heartlessness!
And yet this heartlessness is no greater than that of
modern European society, which simultaneously makes fun of
the “old maid” and condemns the unmarried mother to infamy.
This double-faced, putrescent “morality” is profoundly immoral,
it is radically evil. It is moral and good to contest it with all
our energy, to enter the lists on behalf of the right to free love,
to “unmarried” motherhood. Let us make a clearance of this
medieval bugbear of coercive marriage morality, which is a disgrace
in respect of our state of civilization and economical development.
Two million women in a condition of compulsory celibacy
and—coercive marriage morality. It is merely necessary to place
these two facts side by side, in order to display before our eyes
the complete ethical bankruptcy of our time in the province of
sexual morality.
In addition to this necessity for a radical alteration in sexual
morality, we must, in the second place, enunciate the demand for
a general insurance of motherhood, for the foundation of homes
for pregnant women, for women in child-birth, and for infants.
The fulfilment of these demands alone will bring us a great step
forward in the restoration to health of our sexual life, and in the
preparation of a more beautiful
future.[215]
If it be true, as W. B. Stevenson
reports,[216] that King Charles IV.
decreed that all foundling children in Spanish America were to
be regarded as of noble birth, in order that all professions might
be open to them, we cannot but consider that this mode of
thought and action, on the part of a ruler in the country of the
Inquisition, was a shining example for our own time.
“Society,” says Eduard Reich, “as well as the Church, sins against
the laws of morality, as long as it stands in the way of the advancement
of illegitimate children, either by the maintenance of miserable
prejudices against these poor beings, or by positive decrees. We shall
never be able, even should the human race enter Paradise, to make
it impossible for extra-conjugal procreation to occur: love-children
will always exist. Since, then, it is not the fault of the latter that
their parents have brought them into the world; and, further, since,
even if all men were married, one could not impute it to a man as a
moral transgression, if he, in the plenitude of his procreative powers,
had intercourse with a beautiful girl, instead of with his wife (suffering,
for example, from cancer, or some other serious disease); and since,
on the other hand, a wife still in the full bloom of youth could not
be blamed for unfaithfulness if, her elderly husband having been
impotent for several years, she now has intercourse with a vigorous
and healthy young man—for such reasons, let us throw the veil of
forgetfulness over all well-intentioned human weaknesses, and no
longer ask whether a citizen of the world has been engendered in the
marriage-bed, or has sprung from the well-spring of love. To the
reasonable being it is the man himself who is of value; and only
blockheads, simpletons, and donkeys will inquire as to his
origin.”[217]
And yet one more question I will address in conclusion to the
adherents of coercive marriage morality. How many free-love
relationships, how many illegitimate children have there not been
at all times among the cultured classes, even among the pillars
of the throne and the altar, precisely among those who, on account
of their higher spiritual development, ought to possess a stronger
ethical sensibility (nota bene, from the standpoint of coercive
marriage morality). It would be an interesting task to collect
statistics relating to such free unions, and the resulting “illegitimate”
offspring, in the case of notable men and women! The
marriage fanatics would be horrified! Quite apart from the
innumerable secret relationships of this nature, and their consequences,
a short observation and enumeration of the illegitimate
loves and parentage of men and women of high standing, alike
spiritual and moral, would alone suffice to illuminate the actual
conditions, and would enable us to draw remarkable conclusions
regarding coercive marriage. It is my intention, as soon as
possible, to represent in a brief work the rôle of free love in the
history of civilization, and to adduce proofs that free love is very
well compatible with a moral life. Who would venture to reproach
with immorality a Bürger, a Jean Paul, a Gutzkow, a
Karoline Schlegel, a George Sand, or even a
Goethe?[218]
It is a simple evolutionary necessity that free love, in association
with progressive differentiation and with the reshaping of
economic conditions, will find its moral justification also for those
who at present judge and condemn it from the point of view of
long outworn social conditions.
