The Morality of Marriage

Southland Times, Issue 11485, 18 June 1890, Page 3

The Morality of Marriage

It must not be forgotten, in considering ,hi§ moit complex of questions, that while there has been much evil from licentious excess oa tbe one hand, there has been alto Buffering among those who have led a strictly single life on the other. The excese, carried on from generation to genera tion, probably partly explains the coffering of the self-controlled. Society demands this endurance from women but not from men ; man hand on to the race exaggerated instincts to devastate other lives, and the brant of those unsatisfied instincts must be allowed to destroy the health and sometimes the reason, because the sufferer belongs to the sex that has no choice in these matters. Duty or sin ; stem, strict, savage, intolerable doty, or black, polluting, ungovernable uin ! Tbe.ie are the woman's alternatives ! It is not true that we wom^n reap what we so»; we r(<Bp what other people have bowd for us! The interest and attraction which m*n feel for women »nd wonmn for men have no complete and healthy opportunity. The satisfaction of the emotional nature must be purchased at the cost of a bondage that lasts for life, with nil its responsibility and risk. The moet orthodox usually aHmit ihut it is bad to assume these responsibilities too young, but they do not admit that it is b"d alao to forego the society and tbe interests for which there is co strong v desir' 1 , if there are dangers in freedom, they are nothing more than the price thit muat he paid for everything that is worth having. We do not prevent people from fall ing in love by our restrictions ; we oa'y prevent them from falling io love suitably. Fulness of life, mental and emotional, is calming and steadying to th* judgment ; its darjgers are greatent when it is enjoyed as a solitary privilege. There are worse things for sock-ty than the play of passion. We have those worse things now in the play of lust, cruel and cold, in sapless lives and pinched souls, in organisms that seem a sort of crors between a corpse and. a lay figure. We shall sooner or later have to consider whether our ideas of wbat we are pleased to call ' high' and 'puro' are precisely 6quare with facts : whether those men and women who keep moot closely to the current models of the commeudable are really tbe most joy-inspiring and beneficial people. If we accept the scientific view of morality—the school of B«ntham, Mill, Herbert Spencer, Clifford — that is the test whi'h must be applied. What, after al l , is 'purity?' Does it not come very clese to charity which ' vaunteth not itself , is not pnffed up, seeketh not her own, thinketh no evil ;' The ' purity' that sits up aloft under the presidency of Mrs Grundy vaHnteth itself exceedingly, is puffed up very much indeed, eeeketb her own, to the entire forgetfulnees of tbe manner in which Bhe acquires it, and occupies *ill her leisure in thinking evil. This kind of purity has a beautiful sister, who unques tionebly ad 'pts the elder's rules, hut obeys them in a devotional spirit, believing them to come straight from heaven, with the light of holiness still upon them. And for these she i« ready to suffer — and ofren has <o euffer — martyrdom. Both these forms of purity, nobie and ignobl-, ba»iu to grate agaimt fact. There is yet another kind. This purity came into being win the love of nature, the vivid modern ssnee of the splendour of lifo, the 'beauty of the world.' She ia fostered by that passionate love of'liberty, of health, sunlight, freshneß», which i» becoming one of the regenerative and moving forces of the century. Sne is frosh as a sea-breezo, full of the breath of life, op«c-eyed ,Rtraight of glaDce, and utUrly without fenr. This is 'be purity (tbe nmre witb its pale, cramped associations s jetns to mock her !)of an age of science aud the poetry of science, of an age which permits no roofs and domes to stand b'tween itsblf and the light of truth, which Sods its hope and its inspirations in the service of man. — English Paper.