BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.—TO TAKE, OR NOT TO TAKE A WIFE?
For the majority of men, and for at least thirty years of their lives, love is the strongest necessity, and governs them like a tyrant with no other curb than the wretched brake of written codes, which they do not read, and of social conventionalities, which they can easily silence by employing hypocrisy’s mask; an hypocrisy, let it be well understood, well dressed, well curled, and well educated.
How can one satisfy this greatest of all human needs?
[Pg viii]
By buying love, at so much an hour, so much a month, or so much a year.
By gaining it by seduction or violence.
By taking a wife.
It would seem as if these three ways of loving were totally distinct, one from the other; in fact, that any one would exclude the others, and that they would stand in direct opposition to each other. But when hypocrisy is at the helm of the vessel which bears us over the great sea of life, it contrives so ably and so cleverly, as to enable us to enjoy all three methods at one moment, and, while we are sailing between rocks free of danger or shipwreck, it affords us, as it were, all the delights of a voyage in a beautiful archipelago, where islands and [Pg ix] islets seem to meet and touch each other; and where land, mountains, and scenery all form a bright, picturesque, and beautiful picture.
We row upon the tranquil waters of matrimony, and yet glide so near to the shores of venal love that we can grasp the flowers and gather the shells and precious pearls which lie there. We sail with the wind over the more tempestuous sea of seduction, but all the while we coast the island of poetic, faithful, and constant love; thus, vice, adultery, and domestic peace, debauchery and eternal vows, angels and beasts, find themselves guests at the same table, without false modesty, and without remorse.
Civilisation has opened three ways of loving to men of the present day, [Pg x] and one would have thought that since they are free to choose one, they would have been satisfied with that. Not at all. Civilised man is by nature insatiable, for the hammer of the excelsior beats ever at his heart, the thirst for something better wears him away, and the hunger for something more consumes him; hence he has set himself to destroy the boundaries and walls which separate the three roads, so that he can easily take short cuts from one to the other without risk; and so matrimony, prostitution, and adultery walk hand in hand; and if in public they appear very cool to each other, that is only a blind, for in the secrecy of their houses they wink at each other, sup and sleep [Pg xi] together. If all this is indeed so, a Turk would say it is so because it must be. If all this can indeed be, an epicurean optimist would say, let us, too, try and sail in this sea, now so calm, and now so tempestuous, and let us set that sanctified hypocrisy at the helm.
However, I am neither Turk nor cynic, and I still believe in moral progress, and in the efficacy of books and the spoken word; and even though I be left alone in the belief that there is no happiness save in the good, nor cheerfulness save in sincerity, and in being the same inwardly as outwardly, I would still die in this conviction.
I like a mixture of things at table, but I have no heart for it in the [Pg xii] field of morality. I wish to see the family on one side, and the brothel on the other; and when two natures living together have become an intolerable torment to each other, I should wish the law to apply the instrument of divorce to their chains and to set them free.
The three ways of loving should be separate one from the other, and should never be united. So far from breaking down the walls that divide them, I wish to have them so high as to become impregnable fortresses.
?
Only one of these three ways, however, is that which the honest and happy ought to take. That of seduction and violence, only thieves, [Pg xiii] assassins, and villains can enter. The third, unfortunately, the way of venal love, nearly all enter, though still desiring and invoking some distant ideal, where this way shall be closed, and no path left free save that of matrimony, though its dignity must be always guaranteed by the law of divorce.
But is marriage always possible and always easy?
No; it is often impossible, and always difficult.
And the honest man stops and meditates upon it as upon the gravest, the most intricate, and most obscure problem of life. The misfortune is this, that just these timid and thoughtful men are the best, and the fear is sometimes so great, [Pg xiv] and the meditation lasts so long, that old age comes upon them before they have resolved the problem or made themselves a family nest. Instead of this, the improvident, the thoughtless, and villains precipitate themselves headforemost along the road of matrimony; and if for a few moments they struggle in the tortures of doubt, they quickly silence apprehension and remorse by saying to themselves:
“If it should turn out badly, if I find nettles and thorns on this road, I will clear another cross-road with one good stroke of my spade, and will buy love like so many others, and will, like them, seek it either in the house of my friend or neighbor. Immorality on this point is [Pg xv] so lax, the indulgence of the public is so merciful, that I may enjoy this violation of home without falling under the penalty of the law. Mahomet also, generally so severe on all transgressions of the written law, when he speaks of the sins of love, even of the greatest, always adds: ‘But God is good and merciful.’ And all think with Mahomet, though they have not written the Koran, that to the sins of love ‘God is good and merciful.’”
I, however, the warmest advocate of marriage for myself and others, desire with all my soul that the honest and wise man should marry, to increase the capital of honesty and wisdom in future generations. And so I preach and shall preach to my last breath:
[Pg xvi]
Marry! Marriage is still and always will be the most honest, healthy, and ideal mode of loving.
But I add immediately:
Marry well; combine all the powers of your thought and feeling to solve this most important problem of your life; add to them all that is best in yourself; all that you find of the best among your counsellors who are your friends.
And then follow the advice given us by that embodiment of good sense, Benjamin Franklin: Take a sheet of paper, and after having folded it in two, so as to have two distinct columns, write on one side all the advantages the proposed marriage would bring you, and on the other all the evils and dangers into which [Pg xvii] it might lead you. When you have finished this piece of analysis work, try to measure the opposing elements, cancelling alternately those that seem to balance each other, as in algebra + 3 and - 3 is equal to zero, and you will see what is left upon the page—that is, whether the good predominates, or whether the evil has the upper hand.
I know well all the mistakes you may make. I know, too, that if you love you will write in rose-coloured ink in the column of good, and in that of evil you will use the blackest. But in any case this work of analysis, this labour of detailed examination will, without your being aware of it, oblige you to consider many elements which otherwise you would [Pg xviii] have passed over, just as if you had had recourse to a microscope of great power instead of to your eyes.
Matrimony must be studied with the eyes first; with the microscope after; yes, even with the telescope. The eyes will enable us to see the principal part of the problem; the microscope will show all the ins and outs of our love; it will reveal all its cells and all its fibres; and lastly, the telescope will give us the power of seeing, prophetically, as it were, what will befall our passion and desire in the evolution of time.
Then, if, after using eyes, microscope, and telescope, you also read my book, you will find there the sincere and dispassionate words of a man who became a physician that [Pg xix] he might study mankind better; who began by studying himself, as being the subject ever at hand; who to this daily incessant study has devoted forty-six large volumes not yet printed.
Listen to the voice of a man who has made woman his principal study, judging her to be the better part of humanity, and has loved her more than all the creatures upon earth, believing her to be the first and greatest source of happiness. I know perfectly that, even after having applied Franklin’s method to the study of the problem of matrimony, even after having used eyes, microscope, and telescope, and read my book, you may yet make a mistake; but your conscience will always be [Pg xx] free from any remorse, in knowing that, as far as you were able, you did all that was possible to secure happiness.
Vessels are sometimes wrecked under the command of able and brave captains, and under the guidance of a sure compass. But for one of these you find a hundred wrecks, to which there was no compass, or an ignorant or drunken captain.
And all those who marry without reflecting deeply and long on the abstruse problem are drunk and ignorant captains, who launch, without a compass, upon the most tempestuous sea.