LOVE and ETHICS I,OVK and KTHICS By ELLEN KEY Author Child." of " The Century of the " Love and Marriage," etc. i > NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH 1911 Ck)pyright, 1911, By B. W. HUEBSCH All rights reserved i ' * . - i r * . PRINTED IN U. S. A. > J J J J J NOTE U ^ ELLEN KEY'S startling views on the marriage relation in ''Love and Marriage" imply far more than a refusal to accept the sanctified, time-hon- ored beliefs held by the majority to-day. The heat of the arguments provoked by her bold contentions often blinds her ad- versaries to the basic moral good in her creed. She elucidates some of the most difficult problems in eugenics by showing how the right marriage relation, founded on a higher moral standard in the sex re- lation, will make woman more capable of doing her share in the great work, of social reconstruction.' Valuable suggestions for the child-cul- ture of the future are offered when she insists upon a change in the conditions which hamper woman in her highest work as a mother, and rob children of a 5 229434 . : : 0*. '': - "'": Note :.: I- :/:.-" ::.o!;-. . mother's care. Love has assumed a deep- er aspect since woman's powers have been liberated, hence we must strive for a high- er perfection in the relation of the sexes. In ''Love and Ethics" she deals with sex problems with the courage and the purity of mind which such themes de- mand, and she challenges the permanence of current ideals against the law of life which means change and growth. We must anticipate the necessity of establish- ing a new standard of moral values if present-day social wrongs and abuses are to be remedied. Ellen Key points the way to these higher values, without de- manding that her revolutionary ideas of reform be translated into immediate ac- tion. Conditions are not ripe for the rad- ical changes she suggests. A gradual transformation of moral values must lead the way to a better future, founded on a higher conception of love. A. K. B. LOVE AND ETHICS IN love, in which the happiness of the individual and the well-being of society so frequently conflict, the present conception of duty demands the unconditional sacrifice of the individual to society. All the state needs, we are told, is healthy fathers and mothers, the certainty of the permanent union of the parents to secure the education of their progeny. Whenever the happiness of the individual interferes with this require- ment, the individual must be sacrificed. That this entails suffering upon him is no reason for loosening the marriage bond, and certainly not so long as the majority of parents are agreed that children are best cared for in the family. Therefore, it is said, the state is not interested in any 7 8 Love and Ethics change in marriage forms. To facilitate divorce would not remove the causes of the discords that arise whenever human beings live in close union. Even if the present form of marriage does not meet the demands of the most highly developed types of men and women, we must accept the status that benefits society as a whole when confronted with the choice between an innovation that would benefit the few but be harmful to the many and the exist- ing order that brings suffering to the few but benefits the collectivity. At the pres- ent time easy divorce would only slacken the marriage tie by making for disinte- gration. The destruction of the family, hence of the nation, would be the result. Accordingly, for love to demand happi- ness is downright rebellion against the welfare of the state. History, ethnog- raphy, and nature do not bear out the theory that happiness is to be achieved by individualism in love. The lesson Love and Ethics 9 they teach is that of quiet self-denial and courageous fulfilment of duty. As soon as children come, it is said, the parents' de- mands for their own happiness must cease. If they do not, nature, in obedience to her laws, will punish them for the neglect of their duty through the children. The great error in this theory of duty, not only as it affects love but even all other human relations, is the notion that society is necessarily benefited by the sac- rifice of the individual. And the evidence adduced to prove this theory is equally false. What history and ethnography show is but the workings of what we call human nature, a very changing phenom- enon varying with time, /nationality, and climate. They show that what * ' nature' ' commands on the one hand she forbids on the other, that what is denied her in one way she exacts in another way. In France, for example, the arguments ad- vanced to-day against divorce are that 10 Love and Ethics '^ remarriage is against nature," that **a woman is never a true mother outside the family," that the family does not depend upon what our reason tells us, but upon ''natural laws" proved by sociology and biology. Such arguments make it diffi- cult to forget the ''natural law" that has made adultery the shadow of indissoluble marriage, especially in France. Every defence of marriage confirms Lassalle's words, that the art of petty diplomatic souls consists in lying away the truth and denying what is. One would suppose, on hearing these arguments, that those who attack marriage were trying to destroy a beautiful idyl. As a matter of fact, the horrors of the present system are such that what we should do is compare them with the possible dangers of a new system and see which are to be dreaded the more. Even if the social conditions to-day were not the cause of much impurity and un- happiness, the question is not, "Are mod- Love and Ethics 11 ern marriages good enough for the needs of society?" The question is, ''How can we find a more efficient ethical code than the present one for improving the spe- cies?" The basic idea of ' 'Love and Marriage' ' ^ was not that the individual must obtain the highest mea^U7X of happiness in the love re" lationj but that society must be so adjusted as to 7nake the happiness of the individual subserve the betterment of the species. In "Love and Marriage" I pointed out that those who insist on monogamy, that is, a lifelong love relation, as the only moral relationship between the sexes dis- regard the inevitable consequence of such an ethical standard, namely, the waste of A a large amount of splendid life energy which if utilized would produce fine off- spring and so aid in the improvement of the race; while the worse elements of so- ciety would not be deterred by any ethical principle from propagating their kind. 12 Love and Ethics Such high-strung idealism would produce the same results as the convents in the Middle Ages, and, under present social conditions, this standard of morality- would hinder the improvement of the species, although the trend of evolution is unmistakably toward real unity of love as the final goal, and although unity of the soul and the senses can already be laid down as the condition of true chastity in the union of the sexes in or out of mar- riage. From the point of view of the good of the species, the legal and ecclesiastical form of morality cannot hold its ground against the most highly developed sex consciousness of to-day and its ethics. Morality seeks new standards in itself as well as in the laws governing the condi- tions that make for the improvement of the race, laws which science has already discovered, or, with ever-increasing zeal, is seeking to discover. These laws and Love and Ethics 13 this consciousness, I pointed out in my previous work, may sometimes conflict. Sex idealism, for example, holds that the sole sanction for parenthood is love. The eugenists point to the fact that many fine children spring from mothers that never loved the fathers of those children. Sex idealism insists on unity of love. The eugenists show that fidelity is responsible for a great deal of unproductiveness and in so far is a waste to the species, while infidelity has been productive of much good to the species. Sex idealism contends that those parents are the best whose love is most steadfast. The eugen- ists maintain that the most important thing for humanity is that those men and women should unite for parenthood who are best equipped for it, whether with or without love, with or without marriage. They cite as examples the nations that have had a long, vigorous existence, although love played no part 14 Love and Ethics in the contraction of their marriages. Sex idealism replies by saying that the maintenance of a nation is one thing, the elevation of the soul another. Na- tions may exist by virtue of their ignoble qualities as well as their noble qualities. The species can be elevated only by erad- icating inherited savage and animal traits through selection. All other problems of life must be re- garded from this one point of view, the elevation of the species. Are the chil- dren of the upstart millionaire as a rule strong, beautiful, and healthy? If not, then the mad chase after wealth must be condemned not only as an indirect but as a direct hindrance to the improvement of the race. If men or women who are fit for parenthood but not for love suffer through celibacy and could lead a fuller life if allowed to present fine children to society; or even if some men or women are fit for love but not for a single life- Love and Ethics 15 long love, then the one-love idealist has no more right to impose his standard of love upon them than they have to im- pose their standard upon him. That, however, is just what is being attempted, especially among those of our youth who recognize no idealism other than their own. Even our young ''free- thinkers' ' do not regard the sex question with a free, open mind. They seem to think there are only two possibilities, either to be a slave to desire or a slave to duty. And the rest ''plead for chains and pray for barriers." They look up timetables, sailing dates, and Cook's tours and take out passports for safety. Then where is the courage that goes ahead on its own responsibility and at its own peril opens up new paths and tries to discover new countries? The young gen- eration, even the Lelf -styled "truth seek- ers," complain of the inconsistency, the contradictoriness in the treatment of this 16 Love and Ethics subject, forgetting that in love life itself assumes its most contradictory form. Do they not know that life is a living thing and therefore incalculable, that life is not' a hard and fast fact, but a growth with undivined possibilities, that it leads us and all other creatures along mysterious paths and so discloses things we never dreamed of in our philosophy? Have they no glimmering that life often holds in store unexpected destinies, marvellous experiences, blossoms of our own being and other beings that we shall never fore- see? Do they not feel that the beauty of life is its very incalculableness; that greatness in life is to rise to heights through all of life's uncertainties? If we only perceived this, we should never demand a fixed ideal, no matter how lofty. The man who knew that the next day his ideal would become the gen- eral, established ideal would instantly de- stroy it, so gruesome is the thought that Love and Ethics 17 infinite life should thenceforth proceed according to a single model. Idealism, we should then perceive, may signify only one thing that each person values his ideal so highly that he is will- ' ing to live and die for it, even though to others it may seem unimportant, foolish, or even shameful. He is an idealist who swings a heavy hammer and rams into place the stones of the concept of duty, thereby paving a smooth road for others to travel. But either side of the road stretches the earth, which bears life from the poles to the | equator, life with its countless shades of I customs and temperaments. To think of insisting upon a great lifelong love as the sole moral standard for this varied life! He who so insists has never allowed his thoughts to stray beyond the narrow cir- cle prescribed by his like-minded neigh- bors. He forgets that an ideal, a thing incomprehensible to the majority, is 18 Love and Ethics bound to be entirely set aside if it is forced upon mankind as absolute. To proclaim a belief that flows from one's own spiritual state is very different from demanding that same spiritual state in others. When a man proclaims his belief by his teachings or his life, he con- tributes to the spread of a state of soul like his own; others are influenced to pat- tern their spiritual self -culture and their self -given laws of life upon his. But hav- ing proclaimed himself subjectively, his task is done. If all social problems, customs, usages, and pleasures were to be measured by their effect upon the human race, we should perhaps arrive at that absolute ethical standard which is now lacking. But all this must first be investigated. In Europe monogamy is established as the absolute moral law, the necessary condition for the maintenance and health of the nations. But among such hardy Love and Ethics 19 nations as the modern Japanese and the ancient Hebrews we find concubinage an institution sanctioned by law and custom. A nation in which marriages are con- tracted only from deep personal love is at a great disadvantage as against other na- tions and must perish, because deep per- sonal love is still an exception for which so high a price must be paid that he who has paid it does not possess the courage to impose it as an ethical demand on others. For this and many other reasons I maintained in ''Love and Marriage" that the modern sex problem consists in find- ing the proper equilibrium between, on v^ the one hand, the requirements for the improvement of the species and, on the other hand, the increased demands of the individual to be happy in love; whereas formerly the problem was only between society's demands for fixed marriage forms and the individual's demands to satisfy his sex life in any form. The sex i*. 20 Love and Ethics ethics that proceeds from this new equi- librium will be the only true ethics. It will efifect an upliftment of life in both the species and the individual. The problem of sex, as I have also pointed out in ''Love and Marriage," is the problem of life, it is the problem of society's happiness, in comparison with which all other problems sink into insig- nificance. Education, every cultural ef- fort in intellectual and religious matters will remain superficial until we regard as the main question, that which determines all other cultural schemes, the elevation of the human race. We must strive for the elevation of the human race not only as has been done heretofore through the self-improvement of the individuals in each generation, but through their selec- tive instinct, which as it develops in in- sight will enable them the better to rec- ognize the conditions that determine the propagation of the species. Love and Ethics 21 However, as against the one-sided point of view of race-culture, I have in ''Love and Marriage" stated the hypothesis that in love humanity has found the form of selection most conducive to the ennoblement of the species. Yet the earnest truth- seeker cannot possibly think of setting up his unproved hypothesis as an irrefragable principle. All I pled for was greater freedom in love, that we might have the opportunity of observing its effect. I also urged that in the study of the influ- ences of heredity more attention be paid to the effect of love. To gain an ever clearer insight into the combinations that transmit ancestral traits and so be better able to discover the laws of selection by which life in all its aspects ascends to higher levels; to make these laws morally binding, so that selection should secure the best qualities and eradicate the worst this is indeed the universal aim of evo- lution. 22 Love and Ethics Even those who are profoundly con- vinced of the importance of the one-love form as a factor in evolution must admit that there are many other factors be- sides, which no idealistic fanaticism can conjure away from the process of evolu- tion. The life force that has created out of two cells and two cell-souls our com- plex being and given rise to the manifold marriage forms and ideals of love that now determine the species is merely the last link in a chain of evolution begin- ning billions of years ago. And since we know that this evolution of love was ef- fected without any predetermined ideal type, there is no good reason to doubt that Eros will continue to mould a cos- mos out of the existing chaos of sex rela- tions without imposing upon the present as an ethical norm the ideal type of which we are now beginning to have a dawning perception. On the other hand those who think that the whole matter Love and Ethics 23 can be left to the ^^ natural instincts" or to the gratification of the senses, or those who believe that it can be left to the di- vine instinct for what is good and right, forget that man's own power to create ideals has long been a factor in evolution, and that the only question at present is, ''How can this force be made an agent for good in evolution?" By bending our efforts to the improve- ment of the race we shall, as I explained in ''Love and Marriage," build a bridge ,/ to lead from the present chaos in love / toward the one personal love relation. This, too, is the only way in which love can be rid of its irrational character, ^^ which Goethe described by saying that in love everything is a hazard, because every- thing depends upon chance. All of this, however, is only another name for undis- covered laws. Some day we shall reach a point where the erotic discord between the soul and the senses physically and the 24 Love and Ethics discord between several persons psychic- ally will be impossible, for it is the desire of every soul to experience the highest happiness. And the highest happiness can be attained only through the large feelings, which by psychologic necessity exclude the many small ones. But the road still to be traversed is very long, and meanwhile there are pure souls that have loved more than once, because, hav- ing looked in vain for the complete em- bodiment of their ideal in one individual, they have found one side of it in one person, another side in another person. There are pure souls, who upon discover- ing a new soul mate can forget their pre- vious experiences as if they had never oc- curred; other pure souls there are who, because they have erred in their great love, have lost their capacity for further experiences. "Love and Marriage" was addressed to those of our youth who have consecrated Love and Ethics 25 themselves with new devotion to guard- ing the gift of life, those, therefore, who know that the ethical law is not written upon tablets of stone, but upon tablets of flesh and blood, who feel that their own noble happiness in love is a service to life, surpassing in devotion every service to God. But the question where freedom of love ends and the right of the new gen- eration begins is a question which they, too, must decide. Since we still know so little of the con- ditions that make for the best offspring physically as well as psychically, the faith of the idealist in the importance of love cannot obtain greater social concessions to love than those which will not endan- ger the certainty of evolution. Of all social concessions to be demanded the most essential is that the standard by which the morality of parenthood is measured should be, not the marriage rite but the will of two human beings to as vv 26 Love and Ethics sume the responsibility for their children, not the legitimacy of the children but the kind of children they are. The second social concession to be insisted upon is that the dissolution of marriage should be made dependent upon the will of one of the married pair, and that the man and woman should have equal marital rights. While society, therefore, has until now been satisfied if husband and wife merely continued to live together, no matter under what adverse circumstances, and reared children no matter how bad, the new conception of duty will aid in the elevation of life. For these new princi- ples have all the prerequisites to an or- ganic growth of duty combined with hap- piness, of responsibility combined with rights, as well as the prerequisites to the organic union of duty, happiness, respon- sibility, and rights with all the other re- ligious, moral, and economic ideals that each day are coming to be more generally Love and Ethics 27 prevalent. Moreover, these principles can be adapted even now to existing condi- tions in so far as such adaptation is neces- sary for the cooperation of souls and the universalization of customs, so that those on a lower level would be educated by the more advanced. In society at large, as in the individual, the attainment, through every new form, of a fuller development of p(nver, a richer variety, and, at the same time, a com- pleter unity, signifies an upward evolu- tion. The forces of the spiritual life that now radiate in two different directions would be focussed were society to protect all children alike but allow individuals to protect their love. The feeling of re- sponsibility for the child's original char- acter is weakened by the current concep- tion of legitimacy, and for the child's bringing up by the current conception of illegitimacy. That endeavor to elevate love to higher 28 Love and Ethics levels, the impulse by which love lives and bestows happiness, while its cessation is love's death that endeavor will in- crease in infinite measure as soon as free- dom of divorce puts an end to the present certainty in marriage. The fact that in some free unions also love dies, as is fre- quently adduced in controversion, proves nothing against this possibility of a finer love through free divorce. Often the very thing that dissolves free unions is so- ciety's persecution of those who live in free unions. The objection is untenable that even at present the law puts only the slightest obstacles in the way of di- vorce, that delicacy of feeling, a tender conscience, sympathy, and similar spirit- ual states usually prevent a divorce, and that accordingly under free divorce the more serious-minded would remain bound in wedlock while the more frivolous- minded would enjoy greater freedom. For the question of free divorce does not. Love and Ethics 29 in the last instance, turn upon whether it prevents or does not prevent misfortune in the present. The main thing is, that its psychologic effect would gradually be- come a growing power in creating a beau- tiful, dignified love life. Proof of this may be had in a struggle that has already been fought to the fin- ish. When parents decided the mar- riages of their children, particularly their daughters, when the one all-absorbing question was, ''Will I or will I not obtain the object of my love?" how lacking in spiritual qualities was love then, how lit- tle part it played in the whole spiritual life, how few shadings it had, what slen- der demands it made upon inward har- mony. All emphasis had to be laid upon the mere external struggle. But now, when the young lovers as a rule decide their own fate, what a wealth of new spir- itual sensations, of varied shadings, of sentiment, sensibility, and reserve they 80 Love and Ethics betray to those who are privileged to look into their souls. It is exactly in the most soulful girl that we see so marked an in- dividualism in the will to choose for her- self that only a vague presentiment of a man's unexpressed desire will wither her feelings, should the hot breath blow upon her before her own longings have awakened. And among the loftier-mind- ed young men a corresponding will is growing to wait quietly for the woman of their choice, and check their desires, which develop so much more quickly than in women. These young men and women have al- ready travelled far beyond the danger of *' throwing themselves away" on passing loves. In brief, the very forces that lib- erty has set free work against the danger ous consequences of liberty . In "'Love and Marriage" the conviction that the sex relation must be invested with an all-pervasive, all-decisive signifi- Love and Ethics 81 cance and sanctity was thus expressed: love must again become though on a loftier level that which it once was when the nations looked upon life with reverence: Religion. To every one to whom Goethe's word is true, that the aim of life is life itself, love will be a religion, and not only love, but every spiritual expression of life, creation, the search for truth, joy in the beautiful, work. These will be a religion in the degree in which they are connected with the whole of life. In other words, relig- ions perish in religion, in that all-com- prehensive feeling of unity for which the upliftment of life is the only adequate di- vine service and the revelations of univer- sal life are a daily prayer. This worship will be especially dedicated to the power that carries the spark of life from genera- tion to generation. And the more de- vout the worship the more certainly will each generation rise above the preceding. 82 Love and Ethics Until mankind discovers some other way of maintaining the species, the sex relation, undeniably, is the earthly origin of life. Accordingly, the evolutionary view of life must make the sex relation the starting-point for the advancement of all life. It must harmonize the moral concept of sex with the demands for the advancement of life, and it must spread a holiness over the entire kingdom of sex and again make it the object of reverence if it serves the advancement of life. This does not mean merely that love creates a new being. It means that when created by a great love this being will enlarge the souls from generation to generation; it means that a richer, fuller human be- ing is created, endowed with a force of feeling that radiates its warmth. Love is not only the impulse by which the hu- man race obtains new members; it is the impulse by which the human race will become more closely welded together and Love and Ethics 33 ennobled in the degree in which the chil- dren inherit from their parents the great power to love, a power which in all hu- man relations will react upon the whole of mankind. For everything in life is con- nected with sex love. Thus it is that in life-denying religions sex love is the arch- enemy, while in life-affirming religions it is the sacred impulse which not only car- ries the ladder of evolution but deter- mines it. Sex love stands in a most intimate re- lation with art, which gives sex selection its ideals, with literature, with the law, with work and religion. It is commonly believed that the great religious feelings are accessible to all. Nothing is farther from the truth. The religious feelings grow great only in those souls which, un- der other circumstances, would have been just as deeply affected by the great love. Since, evidently, souls grow greater when issuing from the union of great feelings. 84 Love and Ethics ideal love would enlarge the power and the right of love. Scarcely any one as yet comprehends this idea because it is preached to a gen- eration in which love is the most betrayed and the most coarsened, the most neg- lected and the most despised of all the great forces of life, so much so that even the best can hardly conceive that some day it is all bound to be different. Most people still shake their heads in doubt and misgiving when told that mankind on its way to humanity must first bethink itself of love and her justice, because only thus can it attain a higher humanity. Even the most highly educated are so lacking in what Dante calls intelletto d' amove, or at least in an understanding of the importance of love culture, that they regard these words as a temptation to all lovers to inflate their own feelings until they carry them as in a balloon high above life, whence they look down Love and Ethics 35 upon it absorbed in twofold reverence of themselves. In other words, every de- fence of the value of love to life, evident to almost anybody, is construed as an ex- hortation to overlook all other life values for the sake of love. Have those who speak so no knowledge of the fact that religion is sanctifying, strength-giving, compelling only to the extent in which it is love, and that the soul is never more religious, nor more in need of religion, than when it loves? For the soul has a limited amount of energy. What it expends in one way it cannot give in another. Have they no knowl- edge of the fact that love in all its mani- festations is of all feelings the most soul- enlarging, the most unifying, especially that love which absorbs what is highest in all other loves because it forms, as no other love does, the unity of the soul and the senses, of the individual and social life, because it forms the innermost car- 86 Love and Ethics pels of the great mystical world-rose around which all other leaves cluster? That is why every endeavor to solve social and political problems is like build- ing on ground shaken by an earthquake, all cultural creative activity like a stream from an infected source, all development of power in the other fields of life a growth from a shrivelled root. And it will continue to be so until a new relig- ious reverence for love is established as the sole healthy, beautiful condition of sex life. Such a conception of love will create a firm foundation for society, it will purify the source, and convey nour- ishment to the root. No one who has gone through the poor quarter of a large city can have the hardihood to say that we talk too much nowadays about the so- cial question. But the sex relation is to- day the poor quarter of all social classes. And yet when a single voice is raised to speak this truth, even thinking people cry Love and Ethics 37 out, ''Too many words are wasted on love, too much importance is attached to it." Nothing so well confirms the poet's dic- tum that ''the present is so full of matri- monial tragedies and wasted love that it has lost its hearing for its own misfor- tune. " It is still only the very small minority that listen when the religious or human- itarian preacher preaching morality points out the ravages caused by the sins and diseases of sex life, ravages so ap- palling that we should suppose the social consciousness would have been aroused long ago. Hence it is not astonishing to find that practically no one as yet recog- nizes that these ravages have their deep- est root in the denial or the ignoring of the value of love to life. Nor is it aston- ishing that people do not understand when they are told of the numerous ob- stacles to life due to the same cause, which cannot be verified by figures. 88 LiOve and Ethics They ransack every nook and cranny and ferret out arguments to prove the so- cial value of marriage. They pile figures upon figures to show that the mortality through disease and suicide and that crime and drunkenness are greater among the [unmarried than the married; that child mortality and criminality are great- er among those born out of wedlock than in wedlock. Against love, on the other hand, they adduce the divorces, suicides, and crimes it causes. But they cite no statistics of all those who have remained unmarried, or have gone insane, or be- come suicides or criminals or parents of illegitimate children because social condi- tions or the prejudices of the parents have prevented a love marriage, because one of the two has voluntarily or through compulsion turned traitor to love for the sake of wealth, or ''duty," or the ''hap- piness of others. " True, we now meet but rarely with the Love and Ethics 39 sort of victims of which there used to be many, when parents inculcated in their daughter the idea that she ''must not think of her own happiness, but the happiness of others. ' ' That is to say she must ''make happy" the man whom her parents approved, but make unhappy the man she loved. That the man of the parents' choice as well as the parents themselves forgot their duty to think of the happiness of others instead of their own that was left quite out of count. But what a hazy conception people have even yet of the truth that happiness in the love of two young persons is an essen- tial part of the happiness of the commu- nity; that accordingly their main duty is to their love; that they will be able to fulfill all their other duties better if first of all they fulfill their love duty; that love is not the contradiction of duty, but the first and the greatest duty in contract- ing a marriage. 40 Love and Ethics In sporadic instances, to be sure, the strength and victory of duty has meant the decline and fall of love, whether a happy or an unhappy love; or the reverse has been true, love has caused the down- fall of duty. But who stops to think of all the energy lost to every nation be- cause the majority must still dissipate their energies day in day out, in dull res- ignation to all the obstacles in the way of love, or in a secret struggle against love. Who counts all the half -completed works, all the energies weakened from the very start, hindered in their development or prematurely exhausted, which, when re- vived, never blossom fully and fail to achieve their aim, or strive for lower aims? All this through unhappy family life. WTio stops to think that a large part of this social waste of energy could have been avoided had men and women not been taught to take everything else more seriously than the sex life; had men Love and Ethics 41 and women not been educated for every- thing else but marriage; had men and women not obtained from society more right for every other great life demand than for their love? The fact that countless human beings lead a decent, beautiful life without the happiness of love does not prove that their life might not have been still more beautiful and stronger, hence more im- portant to society, if possessed of that happiness. Against those who despite their lack of such happiness are not with- out wisdom and warmth of feeling, must be placed those who outside of marriage or through it have become frozen or distorted, or have gone to rack and ruin. And most people have become so not through the inevitable tragedy that love's destiny some- times imposes and no order of society can relieve, but because the older generation has forced upon the younger its view that love's value in life is extremely small. 42 Love and Ethics When we have got to the point at which love is regarded with religious rev- erence as the necessary basis of the ''sa- credness of the generation," a large part of the present social rescue work will be rendered superfluous. The number of degenerates and erring will diminish in proportion as love becomes one of the means of man's bliss, not the sin that causes his fall. When once the mighty powers now confined in the prison of low passions, of unnecessary suffering through sex life shall have been liberated, then not only the forces at present wasted will serve to benefit all the rest of life, but also all the new forces that love will awaken or intensify. But the love I mean is the personal and great love, which opens up to men all the endless variety of life, not the lit- tle love dalliance which obliterates vari- ety. That man or woman has never even divined the meaning of personal Love and Ethics 43 love who does not know that above all it awakens the feeling that one's own being and other people's beings are something great and unfathomable; that it signifies the love of the personality of another as expressed in individual and social work as well as in love and the home; that it sig- nifies a reverence of personality as ex- pressed in the hour of joy as well as in the eternal questioning of the aim of life, to which love gives an added significance. He who thinks that a man imbued with such a love never concerns himself with anything but his own feelings has never known such a man. What one lives or is through and through one speaks and thinks about least. Even as the healthy man does not speak of his health, or the innocent man of his innocence, but health and innocence speak and think through him. When personal love is permitted to show its power to create what Ruskin has 44 Love and Ethics called the real wealth of nations, **as many healthy, full-blooded, happy hu- man beings as possible," then humanity will reduce to harmony one of the great fundamental contradictions of life, the contradiction between man's being and woman's being. Then, too, the general prospects will be widened, the other pain- ful contradictions of life will be harmo- nized, and humanity will begin to reach up to the heights to which the present generation is but a step. Love must at- tain the prestige and the esteem now withheld from it, because, as I have said, the evolution of love is the mightiest weapon for the unbroken chain of human birth, by which generation after genera- tion inherits and transmits its physical and psychical powers, which grow nobler and attain a finer equilibrium the more closely together love can weld the mascu- line and the feminine. But love, in its evolution, has already Love and Ethics 45 become an important factor in harmoniz- ing masculine and feminine qualities. Thus we see men and women cooperating in the solution of the social problems. Yet their cooperation is, as a rule, a merely mechanical combination of mas- culine and feminine capacities, though growing ever more organic. More and more masculine and feminine soiils com- bine for the furtherance of all the aims of life. The will of the modern woman that marriage should continue to he love signifies, among other things, that the spiritual interchange between man and woman and their common life must embrace more than merely the sphere of domestic life. It signifies that each loves the expression of the personality of the other in fields outside their own common life. Man will thus voluntarily encour- age woman's influence in fields of work in which, left to himself with his n^ascu- line mode of thought and action, he has 4d Love and Ethics for so long not only wasted the new lives woman gave to humanity, but also the new intellectual forces which she has cre- ated, especially her own deeper and finer susceptibility. An increasing number of women, for example, are their husbands' friends in the same line of work. Both together or each for himself, but acting and reacting on each other, they accomplish so much more than would be possible for each alone. While this cooperation is attained through love, those imbued with the new idea no longer consider love a means for attaining other ends. They consider it something to be striven for as an aim in itself. For they never feel they are done with their love. In love, as in every- thing else, they want to attain to ever higher stages. Men, it is true, maintain that love can never fill their existence as completely as it does women's, because by a natural ne- Love and Ethics 47 cessity man seeks the rest of life's variety outside, where his instinct for action and creation constantly finds new aims; while to a woman it is equally natural to turn to the inside, where by an immutable law she finds her highest sphere of action as a mother. Or, as the poet before quoted has expressed it: ''Man can merely love, woman is love itself." When man be- comes womanish in this regard, or woman mannish, the contrast, that is, the spirit- ual condition of sex love, is removed. The ''femininity" that man loves in woman is that very inward-turning qual- ity; and the "masculinity" that woman loves in man is that very outward-turning quality. It is an indisputable fact that if the majority of women no longer had the calm and repose to abide at the source of life, but wanted to navigate all the seas with men, the sex contrasts would resolve themselves not into harmony but into monotony. 48 Love and Ethics Until women come to recognize this it must still be insisted that the gain to so- ciety is nothing if millions of women do the work that men could do better, and evade or fulfill but poorly the greater tasks of life and happiness, the creation of men and the creation of souls. To fulfill these tasks properly women require the same human rights as men, and until they have obtained these rights ''femin- ism" has still all its work before it. But in proportion as women acquire the right of suffrage, using this word not merely in its narrow political sense, but in all senses, the right of choice or selection in general in proportion as they acquire this right they must learn to use it in the field of life. They must learn to know that their power is greatest in those prov- inces in which ''imponderable" values are created, values that cannot be re- duced to figures and yet are the sole val- ues capable of transforming humanity. Love and Ethics 49 Of what avail is it for women to speak at peace congresses if the children in their own nurseries get whippings or beat one another? Of what avail for women to speak at ethical congresses if they are un- able to save even one man from the mis- ery of being a mere fragment, if they are unable to bring harmonious unity into his life. Feminism finds a very apt crit- icism in two apothegms of Goethe. He speaks of the folly of fleeing the sun to warm oneself at the frost; and the first condition of wisdom, he says, is, '"To seem nothing, to be everything." The sun diffuses its warmth where the values of the soul grow; the frost reigns where utilities are created that the soul recks not of. The values of the soul are to be found in the world of feelings. It is a pity the modern American reform proposition has so blinded many women that they do not see that the American programme is like 50 Love and Ethics the American birds whose colors are magnificent but who cannot sing. The American soul in general still lacks mu- sic. It has no ear for the tones and half- tones of life. The millions of women in America who leave the care of their homes and children to collective work while they themselves follow their profes- sions or their trades only seem to be so- cially useful. For it is not utilities but complete human beings that elevate life. Accordingly, all the outward improve- ments through legislation and social work remain on the whole without effect, be- cause neither men nor women understand that what really counts is the work done in the field of ethical values and in the furtherance of spiritual conditions. Forms, it is true, react upon spiritual conditions, but spiritual conditions react infinitely more upon forms. The best forms for marriage, for the right of motherhood, and for the protection of Love and Ethics 51 children will remain ineffective as long as women are unable to follow the ten commandments given them by Schleier- macher, commandments which, if fol- lowed, would renew humanity from with- in outward. The sense, not the wording, of these commandments is: Thou shalt have no lover except the one lover, but thou shalt be a friend of thy friends without eagerness to please and without flirtatiousness. Thou shalt create no ideal unto thy- self, neither after thine own image, nor after the image of others, but thou shalt love thy husband for his own sake, for what he is and for the way he is. For nature is a stern avenger, who visits the empty romanticism of the girl upon the woman unto the third and fourth period of her emotions. Thou shalt not profane the sanctum of thy love, for whosoever gives herself away for any profit whatsoever, even if it be 52 Love and Ethics for the legal right to be a mother, loses her fineness of feeling. Thou shalt contract no marriage that shall have to be broken. Thou shalt not desire to be loved by him whom thou lovest not likewise. Thou shalt not bear false testimony either in word or in deed by putting a fine gloss over the barbarities of our pres- ent customs. Thou shalt desire the education, the art, the wisdom and the honor of men. There is nothing more futile than to try to prove the inferiority of woman to man, unless it be to try to prove her equality. That the reflexive life is stronger in wom- an than in man is as important for the elevation of life as that man's strength displays itself in another direction. Just as the difference between man and woman is essential in the natural life, so also is it essential in the cultural life. Unnamed, women cooperate in men's works, and Love and Ethics 53 men in women's works. The third sex will never have a share in the work of creation. Spiritual fruitfulness will re- sult only in the measure in which wom- an's soul is organically welded with the man's works and ideals, and the man's soul with the woman's works and ideals. That man's work belongs more to the m- dividual side of life and so often leads to strife and division, but also to progress and neoformation; that woman's work belongs more to the social side of life and so often makes for cohesiveness; that she is a better guardian of the warmth of feeling that ''has gradually made its way into human life," as Bjornson says all this does not tip the scale of values one fraction of an ounce in favor of the one rather than the other. Americanism views all problems of life from a very low standpoint in regard- ing the question of self-maintenance as woman's principal aim. Self -maintenance 54 Love and Ethics for the woman as well as for the man is merely the primary external prerequisite to a dignified human existence. The most important step, especially for the future of socialism, is to give every one the opportunity of self-maintenance by means of the work he is best able to do, the work, therefore, which will conduce most to his happiness. This is important for the very reason that such work yields the greatest values to society. And when a profounder culture will have given us deeper insight into these things, it will seem as natural for society to maintain its women as it is now natural for it to maintain its army and navy, because women perform the greatest social func- tion when they educate the new genera- tion. It would be sad, indeed, if the new society were to make an engineer out of a Beethoven or a Wagner. And it would be an equally great misuse of energy if it put mothers to work outside the home Love and Ethics 55 instead of making them educators of the soul. That most mothers now employ a method of education which is to edu- cation what organ-grinding is to music merely proves that every art must be learned. But it does not prove that women's energies would on the whole be better utilized if applied to other tasks than that of educating a more perfect hu- man race, a task for which all present en- deavors are mere preparations and the general connection of which is not yet understood. A more perfect race means a more soulful race, a more soulful race a race having greater capacity for love. And from no other center can this grow- ing power of love radiate toward all fields of life than from the love between man and woman, between parents and chil- dren. THUS, the most encouraging sign of the time, that which holds out the greatest promise, is the fact that the modern woman's intellectual develop- ment and the modern man's erotic devel- opment have reached a stage at which they are beginning to invest with a new significance the woman's inward-turning quality and the man's outward-turning quality. We are perceiving the possi- bility of a love which will be the syn- thesis of both qualities, when woman has learned from man to esteem beauty in the form of activity, and he has learned from her to esteem beauty in the form of repose. Although Eros still seems of as slight importance to men in general as the planet of the same name, yet the older Eros has engrossed their attention as 56 Love and Ethics 57 much as the newly discovered Eros has the astronomers' attention; because so many other questions are connected with the problems evoked by the earthly as well as the heavenly Eros. Eros is so easily able to force a man off his track that ''he has been generally compelled to follow his calling in life in the company of love or in rebellion against it. " This experience is probably the chief reason for man's old hatred of woman. He felt lowered by the kind of love he permitted himself, and he felt injured if he permit- ted himself no love at all. The present stage of woman's emancipation has pro- duced new adverse conditions for men through the disintegration brought about either by her social activity or by her love. Father and mother have thus be- gun to suffer from lack of a home since women have grown tired of sitting at home and waiting for the heures perdues of their husbands as such men have un- 58 Love and Ethics til now regarded the hours devoted to the home; not without reason, seeing that women have filled those hours, in their youth, with billing and cooing, in later years, with grumbling and squabbling. / But in all cases in which there is an affinity of souls and the sympathy of friendship, love is what it always was and always will be, the cooperation of the I father with the mother in the education of the children, as well as the cooperation of the mother with the father in all other great social works. If such parents were to do nothing but give life to their chil- dren and were to leave their education to society, they would feel deprived of the best part of parenthood, their life in com- mon, in which the personality of the man beloved of the mother and the personal- ity of the woman beloved of the father exert direct influence upon the children, more important than all other education, and increasing in importance in propor- Love and Ethics 59 tion as the parents grow through each other. We are thus led to the conclusion that because happiness through love satisfies one of the deepest demands of human nature and directly sets in motion some of its best forces and increases others, the happiness of the individual in love consti- tutes a social value, and the higher the standard of love of the individuals, the higher will be the entire plane of society. But not all human beings are endowed with the gift to love. Even those who possess it have other propensities besides. Consequently, neither to the man nor the woman can the concept of happiness in general mean quite the same as happiness in love, nor, in the main, can it mean the satisfaction of those needs or the applica- tion of those capacities which depend on conditions over which the individual is himself not quite master. Happiness that does not signify the highest possible 60 Love and Ethics development of all our powers would seem small. The meaning of happiness is the perfection of every great capacity and the constant expectation of satisfying still greater and greater demands for per- fection. Happiness means to love, work, think, suffer, and enjoy on an ever higher plane. This height is attained sometimes through ''happy," sometimes through ' ' unhappy" circumstances. Thus happiness in its profoundest sense is the elevation of life through the destinies of life. In this sense happiness is the sole duty to him who sees the aim of life in life itself. For so long as there is left a single duty that has not been transformed into the feeling of happiness, the individ- ual's life and the life of the great collec- tivity are still without their full meaning. In all human interests happiness is at once the end and the means; and not least so in philanthropic work for the happiness of others. Philanthropy, or Love and Ethics 61 social work, will fail just as Christian charity failed, if performed merely for the sake of others. It is only through his own demands for happiness or the conditions that have satisfied them that a man can have any knowledge of what those demands and conditions are to others. The social reformer indifferent to his own happiness is nothing but a blind leader of the blind. Happiness as a duty is a concept which in its relation to love may be illustrated by a comparison with another great value of happiness, that of health. In the Mid- dle Ages, when men tried to enfeeble their bodies by hunger, dirt, and other mortifications of the flesh, when they saw God's punishment in plagues and its cure in processions of flagellants, they could not have had the remotest notion of sani- tation as we conceive it to-day. It was not until health came to be regarded as the will of God that individuals consid- 62 Love and Ethics ered it their duty to promote it; and it was not until life on earth came to be re- garded as a good thing that society con- ceived it to be its duty to apply the achievements of science to laws of health, ^K the overcoming of disease, and the pro- longation of life. Health gradually be- came an end in itself, happiness, which we are justified in striving for for its own sake, irrespective of whether it may be made useful for other purposes or not. Nevertheless, even to-day there are still sick people whose spiritual life has had the effect of intensifying their physical malady. There are many again who, de- spite their conscientiousness in promoting their health, have had the misfortune to lose it. There are some who are selfish in the excessive care they take of their health; others who are magnanimous in sacrificing their health for an end they regard as higher. But all this does not vitiate the general rule, that every indi- Love and Ethics 63 vidual regards and treats his health as of so great a direct value to himself and so- ciety that it is his duty as well as his right to strive for the happiness of health for his own sake, not merely for the sake of others. In other words the entire conception of the Middle Ages has in this case been completely reversed. Coming generations will similarly re- verse the present conception of love, a conception still as inimical to life as was the idea of health in the Middle Ages. This inversion or transmutation of values will not prevent the appearance of condi- tions in love similar to those which I have just mentioned in regard to health. But the great principle remains, that each in- dividual wdll regard and treat his love as a great value both to himself and society, and that it will be his duty as well as his right to strive for this happiness. SINCE the above was written Doctor Foerster has made a criticism of my views; which in his Christian ascetic conception of life is quite natural. Ac- cording to this conception obedience to the laws of bourgeois society and religious authority is the only road to a higher ev- olution; self -discipline and self-renuncia- tion the best conditions of growth. Ev- ery word spoken in behalf of the sanctity and the right of love is in this view ''wor- ship of nature." Suffering, not passion, should be the road to that higher culture which is to be attained through self -con- quest. The best love is fidelity and pa- tience; these alone release the profound- est spiritual forces and join man to the divine. Fidelity in marriage frees man from his sensual instincts and passions and affords him the possibility of person- 64 Love and Ethics 65 al development in the higher sense. On the other hand ''free love" does not de- velop these spiritual conditions, and motherhood out of wedlock must be re- jected because it does not give the child a secure place in a settled family life and does not entail serious responsibility for the child. Since the child has sprung from passion alone the mother's love fades away in the face of responsibility. These views in the ascetic conception of life are, as I have said, natural. But he to whom the aim of life is life itself feels the same reverence for its sensual as for its spiritual demands. He knows there is immoral asceticism just as there is im- moral sensual passion immoral, because it is not uplifting to humanity or the in- dividual. He knows that when two un- married persons give life to a child nature often rewards ''passion" by endowing the child with splendid equipment. Nature seems to pursue a mysterious purpose 66 Love and Ethics with this quality of ''passion" which the sense of responsibility cannot achieve. The important thing, therefore, is to harmonize our concepts of right with na- ture after we have learned to know nature by thorough investigation. It is not im- portant to suppress nature uncondition- ally in favor of moral concepts distinctly opposed to nature. A higher culture in love can be attained only by correlating self-control with love and parental respon- sibility^ a correlation that will follow as a consequence when love and parental re- spoTisihility are made the sole conditions of sex relations. For this reason the young generation must be educated to ever greater demands in love, to an ever higher conception of their right to parenthood. Self-control must be taught in all those relations in which it is a condition of true love and healthy parenthood. But self-renuncia- tion must not be preached when complete Love and Ethics 67 happiness in love will contribute to the growth of the individual soul and human- ity at large. It is solely from this one moral point of view that motherhood without mar- riage as well as the right of free divorce must be judged. Irresponsible mother- hood is always sin with or without mar- riage, responsible motherhood is always sacred with or without marriage. Free- dom of divorce can never remove the ob- stacles that feelings and circumstances 7lace in the way of motherhood. But it can overcome the irrational doctrine that it is always the death of the soul to sacri- fice others, and the life of the soul to sacrifice oneself for others, and that the individual who decides the question of sacrifice in his own favor thereby proves his worthlessness to society. Unprejudiced reflection, however, shows that in an unhappy marriage one of the parties must sacrifice the other. He who 68 Love and Ethics goes sacrifices the one that wants to hold him back; he who is held back is the victim of him that restrains him. Sometimes it is a greater sin to allow oneself to be sacrificed than to sacrifice others, at other times the reverse is true. And if we are asked who is to decide which is the lesser sin the answer is: the individual's conscience which has to de- cide other equally difficult conflicts in duty. There is but one alternative, either the Catholic marriage, or freedom on one's own responsibility. As with all other questions the answer to this question depends upon one's con- ception of life. Either we believe that man must bend his reason, his will and his conscience to the decrees of authority, or we believe that man may find his own way through repeated experience and many and vari- ous trials of power. Either we believe that obedience is the sole road to a higher Love and Ethics 69 culture or we believe that rebellion may be just as essential as obedience. Either we believe that the sensual instincts are pitfalls and obstacles, or we regard them as guides in the upward movement of life on a par with reason and conscience. If we hold the latter opinion then we know that in sex life right and wrong, growth and decay, sacrifice of oneself and sacri- fice of others are more closely connected with one another than in any other prov- ince of life; that in sex life ''right" often becomes ''wrong"; that he who sacrifices the other is perhaps secretly the victim of his victim; that "passion" produces great and beautiful effects which beauty cannot achieve. The one necessary thing is to make ever greater demands upon the men and women who take to theTUselves the right to give humanity new beings. In order to make room for these new demands the ethical conception that 70 Love and Ethics makes the right of parenthood dependent upon the present fixed forms of marriage must fall. Then, and then only, will the entire moral emphasis be laid upon the physical and psychical character of men, and parents will become the most impor- tant factor for the children and the traits they inherit. Not until the character of the child becomes the determining ele- ment in society's moral conceptions will natural morality replace the morality op- posed to nature. Not that all asceticism will become unnecessary, but it will not be brought into requisition except when it serves the progress of life. And not that all fidelity must cease. Fidelity will become personal, husband_and wife, like tw^ friends, will show consideration, ten- derness, and-kindness t o each other t^e- cause they will know that that is the ouly way of the ir pr eserving each other^ love, the only way their love can attain its full stature. Love and Ethics 71 The more souls develop the more they demand, not of the strongest sensual pas- sions, but of the greatest spiritual love. For his own sake the lover exacts from himself the control of his passion and for his own sake he guides his hand carefully in the cultivation of all conditions neces- sary to a common life. Thus the ener- gies of the soul are fveedjrom within out- wardly. For we learn by experience that the more intimately, tenderly and completely we love the more happiness we possess and give through our love. The old morality that still claims the right to be considered the only real mo- rality is built upon a conception of life according to which the divine resides ex- clusively in the spirit and the will, not in the body and its instincts and impulses. It is a conception that must have the sup- port of authority and dare not rely upon its own laws. The new morality, on the other hand. 72 Love and Ethics does not regard the spiritual as hostile to the physical, nor does it call every mani- festation of nature '"divine." It sees in the sensual and the spiritual the two forms of the divine and it holds that the divine reveals itself the more clearly the more the bodily and the spiritual pervade each other. The animal man feels no contra- diction between the senses and the spirit. The '' spiritual" man seeks to rid himself of the dualism he feels by suppressing the sensual. The new morality aims to re- move the contradiction. In love this can be done only by means of true love. Through the lack or the possession of this sense of unity each one is able to see for hiviself the value and Justification of his love. "V IT is a false accusation, as every one who has read ''Love and Marriage" to the end knows, that I want to rob society of all forms. It is an accusation always made against those who demand new forms. One may doubt the psycho- logical import or the legal soundness of the new forms which I proposed; but no one can truthfully maintain that I de- manded freedom alone without any bonds whatsoever. But my bonds are like the hempen cords that tie up a young tree, not like the iron hoops fastened round an old tree to keep it from falling apart. 73 RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW ^UG 2 4 2005 i DD20 12 M 1-05 $ YB 2b'-^fo U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES lilllilllili CD0M0ba473 .^3 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY