THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 1 J 
 
 Will the Home Survive 
 
 A Study of Tendencies 
 in Modern Literature 
 
 CHAUNCEY J. HAWKINS 
 
 Author of " The Min} 'of Whittier " 
 
 f^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, Inc. 
 
 2 AND 3 Bible House
 
 < ( < c 
 
 Copyright, 1907, 
 By Thomas Whittaker, Inc. 
 
 « « 
 c < 
 » « * 
 
 < • • « < 
 
 « ^ 4 
 » * 4 • 
 
 « • 4 « « 
 
 • • « • t * 
 
 • C c * 

 
 HO 
 
 To the memory of J. N. Beard, 
 former President of the Univer- 
 sity of the Pacific, who was a great 
 ^ inspiration to me in student days, 
 
 N and the richness of whose life 
 
 S grows upon me as the years pass, 
 
 I dedicate this little volume. 
 
 O 
 
 t 
 C9 
 
 J.34429
 
 Contents 
 
 I. Introduction .... 7 
 
 II. Ibsen's Ethics of Marriage . 27 
 
 III. Bernard Shaw and the Super- 
 
 man . . . . . 63 
 
 IV. Max Nordau and Naturalism . ^^ 
 
 V. Tolstoy's Conception of Mar- 
 riage 102 
 
 VI. The Family IN Modern Fiction 119 
 
 VII. Socialism and the Family . 171 
 
 VIII. H. G. Wells : the Prophet of 
 
 the New Order . . . 204 
 
 IX. Some Concluding Words . 231
 
 Will the Home Survive 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Will the family, that institution which we 
 have long regarded as the unit of civilization, 
 the foundation of the state, survive ? The 
 very form of the question may startle us, but 
 we have to recall only a few facts to remind 
 ourselves that the family of our fathers' time 
 has almost entirely gone. Its going has not 
 been caused by any revolution, it has passed 
 so imperceptibly that we scarcely realize that 
 it has gone. Indeed, in a few cases it may 
 remain in something like its original state, but 
 for the most part the home, as our fathers 
 knew it, has entirely passed from our civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 Home life, for the most part, especially in 
 large cities, is a matter of history. Hunter in 
 
 7
 
 8 Will the Home Survive 
 
 his suggestive book on Poverty says of the 
 home of our fathers : " The economic de- 
 velopment of the last hundred years has des- 
 troyed it and left in its stead a mere shadow 
 of what once was the source of all things 
 essential to the world. The mills, factories, 
 abattoirs, breweries, and bakeries took from 
 the home the various trades ; the state sup- 
 plied the defense, and the city the water 
 supply ; the sanitarian, the surgeon, and the 
 alienist took precaution against disease and 
 replaced home remedies by skilled practice 
 and medical science ; the sick have hospital 
 care, the schools undertake the instruction of 
 the child, and the factory, etc., the technical 
 training. The home is now a few rooms in a 
 crowded tenement or apartment-house. The 
 fields have diminished to commons, the com- 
 mons to yards, the yards to courts and light 
 shafts; the tenement has become yardless. 
 Little or nothing has replaced the social losses 
 of the home." 
 
 A few decades ago virtually the entire life 
 of the parent and the child was in and about
 
 Introdtiction 9 
 
 the home. There the work was done, and it 
 was for the most part hand work. KiUing, 
 cooking, baking, sewing, spinning, were all 
 home occupations. The child was not only 
 trained in the three R's by its parents, but by 
 them was given the higher education it re- 
 ceived in the affairs of life. The child was 
 with the parent a large part of the day and 
 was in a position to observe the parent at 
 work. But this has all been changed. The 
 child of to-day receives a very small part of 
 its education in the home. The public school 
 is responsible for its education so far as the 
 knowledge of books is concerned. In the 
 affairs of life the store and factory educate the 
 child. The larger education the child derives 
 from play is usually gained in the street. The 
 home is a place of a few rooms where the^ 
 family eat and sleep. The home life is gone. 
 The American city is no longer a place of 
 homes, but of tenement and apartment- 
 houses. 
 
 The loosening of the family ties through 
 the laxity of divorce laws has also resulted in
 
 lo IVill the Home Survive 
 
 the passing of the older conception of family- 
 life. The home made by one man and one 
 woman bound together " until death do ye 
 part " has in large measure given way to the 
 trial marriage. Many men and women enter 
 into this relationship openly confessing that 
 they will test the matrimonial state, and if it is 
 not successful will seek their freedom, while, 
 we fear, an increasing number, who are not so 
 bold in their confessions, understand that it is 
 a comparatively easy task to find freedom if 
 they are not happily married. At any rate, 
 the increase in divorce in recent years has 
 been so rapid that there can be little doubt 
 about the changed conceptions concerning the 
 sacredness of marriage. 
 
 The necessity for family life has been 
 greatly modified both by the modern educa- 
 tion of women and by the convenient means of 
 living which are open to men. The higher 
 education of woman and the industrial oppor- 
 tunities for maintaining herself have made her 
 economically independent of man and hence 
 she has greater freedom in the choice of a
 
 Iiiirodiiction 1 1 
 
 husband. The boarding-house and club life 
 supply two of the most important factors 
 which once made man dependent upon 
 woman, while with a large class of men the 
 prostitute, or if they are men of wealth, the 
 mistress, satisfy their sexual instincts. All 
 these things have contributed to reduce the 
 number of marriages in proportion to the 
 population. This is true of almost every 
 country of Europe. In Holland the number 
 of marriages to 10,000 persons dropped from 
 171 in 1873 to 139 in 1886; in Switzerland 
 from 152 to 137; in Austria from 188 to 
 155 ; in France from 178 to 149; in Belgium 
 from 156 to 134; in England from 176 to 
 141 ; in Scotland from 155 to 124; in Ireland 
 from 96 to 84; in Denmark from 162 to 142 ; 
 in Norway from 145 to 131. 
 
 Those who refuse because of modern con- 
 ditions to enter into the marriage relationship 
 are for the most part people of high culture. 
 Not more than half the women who graduate 
 from college are ever married, and the men 
 who withhold themselves from this relation-
 
 12 Will the Home Stcrvive 
 
 ship are as a rule men of education and 
 thought. 
 
 Furthermore, what our fathers regarded as 
 the natural and divinely ordained end of 
 marriage, the bearing of children, finds less 
 place in the conduct of this generation. Out- 
 side our immigrant class, and a few native- 
 born families scattered here and there, women 
 have learned the art of preventing pregnancy, 
 and if they fail in this, notwithstanding moral 
 and criminal codes, they resort to abortion in 
 preference to giving birth to many children. 
 There are several reasons for the increase of 
 this practice. It would be an error to attrib- 
 ute the practice entirely to immoral or heedless 
 women. There are unquestionably some who 
 practice abortion because they do not want an 
 interruption of sexual pleasures, who do not 
 like the duties of motherhood, and who do not 
 want to run the risk of losing their hold upon 
 their husbands, which might result during a 
 part of the period of pregnancy. But there 
 are more serious reasons which deter many. 
 The fear that the children cannot be given the
 
 Introduction 13 
 
 necessary education to fit them for the best in 
 life, the pinch of poverty, industrial incon- 
 venience, deter many from fulfilling the end 
 of their existence. The desire for uninter- 
 rupted social life, and the dread of want, are 
 the two great forces warring against the holy 
 tnnity of father, mother, and child which 
 characterized the home of our fathers. 
 
 Hence the question is not. Will the family of 
 our fathers' time endure? That type of 
 family life has already largely passed from our 
 civilization. The family has never been a 
 fixed institution, but has constantly been 
 modified by the industrial forces to which it 
 was compelled to adjust itself, as well as by 
 the changed conditions of moral, religious, 
 and intellectual thought of different times. 
 Imperceptibly this adjustment has been taking 
 place in recent years until to-day the type 
 of family life which prevailed a generation or 
 two ago has been quite superseded by a new 
 and widely different type. 
 
 The question now arises, Will the patri- 
 archal family, monogamous in form, endure,
 
 14 Will the Home Survive 
 
 that is, the family with the father as head, the 
 mother and child in some sense his subjects ; 
 or is even this type destined to pass with the 
 new industrial order ? This question is more 
 serious than it has been at any period since 
 the forming of our so-called Christian civiliza- 
 tion, because the attack upon the family is no 
 longer academic, as it has been in times past, 
 but is using as its instrument of warfare the 
 popular novel and drama, the types of litera- 
 ture which are read by the masses of men. 
 
 This attack is fraught with danger just 
 because of the weapons being used. The 
 sensual novel and drama, which unfold the 
 story of sexual looseness, make an appeal to 
 many people stronger than the cold appeal of 
 logic. There seems to be a morbid sentiment 
 at the present time which responds to the 
 erotic in literature. Whether it has been 
 created by literature of this type, or whether 
 there is something in man which welcomes 
 the stimulus from this type of sentiment, it 
 would be difficult to determine. It is only 
 necessary for us to note this as a fact. Until
 
 Introduction 15 
 
 the publication of Kveutzer Sofiata Tolstoy 
 was read little outside of Russia. War and 
 Peace, The Cossacks, Anna Karenina were his 
 richest creations, and from a literary point of 
 view will form his chief title to fame. Yet these 
 were not the things which made him famous. 
 His Kreutzer Sonata was his first story to be 
 published in all the European languages. 
 Its circulation ran into hundreds of thousands 
 and from this time Tolstoy was placed in the 
 front rank of living authors. Yet why should 
 this story bring Tolstoy into such promi- 
 nence ? The book can scarcely be called a 
 short story. As a work of the imagination 
 there are no signs of greatness in it. It is 
 lacking utterly in poetic qualities. The erotic 
 element is the only thing which can account 
 for its wide-spread popularity. 
 
 How can we account for the large sale of 
 the works of the symbolists in France and of 
 the realists in Germany except by their 
 appeal to this morbid sentiment? In 1893 
 Zola's works had sold in this proportion : Nana, 
 160,000; La Debacle, 143,000; LAssomoir^
 
 1 6 Wi/l the Home Survive 
 
 127,000; La Tcirc, 100,000 ; Germinal, 88,000 ; 
 La Bete Hzwiaine and Le Rcve, each 83,000; 
 Pot-Bouille, 82,000; as a contrast, LCEiivre, 
 5 5 ,000 ; La Joie de Vivre, 44,000 ; La Qir'ee, 
 36,000; La Co liquet e de Plassans, 25,000. 
 The novels with the largest sales were those 
 where lust and bestial coarseness appeared 
 most flagrantly, and they decreased in their 
 market value in proportion as their nastiness 
 and obscenity became less. His purest novels 
 have the least sale. Why this is true we 
 must leave for the theologian to determine, but 
 the fact that the weapon is used effectively 
 only accentuates the importance of the attack 
 that is being made upon the family through 
 popular literature. 
 
 The second weapon which is being used is 
 the appeal of individualism, which is so strong 
 in many minds at the present time. Ibsen 
 was a leader in this conflict. The only im- 
 portant thing in his sight was for man to save 
 himself. Whatever restricted his freedom, 
 whether it was state, church, or family, he 
 regarded as an enemy. This led Ibsen to
 
 Introduction 1 7 
 
 rage against the family in Dolls House and 
 Ghosts, and led him finally to advocate the 
 marriage of convenience. 
 
 Ibsen has a host of followers. Among 
 English-speaking people, Bernard Shaw has 
 become a voice for Ibsen and has declared 
 that the present institution of the family must 
 be abolished before we can expect to produce 
 a better race of men. In Germany Gerhart 
 Hauptman is a follower of Ibsen, while in the 
 Scandinavian world George Brandes is ap- 
 pearing as the enemy of traditional morality. 
 In France Ibsenism has become a cult and 
 Ibsen's social theories are presented on the 
 stage by many of the younger dramatists. 
 
 A number of novelists, who do not go to 
 the extent of preaching nihilism, are pleading 
 for the rights of the individual as against the 
 rights of society. Elizabeth Waltz is pleading 
 for greater liberty in divorce and dedicates 
 her book " to those men and women who take 
 the larger view and who walk in the light of 
 it." Robert Grant in his Unleavened Bread 
 would give divorce on the ground of in-
 
 1 8 Will the Home Survive 
 
 compatibility. A large number of novelists 
 of recent months attack the traditional theory 
 of marriage as a sacrament and argue for 
 greater liberty in making and breaking the 
 marriage tie. 
 
 A third source of attack is socialism. 
 H. G. Wells boldly declares that the present 
 institution of the family must be modified, and 
 a large number of socialistic novels and 
 dramas are pleading for the modification of 
 the family on the ground that the socialistic 
 scheme is incompatible with the individualistic 
 family. The thing which retards the socialis- 
 tic propaganda, so the socialist thinks, is the 
 family, and he would destroy the present form 
 of the family that his theory may triumph. 
 
 Another class of writers who are attacking 
 the family, is represented by Max Nordau. 
 They reject all spiritual conceptions of the 
 family and find the basis of love in the 
 physical instinct of sexual passion. This pas- 
 sion is love. Whenever it becomes stronger 
 for one creature than for another, the latter 
 should be deserted for the former. This is
 
 Introduction 19 
 
 the underlying thought of the Right to 
 Love. 
 
 The mere enumeration of these sources of 
 attack indicates the strength of their appeal. 
 Merely to stamp a thing " scientific," as does 
 Max Nordau, is to be sure of its acceptance 
 by a m.ultitude of shallow minds to whom 
 " scientific " means ultimate authority. To 
 cry from any platform, " Dare to be yourself," 
 is such a challenge to the self-respect of those 
 who are so small they are afraid to lose what 
 they already possess, that it is certain to 
 arouse them to rebellion. The air is so full 
 of socialistic sentiment that the socialistic 
 appeal for the abolition of the family is sure 
 to carry great weight with many people, while 
 the appeal to the sexual passion is almost 
 irresistible in multitudes. This is indicated by 
 the large sale of literature dealing with the 
 sexual instinct. 
 
 A further danger which arises from this 
 attack is the deception hid in the literature in 
 which it is made. These writers leave the 
 impression that the family is in a degenerate
 
 20 Will the Home Survive 
 
 condition, immoral and undesirable. The 
 typical Ibsen family centres about a Nora or 
 Mrs. Alving, wholly abnormal creatures, rare 
 in any community. Yet Ibsen chooses all his 
 characters from this morbid or immoral class, 
 making them typical of the family as it exists 
 at present, leaving the impression that the 
 family is a thing no longer to be tolerated. 
 Zola calls his series of novels " The Natural 
 and Social History of a Family Under the 
 Second Empire," and leaves the impression 
 that he portrays from actual observ^ation the 
 average family of the French middle class 
 under Napoleon III. But the family he pic- 
 tures through twenty weighty volumes is 
 entirely outside of normal French life. It is 
 gathered from newspaper reports of immoral- 
 ity and crimes, and is in no degree based upon 
 observation, as he claims. Maupassant's nas- 
 tiness grew out of his own immoral life rather 
 than degenerate social conditions, and the 
 " realism " of " young Germany " with all its 
 vulgarity is as far from being a real portrayal 
 of German life as the pure, normal German
 
 Introduction 21 
 
 home is from the sty. The attempt is appar- 
 ently made to create dissatisfaction with the 
 family by picturing it in as unfavorable a light 
 as possible, whereas the average family life 
 of Europe and America is on the whole desir- 
 able and pure. 
 
 The attack on the family, while it is at- 
 tracting more attention at the present time 
 than ever before, cannot by any means be 
 called a recent thing. December loth, 1835, 
 the Federal Diet of the German Confederation 
 passed the following resolution against the 
 school of writers known as " young Germany " : 
 "In view of the fact that a school of literature 
 has lately come into existence in Germany, a 
 school now known by the name of ' young 
 Germany,' or ' the young literature,' whose aim 
 is, by means of belletristic writings, accessible 
 to all classes of readers, imprudently to attack 
 the Christian religion, to discredit the existing 
 conditions of society, and to subvert discipline 
 and morality, the Council of the German 
 Confederation (Bundesversammlung) . . . has 
 unanimously passed the following resolutions :
 
 22 Will the Home Survive 
 
 All the German governments bind them- 
 selves to bring the penal and police statutes of 
 their respective countries and the regulations 
 regarding the use of the press in their strictest 
 sense to bear against the authors, publishers, 
 printers, and disseminators of the writings of 
 the literary school known as ' young Germany ' 
 or ' the young Hterature,' to which notably be- 
 long Heinrich Heine, Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich 
 Laube, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Theodor Mundt, 
 as also by all lawful means to prevent the dis- 
 semination of the writings of this school by 
 booksellers, lending libraries, or other means." 
 The originator of this school of writers was 
 Ludolf Wienbarg, an earnest but not especially 
 gifted man, who was born in Altona in 1803. 
 In 1834 he published a book, the title of 
 which suggested revolution, A71 yEstlietic 
 Campaign, and prefixed this dedication : " To 
 the young Germany, not the old, I dedicate 
 this book." By young Germany he meant the 
 contemporary writers who had broken with 
 tradition, in art, state, church, and society, and 
 who were using their pens in what they con-
 
 Introduction 23 
 
 ceived to be needed reforms. In reality, the 
 term came to be applied to a group of writers 
 who had broken with Christianity and were 
 trying to establish a pantheistic religion for 
 the new era. Under such phrases as " the 
 emancipation of the flesh," or " rehabilitation 
 of the flesh," they were pleading for the aboli- 
 tion of traditional morahty and for greater 
 freedom in the laws regulating the union and 
 separation of the sexes. 
 
 Karl Gutzkow, born in Berlin in i8n, was 
 one of the leaders among these new lights. 
 He declared that the marriage ceremony con- 
 ducted by clergy neither added to nor de- 
 tracted from the sacredness of marriage, and 
 boldly declaimed against " the water-soup 
 weddings, the sordid procreation of children, 
 and struggle for mouldy bread," the cold 
 prose of the ordinary marriage. In Wally he 
 not only aired his religious heterodoxy but 
 also his moral heterodoxy, his hatred of the 
 existing sexual morality. His interpretation 
 of the term, " the emancipation of the flesh," 
 is found in a scene from this book which
 
 ^4 Will the Home Survive 
 
 caused a furor in Germany. Wally loves 
 Caesar and he loves her, but they cannot marry 
 as she has been obhged to betroth herself to 
 the Sardinian ambassador, Caesar begs of her 
 to celebrate a spiritual marriage with him by 
 displaying herself in all her naked beauty be- 
 fore him the night before her wedding. This 
 she does. " It all happened in one breathless, 
 silent moment — it was sacrilege, but the sac- 
 rilege of innocence and of woeful, eternal re- 
 nunciation." 
 
 In the first part of his novel, Das Jtinge 
 Europa, Laube sings a sort of prose hymn to 
 female beauty and free love. The book is a 
 revolt against Christianity and against mar- 
 riage. Mundt in his Madonna tells the story 
 of a young girl who was prepared for married 
 life with a rich debauchee of high position. 
 She managed to escape from him and found 
 her way to the room of a theological student 
 whom she loved and who loved her. With 
 chaste passion she gave herself to him. He 
 could not reject her. The next day, feeling 
 the guilt of his sin, he committed suicide.
 
 Introduction 25 
 
 Mundt taught through the story the innocence 
 of the girl's self-abandonment to the student, 
 an innocence which the world has called guilt. 
 In his eyes she was a saint, the embodiment 
 of holiness and beauty, for in his creed noth- 
 ing can be more holy or spiritual than the 
 carnal. Indeed, the spirit and the flesh must 
 be fused. " The world and the flesh must be 
 reinstated in their rights, in order that the 
 spirit may no longer have to live in the sixth 
 story as it does in Germany." 
 
 Though this type of literature as early as 
 1835 roused prohibitory legislation in the 
 Federal Diet and caused Menzel to write, 
 " As long as I live, such infamous dishonoring 
 of German literature shall not go unpunished," 
 it is clear that such threats and legislative ac- 
 tion can no longer check the attack that is ex- 
 tending throughout Christendom. When men 
 were in the midst of their heated discussions 
 of the Holy Trinity, the atonement, eschatol- 
 ogy, and the higher criticism, they could still 
 return from the conflict to the peace and quiet 
 of their homes. They never dreamed that
 
 26 Will the Home Survive 
 
 this holy sanctuary of the hearth would be- 
 come the object of the critics' arrow. But 
 that time has come. Like all other institu- 
 tions the family must now be brought to the 
 fighting line and stand or fall by its ability to 
 bear the attack. 
 
 In the following pages we purpose to study 
 this attack upon the family as it is presented 
 in modern literature, especially the novel and 
 the drama. We purpose to state as clearly as 
 possible the position of the various attacks and 
 then study their weakness and their strength.
 
 II 
 
 IBSEN'S ETHICS OF MARRIAGE 
 
 Ibsen was as thoroughgoing an individuahst 
 as the last century produced. His one aim in 
 life Avas the development of himself. What- 
 ever stood in the way of this had to fall before 
 his iron will. He left his family when only a 
 boy, because of some disagreement with them, 
 and never even corresponded with them, ex- 
 cept later in life with his sister, who was able 
 to understand him. He left his native coun- 
 try, going into willing exile, because he found 
 himself hampered by the customs and tradi- 
 tions of his people. The •' wicked smile " of 
 the " clammy crowd " froze the springs of his 
 nature and he had to get away from it to be 
 himself. He wrote to Magdalene Thoresen : 
 «* I had to get away from the beastliness up 
 there before I could begin to be purified. I 
 could never lead a consistent spiritual life there. 
 I was one man in my work and another out- 
 
 ?7
 
 28 Will the Home Survive 
 
 side of it — and for that very reason my work 
 failed in consistency too." When later in life 
 he visited his country he wrote : " I was no 
 longer myself beneath the gaze of these cold, 
 uncomprehending Norwegian eyes at the win- 
 dows and in the streets." 
 
 He not only denied himself home and na- 
 tive country but also friends, as they stood in 
 the way of his self-development. " Friends," 
 he wrote, " are an expensive luxury ; and when 
 a man's whole capital is invested in a calling 
 and a mission in life, he cannot afford to keep 
 them. The costliness of keeping friends does 
 not lie in what one does for them, but in 
 what one, out of consideration for them, re- 
 frains from doing. I have had personal ex- 
 perience of it ; and there are, consequently, 
 many years behind me, during which it was 
 not possible for me to be myself." He con- 
 sidered the end of life to be for each will and 
 mind to press forward to its own predestined 
 path, and those things which hindered this 
 ultimate task of the human soul had to b^ 
 sacrificed.
 
 Ibse7i^s Ethics of Marriage 29 
 
 The thing which hindered him among his 
 people, and the thing which would have re- 
 pelled him had he been compelled to live as a 
 part of the social and political life of any na- 
 tion, was the bondage of men to the uniformity 
 of custom and tradition, and their lack of 
 courage to be themselves at whatever cost. 
 He saw the world as did Mrs. Alving. We 
 are all of us ghosts. Not only what we have 
 inherited from our fathers and mothers walks 
 in us, but " all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless 
 old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vital- 
 ity, but they cling to us all the same, and we 
 can't get rid of them." These ghosts are all 
 the country over, " and we are one and all so 
 pitifully afraid of the light." He saw his 
 countrymen as " a well-drilled troop," a nation 
 whose " uniformity is in its way exemplary ; 
 step and time are the same for all." Peer 
 Gynt was the type of his nation as he saw it, 
 containing all the defects of the national life. 
 Peer Gynt was always hedging. He never fully 
 committed himself to any principle he espoused. 
 He Hved a superficial hfe. He dwelt upon the
 
 30 Will the Home Survive 
 
 former grandeur of his family and dreamed 
 constantly of great things he was to do in the 
 future, but he neglected the duties that were 
 close at hand. He had only a superstitious 
 type of religion, and he was cynically indiffer- 
 ent to all the higher motives of life. All this 
 was unbearable to Ibsen, for it seemed to be 
 destructive of life, and he went away from it 
 that he might be himself. 
 
 He was an egotist. Self in his vocabulary 
 did not include the social consciousness. It 
 included only the world of his inner life. This 
 definition of self was practically admitted in a 
 letter to George Brandes : " I have never 
 really had any firm belief in solidarity ; in fact, 
 I have only accepted it as a kind of traditional 
 dogma. If one had the courage to throw it 
 overboard altogether, it is possible that one 
 would be rid of the ballast which weighs down 
 one's personality most heavily. There are 
 actually moments when the whole history of 
 the world appears to be like a great shipwreck, 
 and the only important thing seems to be to 
 save one's self." This is really the key-note
 
 Ibsen* s Ethics of Marriage 31 
 
 to all Ibsen's writings. He lived to save him- 
 self, and his fight was against any social, re- 
 ligious, or political restriction to the full devel- 
 opment of his isolated ego. 
 
 Liberty, as he defined it, did not concern 
 society, but rather the individual. He had no 
 faith in special reforms for the advancement 
 of men. Those who attempt to make the 
 world better by this method are on the wrong 
 track. There is only one kind of liberty 
 worth striving after, that is the idea of Uberty. 
 Special reforms can only result in the attain- 
 ment of certain liberties but not liberty. True 
 liberty is " nothing but the constant, living as- 
 similation of the idea of freedom. He who 
 possesses liberty otherwise than as a thing to 
 be striven for, possesses it dead and soulless ; 
 for the idea of liberty has undoubtedly this 
 characteristic, that it develops steadily during 
 its assimilation. So that a man who stops in 
 the midst of a struggle and says, ' Now I have 
 it ' — thereby shows that he has lost it." The 
 individual's pursuit of the idea of freedom, of 
 a flying goal, is the only thing important.
 
 32 Will the Home Survive 
 
 The struggle for liberty, not the possession of 
 it, is the great good. The possession of it 
 means its loss. 
 
 This uncompromising individualist saw no 
 hope for the freeing of the race in the demo- 
 cratic movements of the age. " The major- 
 ity," he declared, " are never right." " The 
 most dangerous foe to truth and freedom in 
 our midst is the compact majority." For who 
 is it that makes up the majority of any given 
 country ? Is it wise men or fools ? "I think 
 we must agree that the fools are in a terrible, 
 overwhelming majority, all the wide world 
 over. The majority has might, but right it 
 has not. I and a few, the individuals, are right. 
 The minority is always right." The majority, 
 from the nature of the case, must always be 
 far behind the times. Truth grows old and 
 decrepit like men. Its normal lifetime is sel- 
 dom outside of twenty years. Truths older 
 than this are " shockingly thin." Yet it is not 
 until truth has reached about this age and is 
 ready for burial that the majority take it up. 
 ** All these majority-truths are like last year's
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 33 
 
 salt pork ; they're like rancid, mouldy ham, 
 producing all the moral scurvy that devastates 
 society." The majority stand by truths 
 decrepit with age and hence there is no 
 possibility of progress through the work of 
 majorities. A few individuals who are open 
 to truth, from whatever source it may come, 
 are the ones who stand as it were at the out- 
 posts of civilization, so far in the van that the 
 common majority cannot reach them. In 
 them alone, men who are true to themselves, 
 true to truth, is found the hope of advance- 
 ment. Democracy means stagnation, as does 
 also the aristocracies of the world, which are 
 bound by customs and traditions and which 
 are safely entrenched in their beds of ease. 
 Ibsen pleads for an aristocracy of Supermen, 
 to use Bernard Shaw's phrase. " The strong- 
 est man upon earth is he who stands most 
 alone," alone because he sees the truth to 
 which all men must attain before they can be 
 spiritually purified. 
 
 This conception of liberty led Ibsen into 
 nihilism, the denial of the state, as the state
 
 34 Will the Home Survive 
 
 means the " maintenance of a certain given 
 standpoint of liberty." " The state is the 
 curse of the individual," because it means 
 " the emerging of the individual into a certain 
 political and geographical concept." The 
 Jewish nation in its isolation is noble and 
 poetical, the flower of humanity. It has been 
 able to maintain this position in spite of the 
 barbarity which it has suffered from without 
 because it has not been burdened by a state. 
 Had this race remained in Palestine, maintain- 
 ing its political existence, it would have been 
 ruined Uke the other nations of Europe. 
 " The state must be abolished." Until it is, 
 there is no hope for ushering in the great rev- 
 olution that is needed, the revolution in the 
 spirit of man. The state must be undermined, 
 willing and spiritual kinship being made the 
 only essential in any union of people. The 
 changing of the forms of government is only 
 playing with a great problem. " The great 
 thing is not to allow one's self to be frightened 
 by the venerableness of the institution. The 
 state has its root in time ; it will have its culmi-
 
 Ibse){ 5 Ethics of Marriage 35 
 
 nation in time. Greater things than it will fall ; 
 all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions 
 of morality nor those of art are eternal." There 
 can be no universal standard, for this implies 
 a binding force upon the will and an unnatural 
 obedience on the part of the individual. But 
 this is destructive of the idea of freedom. To 
 realize ourselves is true liberty. Anything 
 which restricts this must be abolished. 
 
 This conception of the individual is set 
 forth in the famous funeral oration in Peer 
 Gynt. The priest who pronounced the eulogy 
 over the dead peasant declared : 
 
 " No patriot was he. Both for church and state a fruitless 
 
 tree. But there, on the upland ridge, 
 In the small circle where he saw his calling, there he was 
 
 great, because he was himself." 
 
 The same poHtical philosophy is expounded 
 in Emperor a?id Galilean. The drama presents 
 a conflict between church and state, the Gali- 
 lean representing the church, and Julian the 
 state. The great question is, Who shall con- 
 quer, Emperor or Galilean ? The clear answer 
 is : " Both the Emperor and Galilean shall
 
 36 IVill the Home Survive 
 
 succumb." The process will be very gradual, 
 as the child succumbs in the youth, and the 
 youth in the man, but both are destined to be 
 swallowed up in a new order of men. There 
 shall come a man, of the order of the third 
 kingdom, who shall be a god-emperor, an em- 
 peror-god. He will be the man who dares to 
 be himself, who wills unfettered by custom and 
 tradition, who enters into the full heritage of 
 his spirit. He will be the coming messiah 
 who shall bear good tidings to the earth and 
 before whom both Emperor and Galilean shall 
 fall. In this coming age a man will not need 
 to die to hve as a god. He who wills con- 
 quers. He who lives his true Hfe, his whole 
 hfe, is divine. 
 
 Ibsen's conception of love and marriage is 
 a consistent carrying out of the formative 
 principle of his political philosophy. As true 
 freedom consists in the pursuit of the idea of 
 freedom, so true love is maintained only in the 
 cherishing of the idea of love, and as freedom 
 is lost as soon as one thinks he has attained it, 
 so true love is lost in marriage. " When lov-
 
 Ibseti s Ethics of Marriage 37 
 
 ers prove what love is, all is over with their 
 love." The principle worked out in Loves 
 Comedy may be briefly stated thus : The only 
 way to maintain a true love is to abstain 
 from marriage, while for a fruitful marriage 
 there must be an absence of love. This is the 
 opposite of the orthodox doctrine, which de- 
 clares that marriage should be for love only, 
 but it was just this orthodox principle which 
 to Ibsen was the death of the ideal of love. 
 
 He was in harmony with the Romantic 
 school of writers in his declaration that love is 
 happiness and also in his protest against the 
 civil and religious restrictions thrown about 
 love and marriage. In 1857 Camilla Collet 
 disturbed the Scandinavian world by the pub- 
 lication of her novel. The Official's Daughter, 
 which protested against the social restrictions 
 upon love and plead for the right of woman 
 to give her heart how and where she would. 
 Ibsen also made Falk say : 
 
 •' Yes, to pass current here, Love must have cross'd 
 The great Siberian waste of regulations, 
 Fann'd by no breath of ocean to its coast ; 
 It must produce official attestations 
 
 4:344J29
 
 38 Will the Ho7ne Survive 
 
 From friends and kindred, devils of relations, 
 From church curators, organist and clerk, 
 And other fine folk, over and above 
 The primal license which God gave to love." 
 
 The result is : 
 
 " Love is with us a trade, a special line 
 Of business, with its union, code, and sign ; 
 It is a guild of married folks and plighted, 
 Past-masters with apprentices united." 
 
 But while Ibsen was in harmony with the 
 Romanticists in his protest against law and 
 custom, which restricted the free course of 
 the individual, he differed from them in his 
 conclusions concerning marriage. With the 
 Romanticists love is happiness and marriage 
 unrestricted the end of love, but Ibsen says, if 
 you would maintain your love and feel always 
 the joy of it do not marry at all. Love is a 
 passion which can maintain itself only in pur- 
 suit. When it reaches its goal it dies. Mar- 
 riage is its sentence of death. As soon as 
 Stiver becaine engaged to Miss Jay he lost the 
 romance from his nature, which in the days of 
 his love-making had made him a poet. He 
 felt " no lyric impulse, truth to tell, from that
 
 Ibsen's Ethics of Marriage 39 
 
 day forth," and the parson's wife, " she can't 
 remember being wooed, has quite forgotten 
 what is meant by love." Svanhild discovers 
 this principle and, though she loves Falk in- 
 tensely, she sees that for her own happiness 
 she must not marry him. Her love must be- 
 come a memory. Enthroned there it can 
 never perish and her happiness can never pass 
 away. In losing her love she finds it. De- 
 taching it from all sense and passion and ma- 
 terial thing, it remains in its purity. 
 
 Her lover, at first pained by her refusal, 
 finally sees the truth and cries : 
 
 " Now I divine ! 
 Thus and no otherwise canst thou be mine ! 
 As the grave opens into life's Dawn-fire, 
 So love with life may not espoused be 
 Till, loosed from longing and from wild desire, 
 It soars into the heaven of memory." 
 
 To which Svanhild replies : 
 
 " Now for this earthly life I have foregone thee 
 But for the life eternal I have won thee." 
 
 This conception of love seems to be an out- 
 growth of Ibsen's experience. His biographer 
 describes a poem that was written by him
 
 40 Will the Home Survive 
 
 some time between his nineteenth and twenty- 
 second years, entitled, Recollections of a ball : 
 a fragment of life in verse and prose. He met 
 at the ball a young woman who seemed to em- 
 body all that he would have in the woman he 
 was some day to wed. But he heard that she 
 was engaged and he wrote : " Fate ! take from 
 me this overwhelming bliss, do not desecrate 
 this moment by prolonging it. I have had it 
 — what would I more ? " Her memory re- 
 mained his possession to bless and enrich his 
 life. He makes Hjordis in the Vikings, who 
 was denied the bliss she sought with Sigurd, 
 say at the point of death : " O it is better so 
 than if thou hadst wedded me here in this 
 life — if I had sat by thy homestead weaving 
 linen and wool for thee and bearing thee chil- 
 dren, pah ! " King Skule declared to his wife, 
 after he had discovered her love for him, and 
 his love for her : " To-night have I found you 
 for the first time ; there must fall no shade be- 
 tween me and you, my silent, faithful wife ; — 
 therefore must we not seek to unite our lives 
 on this earth."
 
 Ibsen' s Ethics of Marriage 41 
 
 Mr. C. H. Herford finds something heroic in 
 this loneliness in which Ibsen makes his char- 
 acters stand for the sake of love, in this 
 " ascetic idealism," but rather there seems to 
 be more of cowardice, the cowardice of the 
 timid soul that longs for the sight of the old 
 world, cathedrals rich with age, galleries 
 crowded with works of art, and people inter- 
 esting in their customs and strange doings, 
 but which has not the courage to brave the 
 sea with its storms and its inconveniences. It 
 is the cowardice of the men who looked into 
 the strange land and saw its great clusters of 
 grapes, its figs and pomegranates, yet dared 
 not enter for fear of pitfalls. Ibsen's charac- 
 ters look into the rich land of love and taste 
 its fruits, but refuse to enter because there are 
 snares and foes, and they turn back to hold 
 the vision in the ecstasy of memory, drawing 
 their comfort out of the memory itself. There 
 is something more truly heroic in Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's conception of the lover: 
 " The great lover, like the great painter, is he 
 that can so embellish his subject as to make
 
 42 Will the Home Survive 
 
 her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning 
 art he has so based his apotheosis on the 
 nature of the case that the woman can go on 
 being a true woman, and give her character 
 free play, and show littleness or cherish spite, 
 or be greedy of common pleasures, and he 
 continue to worship without a thought of in- 
 congruity. To love a character is only the 
 heroic way of understanding it." In other 
 words, the true lover will continue to 
 love in the face of imperfections and incon- 
 gruities. He is not compelled to deny himself 
 the happiness of the consummation of his 
 love, and retire into the loneliness of his soul, 
 untouched by the dust of earth, to retain his 
 joy. He is the courageous lover who accepts 
 life as it is and is strong enough to love in 
 spite of the limitations which surround the 
 marriage state. 
 
 What seems truly heroic is for Svanhild to 
 calmly say. 
 
 " Now over is my life, by lea and lawn, 
 The leaves are falling ;— now the world may take me,"
 
 IbseiUs Ethics of Marriage 43 
 
 and then, with a passionless abandonment, give 
 herself in marriage to the cold, practical Guld- 
 stad, not for love, but just because she owes it 
 to the world. Indeed it is such an unnatural 
 closing to an otherwise powerful drama that we 
 lose our interest in it. 
 
 This, however, is only one side of Ibsen's 
 thought concerning love and marriage. For 
 any understanding of Ibsen we must see in 
 him a trinity of tendencies. He was an ideal- 
 ist, a stern, merciless critic, and still a practical 
 man. In Loves Comedy, Ibsen the idealist 
 speaks, enthroning love high above degrading 
 passions, but in Dolls House, Ghosts, and The 
 Lady from the Sea, there is nothing but the 
 critic, bitter in dealing with human frailty, 
 seeing all society sick, and ministering to it a 
 nauseous and astringent dose. As this critic 
 saw the death of the individual in the state, so 
 in marriage he saw pitfalls from which the in- 
 dividual could not save himself, when once 
 he entered. 
 
 This is the meaning of Doll's House. Nora 
 married and in her marriage she lost her life.
 
 44 Will the Home Survive 
 
 The institution smothered her soul and the only 
 way she could regain her life was in the 
 desertion of her husband and children. 
 While their home had been apparently ideal, 
 it had never been a happy home, only a 
 merry one. Her house had been a playhouse. 
 She had been a doll wife and her children had 
 been her playthings. When this situation 
 dawned upon her she saw for the first time 
 how she had never had any opportunity to be 
 herself. The discovery was unbearable and 
 she started in quest of her self-hood, leaving 
 home, husband, and children. The husband 
 urged upon her the scandalous gossip of the 
 world, but to that she could pay no heed ; she 
 must be herself. He urged duties to husband 
 and children, but she declared that she had other 
 duties equally sacred, duties to herself. But 
 " before all else," he urged, " you are a wife 
 and a mother." ♦' That I no longer believe," 
 she replied. " I think that before all else I am 
 a human being, or at least I will try to become 
 one." She was conscious that the people 
 generally agreed with the position that her
 
 Ibsen! s Ethics of Alarriage 45 
 
 husband had taken but she could not be satis- 
 fied with what people thought. He finally 
 urged upon her the infallible voice of her re- 
 ligion. But she knew nothing about rehgion 
 except what her clergyman had taught her. 
 " He explained that religion was this and that. 
 When I get away from here and stand alone, I 
 will look into that matter too. I will see 
 whether what he has taught me is true, or, at 
 any rate, whether it is true for me." She 
 thought her life had been smothered under 
 these institutions, and almost in defiance she 
 threw off the things that stood in the way of 
 her development and went in quest of her self- 
 hood. As Svanhild saved her love by refus- 
 ing to give it material expression, so Nora lost 
 her love, and as a last hope she fled from the 
 institution. 
 
 The same idea finds expression in The 
 League of Youth, where Selma discovers that 
 she has been a spiritual pauper in her home, 
 never accorded the privilege of making any 
 sacrifice or bearing any burden, and indig- 
 nantly she declares ; " How I've thirsted for a
 
 46 IVill the Home Survive 
 
 single drop of your troubles, your anxieties ! 
 But when I begged for it you only laughed 
 me off. You have dressed me up like a doll ; 
 you have played with me as you have played 
 with a child. I won't stay with you. I'll 
 rather play and sing in the streets." But Selma 
 had not Nora's strong will and she returned to 
 her home. 
 
 Ibsen's criticism of the family is most severe 
 in Ghosts. Doll's House was published in 
 1879, and its appearance called down upon 
 Ibsen a flood of indignation. He was irritated 
 by the severe criticism of this play and he 
 gave his answer to the enraged public in this 
 most cutting, deleterious, and loathsome drama 
 that ever came from his pen. DoWs House 
 told the story of a battle of a woman to be 
 herself and her escape from the family which 
 held her in bondage, while Ghosts showed the 
 terrible consequences which result from com- 
 pelling a soul to remain in bondage to the 
 family when the relation between man and 
 woman are neither wholesome nor congenial. 
 Mrs. Alving had been married to Alving only
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 47 
 
 a little while when she discovered that he had 
 long lived, and was still living, a dissolute life, 
 and she deserted him, going in search of her 
 happiness. Her pastor, however, persuaded 
 her in the name of law and order and decency 
 to return to her husband. She returned, 
 hating her husband, to Hve until his death a 
 life of misery. After the death of Alving she 
 discussed this marriage with her pastor, who 
 rebuked her for her free thinking, her belief in 
 irregular marriages, and her doubt of old and 
 cherished beliefs. Her husband had become 
 the father of a child born of their servant maid. 
 This unfortunate girl received a small sum of 
 hush-money from Alving, and she found one 
 Engstrand who was willing to assume Alving's 
 sin and marry her for this sum of money. 
 The pastor was horrified at this story. " Think ! 
 think of that ! for a miserable three hundred 
 dollars to go and marry a fallen woman!" 
 " Then what have you to say to me ? " asked 
 Mrs. Alving. " I went and married a fallen 
 man." " But there's a world of difference be- 
 tween the two cases," he urged. " Not so
 
 48 Will the Ho7ne Survive 
 
 much difference after all," she replied, " except 
 ill the price — a wretched three hundred dol- 
 lars and a whole fortune." But there remains 
 this difference at least : " Your marriage was 
 in accordance with law and order." Now 
 Ibsen brings his blow again against society : 
 " That perpetual law and order ! That does 
 all the mischief here in this world." In the 
 hour when her pastor forced her under the 
 yoke of duty and obligation, when he praised 
 as right and proper what her whole soul re- 
 belled against as something loathsome, she be- 
 gan to see the hollowness of social customs, 
 the machine-made character of doctrines, and 
 picking one single knot " the whole thing rav- 
 eled out." The entire structure of society as 
 it has to do with the family is mechanical, 
 hollow, false. When her pastor in the name 
 of society forced her back to her lawful hus- 
 band he committed a crime, bringing torture 
 to her own soul and hell into the life of her 
 family. The awful working out of this play, 
 centering about immorality, destruction, de- 
 generacy, and raving insanity in a son who
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 49 
 
 reaps what his father has sown, all intensified 
 by the height of Ibsen's dramatic power, is the 
 measure of the crime which society commits 
 in the name of duty and obligation in family 
 life. 
 
 After the severe criticism to which Ghosts 
 was subjected, Ibsen denied that it expressed 
 his opinion. " There is not in the whole book 
 a single opinion, a single utterance, which can 
 be laid to the account of the author. It 
 merely points out that there is a ferment of 
 nihilism under the surface, at home as else- 
 where. And this is inevitable. A Pastor 
 Manders will always rouse some Mrs. Alving 
 to revolt." We have no reason to doubt 
 Ibsen's sincerity in this declaration, but this 
 " ferment of nihilism " was the ferment which 
 from first to last stirred Ibsen's mind, the spirit 
 which he fostered in all his works. Mrs. 
 Alving may have carried it to an extreme, but 
 she acted along the line which, in both letters 
 and dramas, Ibsen advocates. If the book 
 does not preach, and if he labored to exclude 
 his opinions from the book, it at least breathes
 
 50 Will the Home Survive 
 
 with his spirit, and the student of Ibsen will 
 always look to Ghosts as the most tragic pres- 
 entation of both his scientific and philosophical 
 theories. 
 
 The Lady from the Sea is one of Ibsen's 
 most difficult dramas to interpret. It belongs 
 to those symbolical plays which Ibsen wrote 
 after the appearance of his coarsely realistic 
 writings which sacrificed beauty and imagina- 
 tion to truth, and there will always be a wide 
 difference of opinion as to what Ibsen's 
 thought was in this play. Howev^er, the main 
 drift of his thought seems to be clear. He is 
 here, as elsewhere, the same advocate for the 
 individual. EUida, after years of married life, 
 discovered that she had been bought, or rather 
 that she had sold herself. Wangel, a widower, 
 could not endure the void in his house. He 
 wanted a mother for his children, while Ellida 
 was helpless and forlorn and utterly alone. 
 What more natural than that she should jump 
 at the bargain. She sold herself, rather her 
 freedom, her right to choose. Their Hfe to- 
 gether had not been utterly valueless nor en-
 
 Ibseti^s Ethics of Marriage 5 1 
 
 tirely lacking in happiness, but she did not go 
 into his home of her own free will, " that is 
 the thing." Hence the life they led together 
 was really no marriage at all. Only a volun- 
 tary promise can make a marriage binding. 
 She must have her freedom, her right to make 
 a free choice. She does not care for a formal, 
 legal divorce, because forms are nothing to her. 
 " I lay no stress whatever upon these external 
 details. What 1 wish is that we two should 
 aorree, of our own free will, to release each 
 other." They must freely cancel the mar- 
 riage bargain. After a long struggle Wangel 
 consented to do this, giving her perfect free- 
 dom to choose between him and the Stranger, 
 at the same time confessing how his love for 
 her had deepened. When she discovered this, 
 and at the same time discovered that she might 
 do as she would, that she might be an individ- 
 ual with free choice, she said to Wangel : 
 " Now I will come to you again. Now I can, 
 for now I come to you in freedom, of my owit 
 will, and on my own responsibility." She was 
 saved by the right to choose, the thing which.
 
 52 Will the Home Survive 
 
 denied to Nora and Mrs. Alving, resulted in 
 the loss of their spirituality. 
 
 We find Ibsen in his later life defending the 
 marriage of convenience. It was natural that 
 this hater of institutions should defend this 
 type of marriage. In his eyes a justice of the 
 peace or a parson could not make marriage 
 one whit more sacred by their presence. 
 Only a real communion between two souls 
 can constitute a marriage — a communion that 
 is nourished in freedom. Rosmer says to 
 Rebecca: " Even during Beata's life," that is, 
 his first wife, " all my thoughts were for you. 
 It was you alone I longed for. It was beside 
 you that I felt the peaceful blessedness of 
 utter content. If you think it over, Rebecca, 
 did we not feel from the first a sort of sweet, 
 secret, child-love — desireless, dreamless ? And 
 it was this close-linked life in and for each 
 other that we took for friendship. No, 
 Rebecca, our bond has been a spiritual mar- 
 riage." When this bond exists law and cus- 
 tom can add nothing to it. It is a marriage if 
 free consent is given.
 
 IsberHs Ethics of Marriage 53 
 
 Oswald defends the young artists of Paris 
 who cannot afford to marry, set up a home, 
 and support a family, but who can have a 
 home, as many of them, as a matter of fact, 
 do, homes very pleasant and comfortable too. 
 The clergyman is shocked at such irregularity, 
 but Oswald declares that he has " never 
 noticed anything particularly irregular about 
 the Ufe these people lead." It may not be a 
 decent principle in the eyes of the world, but 
 what are these young artists to do ? "A poor 
 young artist, — a poor girl — it costs a lot to get 
 married. What are they to do ? " They must 
 exercise self-restraint, declares the clergyman. 
 But " such talk won't go far with warm-blooded 
 young people, over head and ears in love," de- 
 clares Oswald. 
 
 To use his expression, if they are " head over 
 ears in love," then they have the elements 
 necessary for the married life. Nature has 
 been satisfied ; nothing else has a right to 
 speak. 
 
 In any just estimate of this poet of revolt 
 the country or time in which he lived must
 
 54 Will the Home Survive 
 
 not be forgotten. Norway, as one writer has 
 said, " before 1870 was a country of timid 
 thoughts and vapid appreciations. There the 
 spiritual soil was dense and dry ; nothing 
 could be done to vitahze it until the plough- 
 share ran deep into its substance, and let in 
 light and air by breaking up the old conven- 
 tions and smashing the hypocrisies to bits." 
 It is impossible to tell what Ibsen might have 
 been in unconventional America or semi- 
 civilized Russia. He doubtless would have 
 been something far different from the man he 
 was. But being by early influences a stern 
 Puritan of the individualistic type, it was 
 natural that, as a product of Norway, he 
 should be the man of revolution. Indeed, in 
 all of Europe in the third quarter of the last 
 century, when everything was expected from 
 the state, when the individual was only ex- 
 pected to fit into a monotonous political and 
 commercial system, when militarism was being 
 extended, it was a time for men to cry out for 
 the salvation of their souls. When kings or- 
 ganize states, and reformers exalt the machin-
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 55 
 
 ery of government above the souls of men, 
 strong men, conscious of their power, will 
 rebel, refusing to be smothered under the 
 closely knit web of things. Ibsen uttered 
 such a cry, a cry which we have all uttered 
 some time in our lives. When the zealous re- 
 lisionist comes to us in his thus-saith-the- 
 Lord attitude and insists upon our acceptance 
 of his creed, because it alone is right ; when 
 the big shop window insists that we shall wear 
 such an article of clothing because Mr. Style- 
 setter declares that everybody shall wear it ; 
 when we must do certain things in certain 
 ways or be considered queer, simply because it 
 has been the custom to do them in that way ; 
 yes, when mother insists that Elizabeth shall 
 marry John because he is from a good family 
 and has a fortune, though her heart is only 
 lukewarm ; when law and custom insist upon 
 holding together man and wife when there is 
 no longer a true marriage, a communion of 
 spirits ; in short, when organized religion, or 
 society, or politics, or labor are so exalted 
 that the individual is lost, then there is some-
 
 56 IVill the Honie Survive 
 
 thing in all of us which cries : I will be 
 myself though everything else must go. 
 Ibsen uttered this cry in language that offended 
 the custom-bound world ; nevertheless, he has 
 uttered a cry which comes from all of us in our 
 noblest moods. 
 
 Yet while there are noble ideals in Ibsen, 
 ideals that at once awe and charm us, so pure 
 and high are they, there can be no question 
 that his philosophy in the last analysis is bold 
 and uncompromising selfishness. The isolated 
 individual, lonely in the solitary pursuit of its 
 ideal, is the centre of all his thought. He 
 was never a patriot in the sense in which other 
 men are patriots, because of his opposition to 
 the institution of the state. He did, however, 
 possess a certain type of vague patriotism in 
 his belief in Scandinavianism, but this was only 
 a hope for the spiritual union of the Scandi- 
 navian races, a union to be accomplished by 
 the revolution in the spiritual life of individu- 
 als, a revolution which would enable each in- 
 dividual, unfettered by institutions, to attain to 
 the fulness of selfhood. But later in life he
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 57 
 
 lost even this. He wrote to George Brandes : 
 " I began by feeling myself to be a Norwegian ; 
 then I developed into a Scandinavian ; and I 
 have ended in Teutonism," This only means 
 in reality that he ended in cutting himself 
 loose from humanity, from all tangible relation- 
 ships with the great social fabric, so far as it is 
 possible for a man to do this, and sought with 
 the freedom of an eagle, soaring in its isola- 
 tion, the interests of his personality. The 
 great movements of the age, which work for 
 the social uplift of humanity, the movement of 
 the social consciousness which fills our time as 
 the incoming tide fills the harbor and makes 
 all the shores sing songs of rejoicing, were re- 
 pulsive to Ibsen, were the death of what he 
 thought was the great good, and he stood 
 apart from them, fighting them to the end of 
 his days. 
 
 It sounds exceedingly attractive to hear 
 Ibsen say that the end of life is to be one's 
 self, but the very attractiveness of the state- 
 ment may hide the error it contains. We 
 must ask the further question : What is it to
 
 58 Will the Home Survive 
 
 be one's self? What is the predestined path? 
 Is it to follow whatever concerns one's self and 
 count all else as non-existent? Or to develop 
 the best life must we also follow what concerns 
 our neighbor ? Is the ideal egoism or altruism, 
 or perchance does the ideal include both egoism 
 and altruism ? Is the ideal man some Robin- 
 son Crusoe, who develops all his faculties to 
 the highest point to which his egoism will 
 carry him, or is he some Lincoln who enriches 
 his personality through giving it for others ? 
 Ibsen advocated the former, but he has not 
 succeeded in making his characters either 
 beautiful or lovable, and indeed there is an 
 element of estrangement from his fellow men 
 about his own Hfe that will not lure many into 
 his manner of living. He began to write 
 when science was in its beginnings and its great 
 teachings had not been thought out to the end. 
 The cruel, merciless law of the survival of the 
 fittest was being preached as the eternal gos- 
 pel. The struggle for existence had not been 
 matched by the more merciful law of the 
 struggle for the existence of others. Ibsen
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 59 
 
 applied this law to the social creation and 
 failed to see the greater truth that no man can 
 live unto himself and attain the highest life. 
 
 This brings us to another defect, a grave in- 
 tellectual defect in all Ibsen's thought, namely, 
 the antagonism which he always finds between 
 spirit and form. An institution, instead of 
 being a thing through which the deepest life 
 of man may express itself, is always with him 
 the deadly foe of the spiritual life. State, 
 church, and family, instead of being the three 
 noblest channels through which humanity 
 could realize itself, were the three shackles 
 which held it in bondage. The imperfection 
 of institutions loomed so large in Ibsen's eyes 
 that he could see nothing good. He was in- 
 capable of finding diamonds in the dust heap 
 or gold in the gutter. He could not hear a 
 song in the mud and scum of things. He 
 found no glory in the imperfect. He was too 
 impatient to wait for the evolution of some- 
 thing better out of the present state of human- 
 ity. Indeed, he was so much of a pessimistic 
 fatalist that he could not even hope for any-
 
 6o Will the Home Survive 
 
 thing better. Institutions were bad ; therefore 
 away with them was his stern command. 
 Here Hes his fundamental weakness. His 
 ideals are often noble but they are disem- 
 bodied spirits flitting through space, to allure 
 or to frighten, incapable of taking the form of 
 muscle and nerve and bone, and becoming 
 servants to the poor in spirit, the blind, the 
 bruised, and those in prison. Priding himself 
 upon his realism, Ibsen was in reality the chief 
 of idealists, the idealist who saw visions and 
 dreamed dreams but who cut from beneath 
 himself the very means of making his dreams 
 and visions real. 
 
 An insuperable barrier to Ibsen's wide- 
 spread popularity among English-speaking 
 people is his pessimism. The Anglo-Saxon 
 has never rejoiced over the news of the failure 
 of existence, and the author who makes such 
 an announcement may be certain of slight 
 consideration. Our great writers, who have 
 won universal favor, have believed that " all's 
 right with the world." In this optimism we 
 have been nourished and we do not propose to
 
 Ibsen^s Ethics of Marriage 6i 
 
 begin our funeral march to the grave at this 
 late hour. Ibsen was a born doubter. Once 
 asked what were the elements which supported 
 his early life he replied, " Doubt and Despond- 
 ency." His childhood spent without affection, 
 his youth spent in a struggle for existence, he 
 was destined for a Yiie. of doubt and despair, if 
 ever a life was destined for such an end. 
 Beginning by doubting the religion of his 
 childhood and the social structure of which he 
 was a part, he ended by doubting even his 
 own ideals. In Wild Duck he seems to doubt 
 his own thoughts and turn from his own 
 visions. It is a sickening picture of the use- 
 lessness of all ideals and the hopelessness of all 
 advancement. The principle of heredity and 
 the force of environment are too strong for the 
 human will. Men like Rosmer may see the 
 truth and long for freedom, but their wills are 
 not strong enough. In vain they aspire to any- 
 thing better. The world is on the wrong 
 track and it will continue on the wrong track. 
 Ibsen sees something beautiful in Lovborg 
 committing suicide, " for he had the courage
 
 62 Will the Home Survive 
 
 to live his life after his own fashion," but 
 people generally have not even the courage to 
 do this. They are prisoners to a system of 
 things. They are Ghosts, the weird products 
 of a dead past. Here we believe is the real 
 barrier which debars Ibsen from the English 
 mind. The air in which he lives suffocates us. 
 In it we cannot live. God created the world 
 and behold it was very good, is more inviting 
 to our happy spirits.
 
 Ill 
 
 BERNARD SHAW AND THE SUPERMAN 
 
 Whether to take Bernard Shaw seriously 
 or as a huge joke (if the latter we must confess 
 a rather tragic one), are feelings which alter- 
 nate, sometimes in rapid succession, as we 
 read his wild, anarchistic shrieks, for nothing 
 less than this can they be termed. When we 
 hear him lamenting the calamity of being sent 
 to heaven because it is " the most angelically 
 dull place in all creation," and see the elect of 
 earth seeking hell because of its delights, we 
 scarcely know whether to take him as a foolish 
 jester on the most serious of themes, or as a 
 self-appointed town-crier who goes about 
 shrieking simply that he may be heard. 
 Were it not for our principle that every writer 
 must be taken seriously until proven other- 
 wise, we should certainly place Bernard Shaw 
 in the list of modern clowns, but as he claims 
 to be serious we must take him at his word 
 
 63
 
 64 Will the Home Survive 
 
 and regard him as one of the extreme revolu- 
 tionists of our day, not only against govern- 
 ment but against the institution of the family. 
 His fundamental complaint is against the 
 " hoofs of the swinish multitude " which has 
 received the power of suffrage, yet which is 
 incapable of ruling the world and will bring 
 us to our ruin unless we can produce a better 
 race of men. Promiscuous marriage breeds a 
 race of men which may govern a small tribe 
 but which is utterly incapable of dealing with 
 the great problems of state and is hopelessly 
 blind w^hen it comes to dealing with the 
 modern world of international politics. " We 
 have yet to see the man who, having any 
 practical experience of Proletarian Democracy, 
 has any belief in its capacity for solving great 
 political problems, or even for doing ordinary 
 parochial work intelligently and economically. 
 Only under despotisms and oligarchies has 
 the radical faith in ' universal suffrage ' as 
 a political panacea arisen. It withers the 
 moment it is exposed to practical trial, 
 because democracy cannot rise above the
 
 Bernard Shaiu and the Siiperman 65 
 
 level of the human material of which its 
 voters are made." Democratic republics like 
 Canada and the United States are neither 
 " healthy, wealthy, nor wise," and they would 
 be worse than they are if their " ministers 
 were not experts in the art of dodging popular 
 ignorance." Great movements are not led ; 
 there is no one to lead them ; humanity goes 
 blundering on like an elephant breaking 
 through the jungle. The imperative demand 
 is for the Superman who can rise above the 
 mediocracy of our groping humanity and 
 lead us to something better. 
 
 There has been no social progress of the 
 race. Mankind is incapable of making any 
 net progress. The conceit of civilization 
 sometimes bUnds man to the illusion that he 
 is progressing, but " compare our conduct and 
 our codes with those mentioned in such an- 
 cient scriptures and classics as have come 
 down to us, and you will find no jot of ground 
 for the belief that any moral progress what- 
 ever has been made in historic times, in spite 
 of all the romantic attempts of historians to
 
 66 Will the Home Survive 
 
 reconstruct the past on that assumption." 
 Away then with •' this goose-cackle about 
 progress ! Man, as he is, never will nor can 
 add a cubit to his stature by any of its quack- 
 eries, political, scientific, educational, religious, 
 or artistic." 
 
 Our hope then for humanity is in a process 
 of evolution whereby man in his weakness will 
 be replaced by the strength and wisdom of the 
 Superman. " We must breed political capacity 
 or be ruined by democracy." We must cease 
 being cowards and resort to artificial selection 
 to raise a class of men capable of governing. 
 
 There are, however, two fundamental dif- 
 ficulties which Mr. Shaw finds in the way of 
 this scheme. One is the right of private prop- 
 erty, and the other is the present conception 
 of the institution of marriage. So long as 
 there is property there will be social cliques. 
 So long as natural selection is limited by arti- 
 ficial barriers there is no hope of breeding the 
 Superman, Equality is essential to the pro- 
 duction of such a race of beings. So long as 
 there are objections to a countess marrying a
 
 Berjtard Shaw and the Superman 67 
 
 navvy or a duke a charwoman, the natural 
 process of evolution is restricted. Property 
 causes inequality and inequality imposes upon 
 nature an artificial barrier. Marriage also de- 
 lays the advent of the Superman. The best 
 advantages from breeding may be obtained 
 from persons who would not be suitable com- 
 panions for life. " Thus the son of a robust, 
 cheerful, eupeptic British squire, with the 
 tastes and range of his class, and of a clever, 
 imaginative, intellectual, highly civilized Jew- 
 ess, might be superior to both his parents ; 
 but it is not likely that the Jewess would find 
 the squire an interesting companion, or his 
 habits, his friends, his place and mode of life 
 congenial to her." Therefore to obtain the 
 best results there must be a scheme whereby 
 these persons can be brought together for 
 breeding, but not for mating for Ufe. The 
 present institution of the family which makes 
 this impossible must be aboHshed or the race 
 can never hope to attain to anything better. 
 
 Bernard Shaw is confident that this institu- 
 tion, while it lingers in name, is rapidly pass-
 
 68 Will the Home Survive 
 
 ing. The name may linger, but the custom 
 itself is already being altered. " For exam- 
 ple, modern English marriage, as modified by 
 divorce, and the Married Woman's Property 
 Acts, differs more from early nineteenth cen- 
 tury marriage than Byron's marriage did from 
 Shakespeare's. At the present moment, mar- 
 riage in England differs not only from mar- 
 riage in France, but from marriage in Scot- 
 land. Marriage as modified by the divorce 
 laws in South Dakota would be called mere 
 promiscuity in Clapham. Yet the Americans, 
 far from taking a profligate and cynical view 
 of marriage, do homage to its ideals with a 
 seriousness that seems old-fashioned in Clap- 
 ham. Neither in England nor America would 
 a proposal to abolish marriage be tolerated for 
 a moment ; and yet nothing is more certain 
 than that in both countries the progressive 
 modification of the marriage contract will be 
 continued until it is no more onerous nor ir- 
 revocable than any ordinary commercial deed 
 of partnership. Were even this dispensed 
 with, people would still call themselves hus-
 
 Bernard Shaw and the Superman 69 
 
 bands and wives, describe their companion- 
 ships as marriages, and be for the most part 
 unconscious that tiiey were any less married 
 than Henry the Eighth." 
 
 We must understand what Mr. Shaw means 
 by natural selection or we miss altogether his 
 conception of the family. He is not pleading 
 for scientific marriage, as some of our modern 
 writers have done. Indeed, this is the thing 
 in which he does not believe. Why should 
 diseased persons be forbidden to marry ? If 
 they marry they will probably have a large 
 number of children who will die before they 
 reach maturity. Surely this is better " than 
 the tragedy of a union between a healthy and 
 an unhealthy person," 
 
 Shaw believes that there are two great nat- 
 ural forces which operate in our civilization, 
 one the desire of every man " to get means to 
 keep up the position and habits of a gentle- 
 man," and the other the desire of woman for 
 a man and children. The latter is the great 
 force in our humanity. Man is helpless before 
 this quest of woman. The Life Force finds its
 
 yo Will the Home Survive 
 
 expression through this purpose of woman and 
 it is impossible for man to evade it. The 
 drama of Man and the Superman is the work- 
 ing out of this principle. Tanner declared 
 that he would not marry Ann. He saw in 
 marriage only the surrender of freedom, 
 honor, and self. When he found that Ann 
 loved him he ran away ; but she followed him. 
 Others sued for her hand, but she turned them 
 aside, and driven on by the Life Force she 
 sought Tanner. Passionately he declared to 
 her again and again that he would never marry 
 her. But it was useless. He found himself in 
 the grip of the Life Force which had laid its 
 trap from the beginning to bring them to- 
 gether, and finally he submitted, declaring to 
 Ann : " What we have both done this after- 
 noon is to renounce happiness, renounce tran- 
 quillity, above all, renounce the romantic pos- 
 sibilities of an unknown future, for the cares 
 of a household and a family." 
 
 Mr. Shaw believes that when all artificial 
 barriers like property and the present restric- 
 tions of marriage are taken away, and the Life
 
 Bernard Shaw and the Supertnan 71 
 
 Force has freedom in its operations, then selec- 
 tion will be natural and we will breed a better 
 race of men. 
 
 When the question of method of accom- 
 plishing this is raised, Mr, Shaw has nothing 
 to offer. He sees many schemes that would 
 be better than our present plan. " Even a 
 joint stock human stud farm (piously disguised 
 as a reformed Foundling Hospital, or some- 
 thing of that sort) might well, under proper 
 inspection and regulation, produce better re- 
 sults than our present reliance on promiscuous 
 marriage." One thing is clear, that if a 
 woman can by selecting the right husband 
 and properly nourishing herself, " produce a 
 citizen with efficient senses, sound organs, and 
 a good digestion," she should be given a re- 
 ward for such a service to the nation. Shaw 
 has nothing further than this to offer. He can 
 only say that where there is a will there is a 
 way. 
 
 But this is a part of Shawism. To enun- 
 ciate a principle which would be binding upon 
 men, would mean the renunciation of his
 
 '72 Will the Home Survive 
 
 philosophy, which is embodied in the saying, 
 ♦* The golden rule is that there is no golden 
 rule." There must be no ideal, because every 
 ideal restricts man in his liberty of judging 
 upon each particular case. Generalizations, 
 liberal or conservative, hold the mind in bond- 
 age, therefore all generalizations must be 
 abolished. The astonishing thing is that 
 Shaw does not see that he has made the most 
 startling generalizations, which aim at nothing 
 less than the overthrow of our entire social 
 structure. The very thing for which his mind 
 craves, the liberty to make generalizations, and 
 the satisfaction he gives to himself in making 
 them, he denies to others. 
 
 This writer is too inconsistent to be taken 
 seriously and too sensational to be interesting. 
 We have long ago lost our interest in the 
 millennium, and it is too late to attempt to 
 awaken our interest in a golden age of Super- 
 men. It is not a Superman in which we are 
 interested, but in the common, toiling, imper- 
 fect humanity that is about us. Pious, 
 saintly, beer-drinking, profane humanity, with
 
 Bernard Shaiv and the Superman 73 
 
 bleared eyes and with bright eyes, some of it 
 sane and the rest insane, is the humanity of 
 which we are a part, out of which, webeheve, 
 much good has been evolved, and out of which 
 more good will be evolved in the future. 
 Nothing less than blind pessimism, or wilful 
 silliness, could talk of the " goose-cackle " 
 concerning progress. Progress may have 
 been slow but each period has counted a 
 perceptible advance over the last, and our 
 faith in humanity will compel the belief that 
 this progress will continue. We may in the 
 end make a failure ; but we will not be denied, at 
 any rate, the privilege of trying the experiment. 
 Shaw leaves another stumbling-block in our 
 way. What is this Superman to be? Are 
 we assured that he will be any better than the 
 man of to-day ? What evidence have we that 
 the offspring of a countess and a navvy, or a 
 duke and a charwoman, would be a Super- 
 man ? Shaw does not undertake to say what 
 this creature would be. In his delirium he 
 plunges into a darker night than the one in 
 which he is already walking, and he has the
 
 74 Will the Home Survive 
 
 audacity to ask us to step from the light we 
 already have and plunge into the darkness 
 where there is not a light or a path. Our 
 present arrangement of marriage may be at- 
 tended by many imperfections, but no man has 
 yet been wise enough to direct us to anything 
 better, for the simple reason that we do not 
 know for what elements to breed. Humanity 
 is so complex, composed as it is of so many 
 different elements, the thing which is an ele- 
 ment of strength in one man being a weakness 
 in another ; genius is so illusive, that no man 
 has been wise enough to undertake this task of 
 producing the ideal man. Shaw does not un- 
 dertake it. He is in the dark as much as any 
 other person. Hence even to venture upon 
 such a task as he proposes, the abolition of 
 private property and marriage, without vastly 
 more light than he has shed upon the subject, 
 would be the height of imbecility. 
 
 If he should reply that the Life Force, 
 whatever that may be, would regulate this and 
 finally produce the Superman, we reply that 
 this entire doctrine of the Life Force, driving
 
 Berjiard Shazu and the Superman 75 
 
 woman after man until she wins him, is the 
 greatest folly of the imagination that has found 
 its way into print in recent years. It is con- 
 trary to our natures and is contradicted by our 
 observation. Indeed Shaw himself denies his 
 doctrine. " Love," he says, " loses its charm 
 when it is not free ; and whether the compul- 
 sion is that of custom and law, or of infatua- 
 tion, the effect is the same : it becomes value- 
 less. The desire to give inspires no affection 
 unless there is also the power to withhold ; and 
 the successful wooer, in both sexes alike, is the 
 one who can stand out for honorable condi- 
 tions, and failing them, go without." But 
 there is no freedom in the way in which Tan- 
 ner is compelled to marry Ann. He is pic- 
 tured as the most helpless type of slave to a 
 blind and merciless law. All that is noble in 
 humanity declares against it. There is no such 
 slavery of the affections of men. 
 
 Shaw has simply carried the principles of 
 Ibsen to their logical conclusion. Ibsen taught 
 that there were no duties to God or to our 
 fellow men ; that the only duty was to self, to
 
 76 Will the Home Survive 
 
 care for the development of the isolated per- 
 sonality. Shaw is logical when he adds to his 
 denial of duties to God and man, the denial of 
 all duties of whatever kind. •' Woman has to 
 repudiate duty altogether. In that repudiation 
 lies her freedom ; for it is false to say that 
 woman is now directly the slave of man ; she 
 is the immediate slave of duty ; and as man's 
 path to freedom is strewn with the wreckage 
 of the duties and ideals he has trampled on, so 
 must hers be." She must repudiate her duty 
 to husband, to society, to children, and to law, 
 to every one and to everything. Only in this 
 denial of all duty is there any hope for the up- 
 lift of the world. 
 
 Shaw has been conceited enough to declare 
 humanity fools, following an illusion, trying to 
 satisfy itself concerning reality with finely 
 drawn ideals. The voice of humanity has 
 been to him only the voice of insanity ; the 
 travail of the ages has been in vain ; evolution 
 has been fruitless. His plunge into the night 
 is logical. Leave him there to wallow in 
 his murky pessimism.
 
 IV 
 
 MAX NORDAU AND NATURALISM 
 
 Max Nordau finds our civilization not only 
 out of joint but actually filled with " muddle- 
 headed," idiotic degenerates, who are either 
 insane or are verging upon insanity, and he 
 sets before himself the tremendous task of 
 sounding the note of warning and suggesting 
 means of escape before the race is lost in mad- 
 ness. As we read his Degeneration we are 
 constantly possessed with the thought that 
 the raving lunatic is the one who thinks all 
 others insane while he possesses absolute truth 
 and sanity. If egotism and impulsiveness are 
 characteristics of degeneracy, as Nordau would 
 have us believe, then he must be placed in this 
 class of unfortunates. 
 
 His Degeneration, elephantine in style, op- 
 pressive in spirit, tedious because of its in- 
 volved sentences and its multiplication of 
 phrases, carries the theory of Lombroso, that 
 
 77
 
 78 Will the Home Sui'vive 
 
 insanity and genius are closely related to ex- 
 treme issues and absurd conclusions. He cai'e- 
 fully describes the characteristics of degen- 
 erates and then finds such modern writers as 
 Ibsen, Walt Whitman, Maeterlinck, Wagner, 
 Tolstoy, and Zola types of " a degenerative 
 psychosis of the epileptoid order." William 
 Morris, Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti are 
 all imbeciles, babbling and stammering out of 
 diseased minds. Society dresses, eats, and 
 plays like lunatics. The leaders of socialism 
 are " weakly neurasthenic men, muddle-headed 
 people." Great schools of literature like the 
 symbolists, impressionists, realists are degener- 
 ates, trying to exist on the public by writing 
 " crazy and inflated phrases." His conclusions 
 are too sweeping to be taken seriously, his 
 facts treated with too little discrimination to 
 appeal to our judgment, and his spirit so cock- 
 sure that it awakens distrust. 
 
 Nordau has a preconceived notion of hu- 
 manity and he proposes to prove his theory, 
 though he must twist the universe out of joint 
 to accomplish his purpose. Every literary
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 79 
 
 character is of value to him just so far cis he is 
 able to use it to contribute to the purpose of 
 his book. It is this which deprives Nordau's 
 criticism of great value. He places himself in 
 an attitude where he is unable to understand 
 the thought and style of any writer. His prej- 
 udice warps his judgment. His determination 
 to prove that all men are crazy makes him 
 sometimes ridiculous. 
 
 He sees in Maeterlinck only a " servile im- 
 itator of crazy Walt Whitman," a "pitiable 
 mental cripple," " a mentally debilitated pla- 
 giarist," whose fame was an accident. Maeter- 
 linck unquestionably has great defects. He is 
 a mystic without either the joy or the faith of 
 the Protestant or Catholic mystics. " A bend 
 in the road hides from view " those great real- 
 ities which rejoiced the souls of the earlier 
 mystics. The things about which Tauler and 
 Ruysroek, Teresa and Mme. Guyon, spoke with 
 unquestioned confidence, are to Maeterlinck 
 the unknowables in an unknowable realm. 
 Religion was the atmosphere in which the 
 mystics lived ; to him religion is a " departing
 
 8o Will the Ho7ne Survive 
 
 faith," affording no shelter, and he abandons 
 it with a stoical resignation which could not 
 have been surpassed by the pagan gladiator 
 succumbing to his victor. Through his works 
 run a sad music, a melancholy cry, depressing 
 as the moaning of the winds through the pine- 
 trees to the ears of the disappointed lover. It 
 is the melancholy of limitation, the lack of 
 spiritual vision. For the question, Whence ? 
 he has no answer. Whither ? The question 
 is lost in a patient silence. The present alone 
 concerns him, that present a painfully limited 
 one. In it there are no singing birds, no sweet- 
 smelling flowers, no voices speaking through 
 the night. The deep, unfathomable soul of 
 man is his one theme, and the most important 
 things about that are the awful, unknown 
 silences. 
 
 The most pathetic fact concerning Maeter- 
 linck is that the only religion he knows is the 
 mediaeval Christianity which he learned at the 
 Jesuit College, and which was interpreted to 
 him by the church of his boyhood. Finding 
 that religion crumbling under the touch of the
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 8i 
 
 modern critical spirit, he proclaims from the 
 housetops that all religion has perished. One 
 has only to turn to any one of his philosoph- 
 ical writings to discover that religion to his 
 mind is identical with mediaevalism. In one 
 of his essays, " Of Our Anxious Morality ^ he 
 wrote : " We are no longer chaste since we 
 have recognized that the work of the flesh, 
 crushed for twenty centuries, is natural and 
 lawful. We no longer go out in search of res- 
 ignation, of mortification, of sacrifice ; we are 
 no longer lowly in heart or poor in spirit." 
 This is the voice of one who has escaped from 
 monasticism. His most Christian criticism of 
 sacrifice in Wisdom and Destiny is not of that 
 noble kind of sacrifice where man gives un- 
 sparingly of his love, joy, hope, and courage, 
 but of that other type of " grand and gloomy 
 meditation wherein sorrow, love, and despair 
 blend with death and destiny and the apathetic 
 forces of nature." The mere statement of 
 these principles shows that Maeterlinck has in 
 mind only the religion of the monastery. 
 It is the religion of the monk and the priest
 
 82 Will the Home Survive 
 
 that is dead. Maeterlinck says of this priest : 
 " He is getting too old. It looks as though he 
 himself has no longer seen for some time. He 
 will not admit it, for fear another should come 
 to take his place among us ; but I suspect he 
 hardly sees at all any more. We must have 
 another guide." But, again, this priest of the 
 drama, The Blind, is of the mediaeval religion. 
 It is the priest religion. Maeterlinck, having 
 never discovered the grand and free sj^irit of 
 modern liberal Protestantism, is led into the 
 bewildering forest on the lonely island of the 
 bhnd, on which forever breaks the moaning 
 waves from the silent sea. A religion without 
 a priest, a Christian ethics without a monas- 
 tery, a gospel without a crucifix, are concep- 
 tions which have never stirred his imagination. 
 He is like a sailor whose ship has broken loose 
 from the anchor, and who never inquires if 
 there is another anchor that can be cast 
 over to hold the ship in the storm, but who 
 permits his vessel to drift before merciless 
 waves into an unknown sea. 
 
 Finding that religion no longer has answers
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 83 
 
 to the great questions of mankind, Maeterlinck 
 starts in quest of light. The priest has 
 failed. The dumb animal instincts cannot lead 
 us. The flashes of the poet's genius bring 
 some light, but they cannot be relied upon to 
 guide us from the forest. Upon reason we 
 cannot depend. " The most living reason be- 
 finds itself not in reason." It springs from the 
 silent, unknown depths of the soul. 
 
 Depending upon these silent voices for 
 guidance, Maeterhnck starts on his search for 
 truth, and the rapidity of his ever-shifting posi- 
 tion is no less interesting than his mystical 
 theory of the origin of wisdom. All his 
 earlier dramas are wrapped in a fatalistic 
 gloom. Destiny seems " some monstrous, ex- 
 ternal, irresistible force, which compels and en- 
 slaves human beings from the outside." In 
 the second period of his development he 
 passed from the conception of destiny as some- 
 thing external, to the conception of it as per- 
 sonal. " Destiny is character." Human per- 
 sonality alone has power over outward forces 
 and determines destiny. What is character ?
 
 84 Will the Home Survive 
 
 It is " the total weight and range of all the 
 forces within us. Some of these are the prod- 
 ucts of heredity, others of environment, and, 
 above all else, of the subconscious self, moving 
 us to unconscious action." In his last volume 
 of essays he makes still another change, becom- 
 ing an advocate of Comte's Positive Philosophy, 
 a believer in the religion of humanity. Where 
 he will stop in the evolution of his thought no 
 man would dare predict. Having denied the 
 value of history as a guide, and finding reason 
 too hedged about to solve our questions, he 
 plunges into the unknown future by the light 
 of the subconscious self. 
 
 Maeterlinck's interpretation of life is too thin 
 and airy to find wide acceptance in this beef- 
 eating world. He" declares that " misery is the 
 disease of mankind," and he goes in search of 
 the source of happiness, finding it in con- 
 sciousness, " our refuge from the caprice of 
 fate, our centre of happiness and strength," 
 consciousness including the vast, mysterious 
 self, as well as our conscious qualities and 
 defects. Unknowingly, Maeterlinck has fallen
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 85 
 
 into the very pit he has tried to escape, — that 
 of mediaevaHsm. The happiness the old 
 monks soughts in vigils and in prayer, the 
 happiness of resignation, quietude, the negation 
 of unrest, is the very happiness which Maeter- 
 linck seeks in the secret cell of his soul. It is 
 too otherworldly, too much divorced from the 
 things in which we are compelled to dwell, to 
 appeal to toiling mankind. 
 
 What is the source of morality ? Not re- 
 ligion, as it can no longer explain anything. 
 Not common sense, as that is only another 
 term for gross egotism. Even good sense, 
 while a little less material, a little less animal, 
 cannot be the source of our ethical system. 
 This source can be none other than the mystic 
 reason, that unknown depth of the soul from 
 which our true ideals spring. 
 
 Is man immortal? Religion is silent, and 
 reason declares that the hope of the survival 
 of conscious personality is an illusion. 
 " There can be no survival of our present con- 
 sciousness. We cannot tell what our Hfe was 
 before birth, though we cannot doubt it ex-
 
 86 Will the Home Survive 
 
 isted. Neither need we doubt its immortality. 
 But the form of the consciousness is beyond 
 our knowledge or imagination." Here he 
 passes into Oriental mysticism and bids us 
 wait patiently and watch the mystic conscious- 
 ness for glimmers of light. 
 
 There is nothing in this philosophy to warm 
 the heart or to satisfy the reason. A man to 
 whom the great voice of history has no value, 
 and to whom reason is only a ripple upon the 
 deep, unfathomable sea of conciousness, can- 
 not be depended upon as a teacher. Some 
 one has said that all his teaching might be sum- 
 marized in Emerson's words : " We live in 
 the lap of an immense intelligence, which 
 makes us organs of its activity and receivers 
 of its truth." But here is just where Maeter- 
 linck differs from Emerson. To the Belgian, 
 we rest in the lap of an immense silence 
 rather than an immense intelligence. Emer- 
 son was an idealist ; Maeterlinck tries to be, 
 but his idealism is chilled by his agnosti- 
 cism. His silence becomes oppressive, like the 
 silence in the house of the dead.
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalis7n 87 
 
 These fundamental defects in the thought of 
 Maeterhnck ought not, however, bUnd us to 
 his strength and virtue. His great genius 
 carries us through his books, in spite of his 
 fundamental defects. His sublime indifference 
 to fame and wealth, and his persistent insist- 
 ence that the true life is found only in the 
 inner life, is wholesome teaching for our auto- 
 mobile age. His ethical insight sometimes 
 lends eloquence to his lips, and he carries us 
 to the Mount of Vision. None of his con- 
 temporaries have exceeded him in wealth of 
 language or beauty of expression. His style 
 is rich enough to atone for his philosophical 
 defects, and any man who indulges in such 
 wholesale condemnation, oblivious of Maeter- 
 linck's power, as Nordau has done, may be 
 stamped at once as a critic so swayed by prej- 
 udice that he is unable to form an impartial or 
 just estimate of any writer. 
 
 There are times when Nordau does not even 
 impress us as being sincere. He regards the 
 symbolists of France as a school which exists 
 for the " aim of making a noise in the world,
 
 88 IVill the Home Survive 
 
 and by attracting the attention of men through 
 its extravagances, of attaining celebrity and 
 profit, and the gratification of all the desires 
 and conceits agitating the envious souls of 
 these filibusters of fame." They are only 
 " esthetic loafers " who want to work as little 
 as possible and fare as well as possible. George 
 Brandes is only a " sponger on the name and 
 fame of others," who plays and dances before 
 every poet and author and then, " after the 
 hubbub, passes his hat round among the deaf- 
 ened public." We must either confess that 
 the man who makes such assertions is either 
 trying to do the very thing of which he ac- 
 cuses these writers, to stir up such a hubbub 
 that everybody will talk of his book and buy 
 it ; that he is a fool, or is morally and intel- 
 lectually dishonest. In either case, he fails to 
 win our confidence. Like an auctioneer he is 
 shrieking at the top of his voice to attract at- 
 tention and is shrieking in language that leads 
 us to distrust the commodity he has to offer. 
 
 Nordau's conception of life is so limited 
 that he is incapable of dealing with men who
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 89 
 
 do not think as he does. He is incapable of 
 understanding the great truth there is in 
 mysticism, hence Rossetti to him must " be 
 counted among Sollier's imbeciles," and Swin- 
 burne is a " higher degenerate." Having no 
 conception of the invaluable contribution 
 which Ruskin made to English life, to Nordau 
 this great critic " is one of the most turbid and 
 fallacious minds " who combines the most 
 widely eccentric thoughts with the " acerbity 
 of a bigot." Nordau sees life from only one 
 standpoint, judges everything by one standard, 
 and calls every man illogical or crazy who 
 does not see things as he does. He is the 
 slave of naturalism, of that type of natural- 
 ism which is materialistic. In Paradoxes, 
 a volume of essays where he has done 
 some of his best work, he finds the origin 
 of knowledge, art, and morality in the princi- 
 ples of naturalistic evolution. His Degeiiera- 
 tion is based upon a materialistic conception 
 of physiological psychology which would find 
 few adherents at the present time. There is 
 no place in his scheme of things for the
 
 90 Will the Home Survive 
 
 sciences which exist outside of the physical 
 laboratory. Theology may tell of " harp- 
 concerts in paradise," and talk of " the trans- 
 formation of stupid youths and hysterical 
 geese into white-clad angels with rainbow- 
 colored wings," but it is only " the cradle croon 
 of the old wife's tale." Metaphysics may de- 
 vise some fable and propound it with over- 
 whelming earnestness but it will never occur 
 to serious minds to turn to metaphysics for 
 truth. The vicious attack he makes upon 
 French symbolists is vitiated by his inabiUty 
 to appreciate the type of mind which protests 
 against the science which constitutes itself a 
 self-appointed pope to rule over men and place 
 upon the Index Expurgatorius all things with 
 which it is not pleased. Mankind is learning 
 that there is a realm where the microscope and 
 the dissecting-knife are useless, a spiritual 
 realm where the real man dwells, from whence 
 comes his light, his comfort, his hope, and his 
 protest is becoming ever louder against any 
 science which shuts him up to nerve-knots and 
 brain matter. Nordau's inability to under-
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 91 
 
 stand this protest of humanity makes him rage 
 against the symbohsts as though he would 
 burn them alive for their audacity, but the 
 very spirit against which he protests is the 
 measure of his weakness. 
 
 When reading Nordau's Natural History of 
 Love, one feels as though he were walking 
 through physical laboratories with carcasses 
 lying all about, already cut and lifeless, with 
 nothing even to suggest that they were ever 
 human. Here Nordau's naturalism is bold 
 and repulsive, squeezing the life out of hu- 
 manity, leaving the poet without a song or 
 the lover without a romance. The root of the 
 whole matter is physical, sex-centres in brain 
 and spinal chord, out of which grow impulses 
 to love. " All that is now necessary for this 
 impulse and this craving to find an object and 
 become transformed into actual love, is for 
 this individual in this frame of mind, to meet 
 another of the opposite sex in the same con- 
 dition." Nordau makes us feel as though we 
 were brutes, or at least savages, only needing 
 to listen to the demands of the physical life,
 
 92 Will the Home Survive 
 
 when all the demands of love would be sat- 
 isfied. 
 
 Civilization, rather than a help to pure, true 
 love, is a real hindrance, he declares. Our 
 minds are poisoned by fiction and the drama. 
 Our young girls are ruined by novel reading 
 and the theatres. " She substitutes her fancies 
 for the real needs of her organism, and heed- 
 lessly commits those fatal errors in her choice 
 which wreck her life forever afterwards." 
 Ninety cases of marriage out of a hundred in 
 our cities are not produced by true love evolved 
 out of the physical organism, but out of the 
 fancies, imaginations, suggested by fiction. 
 Our wives do not marry us because their na- 
 tures draw us to them, but because their minds 
 have been poisoned and they are trying to re- 
 enact the role of some drama they have heard 
 or read. They are insane, demented by love- 
 literature. Nature has no voice ; or a voice 
 that is not heard. 
 
 This is naturalism gone mad, which exalts 
 the beast above the man, the physical instincts 
 above all we have considered best in our civ"«
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 93 
 
 ilization. It is the absurd position in which 
 all must find themselves who seek the best so- 
 lution of the family life under the microscope, 
 rather than in the spiritual atmosphere of the 
 consecrated home, where intelligence, expe- 
 rience, and imagination unite to lead and check 
 the physical hfe. 
 
 Nordau finds two causes for the existence 
 of the family, one physical and the other 
 social. Man is drawn to woman from physio- 
 logical reasons. He loves her when he de- 
 sires her ; he is indifferent to her when the 
 desire is satisfied. Hence from purely physio- 
 logical causes he would never have invented 
 this institution of the family, the permanent 
 alliance with woman. This permanent alliance 
 arose out of a social necessity, the advantages 
 of a well-ordered household, consideration of 
 duties towards children and the state. The 
 institution as a permanent social factor does 
 not exist primarily for the man. It would suit 
 his nature better not to have it, for he is not 
 so far removed from polygamy in the evolu- 
 tionary process as is woman. The institution
 
 94 Will the Home Survive 
 
 exists primarily for the protection of the 
 woman and her children. The abandonment 
 of the institution and the return to primitive 
 promiscuity might be well enough for rich 
 women, but the vast majority of wives would 
 suffer in the event of such a change. We 
 must maintain the institution of the family for 
 the protection of the weaker part of the hu- 
 man race. 
 
 There are, however, many things which 
 must modify and give flexibility to the institu- 
 tion. " A serious and healthy reformer will 
 contend for the principle that marriage should 
 acquire a moral and emotional import, and 
 not remain a lying form. He will condemn 
 the marriage for interest, for dowry, or business 
 marriage ; he will brand as a crime the action 
 of married couples who feel for some other 
 human being a strong, true love, tested by 
 time and struggle, and yet remain together in 
 a cowardly pseudo-union, deceiving and con- 
 taminating each other, instead of honorably 
 separating and contracting genuine connec- 
 tions elsewhere ; he will demand that marriage
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 95 
 
 be based on reciprocal inclination, maintained 
 by confidence, gratitude, and respect, but he 
 will guard himself from saying anything against 
 marriage itself, this bulwark of relations be- 
 tween the sexes, afforded by definite, perma- 
 nent duty." 
 
 Nordau has made a real contribution to the 
 cause of the family in his Morganatic, where 
 he protests against the injustice of the mor- 
 ganatic marriage of European royalty. He 
 pictures the misery and suffering caused by 
 such an unnatural relation between man and 
 woman. A prince, through his sin, is com- 
 pelled to marry a young and beautiful Venetian 
 singer. Enough is done by the prince's fam- 
 ily to hush the disgrace. The child is given 
 the title of Baron, but is denied those things 
 which are more important than titles, namely, 
 a father's love and care, social recognition and 
 advancement. As soon as he is old enough 
 to understand, he is enraged by these unnat- 
 ural relations. He says : " I am a son of a 
 prince ; but if I give myself out for what I am, 
 I am scorned or persecuted, or both. Why ?
 
 96 JVill the Home Survive 
 
 It is true ! By all divine and human laws, I 
 am Prince Albrecht's son, and my nearest 
 relatives, my uncles and cousins, are the great- 
 est emperors and kings of the earth. And I 
 am asked not to regard my father's brothers as 
 uncles, or the children of my father's brothers 
 and sisters as cousins. It is an atrocious out- 
 rage. If it was a crime, my father ought to 
 have been punished for it, not me. I am not 
 guilty." But as a result of the artificial laws 
 and customs of European society he is the one 
 who had to bear the punishment. He is de- 
 nied by his father's family, cheated of his 
 childhood and youth, sacrificed by a loveless 
 father, left without means, position, profession, 
 or an outlook in life. He sues for a title 
 which is his by right, for the blood of a prince 
 is in his veins, but he fails to secure it. Wast- 
 ing his fortune in a vain effort to obtain rec- 
 ognition, he at last becomes a wanderer over 
 the earth, ending by taking the vows of a 
 monk in a monaster}'. 
 
 The argument of the story is made more 
 forcible by the introduction of another prince,
 
 Max Nordait and Naturalism 97 
 
 the father of a beautiful girl whom he refused 
 to recognize. The girl grows to womanhood, 
 having a voice which commands the attention 
 of the musical world. When she reaches a 
 position of influence, she openly calls the 
 prince, papa, and compels him to marry her 
 mother. The prince at first rebels, but at last 
 recognizes the justice of the claim. He mar- 
 ries the woman who was by nature his wife, 
 and the marriage results happily for all con- 
 cerned. 
 
 The book is a wholesome protest against a 
 society bound by customs which are purely 
 artificial ; often as unholy as they are unnat- 
 ural, denying the justice of nature's ways. 
 Siegfried complains : " I am a living man of 
 flesh and blood, and you wish to slay me by 
 an icy theory." It is for the " living man " as 
 opposed to the " icy theory " that Nordau 
 pleads ; for the recognition of truth rather 
 than tradition, nature rather than customs. 
 
 But the real key to the understanding of 
 Nordau's conception of marriage is in this sen- 
 tence : " He will brand as a crime the action
 
 98 Will the Home Survive 
 
 of married couples who feel for some other 
 human being a strong, true love, tested by 
 time and struggle, and yet remain together in 
 cowardly pseudo-union, deceiving and con- 
 taminating each other, instead of honorably 
 separating and contracting genuine connections 
 elsewhere." His entire conception is reduced 
 to this : the family is based upon the physical 
 instincts of sexual passion; this passion is 
 love ; whenever it becomes stronger for one 
 creature than another, the latter should be de- 
 serted for the former. 
 
 This is the underlying thought of the play, the 
 Right to Love. The absolute right to love, love 
 being only passion divorced from reason, to 
 love irrespective of duties, is the plea of Bertha, 
 the chief character of the play. Married to a 
 man for whom she bears children, who gives 
 her a good home and every comfort, she finds 
 the anniversary of her wedding-day becoming 
 " an old story," tedious and without any pleas- 
 ant memory, the chief reason being that she 
 has fallen in love with another man. She be- 
 comes an advocate of a philosophy whose
 
 Max Nordau and Naturalism 99 
 
 main principle is " the right to love." Every 
 human being has " the right of satisfying the 
 heart," hence " when people love each other 
 they have the right to belong to one another." 
 The solemn covenant of marriage into which 
 a young but ignorant girl enters, amid the en- 
 chanting scenes of the marriage festival " can- 
 not be binding for the whole life." The hu- 
 man being ought and must have the liberty to 
 obey the voice of the heart. The Ten Com 
 mandments are not " up-to-date ; " the duties 
 of home and children are nothing before the 
 blind passion of love, the one powerful law of 
 nature which must be obeyed ; society is '* the 
 thousand-eyed, thousand-tongued, thousand- 
 fisted monster " which must be defied and 
 fought. All must give way to " pleasurable 
 emotion," which is the end of life. 
 
 A bolder statement of the philosophy of 
 selfishness could not be given by Neitzsche 
 himself. Bertha and her lover both teach that 
 selfishness is not wrong. She passionately 
 declares : " What do I care about the world ! 
 I don't have to provide for the world, but for
 
 I(X) Will the Home Survive 
 
 myself." There are no such things as duties 
 to society. The individual alone is to be con- 
 sidered, and if the individual defies the estab- 
 lished law and customs of society, it is no 
 crime but a human right. " No human being 
 is the property of another," and no one is to 
 be considered except the individual, in his 
 search for happiness. Thus in this drama 
 Nordau has done the very thing for which he 
 so strongly condemned Ibsen, only he has 
 done it in another way. Ibsen declares against 
 the institution itself when it stands in the way 
 of the individual, Nordau pretends to stand 
 for the permanence of the institution as a social 
 necessity, but he actually contends for a prin- 
 ciple which is just as destructive of the family 
 life as the principle for which Ibsen contended. 
 His fundamental defect is in that delusion 
 which has taken possession of so many 
 present-day makers of fiction. Priding them- 
 selves upon their naturalism, which they think 
 can alone give the truth, they are " really 
 wallowing in what is left of human nature 
 after the sense of right and wrong have been
 
 • > I 
 
 1 , . 1 » , , 
 
 > » > > > • 
 
 Max Nordau mid Naturalism lOl 
 
 eliminated," The host of writers who, like 
 Nordau, plead for " the right to love," are 
 pleading not for the natural but for the bestial. 
 Self-control, the idealizing powers of the mind, 
 sweet reasonableness, and reverence, are hid- 
 den under the rush of passion. We are put 
 into the sink of the smelling laboratory and 
 asked to believe that this is truth. The type 
 of naturalism which includes all of man, and 
 which brings the lower elements of his nature 
 into subjection to his higher, is absent from 
 this literature, singing songs of liberty for the 
 brute. 
 
 t • 
 
 > • > >
 
 V 
 
 TOLSTOY'S CONCEPTION OF MARRIAGE 
 
 To many serious but sentimentally pietistic 
 people we are living in the most insincere and 
 irreligious age in the history of the world. 
 They point us, on the one hand, to the common 
 multitude, brutalized by a coarse self-indul- 
 gence, repulsive as they come from their 
 nightly revels, covered with the fumes of bad 
 whiskey and worse tobacco, their faces all red- 
 dened by their dissipations, and on the other to 
 the frivolous, godless rich. Let us not deny 
 that both these classes number like the sands 
 of the sea. They have been found, however, 
 in every age, have been the brains of no age, 
 and have existed both to disgust by their con- 
 duct, and to pay by their money the accounts 
 of those who do think and who have con- 
 stituted the real life of every period. 
 
 Considering this latter class, our age will be 
 known in history as an age of sincerity. In 
 
 I02
 
 Tolstoy's Conception of Marriage 103 
 
 literature the dawn came with Ruskin, Carlyle, 
 Emerson, and the great poets of the nineteenth 
 century. In theology the dawn came with the 
 critical study of the old theological systems 
 and of the Scriptures. Ibsen, Maeterlinck, 
 H. G. Wells, and a host of others who have 
 had the verbal missiles of orthodoxy hurled at 
 them, can only be understood when we see 
 them as intensely sincere men, who are con- 
 scious of Hving in a social world where there 
 are many shams, and who, depressed by these 
 shams, have gone in eager search for reality. 
 The critical spirit of the age is the breath of 
 sincerity. The unsparing criticism of religion, 
 society, the family, and the moral order, have 
 been born of an unquenchable thirst to know 
 the truth, to escape the bondage of custom, the 
 spiritual death of formal religion, and the 
 misery-breeding defects of family life. 
 
 A perfect embodiment of this spirit of sin- 
 cerity is found in Tolstoy. He has been called 
 the greatest Christian of the age. This may 
 be doubted. Whether he is a Christian, mean- 
 ing by Christian one who correctly interprets
 
 I04 Will the Ho7ne Su7'vive 
 
 the moral laws of Jesus and lives according to 
 them, may be seriously questioned. Cer- 
 tainly his interpretation of the gospels can- 
 not endure by any known standard of criti- 
 cism, while the emphasis he puts on one ele- 
 ment of Christ's teaching to the exclusion of 
 all others, equally important, leaves him open to 
 the serious charge of being at least imperfectly 
 Christian in his ideals. He has also been 
 caught by the delusion of the simple life, from 
 the destructive influence of which he has been 
 saved by a wife who gives her life to the mend- 
 ing of his stockings and the paying of his bills. 
 The real Tolstoy has often been hidden under 
 these oddities, which will be forgotten after the 
 passing of the great prophet. He will be re- 
 membered as the supreme embodiment of the 
 spirit of protest against solemn shams in state, 
 in religion, in society, and the embodiment of 
 the sincere mind seeking for reality in the face 
 of organized " orthodoxy." 
 
 While Tolstoy's protests against the shams 
 of state and society have been vital and far- 
 reaching in their influence, the work of his
 
 Tolstoy's Conception of Marriage 105 
 
 which will endure is his protest against the 
 great heresy of the orthodox churches of 
 Christendom, the heresy which teaches the im- 
 practicability, as well as the impossibility, of 
 living according to the moral teachings of 
 Jesus. Greeks, Romans, and Protestants have 
 exalted things which were veiled in mystery, 
 have imprisoned and burned men for denying 
 things about which no man can be certain, while 
 the teaching of Jesus, which all can under- 
 stand. His simplest laws of conduct, have been 
 declared impracticable. So-called believers 
 " go through the most elaborate ceremonies for 
 the consummation of the sacraments, the build- 
 ing of churches, the sending out of missiona- 
 ries, the establishment of the priesthood, for pa- 
 rochial administration, for the performance of 
 rituals ; but they forget one little detail — to do 
 what He said." In this sarcastic touch Tol- 
 stoy puts his finger upon what he regards as 
 the great defect of Christendom, the defect 
 which makes Christendom unchristian, the 
 denial of the very thing Jesus proposed to ac- 
 complish, to have men live as He lived.
 
 io6 Will the Home Survive 
 
 The churches of Christendom have taught 
 that the chief work of Christ was to atone by 
 His death for the sin of Adam, •' but every 
 one who has read the gospels knows that 
 Christ taught nothing of the sort, or at least 
 spoke very vaguely on these topics." The 
 chief aim of Christ's words was to regulate 
 men's lives ; how they ought to live in their 
 relations to one another. The cloudy and 
 vague philosophy, the religion of creed and 
 form and priesthood, the ecclesiastical institu- 
 tion which gives its approval to murderous 
 war, and regards oppression and poverty as in- 
 evitable, are parts of a religion as foreign to 
 the teachings of Jesus as the teachings of 
 Gautama are to those of the Nazarene. If 
 man could absolutely detach himself from all 
 of this religion of the church, the religion of 
 traditional theology, and then, without prej- 
 udice of education, give his opinion of it, " it 
 would seem absolute insanity," without founda- 
 tion in the gospels. The declaration that the 
 most important part of Christianity is that 
 portion of it which cannot be understood, and
 
 Tolstoy's Conception of Marriage 107 
 
 is therefore useless, while the part that can be 
 understood is impracticable, and therefore need 
 not seriously be considered, is the most insane 
 contradiction that mankind has ever been 
 asked to believe. We can only believe that 
 such a perversion of truth was born of " those 
 whose deeds were evil," and hence those who 
 " have lost confidence in the truth." 
 
 However much Tolstoy's interpretation of 
 the gospels may be astray, we have the feel- 
 ing, wherever he carries us, that he is at least 
 within the field of reahty, that he is a prophet 
 crying in the wilderness, commanding men to 
 change their manner of living. He has asublime 
 confidence in his message, like unto the con- 
 fidence of Him who spoke on the shore of 
 Galilee. That it is a practical message is his 
 profound conviction. That daily living ac- 
 cording to this message is the only source of 
 happiness, he believes he has proven by ex- 
 perience. That " there is no salvation without 
 the fulfilment of Christ's teaching" is his con- 
 stant declaration. It is a severe message for 
 those who make religion only a magic charm
 
 io8 Will the Home Survive 
 
 that in some mysterious way is to save them 
 after they have spent their Hves robbing their 
 neighbors, crushing out their competitors, Hv- 
 ing Hves of successive polygamy or continuous 
 fornication, plundering the public treasury or 
 crushing the life out of the poor. But it is 
 at least real. Tolstoy has been sincere, and 
 has reminded Christendom that in the future 
 the world is to have little interest in those 
 things about which no man can be certain, and 
 that if the church continues to proclaim 
 Christ's teachings impractical the church must 
 surrender its right to lead mankind. 
 
 With the same spirit of sincerity, Tolstoy 
 set himself to study the family. Discovering 
 that it is hedged about by unholy influences 
 meaningless customs, and immoral practices, 
 he attacks the family life of his country with, 
 merciless vigor. At the same time with equal 
 power, he pictures what, in his conception, the 
 relation between the sexes should be. 
 
 The ideal state, as Tolstoy believes, is the 
 single life. He bases his view upon Matt. 5 : 
 28 and 19: 10, II, 12. Taking these words
 
 Tolstoy's Conception of Marriage 109 
 
 as the foundation of his thought he preaches 
 that complete abstinence is the ideal, though it 
 result in the extinction of the human race. 
 The words of the Gospel : " Whosoever look- 
 eth on a woman to lust after her hath com- 
 mitted adultery with her already in his heart," 
 apply not only to the wives of other men, but 
 mainly to a man's own wife. Wedding tours 
 and excursions of young married people are 
 only licenses authorized by their elders to un- 
 limited pleasures. Jesus had in mind total ab- 
 stinence, and He illustrated the ideal life by liv- 
 ing Himself in the unmarried state. 
 
 This would result in the final extinction of 
 the human race. But why should the race 
 continue to exist ? If life has no aim, if there 
 is no purpose for it, if it exists simply for the 
 sake of existing, then there is no reason why 
 it should continue. If there is no purpose for 
 its existence, then Schopenhauer and the Bud- 
 dhists were right. On the other hand, if there 
 is an object for human existence, then as soon 
 as that end has been attained there is likewise 
 no further reason for humanity to continue.
 
 no Will the Home Survive 
 
 Supposing the purpose for the race to be the 
 attainment of goodness and love, as the an- 
 cient prophets proclaimed it to be, that men 
 should be so united that all swords should be 
 turned into ploughshares, then what is the 
 thing which keeps the race from the accom- 
 plishment of this ideal ? It is passion. If, 
 therefore, we can extirpate stubborn and 
 wicked passion, the prophecy will be fulfilled, 
 the aim and mission of humanity will be ac- 
 complished, and there will be no reason for the 
 further existence of the race. The purpose of 
 our existence is not to multiply like rabbits, 
 but to attain to goodness and love ; when we 
 accomplish this work then the race should be- 
 come extinct. 
 
 Tolstoy thinks this theory should not startle 
 men, as it has been proclaimed both by the 
 church and by science. All theology has 
 been based on the theory that the world will 
 sooner or later come to an end, and modern 
 science teaches the same thing. The only 
 difference is that theology and modern science 
 postpone that event for a longer time. But why
 
 Tolstoy's Cojtceptton of Marriage iii 
 
 postpone it? If our generation does not at- 
 tain the purpose of its existence, the problem 
 will simply be handed on to the next genera- 
 tion, and so on, ad infinitum. It would be 
 better for us to accomplish our work and 
 cease from pain and sorrow. 
 
 Nothing that Tolstoy has wTitten has been 
 criticised more than this theory. And it has 
 been criticised largely on the ground that 
 Tolstoy did not practice it himself, but mar- 
 ried and had a happy home, becoming the 
 father of thirteen children. This, however, is 
 an unfair criticism, as Tolstoy did not arrive at 
 his present philosophical and religious attitude 
 until long after his marriage. There is no 
 reason to doubt that had he arrived at this 
 conception earlier in life he would have 
 abstained from the marriage state. 
 
 He insists upon certain ideals for the married 
 life, which for purity and loftiness cannot be 
 excelled. First he insists that there must be 
 " purity before marriage," a state which he did 
 not realize for himself, because adultery in the 
 single state, rather than being condemned by
 
 112 Will the Home Survive 
 
 his social class, was encouraged as a thing 
 both natural and necessary for good health. 
 As a result he believes that out of a thousand 
 of his countrymen who marry, there is 
 scarcely one " who has not been married be- 
 fore innumerable times." People may feign 
 to believe that this is not true, but everybody 
 knows that it is the actual state of things, 
 everybody except the poor girl to whom a 
 man gives himself for the first time. In all 
 sincerity she thinks he is pure, but men know 
 that few have retained their purity. 
 
 The essence of this sin is not what it im- 
 ports physically, but " what is wrong is the 
 exemption of one's self from all moral rela- 
 tions when terms of intimacy exist." Men do 
 not ask for the affection of the lewd woman, 
 nor will they give to her their affection. 
 They will not be fettered by the giving and 
 receiving of affection. They seek their own 
 gratification, and in withdrawing this most 
 moral of all acts from without the circle of 
 moral significance for their own selfish ends, 
 they commit a crime which can only be
 
 Tolstoys Conception of Marriage 113 
 
 measured by the depths to which they have 
 degraded pure womanhood, and by the cruelty 
 of their own selfish desires. Man who asks 
 purity of woman should have the same thing 
 to offer that he asks of her. 
 
 Next to the sin of adultery committed by 
 men, lies the black sin of women who appeal 
 to the sensual passions of men. Many women 
 are well aware " that what is commonly called 
 sublime and poetical love depends not upon 
 moral qualities, but on frequent meetings, and 
 on the style in which the hair is done up and 
 on the color and cut of the dress." The ex- 
 perienced coquette, eagerly bent upon cap- 
 tivating a man, would rather be convicted of 
 deceit, and even of immoral conduct, than ap- 
 pear before him in a badly made or ugly dress. 
 Loose women appear in dress like that of many 
 women in pure society ; they appear in such 
 dress to appeal the more strongly to the pas- 
 sions of men. The conclusion must be that 
 the so-called respectable women have the same 
 aim, for people who differ in their aims will 
 surely reflect their aims in their outward con-
 
 114 Will the HoDte Survive 
 
 duct. " Look now upon the unfortunate and 
 despised sisterhood of fallen women and com- 
 pare them with the ladies of the highest 
 society. What do you observe ? The same 
 toilets, the same costumes, the same perfumes, 
 the same exposure of the arms and shoulders, 
 the same projections behind, the same passion 
 for jewelry, for costly, glittering ornaments, the 
 same amusements, dances, music, and song. 
 And as the former class of women employ all 
 these things for the purposes of seduction, so 
 also do the latter. There is absolutely no dif- 
 ference between them." 
 
 Kreutzer Sonata, a novel published in 1889, 
 disseminated in hundreds of thousands of copies 
 and read by millions, a novel which is so 
 vulgar that it was denied admission to the 
 United States mail, yet which is nevertheless 
 true to certain aspects of life, is a terrible in- 
 dictment against marriages which were born 
 from this appeal to passion rather than from 
 higher and more spiritual motives. Posny- 
 schefif, who had led a dissolute life, and hence 
 was an easy victim to any excitement, met a
 
 Tolstoy's Conception of Marriage 115 
 
 young woman who was dressed in such a 
 manner as to stir his animal hfe, which he 
 mistook for the dawn of love. " Ecstasies, 
 tenderness, and poetry were all there, in 
 appearance at least, but in reality my love was 
 the result of the contrivances of the mamma 
 and the dressmaker on the one hand, and 
 good dinnei-s and inactivity on the other. If, 
 on the other hand, there had been no boating 
 excursions, no dressmakers to arrange wasp- 
 like waists, and so on ; had my wife been 
 dressed in a plain gown and stayed at home ; 
 and if, on the other hand, I had been leading 
 a normal life, I should not have fallen in love, 
 and all that took place subsequently and in 
 consequence of that, would never have 
 occurred." 
 
 It was a marriage born of lust. There was 
 no spiritual communion between them. Con- 
 versation was carried on with difficulty, as 
 they possessed so little in common. When 
 lust was once satisfied love was dormant, until 
 passion again brought it into being. The 
 marriage being the fruit of lust, their children
 
 Ii6 Will the Home Survive 
 
 were never welcome and never received the 
 care of the parents. A musician came into 
 their home and Posnyscheff 's suspicions being 
 aroused his jealousy began to grow, until one 
 night finding the musician in his wife's com- 
 pany, in a rage of jealousy he killed her. Im- 
 prisoned, he had time to repent of his crime. 
 Had he realized the meaning of Christ's 
 words ; " Whosoever looketh on a woman to 
 lust after her," he would have been saved 
 from his unhappy life and his crime. The 
 story was not intended to prove that marriage 
 is a failure, but that marriage entered into 
 for any except the highest and purest motives 
 is the source of misery and sin, and that those 
 who enter marriages from low motives are no 
 better after their marriage than they were 
 before. 
 
 This book is repulsive beyond expression 
 but it is a powerful protest against a system 
 of match-making which Tolstoy regards as 
 worse than the match-makings of the heathen. 
 In old times the parents arranged the match 
 when the girl was of age. This is still true
 
 Tolstois Conception of Marriage 117 
 
 with the Chinese, the Indians, Mohammedans, 
 and the lower orders of Russians. The 
 system has this advantage, " that the rights 
 and chances are equal on both sides." " Our 
 system is a thousand times more degrading " 
 because it makes woman " either a slave in 
 the market or a mere decoy." Having unfair 
 advantages with man, she must resort to 
 methods which will counterbalance his rights. 
 If he will use her for his instrument of 
 pleasure, she must study to enslave him. 
 This is what she does. " Woman acts upon 
 the senses of man, and through his senses so 
 completely enslaves him that his right of 
 choice dwindles away to a mere formality." 
 Having once mastered the means of conquest 
 she abuses them and thereby acquires a 
 terrible power over men. Only as this 
 pernicious system is overcome and marriage is 
 lifted into a higher realm, a spiritual atmos- 
 phere, can we hope for happy homes. 
 
 Not only should the marriage state be 
 entered from the highest spiritual motives, but 
 it should be maintained with one woman who 
 
 -♦
 
 Ii8 Will the Home Sttrvive 
 
 should give to the world well-born and well- 
 trained children. Tolstoy again and again 
 condemns the ease with which the physician 
 enables the woman to turn from the realiza- 
 tion of the highest end of her existence, and 
 Posnyscheff declares that the moment the 
 doctor said that his wife must bear no more 
 children, and forbidding her to nurse her 
 child handed it over to the care of another, 
 the chasm between himself and his wife was 
 widened, and all hope of future reconciliation 
 was taken away. None of Tolstoy's children 
 were ever unwelcome to himself or to his wife, 
 nor were given to the care of a nurse. Nordau 
 nowhere shows his inability to understand 
 Tolstoy more than where he says that for him 
 " marriage is quite as impure as the loosest 
 tie." Tolstoy teaches just the opposite. He 
 constantly protests against the looseness of 
 sexual relations, and declares that only as man 
 and woman live in fidelity to one another, and 
 as both share in the fulfilment of the mission 
 nature has set for them, can there be any 
 hope of a wholesome family hfe.
 
 VI 
 THE FAMILY IN MODERN FICTION 
 
 The question of the real value of the prob- 
 lem novel and play will evoke a variety of 
 opinions. Especially is this true of the 
 drama. It is our opinion that the drama, 
 which deals with social problems, tends to 
 produce excitement and prejudice of a not 
 very healthy kind rather than cool and serious 
 thought. A large audience may pass from 
 the theatre with their spiritual temperature far 
 below zero, after listening to Hauptmann's 
 Weavers, or The Sunken Bell, as a result of 
 having received the impression that people are 
 almost powerless in their fight against the 
 forces of heredity and environment. Yet this 
 is only an impression. The play has not 
 solved the problem which is still in the boiling 
 crucible of conscience. Men who seriously 
 study the question of heredity to-day are not 
 
 nearly so certain about it as were the men of 
 
 119
 
 I20 Will the Home Survive 
 
 a generation ago, yet the play, by means of an 
 impression, has sent the audience away feeling 
 that they were in bondage to this ghost, who 
 has crept down from their ancestors to haunt 
 them. Maeterlinck in one weak play, The 
 Blind ^ would brush away all the results of the 
 study of comparative religions, and Ibsen, by 
 introducing us to a few neurasthenic and 
 hysterical women, mated with weak and 
 abnormal men, would bankrupt the institution 
 of the family. At best the problem play can 
 only awaken prejudice, divorced from intelh- 
 gence, and as such can contribute nothing to- 
 wards the solution of great social questions. 
 It is a hindrance rather than an aid to this 
 end. 
 
 The novel may contribute more towards 
 the solution of social questions for the simple 
 reason that it has more space in which to 
 reveal facts and mass arguments. When it 
 does this, however, it is no longer literature 
 with an argument, but an argument much 
 weakened by the fact that it is cumbered by 
 fiction. It cannot be denied that there are
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 121 
 
 times when an impression is more valuable 
 than an argument. An Uncle Toms Cabin 
 will accomplish what no abstract treatise on 
 liberty could do. But the major part of our 
 social questions, like those of heredity and the 
 family, cannot be solved by the stirring of the 
 emotions of a nation. Calm investigation and 
 patient experience alone can solve these 
 questions. 
 
 Yet limited as the novel is for the gigantic 
 task of treating social questions, it is more 
 and more being used for this purpose. Al- 
 most every phase of the family question can 
 be found in the modern novel, and from no 
 source is the attack upon the traditional con- 
 ceptions of the family more severe than from 
 those " Hilltop " novels which deal with 
 family life. We turn our attention, therefore, 
 in this chapter to a few of those novels which 
 deal with various phases of this question. 
 
 The conception of marriage as a sacrament 
 is argued by Paul Bourget, a Roman CathoHc, 
 who takes the side of the church against the 
 state in the conflict which for several years
 
 122 Will the Home Survive 
 
 has been in progress in France. He sees 
 this conflict as a part of a great modern move- 
 ment, led by ill-balanced minds, who " would 
 destroy all existing order, whilst dreaming of 
 an impossible millennium," and who are sure 
 to lead us into an intolerant anarchism. The 
 law of France permitting divorce and remar- 
 riage, a law contrary to the traditions of the 
 nation, is to Bourget an indication of this 
 anarchistic movement which is destined to 
 bring untold suffering and degradation. His 
 novel, A Divorce, is one of the strongest 
 works of fiction dealing with this subject that 
 has been written, the purpose of it being to 
 show that the civil law granting divorce is 
 " destructive of family life, subversive of 
 religion, the source of anarchy and revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 The story centres about a woman who was 
 separated from her first husband, and who 
 contrary to the laws of her church remarried. 
 Her second husband was not a believer in the 
 dogmas of the church and she followed him in 
 his belief. After a few years, however, finding
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 123 
 
 her faith returning, she sought reconcihation 
 with her church, but only to find that this was 
 impossible. The priest to whom she went 
 for confession stated clearly the Roman 
 Catholic position, which is, the recognition of 
 separation between husband and wife when 
 the marriage relation is not bearable, but by 
 no means the annulment of the marriage tie. 
 This being true, her second marriage could 
 count for nothing in the eyes of the church. 
 The priest urged that this seemingly arbi- 
 trary law of the church is based on the needs 
 of society and on the laws of nature. Both 
 justice and charity demand that the individual 
 be sacrificed for the general good of society. 
 Divorce separates families, destroying unity 
 of spirit and common tradition, without which 
 there can be no social permanence but only 
 anarchy and perpetual unrest. Society de- 
 velops towards monogamy, but " divorce is 
 successive polygamy." Thus those who seek 
 divorce, sacrifice society to their own happi- 
 ness, setting up an irregular home, destructive 
 of order.
 
 124 Will the Home Survive 
 
 Not only is the law of the church, accord- 
 ing to the priest, based on the needs of 
 society, it is also based on the laws of nature. 
 The civil law granting divorce ignores the law 
 of heredity and the power of tradition which 
 binds families together by ties that cannot be 
 broken. Children by a first husband cannot 
 love a second husband to whom the mother 
 has been married, consequently bitter antag- 
 onisms arise. The whole arrangement, being 
 irregular, results in fierce jealousy and hideous 
 strifes. 
 
 The novel is a skilful working out of these 
 principles. The loose family relations caused 
 by the granting of divorce by the civil law bore 
 the natural fruits of the doctrine of free love. 
 This woman's son by her first husband be- 
 came an advocate of this conception of mar- 
 riage. To him " marriage is a contract be- 
 tween a man's conscience and a woman's con- 
 science." Civil and religious law could add 
 nothing to it. " The only true marriage, the 
 only one which is absolutely unstained by 
 hypocritical convention, is free union." Con-'
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 125 
 
 trary to the desire of his parents, and in 
 defiance of the traditions of both church and 
 state, he ran away, taking the woman he 
 loved as his wife. It is a picture, so Bourget 
 thinks, of what must logically follow as soon 
 as we admit the principle of divorce. 
 
 The inevitable sufferings which come to the 
 parties of the second marriage are vividly 
 portrayed. The son by the first husband, in 
 accordance with the inevitable law of his 
 being, came to hate his stepfather. The 
 wife came gradually to feel the unnatural 
 position she occupied and in quest of happi- 
 ness left her second husband. But happiness 
 could not be found. She was a prisoner to 
 divorce, and she cursed the " impious law, to 
 whose seductions her feminine weakness had 
 succumbed." The law of divorce had promised 
 her freedom and happiness, but all " she found, 
 like so many of her sisters, was captivity and 
 wretchedness." 
 
 The weakness of this novel is the weakness 
 of this entire attitude towards marriage and 
 divorce. Bourget unconsciously makes the
 
 126 Will the Hofne Survive 
 
 free love of the rebellious son too attractive. 
 He leaves us with the impression that the son's 
 happy life is much to be preferred to the life 
 of the poor woman fighting for her happiness 
 against the arbitrary law of the church. 
 While the priest declares that the law rests 
 upon nature all that is really human in us 
 speaks against it. We feel that we would 
 rather be the son with his free love, his pure 
 and happy home, than the woman enslaved by 
 a soulless institution. She fought con- 
 tinually against her nature to meet the demands 
 of an abstract law, not made to meet her 
 individual case but to meet cases in general, 
 and she sacrificed herself to an institution 
 which could not understand her, which makes 
 no allowance for individual peculiarities, and 
 hence whose action of necessity must be as 
 soulless as the rock-crusher grinding stones 
 into pebbles for the streets. The argument of 
 the novel breaks down utterly when tested in 
 the light of human instincts and passions. 
 
 The moral result of refusing to remarry 
 divorced people is very serious. It is almost
 
 The Family in Modem Fiction 127 
 
 inevitable that if this refusal is carried too 
 far it will result in increased indifference to 
 marriage conventionalities. Natural law is 
 stronger than legislation, whether of state or of 
 church, and if either church or state refuses to 
 meet the reasonable demands of human nature 
 the result must in the end be the indiffer- 
 ence of men and women to civil and religious 
 forms. When men are stirred by the over- 
 powering passion of love, they will not permit 
 the law of man to stand in the way of the 
 consummation of their happiness. 
 
 Not only must this refusal in many cases 
 result in a disregard for the conventional forms 
 of marriage, but where the law is strictly 
 enforced it will result in immorality. We 
 often declare that divorce is immoral and we 
 are shocked when we learn of the increase of 
 divorce throughout Europe and America. A 
 loose, thoughtless divorce, where men and 
 women change their partners as at a dance, is 
 always immoral, but it does not necessarily 
 follow that divorce in itself is immoral. On 
 the other hand, the 1 efusal to remarry divorced
 
 128 Will the Home Survive 
 
 people has in nearly all the countries of Europe 
 resulted in loose marriage relations. If 
 churches or states refuse to give their approval 
 to the God-implanted passion of sex, human 
 beings will follow the law of their natures and 
 live in free union. Calvinism was destroyed 
 not so much by the logic of theologians as by 
 the love of mothers for their children, and 
 whenever an arbitrary law of the church or 
 state stands in the way of a reasonable demand 
 of human passion, the law must in the end be 
 defeated or ignored, and the human demand 
 gain its right. This is what has already oc- 
 curred, and will continue to occur, whenever 
 the church tries to measure all conditions and 
 temperaments by one inflexible law. 
 
 What could be more absurdly cruel than 
 the refusal to remarry the innocent parties of 
 divorce? It is most unreasonable, as the Rev. 
 Samuel H. Bishop, a thoughtful clergyman of 
 the Episcopal Church, has said, " that a man 
 may drag his wife down into the foulest gut- 
 ters, may debase and debauch her in body and 
 soul, may make life a perfect hell to her, and
 
 The Fatnily in Modern Fiction 129 
 
 she have no remedy except separation, perma- 
 nent widowhood, and prohibition of all pos- 
 sibility of gaining human happiness and true 
 love while he and she live on the earth," 
 
 The only possible ground for refusing to re- 
 marry divorced couples is that this refusal will 
 act as a check upon the looseness of divorce, 
 but a careful study of the statistics proves that 
 this is not true. Contrary to popular opinion, 
 restriction upon the remarriage of divorced 
 persons does not affect in any large degree the 
 divorce rate. The fact is that divorce is de- 
 pendent upon social forces which lie deep in 
 human nature and are in a large measure be- 
 yond the control of the statute-maker. This 
 is not minimizing the value of divorce laws. 
 Good laws may check hasty impulse, and force 
 individuals to reflect. They may also secure 
 a certain degree of publicity which will act as 
 a restraining influence. But as the facts stand, 
 they seem to prove that the refusal to remarry 
 divorced people does not prevent the increase 
 in divorce. 
 
 This protest of man against soulless law is
 
 130 Will the Home Szirvive 
 
 finding expression in the literature of our 
 Southland. Divorce is one of the greatest dis- 
 graces that can come upon a Kentucky family. 
 A man may drink intoxicants excessively, 
 abuse his wife, maintain the loosest relations 
 with negro women, but the marriage is " until 
 death us do part." Elizabeth Waltz thinks 
 the time has come to alleviate the sufferings 
 of the Southern woman who is unfortunate 
 enough to be mated with a man with whom 
 she can have no happiness, and her book, The 
 Ancient Landmark, is dedicated " to those 
 men and women who take the larger view and 
 who walk in the light of it." The book is by 
 no means an argument that men and women 
 should change their partners thoughtlessly or 
 frivolously ; it is rather a protest against a social 
 and religious system which makes it necessary 
 for women to suffer with cruel and domineer- 
 ing men. 
 
 One of the most tragic, soul-rending novels 
 of the past year, a novel which reveals the suf- 
 ferings, both physical and spiritual, as well as 
 the immorality, to which the Roman Catholic
 
 The Fafuily in Modern Fiction 131 
 
 position often drives men and women, is 
 Traffic, by E. Temple Thurston. It is one of 
 those novels almost every page of which causes 
 us to blush. It is a story which tortures our 
 souls with lurid lights and painful pictures, 
 which racks our nerves before we reach the 
 last page, but which compels us to lay down 
 the book with the reflection that if it is true to 
 life, if there is a man or woman in the whole 
 universe tortured and driven to crimes by a 
 marriage law, as this woman is represented as 
 being, then the law has no right to continue 
 its pernicious work. None who take time to 
 study the facts can doubt that the book has 
 disclosed an actual condition, that it is pro- 
 foundly true to life. 
 
 Robert Grant represents the class of writers 
 who protest against the sacramental interpre- 
 tation of marriage and plead for the right of 
 the individual. The Utidercurrent is a strong 
 presentation of this phase of the divorce ques- 
 tion. Grant finds the foundation of marriage 
 in the instincts of sex. It is easy for the 
 moralist to sit at his desk and formulate
 
 132 Will the Home Survive 
 
 ideal truths respecting the marriage relation, 
 but " the renewal of the race through the 
 union of the sexes is an instinct which asserts 
 itself in spite of code and thesis, and the insti- 
 tution of lawful wedlock is the bit by which 
 civilization regulates it." The wise whisper to 
 the young not to rush hastily into matrimony ; 
 scientists advise the isolation of the degenerate 
 and the diseased that they may not produce 
 offspring; the well-to-do try to screen their 
 daughters from the rough world, but after all 
 care is exercised the daughters of the rich 
 elope, and the daughters of the poor wed, be- 
 cause the law of sex is the controlling law of 
 human life. 
 
 When young people, ignorant of life, are 
 brought together " under the spell of the law 
 of their being," and afterwards find that there 
 is no real harmony between them, shall they 
 be compelled by the laws of the state, or the 
 customs of society, to remain together, having 
 their happiness destroyed for life ? The book 
 is a negative answer to this question. 
 
 Constance in her youth married a man who
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 133 
 
 proved to be unworthy of her love. He pros- 
 pered for a while in business, then he failed, 
 became discouraged, ran away from his home, 
 leaving his wife without money to support his 
 two children. After months of struggle she 
 became a stenographer for a prosperous law- 
 yer, a man of high ideals and unquestioned 
 honor. Discovering his love for her, he asked 
 for her hand. She longed to give it, but her 
 first husband still lived, and while she was en- 
 titled to a divorce, according to the laws of her 
 state, in her own mind it would be contrary to 
 the " eternal fitness of things " to seek a 
 divorce and marry again. She had made her 
 mistake and she must suffer the penalty. 
 Gordon, her lover, tried to convince her that 
 her attitude was unreasonable, that she must 
 not sacrifice her happiness and his, but his 
 plea was unavailing. Such a marriage would 
 be against the laws of her church, and that for 
 her was reason enough for refusal. Her rec- 
 tor said to her : " Invoke the human law for 
 your protection against your husband if you 
 will, but he is still your husband in the eyes
 
 134 Will the Home Survive 
 
 of God, and if you wed another you commit 
 adultery." He looked upon the modern dis- 
 regard of this principle as a blow at the institu- 
 tion of the family. The state, he felt, winks 
 at the looseness of the holy tie and so the 
 church is compelled to declare loudly that 
 " the apparent earthly happiness of one must 
 be sacrificed for the good of the many." 
 
 Constance submits to this position, but from 
 it Gordon rebels. Gordon asks the rector why 
 the church has a right to usurp the functions 
 of the state, and deciding what is best in a 
 temporal matter, substitute an inflexible ethical 
 standard for the judgment of organized society. 
 The rector gives two reasons : First, " be- 
 cause the church declines to regard as a tem- 
 poral matter an abuse which threatens the ex- 
 istence of the family, the corner-stone of Chris- 
 tian civilization ; and secondly, because the 
 state has flagrantly neglected its duty, allow- 
 ing divorce to run riot through the nation with- 
 out uniform system and decent limitations." 
 
 Gordon deals with each of these objections. 
 First he reminds the rector that this is the
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 135 
 
 only matter in the realm of human social af- 
 fairs where the church interferes. The church 
 forbids abstract vices but leaves the function 
 of defining these vices to the state. Why in 
 the matter of marriage should it attempt to 
 substitute canons for the secular statute book ? 
 To the argument that this is a sacrament, and 
 hence concerns the church alone, Gordon re- 
 plies that it was not so regarded by the early 
 Christians. They did not attempt to regulate 
 marriage. The church assumed this function 
 at a later period. Furthermore, this idea of 
 marriage as a sacrament is foreign to our 
 American life. It was imported into this 
 country by Roman Catholicism and by the 
 Church of England. In the early days of 
 New England the marriage ceremony was per- 
 formed by the magistrate and not by the clergy. 
 It was the authority of the commonwealth and 
 not the church that was recognized. The idea 
 of marriage as a sacrament was not born of 
 the " rational, every-day reasoning of republi- 
 can democracy," but of a system that is auto- 
 cratic, if not aristocratic.
 
 136 Will the Home Survive 
 
 The rector tries to defend both these 
 churches by pointing to their philanthropic 
 efforts, but Gordon insists that " neither church 
 has compassion on the misery of common 
 humanity when to reheve it would conflict 
 with the hard and fast letter of church law." 
 
 Feeling the force of this argument, and not 
 desiring to carry it further, the rector asks : 
 " Where then will you draw the hne ? " They 
 turn to discuss the grounds for which the state 
 grants divorce : '• Impotence, adultery, deser- 
 tion for three years, sentence for felony for two 
 years, confirmed habits of intoxication, extreme 
 cruelty, grossly and wantonly refusing to sup- 
 port a wife." The rector would admit divorce 
 for adultery only, but Gordon replies : " Pro- 
 gressive democracy in the person of the state is 
 more lenient, more merciful. It refuses to be- 
 lieve that one relentless, arbitrary rule is adapted 
 to the exigencies of human society. It insists 
 that each case should be judged on its merits, 
 and that both relief should be afforded and 
 fresh happiness permitted when justice so de- 
 mands. Think of the many poor creatures in
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 137 
 
 the lower ranks condemned by your inexo- 
 rable doctrine to miserable, lonely lives, who 
 might otherwise be happy ! " 
 
 Gordon does not try to defend the inade- 
 quate laws of the state and admits that society 
 has been derelict. The evil, however, lies not 
 so much in the bad laws of the state as " in 
 the looseness of administration sanctioned in 
 some jurisdictions, by means of which collu- 
 sive divorces are obtained by pretended resi- 
 dents, and close scrutiny of the facts is avoided 
 by the courts." These things must be rem- 
 edied, but democracy, having wrung the 
 victory from the clergy and placed marriage 
 under the secular law, will never again consent 
 to deny to a husband or a wife, who has suf- 
 fered a cruel wrong, the freedom to break the 
 bond and marry again. The people are 
 aroused to the evils of divorce, " the licentious 
 shuffling on and off of the marriage tie 
 through temporary residence and collusive pro- 
 ceedings in other states," but on the other hand 
 men and women will no longer believe that 
 they should sacrifice their happiness until death
 
 138 Will the Home Survive 
 
 on account of the vices of others. The privi- 
 lege of remarriage is demanded for the welfare 
 of humanity, for the prevention of immoraUty, 
 for where divorce is forbidden immorahty 
 abounds, " for the protection and reHef of the 
 suffering and virtuous and the joyous refresh- 
 ment of maimed, tired Hves." 
 
 To the objection that this view of marriage 
 and divorce would lead ultimately to the grant- 
 ing of divorce on the ground of incompatibility, 
 Gordon confesses that this seems to be the inev- 
 itable issue of the question. If people reach 
 the conclusion that it is not for the welfare of 
 themselves or their children to remain together 
 the state will probably give them their liberty. 
 '' But one thing is certain, the church will 
 never be able again to fasten upon the world 
 its arbitrary standard." 
 
 Constance was firm in her position and for 
 many months she would not yield, but finally 
 the law of her nature gained the ascendency 
 over her reason and she yielded, and in yield- 
 ing found happiness. 
 
 The philosophy of marriage which under-
 
 The Fainily in Modern Fictiofi 139 
 
 lies this book, in common with the works of 
 all extreme individualists, is that marriage in 
 its essential nature is a spiritual relation be- 
 tween man and woman. The mere forms of 
 the marriage ceremony, whether of church or 
 state, do not constitute real marriage. Mar- 
 riage is a relationship between man and 
 woman constituted by marriage-love, and 
 marriage continues only so long as marriage- 
 love continues. But marriage-love may die, 
 like any other feeling. When this occurs 
 there is no longer any real marriage. The 
 passing of marriage-love has really dissolved 
 the marriage relationship. Hence divorce 
 must be given not only for causes which touch 
 the flesh but even more for causes which 
 touch the spirit. Spiritual incompatibility 
 may be a greater reason for divorce than 
 physical adultery. Indeed, many even ven- 
 ture to suggest that those who live together 
 having no bonds of affinity are really living 
 in adultery. In such cases, divorce can only 
 be the breaking of a legal bond which holds 
 two persons together who are not actually
 
 140 Will the Ho7ne Survive 
 
 married. " It is not a violent rupture of a 
 sacred relationship but a formal recognition 
 that this relationship in its full sanctity had 
 never existed." Divorce separates only those 
 who have no moral right to live together. 
 
 This position was advocated by Milton. 
 He says : " The internal form and soul of 
 this relation (marriage) is conjugal love aris- 
 ing from a mutual fitness to the final causes of 
 wedlock. . . . When love finds itself un- 
 matched, and justly vanishes, nay cannot but 
 vanish, the fleshly relation may indeed con- 
 tinue, but not holy, not pure, not beseeming 
 the sacred bond of marriage ; being truly 
 gross and more ignoble than the mute kindli- 
 ness between herds and flocks. . . . Why, 
 then, shall divorce be granted for want of 
 (bodily fidelity) and not for want of fitness to 
 the intimate conversation, whereas corporal 
 benevolence cannot by any human fashion be 
 without this ? " 
 
 The fact which appears most clearly in 
 modern literature as it touches the family is 
 that " the internal form and soul " of marriage
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 141 
 
 is not found alone in the physical relation 
 between man and woman, but is found in a 
 spiritual relationship. Nowhere is this more 
 beautifully expressed than in Phillips' Sin of 
 David, where Lisle says : 
 
 " Our former marriage, though by holy bell 
 And melody of lifted voices blest, 
 Was yet in madness of the blood conceived, 
 And born of murder : therefore is the child 
 Withdrawn, that we might feel the sting of flesh 
 Corruptible ; yet he in that withdrawal. 
 Folded upon the bosom of the Father, 
 Hath joined us in a marriage everlasting ; 
 Marriage at last of spirit, not of sense. 
 Whose ritual is memory and repentance, 
 Whose sacrament this deep and mutual wound, 
 Whose covenant the all that might have been." 
 
 Upon this conception of marriage both in- 
 dividualist and socialist unite, declaring that 
 absolute freedom must be given to break the 
 union when the spiritual bonds which hold it 
 together no longer exist. 
 
 When it is objected that this freedom 
 would open the door to all sort of profligacy 
 and sexual looseness, it is replied that it would 
 not lead us to condemn adultery less, but 
 would make us condemn spiritual defects more.
 
 142 Will the Home Survive 
 
 It would place a social stigma on those whose 
 bad tempers render separation necessary. 
 Mallock declares that it would not only make 
 adultery venial, but would place other faults 
 under a precisely similar condemnation. 
 
 There can be no question that there is a 
 great truth expressed in this conception of 
 marriage. The more developed our civiliza- 
 tion and the higher our culture, both intel- 
 lectual and moral, the more do the real mis- 
 eries of unhappy marriage relations come 
 from the realm of the spirit rather than from 
 the flesh. It was the spiritual failure of 
 Posnyscheff's marriage that resulted in the 
 torture of his soul. He says : " I was only 
 engaged for a short time, and yet I cannot 
 recall that period of my life without shame. 
 What an abomination ! The love that united 
 us was supposed to be of a spiritual char- 
 acter. But if our love and communings had 
 been of a spiritual nature, all the words, 
 phrases, and conversations that passed be- 
 tween us should have expressed this. As a 
 matter of fact, nothing of the kind took place.
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 143 
 
 We found it extremely difficult to converse 
 when left alone ; it was a labor of Sisyphus. I 
 would think of something to say, say it, relapse 
 into silence, and then rack my brain for some- 
 thing else — there was absolutely nothing to 
 converse about." 
 
 We all recognize the truth involved in this 
 picture. There can be no happy family with- 
 out moral and intellectual sympathy. There 
 can be no home without a communion of 
 spirits. Marriage is torture unless men and 
 women are drawn together in their higher na- 
 tures. 
 
 But shall we conclude from this that when- 
 ever " the internal form and soul of this rela- 
 tion " is wanting the union should be dissolved ? 
 Even Mallock, when he fairly faces this ques- 
 tion, hesitates. " Married happiness would be 
 best secured and promoted by marriage be- 
 ing at once both dissoluble and indissoluble. 
 This seeming impossibility would be reduced 
 to a practical reality by the dissolution of mar- 
 riage being made difficult, so far as \}!\q process 
 is concerned ; but easy so far as the grounds
 
 144 Will the Home Survive 
 
 are concerned. The grounds of a divorce or 
 dissolution should be the simple will of the 
 parties interested. They alone are the proper 
 judges of its sufficiency; but in order to pre- 
 vent their will on so important a matter being 
 formed lightly, the carrying of their will into 
 effect should demand serious sacrifices." 
 This is only saying, so far as practice is con- 
 cerned, that it should be made so difficult for 
 the individual to break the marriage tie that 
 the probabilities are he would not do it. In 
 other words, divorce would be made no easier 
 by one method than by the other. 
 
 The fundamental defect of this entire atti- 
 tude towards marriage is that it is too narrow. 
 Marriage is fundamentally a moral and spirit- 
 ual relationship, but it is one which involves 
 more than the mere happiness between man 
 and woman. The conception of the individ- 
 ualist may be stated in the form of a syllo- 
 gism : The end of marriage is the happiness of 
 the two individuals concerned ; lack of spirit- 
 ual affinity destroys this happiness ; therefore 
 where spiritual affinity is absent, the end of
 
 The Fa7tiily in Modertt Fiction 145 
 
 marriage being destroyed, give men and women 
 their freedom. The weakness of the syllo- 
 gism is in the first premise. The end of mar- 
 riage is happiness but not merely the happi- 
 ness of the two individuals first involved. The 
 happiness of their children and of the state 
 must be considered, the happiness of all in 
 any way concerned. 
 
 Marriage, which is the result of mere phys- 
 ical desire, is nothing more than polite adultery, 
 and the marriage which is nothing more than 
 pleasing companionship between two con- 
 genial spirits is a selfish thwarting of nature's 
 purpose. The child is involved in the normal 
 marriage relationship and its happiness must 
 be considered as well as the happiness of the 
 two individuals who are responsible for its ex- 
 istence. The child, however, has never re- 
 ceived his just consideration. Divorce is 
 granted in nearly every state of our Union 
 without any thought for the child. If he 
 enters at all into the matter, it is as an after con- 
 sideration. He has been treated as of abso- 
 lutely no importance, his welfare and happiness
 
 146 Will the Home Survive 
 
 have never been considered. The effect of 
 the breaking of the family traditions and the 
 loss which this brings to the child, the depri- 
 vation which he must suffer in his education 
 through the loss of the influence of one of his 
 parents, the moral effect of the breaking of 
 the family ties — these have never entered. into 
 the moral and legal aspects of the question of 
 divorce as they should have done. The hap- 
 piness of the child has been ignored in the ef- 
 fort to give happiness to the father and mother. 
 But the child must have his dues. In any future 
 readjustment of family life he must be re- 
 garded as the chief factor. 
 
 The highest welfare of the child cannot be 
 secured outside the family. Institutional life, 
 however well managed, must be mechanical, 
 and it is easy for any authority which does not 
 spring from the love of parents to become 
 tyrannical. It is at this point that any social- 
 istic scheme, by which the child would be 
 given to the care of the state, breaks down. 
 The child out of the home, presided over by 
 father and mother, and apart from the atmos
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 147 
 
 phere of parental love, can never develop 
 normally. 
 
 Again, the individualist forgets that mar- 
 riage has a social significance as well as a 
 meaning for the individuals involved. The 
 complaint he has raised is that the family is 
 not always congenial, that it suppresses human 
 nature, that it limits and narrows the individ- 
 ual, hence man must have the privilege of es- 
 caping from the tyranny of the family and go- 
 ing into a larger world. But this is precisely 
 the thing he would not do. Escaping from 
 the family he would go into a narrower world, 
 an unsocial world. Consciously or uncon- 
 sciously all these writers are pleading for man's 
 escape from society, for the privilege of man 
 to live in a little world, a world no larger than 
 his individual comforts. 
 
 Chesterton says : " It is the whole effort of 
 the typically modern person to escape from 
 the street in which he lives. First he invents 
 modern hygiene and goes to Margate. Then 
 he invents modern culture and goes to Flor- 
 ence. Then he invents modern imperialism
 
 148 Will the Home Survive 
 
 and goes to Timbuctoo. He goes to the 
 fantastic borders of the earth. He pretends to 
 shoot tigers. He almost rides on a camel. 
 And in this he is essentially fleeing from the 
 street in which he was born ; and of this flight 
 he is always ready with his own explanation. 
 He says he is fleeing from the street because 
 it is dull ; he is lying. He is really fleeing 
 from the street because it is a great deal too 
 exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting ; 
 it is exacting because it is alive. 
 
 " He can visit Venice because the Venetians 
 are only Venetians ; the people in his own 
 street are men. He can stare at the Chinese 
 because for him the Chinese are a passive 
 thing to be stared at ; but if he stares at the 
 old woman in the next garden she becomes 
 active. He is forced to flee, in short, from 
 the too stimulating society of his equals — of 
 free men, perverse, personal, deliberately dif- 
 ferent from himself." He flees not because he 
 desires to be more social but because he de- 
 sires to be unsocial, individualistic. If he 
 wants to live in a large world, a real world
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 149 
 
 where he can achieve large results, he must 
 remain in his place of business. It is there, 
 brushing against other men, entering into the 
 conflict with them, that he really enters into a 
 large world and attains a rich personality. 
 
 For the same reasons it is a good thing for 
 a man to be in a family. It is a good thing 
 for a man to be in a family for the same rea- 
 son that it is a good thing for a man to be 
 besieged in a city. The critics of the family 
 object to the institution because it is not 
 always congenial. It is because it is not al- 
 ways congenial that it is a good institution. 
 It is sometimes defended because it is a peace- 
 ful and pleasant retreat for the weary soul, but 
 Chesterton defends it because it is not always 
 peaceful and pleasant. " It is wholesome pre- 
 cisely because it contains so many divergencies 
 and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalist says, 
 like a little kingdom, and like most other little 
 kingdoms, is generally in a state of something 
 resembling anarchy. It is exactly because 
 our brother George is not interested in our 
 religious difficulties, but is interested in the
 
 150 Will the Home Survive 
 
 Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has 
 some of the bracing quahties of the Common- 
 wealth. It is precisely because our Uncle 
 Henry does not approve of the theatrical am- 
 bitions of our sister Sarah that the family is 
 like humanity. The man and woman who, 
 for good reasons and bad, revolt against the 
 family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply 
 revolting against mankind. Papa is excitable, 
 like mankind. Our younger brother is mis- 
 chievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, 
 like the world ; he is old, like the w^orld." 
 
 Those who step out of this social environ- 
 ment of the family step out of humanity into 
 a narrower world. This is where they are 
 deceived. Thinking that they are stepping 
 into a larger world, they are really entering a 
 world no larger than the smallness of their 
 selfish and unsocial desires. Men refuse to 
 marry because they declare that they want the 
 freedom of the larger world. Women refuse 
 to bear children because they do not want to 
 become narrow. Both are deceiving them- 
 selves by a certain conceit which has been
 
 The Family in Modem Fiction 151 
 
 attached to these words. If they could look 
 behind the words they would soon discover 
 that they are living in the narrowest of all 
 possible worlds, a world just as large as their 
 individual happiness and no larger. The self 
 that can be realized only in social conditions, 
 the real superman, who is grown not in arti- 
 ficial conditions but only in the conflict with 
 the uncongenial environment of men, is the 
 self which these individualistic pleasure- 
 mongers have never understood. 
 
 The family with its limitations, its uncon- 
 genial elements, is the best school yet con- 
 ceived for the education of the citizen for the 
 state. There he learns to adjust his will to 
 other wills that he may live in peace and har- 
 mony, and it is inconceivable how man could 
 go into the world of industry, politics, and the 
 professions, and adjust himself peaceably and 
 honorably to his fellow men without the earlier 
 training and discipline in the family. It is the 
 small social unit where all the essential ele- 
 ments of society exist, and without its disci- 
 pline man would be launched upon a stormy
 
 152 Will the Home Survive 
 
 sea without the knowledge or the instruments 
 of navigation. 
 
 Thus we discover that while the end of 
 marriage is happiness, marriage involves vastly 
 more that the happiness of one man and 
 one woman. It involves the happiness of 
 the child and the well-being of the state, and 
 no dissolution of the relationship should be 
 permitted which does not consider carefully 
 the bearing of this dissolution on the child 
 and the state. 
 
 Before we follow Grant and the school of 
 individualists, we must stop to consider one 
 other weakness in their position. If a man's 
 observation has been at all wide in respect to 
 this question, he has seen many men and 
 women who at one period of their married 
 life were unhappy. It seemed as though all 
 affection had left the home. They were un- 
 congenial and they thought seriously of 
 separating, but when they faced the serious- 
 ness of divorce and the difficulty of securing 
 divorce, they hesitated. As the months 
 passed their differences were healed; harmony
 
 The Faviily in Modem Fiction 153 
 
 was restored in the household, and at last they 
 lived happy and useful lives together. This 
 is not a rare but a common occurrence, an 
 occurrence which we believe would be much 
 less common if divorce were granted on the 
 simple ground of incompatibility. 
 
 Grant's position that the state should grant 
 divorce on the ground of incompatibility is as 
 destructive of society as the arbitrary law of 
 the Roman Catholic Church is cruel to the 
 individual. Man is not so far removed from 
 polygamy as woman. He does not find it so 
 difficult to put away one companion and take 
 another as does the bearer of his children. 
 The instincts of home are not so strong with 
 him and he will not mourn when, a la Nora, 
 his wife leaves him, as the woman will mourn 
 when her husband leaves her in the same way. 
 Women and children must be protected in 
 some way from the polygamous instincts 
 which are still strong in many men. Without 
 such protection women would be helpless, 
 children would suffer, homes would be built 
 upon sand, and society would be wrecked.
 
 154 Will the Home Survive 
 
 Mrs. John Van Vorst, in The Issues of Life, 
 has made a strong argument against this ex- 
 treme type of individuaUsm. " The basis of 
 the family," she says, " is love — love for 
 others ; not individualism but sacrifice ; de- 
 votion not to self, but to the interests of a 
 group." Society cannot reap the highest re- 
 sults from man and woman struggling sepa- 
 rately for self-development, " each generation 
 working for itself, but man and woman side 
 by side toiling in union for the generation to 
 come." 
 
 The enemy of the home of America, as she 
 conceives it, is an extreme individualism. 
 The vast resources of the country, which en- 
 able many men to reach positions of sudden 
 importance, emphasize this as the end of ex- 
 istence. Each man is tempted to live for 
 this, so that the family and the larger interests 
 of society are excluded as hindrances to his 
 development. It is this individualism that de- 
 termines Mary Evans' conception of marriage, 
 a college graduate who has more knowledge 
 than humanity. She says : " Neither do I
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 155 
 
 ever expect to marry — at least, not in the way 
 people marry to-day. I could imagine, per- 
 haps some time when I am much older, taking 
 a companion who would be willing to work 
 by my side, to be my friend, on condition that 
 he leave me absolute freedom to develop my 
 individuality — that I remain independent, 
 body and soul, as I am now ! " She would 
 be her husband's equal as a breadwinner, as 
 well as physically and mentally. The race 
 would perpetuate itself by the " occasional 
 and dehberate mating of two perfect types." 
 But it was this unnatural individualism that 
 left her real nature starved and she finally 
 tried to feed her woman's heart upon the 
 affections of an Irishman, in every way her 
 inferior. It was the same individualism that 
 led Martha to suicide, writing this note to 
 Madeleine just before she put the pistol to her 
 brain : " I leave this as a farewell to you, 
 Madeleine. You have a husband and chil- 
 dren who love you and depend upon you. 
 You have found your destiny. Do not ever 
 be tempted from it. I have missed mine.
 
 156 Will the Home Survive 
 
 That is why I am putting an end to it all." 
 Mrs. Penfold, who wanted to lead her own 
 life unhampered, refused to bear children. 
 With children, her life, as she conceived it, 
 would be so tied down to the nursery that she 
 could not entertain friends or be a companion 
 to her husband. She could have no more 
 individuality, no more chance to develop and 
 study. Furthermore, while she had a com- 
 fortable income she had not enough to pro- 
 vide for a family. It was well enough for the 
 extremely poor to have large families because 
 they are only half civilized ; hence their de- 
 sires are so small that they have no great 
 obligations. But as soon as one gets money 
 and seeks culture, leisure, beauty, and luxury, 
 " you simply cannot have a lot of children." 
 In spite, however, of her arguments, she finds 
 herself on the way to motherhood and she 
 rushes to her physician for relief, only to find 
 that he will not assist her. Instead of physical 
 aid he has a moral homily to deliver. " You 
 speak of individual development," he says. 
 " Look at the wrecks with which society is
 
 The Fa^nily in Modern Fiction 157 
 
 strewn from this fatal shoal. All the strange 
 ills, which range from nervous prostration to 
 insanity, from the misery of the soul known 
 as restlessness, to the destruction of the body 
 known as suicide, every one of them so char- 
 acteristic of modern women, have a common 
 cause. Our American women are paying for 
 their transgression, their own will and desire 
 for self-development, for sterility. I see a 
 whole generation passing like driftwood. . . . 
 Without natural affections to develop and 
 mature them, without the fruit which gives 
 meaning to the flower, they wither before they 
 are half-blown, and they fade before their 
 blossoming time has come. How can you 
 expect them, how can you expect yourself to 
 have any peace of mind until you clearly un- 
 derstand that there is not a creature upon 
 earth, not even the American woman of the 
 twentieth century, who has been put here free 
 of natural duties, to live a purely egotistical 
 existence at the expense of others ? " Even 
 if she would not heed the moral law, nature 
 is against the course she seeks. The destruc-
 
 158 Will the Home Survive 
 
 tion of life is a crime. "To extinguish one 
 of those lamps is to be in open rebellion 
 against God — against the Creator who has 
 made the world. It is to set one's will con- 
 trary to the course of existence. A priest 
 would even tell you that such a sin deprives 
 him who commits it from his chances of 
 Paradise. I am not a priest. I am a scientist, 
 and I need no other than a scientific proof to 
 affirm that Nature does not wait for another 
 world to curse the woman who goes against 
 her destiny. She brands her here upon 
 earth." Mrs. Penfold, however, will not heed 
 her physician. She transgresses nature and 
 spends as a result a wretched life, morally and 
 physically an invalid. 
 
 Mrs. Van Vorst does not use man as the 
 white saint for the background, to set off the 
 darkness of her women who turn away from 
 the normal home in pursuit of happiness, but 
 rather lays the blame for woman's failure in 
 the fulfilment of her destiny to man. " Man 
 is the lord of creation," says the doctor, " and 
 the sort of woman or women he wants will
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 159 
 
 prevail as types in the land he inhabits," The 
 enemy of the American wife is the American 
 man. He gives no time to his home and it is 
 natural that she should find her interest out- 
 side her household. He gives his life either to 
 business or to science, " She tries to make 
 the most of the situation by mimicking her 
 rivals. The business man's wife is capricious 
 and a spendthrift; the scientist's wife is a 
 pedant. No children, no domestic duties, 
 overstrained mind in the one ; passion for 
 luxury in the other ; perverted, both of them, 
 and sure to end up at a rest-cure or under the 
 surgeon's knife. You can't blame them for 
 their depravity. It's not their fault. It is the 
 fault of the man." " The American man of 
 to-day wants as companion a creature who 
 corresponds in no way to what nature intended 
 that woman should be." 
 
 In contrast to this idea of the man and 
 woman each seeking individual happiness, is 
 the home of Philip and Madeleine, blessed 
 with children, happy in its harmony, each one 
 finding joy in living for the other. " The
 
 l6o Will the Home Survive 
 
 natural meaning of existence is the union of 
 man and woman, that the woman may bear 
 children, while the man defends the home. 
 The moment either one diverges from this 
 destiny harmony is destroyed." 
 
 The Awakcimig of Helena Richie by Mar- 
 garet Deland is an argument for the social as- 
 pects of duty as over against a bald individ- 
 ualism whose end is happiness. Helena 
 Richie was a woman who thought of nothing 
 except happiness. She had never thought of 
 being good or bad, she just wanted to be 
 happy. She married to find happiness, and 
 because she did not find it she deserted her 
 husband to live with another man, not be- 
 cause she wanted to be bad, but to be 
 happy. In doing this she never once 
 thought of the effect of her act upon so- 
 ciety. That marriage is what makes us civi- 
 lized, and that he who injures this institution 
 injures society; that if every dissatisfied wife 
 followed her example decent life could not go 
 on, had never entered her mind. The sense of 
 social responsibility in her was drowned in
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction i6i 
 
 selfishness. Failing to find happiness in her 
 new venture she took a little boy. She did 
 this with no thought of what influence she 
 might exert over him, but simply that he 
 might add to her happiness. Finally one of 
 her admirers, whom she had rejected, took his 
 own life and as she heard the pistol shot and 
 thought upon the tragic deed, there came to 
 her for the first time the thought that the end 
 of life is more than happiness. In the midst of 
 this elemental tumult of her nature she had the 
 first dim glimpse of her responsibility. Her 
 soul had never been pierced by the " disturb- 
 ing light of any heavenly vision declaring that 
 when personal happiness conflicts with any 
 great human ideal, the right to claim such 
 happiness is as nothing compared to the priv- 
 ilege of resigning it." The crack of the pistol 
 revealed to her for the first time the relation 
 of her life to other lives and destroyed all her 
 excuses for living simply to seek happiness. 
 For the first time she saw her selfishness naked 
 before her eyes. This revelation of social re- 
 sponsibility was so intense, and the upheaval
 
 1 62 Will the Home Survive 
 
 of her nature was so sudden, that she sought 
 shelter in obedience to the letter of the law, 
 marriage. " To marry her fellow outlaw 
 seemed to promise both shelter and stability, 
 for in her confusion she mistook marriage for 
 morality." She had not discovered her fun- 
 damental sin. She would adopt a mere form, a 
 legal form, and in that satisfy her conscience. 
 What she needed was a proper understanding 
 of the moral order and her relation to it. The 
 desire to be happy must be modified by a 
 sense of duty, of responsibility for other lives. 
 Selfishness must be killed ; her soul must be 
 regenerated, so that she could love her neigh- 
 bor as well as herself. Only when this fact 
 dawned upon her was her life awakened so 
 that she could fulfil her task in the social 
 order. 
 
 " We have reached a position where it must 
 be clear that the reason for the permanence of 
 the family is to be found neither in the con- 
 ception of marriage as a sacrament, nor in the 
 changeful whims of the individual will, but in 
 the demands of nature and of society. The
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 163 
 
 appearance of the infant is the key which 
 locks the family together as a permanent in- 
 stitution ; an institution which is not to be 
 unlocked by the skeleton keys manufactured 
 by selfishness. Nature has so constructed the 
 cat that the care of its offspring may be com- 
 pleted in a few days, but the care and de- 
 velopment of the human infant requires the 
 major part of a parent's life. Its nurture, the 
 forming and completing of its ideals, its moral 
 and intellectual training, are all conditioned 
 upon the permanence of the home. The cul- 
 mination of the evolutionary process is the 
 creation of an infant dependent upon its 
 parents for its highest development. To at- 
 tempt to destroy this home is to defy the 
 wisdom of nature's process. 
 
 Jesus found the reason for the permanence 
 of the family, not in any arbitrary command 
 of His own, but in nature. When He was 
 asked if it was lawful for a man to put away 
 his wife for any cause, He replied : " Have ye 
 not read that He which made them from the 
 beginning made them male and female ? "
 
 164 Will the Home Survive 
 
 They have been so created that they should 
 be one. It was the purpose of nature that 
 man should leave his father and mother and 
 cleave to his wife and the two should become 
 one flesh. Therefore let not the purpose of 
 nature be thwarted by the devices of men. 
 What God hath joined together let no man 
 put asunder. In the eagerness of our debate 
 over the question of whether Jesus permitted 
 divorce, and the remarriage of divorced peo- 
 ple, we have forgotten to emphasize His idea 
 of why the family existed, of the purpose in 
 its creation, of the reason for its permanence. 
 Jesus is not giving a law of divorce so much 
 as He is protesting against anything which 
 would make men lose sight of the fundamental 
 arrangement of which marriage is an outcome. 
 Marriage is the unit of nature and of civiliza- 
 tion, and is not to be broken by the lustful 
 desires of men. The operation of the entire 
 natural process and the very structure of so- 
 ciety work against the tendency to loosen the 
 marriage tie. The demands of childhood, the 
 training of the child in proper conceptions of
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 165 
 
 home life, the preservation of the traditions of 
 family life, the purity of society, all call for the 
 permanence of this institution, and hence 
 make a demand upon the individual to sacri- 
 fice some of his own happiness for the good of 
 others, finding his joy in this very sacrifice. 
 
 A class of novelists has arisen who are try- 
 ing to find the basis of marriage in neither the 
 traditional view of marriage as a sacrament, 
 nor in the changeful whims of the individual 
 will, but in nature. To this class belong such 
 men as Spearman in Doctor Byrsoit, d,nd H. A. 
 Mitchell Keays in He That Eateth Bread With 
 Me. Keays treats the subject from the high- 
 est moral and spiritual standpoint. He finds 
 the basis of the family in the moral and spir- 
 itual nature of man, as well as in the physical 
 nature, and his complaint is against both 
 church and state for falling below this lofty 
 ideal. 
 
 Katharine was married to Clifford. They 
 had one son and were happy in their home. 
 Later Chfford fell in love with another woman, 
 and gaining a divorce from Katharine, married
 
 1 66 Will the Home Survive 
 
 Isabel. Katharine believed that her marriage 
 had been until death and her soul brought a 
 terrible indictment against the church which 
 would not refuse to sanctify scandal within its 
 holy precincts. She could not forget how her 
 pastor only a few years before " had married 
 an innocent girl to a notorious and gilded 
 divorce with all the pomp and benediction at 
 his disposal. His congregation had mur- 
 mured, but he conducted his defense so 
 adroitly that the committee appointed to 
 rebuke joined forces with him and calmed the 
 tumult by dweUing upon the spiritually reas- 
 suring fact that the ecclesiastical finances had 
 never been in so flourishing a condition be- 
 fore." Such a church could no longer hold 
 her respect. The church might meet in sol- 
 emn conclave and discuss why it had lost its 
 hold upon the world, but so long as its honor 
 could be bought and sold the world would 
 pass it by. Airlie says : " That ' until death ' 
 is a delusion, dear, and the church knows it. 
 A minister married you to him. A minister 
 married him to her. A minister will marry
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 167 
 
 you to him again if you wish. The church 
 doesn't worry much about the sacredness of 
 marriage." But this does not move Katharine 
 from her position. The church may sell itself 
 for a mess of pottage ; she will be true to her 
 marriage vows. 
 
 She also brings an indictment against the 
 state which makes it easy for her husband to 
 break the vow he had made to her. It is the 
 very divorce-made-easy system, legalized by 
 the state, she thinks, which undermines the 
 moral nature of men and blinds them to the 
 enormity of this offense against the family. 
 If the state had made divorce less easy, Clif- 
 ford would have found Isabel's charms less 
 captivating. Though church and state sanc- 
 tion her husband's sin, she holds to the in- 
 violability of marriage. She has been true to 
 her vow though he has not been true to his 
 and her marriage remains intact. The law 
 cannot destroy the natural relation of mother 
 and child, or father and child ; how can it de- 
 stroy the natural relation of husband and wife, 
 who have brought the child into the world ?
 
 1 68 Will the Home Survive 
 
 At best the law of the state " by which 
 we try to govern others must always be lower 
 than the laws by which we govern ourselves." 
 There is a higher law, the inner law of con- 
 science, which declares against the righteous- 
 ness of such action, and if the law of the 
 state, which can only keep men from being 
 bad, but can never make them good, permits 
 divorce, the righteous law of the soul rises 
 against it. When Katharine meets Isabel, she 
 declares : " You have not taken my husband 
 from me. You never can. He may be yours 
 legally — he never can be morally, and you 
 know it. You will try to forget me and my 
 little child — you will never forget us. Neither 
 will he. There will come a time when, look- 
 ing at you, he will think only of me, the wife." 
 The church or the state can never take her 
 husband from her : he is her own by nature 
 and this fundamental relationship cannot be 
 dissolved by any legal process. 
 
 To this position Katharine is true to the 
 end. Others seek her hand, but she refuses. 
 Finally Clifford grows weary of the cunning
 
 The Family in Modern Fiction 169 
 
 Isabel and his love for his child would draw 
 him back to Katharine. She seems to him the 
 embodiment of purity and sweetness. She is 
 his religion, his good angel. His own nature 
 has become pure through her goodness and 
 he must have her back. At first she wavers 
 and consents, but then arises the question, 
 What right has Isabel ? Has Katharine any 
 right to separate this man and this woman 
 whose union the law has legalized ? She 
 finally decides that she has not and writes 
 Clifford : " This morning I felt that I could 
 forget Isabel — that I would forget her. I 
 thought that we, you and I together again, 
 could blot that all out. We never could. 
 Isabel belongs to us — to you and to me — be- 
 cause I love you." 
 
 Isabel is killed by a train and Clifford suf- 
 fers agonies of soul because of his mistake. 
 He becomes, however, through the suffering 
 of Katharine, a new man. She has been his 
 redeemer. The bitterness of her self-abnega- 
 tion, the humiliation of her despised love, did 
 for him what the cross has wrought for the
 
 lyo Will the Home Survive 
 
 race. Her faith, her patience, her love, lifted 
 him above the recklessness of passion and no 
 evil force of the universe was strong enough to 
 keep them apart. 
 
 This conception of marriage may be made 
 as arbitrary and merciless as the Roman 
 Catholic doctrine of marriage and divorce. So 
 may any other conception when it is crystallized 
 into fixed and unalterable law. Humanity is 
 fluid and must be ruled ultimately by flexible 
 spiritual conceptions rather than by static 
 legislation. But this conception of marriage, 
 in moral and spiritual elevation, certainly has 
 the advantage over both that of the sacramen- 
 talist and that of the individualist. It evokes 
 a favorable response from our better natures. 
 Our experience declares that it is true. It 
 satisfies our reason because it gives permanence 
 to the family and hence to the social structure.
 
 VII 
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE FAMILY 
 
 There has been much misrepresentation 
 concerning the attitude of socialism towards 
 the family, for which the socialist has been 
 obliged to suffer. Certain types of socialism 
 do not necessarily involve any change in the 
 form of the institution of the family, and there 
 are sincere socialists who are working for a 
 higher and purer form of family hfe as ear- 
 nestly as any others. What many socialists do 
 see is the destruction of the family by the 
 present industrial order. They point to the 
 disintegration of the family caused by the 
 separation of parents, necessitated by economic 
 conditions ; to the " she-towns " of New Eng- 
 land, and the mining centres of the West, 
 where men are massed in large numbers ; to 
 the divorce evil and prostitution — all a part of 
 capitalistic society, and they prophesy that 
 
 171
 
 172 Will the Home Survive 
 
 unless there are great changes in the indus- 
 trial order the present institution of the family 
 is doomed to decay. They are giving them- 
 selves to the improvement of the social order, 
 that family life may be more stable and love 
 may be neither bought nor sold. 
 
 But while socialism, in itself, does not 
 necessarily involve any change in the essen- 
 tial form of the family, it is nevertheless true 
 that some of the strongest attacks upon the 
 family have come from socialistic writers, 
 especially from those socialists who hold a 
 materialistic interpretation of history, and who 
 see the present form of the family as a product 
 of the present economic system. 
 
 The great authority on the family under the 
 socialistic scheme is August Bebel, the grand 
 old leader of the Social Democrats of Ger- 
 many, and some knowledge of his book, 
 Wome7i Undey Socialism, is essential to any 
 discussion of this subject. We do not claim 
 for him complete originality. He is indebted 
 to the older socialists for his leading principles 
 concerning the family, but to him belongs the
 
 Socialism and the Family 173 
 
 credit of first treating the subject in a thorough 
 and scientific way. Accordingly, almost all 
 socialists turn to his book as the chief 
 authority on the woman question. 
 
 He regards the family as part of the present 
 " bourgeois society," and he finds no hope for 
 woman's emancipation until she is given in- }\^^ 
 dustrial equality and perfect freedom with 
 man, things impossible under the present 
 social system. 
 
 His fundamental principle is that the sex 
 instinct is one of the strongest nature has given 
 us, and that " its satisfaction is an actual 
 necessity for man's physical and mental 
 health." Sexual abstinence at the age of 
 maturity affects the nervous system, as well as 
 the entire organism of both sexes, often caus- 
 ing serious disturbances and sometimes lead- 
 ing to insanity and death. Bebel tries to 
 prove this by citing the statistics for insanity 
 and suicide. He finds in one State that 
 eighty-one per cent, of the insane were un- 
 married, while only seventeen per cent, were 
 married, the conjugal status of two per cent.
 
 174 Will the Home Survive 
 
 being unknown, while the number of suicides 
 between the ages of twenty-one and thirty- 
 years is higher for females than for males. 
 These statistics, however, have little or no 
 value, as the causes for insanity are not indi- 
 cated. The number born as idiots or mentally 
 weak, the number of children who become 
 insane before the period of adolescence, those 
 who refrain from marriage because of physical 
 infirmities which later result in insanity, and 
 innumerable causes of insanity outside the sex 
 instinct, are not indicated. Hence all his de- 
 ductions concerning both suicide and insanity 
 have very little value. 
 
 Believing, however, that he has established 
 his contention, he declares that modern society 
 has failed to meet the demand for a natural 
 life. The failure to honor nature has not been 
 due to the free will of man, but to the obstacles 
 which society places in his way. Under the 
 present social system, with its moral ideals, it 
 is impossible for all to satisfy their nature. 
 
 The greatest sufferer, however, under this 
 social tyranny is the female, for society has
 
 Socialis})i and the Family 175 
 
 provided for the male in the prostitute, a pro- 
 vision which is necessary for the capitahstic 
 world. " Man ever has looked upon the use 
 of prostitution as a privilege due him by right. 
 All the harder and severer does he keep guard 
 and pass sentence when a woman, who is no 
 prostitute, commits a ' slip.' That woman is 
 instinct with the same impulses as man, aye, 
 that at given periods of her Hfe (at menstrua- 
 tion) these impulses assert themselves more 
 vehemently than at others, — that does not 
 trouble him. In virtue of his position as 
 master, he compels her to violently suppress 
 her most powerful impulses, and he conditions 
 both her character in society and her marriage 
 upon her chastity. Nothing illustrates more 
 drastically, and more revoltingly, the depend- 
 ence of woman upon man than this radically 
 different conception regarding the gratification 
 of the identical natural impulse, and the 
 radically different measure by which it is 
 judged," 
 
 The consequences of the act of generation 
 has placed upon woman the heaviest burden.
 
 176 IViH the Home Survive 
 
 Man has no fear or responsibilities after the 
 act is completed, and being free from all 
 consequences he has indulged his passion with 
 perfect freedom, until "prostitution becomes a 
 social institution in the capitalistic world, the 
 same as the police, standing armies, the 
 church, and wage-mastership," and is re- 
 garded by our statesmen as inseparable from 
 our social institutions. 
 
 This is the common charge of sociaHsts 
 against the present social order. Thompson 
 declares that under the present social order 
 "sexual enjoyment becomes, like everything 
 else in society, a matter of trade, of exchange, 
 just like every other commodity," and he I 
 speaks of the " mutual, unbought, uncom- 
 manded affection " under socialism. The vile 
 trade of prostitution, he declares, could not 
 exist under sociahsm. " Man has, here, no 
 individual wealth more than woman, with 
 which to buy her person for the animal use of 
 a few years. Man, like woman, if he wish to 
 be beloved, must learn the art of pleasing, of 
 benevolence, of deserving love." The same
 
 Socialism and the Family 177 
 
 attitude is taken by Bax, who declares that 
 monogamy and prostitution go together, as 
 both are based on commercial considerations, 
 one being purchase and the other hire. Both 
 are wrong because based upon a wrong 
 economic principle. " Socialism will strike at 
 the root at once of compulsory monogamy 
 and of prostitution by inaugurating an era of 
 marriage based on free choice and intention, 
 and characterized by the absence of external 
 coercion. For where the wish for the main- 
 tenance of the marriage relation remains, 
 there external compulsion is unnecessary ; 
 where it is necessary, because the wish has 
 disappeared, then it is undesirable." 
 
 Under socialism woman would have an 
 equal chance with man in satisfying her 
 nature and in seeking happiness. She would 
 be socially and economically independent, 
 being no longer the subject of man for his 
 exploitation but in every way his peer, mis- 
 tress of her lot. " In the choice of love, she 
 is, like man, free and unhampered. She 
 wooes or is wooed, and closes the bond for no
 
 178 Will the Home Survive 
 
 consideration other than her own inchnations. 
 Tliis bond is a private contract, celebrated 
 without the intervention of any functionary." 
 The satisfaction of the sexual instinct is a 
 private concern, and man must be left free 
 in his choice, as in the satisfaction of any 
 passion or appetite. If incompatibility comes 
 between two persons, who have been brought 
 together in marriage, socialistic morality de- 
 mands their separation, for their relation is 
 unnatural and hence immoral. 
 
 One of the finest pictures of the bliss of 
 man and woman in the married state under 
 socialism is pictured in Bellamy's Looking 
 Backward. It is a picture, however, which 
 must have caused his paternal ancestor. 
 Dr. Joseph Bellamy, the distinguished theo- 
 logian and eloquent preacher of revolutionary 
 days, to turn in his grave, if perchance he is 
 still quietly waiting for the great judgment 
 day, which he once made the terror of timid 
 souls. It is a picture of an ideal republic 
 where all are supplied from a common treasury. 
 Wives are in no way dependent upon their
 
 Socialism and the Family 179 
 
 husbands, nor children upon their parents, 
 except for offices of affection. " That any 
 person should be dependent for the means of 
 support upon another would be shocking to 
 the moral sense as well as indefensible on any 
 rational social theory." Under the present 
 social system women have to sell themselves, 
 with or without the forms of marriage, to get 
 their living. Men seize the products of the 
 world and leave women " to beg and wheedle 
 for their share." Such infringement of per- 
 sonal liberty is robbery and cruelty. Woman 
 is not able physically to do the same kind of 
 work as man. The heavier work must be left 
 for him, and at the time of child-bearing she 
 must withdraw from all work. But because 
 her work is different, it is none the less 
 valuable. " None deserve so well of the world 
 as good parents," and no work is so unselfish 
 as the bearing of the children who are to make 
 the world when we are gone. Children, too, 
 should be supported from the common fund, 
 for they in time will contribute to the com- 
 mon wealth.
 
 i8o JVill the Home Survive 
 
 When it is objected that once woman is 
 guaranteed a hvehhood, and is in no way de- 
 pendent upon man, she will refuse to endure 
 the pains of child-birth and the inconveniences 
 of carrying the child, Bellamy replies : " The 
 Creator took very good care that whatever 
 other modifications the dispositions of men 
 and women might take on, their attraction for 
 each other should remain constant," But 
 this, it appears to us, is only a begging of the 
 question. Bebel devotes pages to show the 
 wide practice of abortion, and the increase of 
 the practice in all the states of Europe and 
 America. He attributes this to economic 
 conditions, the refusal to bear children in 
 poverty. His argument, however, is weak- 
 ened from the fact that abortion is practiced 
 not by the poorer classes, where the pinch of 
 poverty is greatest, but by the upper classes 
 of society, by those whose financial conditions 
 make life comparatively easy. This being 
 true, if the socialistic state could bring such 
 happiness and abundance as Bellamy pictures, 
 we are not at all certain that the Creator's
 
 Socialism and the Family i8i 
 
 provisions could overcome these criminal 
 tendencies. 
 
 Bellamy further argues that the economic 
 independence of the sexes would make them 
 perfect equals as suitors. Dr. Leete says to 
 the resuscitated nineteenth century derelict, 
 Mr. West : " In your time the fact that 
 women were dependent for support on men 
 made the woman in reality the one chiefly 
 benefited by marriage. . . . Nothing was 
 therefore considered more shocking to the 
 proprieties than that a woman should betray a 
 fondness for a man before he had indicated a 
 desire to marry her. Why, we actually have 
 in our libraries books, by authors of your 
 day, written for no other purpose than to dis- 
 cuss the question whether, under any con- 
 ceivable circumstances, a woman might, with- 
 out discredit to her sex, reveal an unsolicited 
 love. All this seems exquisitely absurd to us, 
 and yet we know that, given your circum- 
 stances, the problem might have a serious 
 side. When for a woman to proffer her love 
 to a man was in effect to invite him to assume
 
 l82 Will the Home Survive 
 
 the burden of her support, it is easy to see 
 that pride and delicacy might well have 
 checked the promptings of the heart." Un- 
 der the socialistic scheme there is no pre- 
 tense of a concealment of feelings on the part 
 of either sex. A woman is as free to woo as 
 the man, and any " coquetry would be as 
 much despised in a girl as in a man." 
 
 The result of this is that all matches are 
 born of true love. For the first time in his- 
 tory " the principle of sexual selection, with 
 its tendency to preserve and transmit the bet- 
 ter types of the race, and let the inferior types 
 drop out, has unhindered operation. The 
 necessities of poverty, the need of having a 
 home, no longer tempt women to accept as 
 the father of their children men whom they 
 can neither love nor respect. Wealth and 
 rank no longer divert attention from personal 
 qualities. The gifts of person, mind, and 
 disposition ; beauty, wit, eloquence, kindness, 
 generosity, geniality, courage, are sure of 
 transmission to posterity. Each generation is 
 sifted through a little finer mesh than the last.
 
 Socialism and the Fainily 183 
 
 The attributes that human nature admires are 
 preserved ; those that repel are left behind. 
 There are, of course, a great many women 
 who with love must mingle admiration, and 
 seek to wed greatly, but these not the less 
 obey the same law, for to wed greatly now is 
 not to marry men of fortune or title, but those 
 who have risen above their fellows by the 
 solidity or brilhancy of their services to 
 humanity." Thus the human race is con- 
 stantly elevated. Women marry with the 
 good of the race in view. This is a part of 
 the ethics of the new republic. Those who 
 cannot acquit themselves in the world of life 
 are left as celibates. Women rise " to the 
 full height of their responsibility as wardens 
 of the world to come." 
 
 Bellamy tries to lift the family life rather 
 than degrade it, and in a measure he suc- 
 ceeds, as he has a spiritualistic rather than a 
 materialistic philosophy of history. But just 
 at the point where he tries most to idealize 
 the family, he fails. For illustration, his 
 spirituahstic interpretation of history hinders
 
 184 Will the Home Sttrvive 
 
 him from the elimination of prostitution. 
 Bebel abolishes prostitution by substituting 
 for the present social system free love. The 
 relation of the sexes, he argues, is not 
 moral or immoral, it is natural. And in a 
 society where men and women are perfectly 
 free to exercise their passions, there is no 
 call for prostitution. But so soon as you 
 begin to debar certain classes from the mar- 
 riage state and form a class of celibates, for 
 whatever reason, you then have all the 
 factors for prostitution. This is what Bel- 
 lamy does. His women are so saintly they 
 will marry none but the highest and best 
 types of men. Certainly his men are of like 
 tendencies. But this leaves the undesirable 
 classes of society, and those unfit, unmarried, 
 which means that even in the ideal republic 
 there are all the factors for prostitution. 
 
 One of the most radical advocates of social- 
 ism is Grant Allen. In the Woman Who Did, 
 Herminia rebels against the entire social sys- 
 tem in its treatment of women. She declares 
 that men have permitted women to develop in-
 
 Socialism and the Family 185 
 
 tellectually, but socially and morally they are as 
 much slaves as ever. She determines to be ab- 
 solutely free from man. When she finds the 
 man she loves, she gives him her will, but not 
 her hfe, her future, her individuality, or her 
 freedom. To give any of these would be a 
 treason to her sex. She simply gives her will, 
 and her lover must take her in free union or 
 not at all. No marriage ceremony must unite 
 them, for that is an assertion of man's suprem- 
 acy over woman. " To tie her to him for life, 
 it ignores her individuality, it compels her to 
 promise what no human heart can be sure of 
 performing." If she loves a man at all it 
 must be on terms of perfect freedom. " I 
 can't bind myself down to live with him to my 
 shame one day longer than I love him ; or to 
 love him at all if I find him unworthy of my 
 purest love, or unable to retain it, or if I dis- 
 cover some other more fit to be loved by me." 
 Alan Merrick finally takes her under these 
 conditions. They are to live together, outside 
 of civil and religious marriage, and to be free 
 to separate at any time. But another ques-
 
 1 86 Will the Home Survive 
 
 tion arises, how shall they live ? For her to 
 go to his house would be a confession of his 
 supremacy over her. She must live apart 
 from him, preserve her independence, and re- 
 ceive visits from the man who will be the 
 father of her children. Only thus can she be 
 free. Marriage must not be allowed to alter 
 her position at all. It must be " merely the 
 addition to life of a new and very dear and 
 natural friendship." She must even keep her 
 maiden name. Nothing is surrendered in her 
 marriage, it is simply another step taken to- 
 wards the fulfilment of her nature. 
 
 In The British Barbarians, Grant Allen 
 goes still further in his free-love doctrine and 
 teaches that it is immoral for a woman to live 
 with a man one minute after she has ceased to 
 love him. Bertram says to Freda, after he 
 had won her affection from her husband, •' If 
 you don't love Monteith, it's your duty to 
 him, and still more your duty to yourself and 
 your unborn children, at once to leave him ; 
 if you do love me, it's your duty to me and 
 still more your duty to yourself and our un-
 
 Soda /ism and the Family 187 
 
 born children, at once to cleave to me." 
 When her husband finds them, after they have 
 gone away together, and accuses his wife of 
 adultery, Bertram says : " Adultery it was, in- 
 deed, an untruth to her own higher and purer 
 nature, for this lady to spend one night of her 
 life under your roof with you ; what she has 
 taken now in exchange is holy marriage, the 
 only real and sacred marriage, the marriage of 
 true souls, to which even the wiser of your- 
 selves, the poets of your nation, would not ad- 
 mit impediment." Every person should be 
 absolutely free to do as he wills with his own 
 person, for this is the very foundation of per- 
 sonal liberty. Anything else is slavery. 
 
 One is amazed to find how common this 
 idea is in modern literature. Lyndall, in The 
 Story of An African Farm, says to the father 
 of her illegitimate child : " I like to experi- 
 ment, I like to try. I cannot marry you be- 
 cause I cannot be tied ; but, if you wish, you 
 may take me away with you ; then when we 
 do not love any more we can say good-bye." 
 And what strikes one even more forcibly than
 
 1 88 Will the Home Survive 
 
 these words is the way in which the men of 
 the book regard this illegitimacy. They have 
 no contempt for this " fallen " woman, as the 
 world has had in the past, but regard her in 
 the same way they did before her revolt 
 against the family. There can be no question 
 that marriage has become to the mind of Miss 
 Schreiner an open question which must be 
 treated along with the open questions of re- 
 hgion. 
 
 The same anti-marriage doctrine is found in 
 / Forbid the Banns by Frankfort Moore. 
 Bertha refuses marriage as being beneath 
 spiritual union. She says to her lover, Julian 
 Charlton : " Were we not married in spirit the 
 first hour we met, nay, were our souls not 
 wedded from the instant they breathed the 
 same air of this world, just as they were in that 
 past existence of our souls of which we re- 
 member nothing ? . . . Why should you 
 hurt me by talking about our marriage as if it 
 were something in the future ? . . . We are 
 already wedded as indissolubly — nay, far more 
 indissolubly than if the Archbishop were to
 
 Socialism and the Family 189 
 
 give us his benison — sell us his benison, I 
 should rather say ; for I believe your special 
 license is an article of commerce." 
 
 From this hasty review of socialistic writers, 
 the following principles seem to be clear: 
 First, the present institution of the family is a 
 part of the capitalistic society and must be 
 abolished with the present industrial order. 
 Secondly, under socialism man and woman 
 will be economically independent of one an- 
 other. Thirdly, each will be free to seek the 
 other in marriage and each will be free to 
 separate at any time. Fourthly, as there will 
 be no marriage but free-union there will be no 
 need of divorce. The free-union is a private 
 contract and no outside party can interfere. 
 
 The fundamental defect of these socialistic 
 writers in their treatment of the family is the 
 supposition that the family is wholly the prod- 
 uct of economic conditions, hence that our 
 institution of the family is the fruit of our 
 present economic system, and that with the 
 passing of the latter the former must pass also. 
 This supposition includes two errors. The
 
 IQO Will the Home Survive 
 
 first is that the family is wholly the product 
 of economic conditions. This is the assump- 
 tion of all socialists who write from a material- 
 istic standpoint. Philip Rappaport, in his 
 recent volume, Looking Forward, writing 
 " from the standpoint of historic materialism," 
 endeavors to prove that every modification of 
 the family has been caused by material condi- 
 tions, a proposition quite as difficult to prove 
 as the tenets of socialism. A close study of 
 the history of the family would seem to indi- 
 cate that the form of the family had as much 
 to do with the form of economic activity as 
 the economic conditions had to do with the 
 form of the family. One was as much a de- 
 termining factor as the other. " It is," says 
 Helen Bosanquet, " impossible to say which 
 position has most truth in it — that the 
 stronger organization of the family has en- 
 abled and led to the development of agricul- 
 ture, or that the development of agriculture 
 has determined the form of the family. Why, 
 for instance, did not the lower insect-catching 
 hunters develop the patriarchal family, which
 
 Socialism and the Family 191 
 
 would have enabled them to carry on agricul- 
 ture ? It was not that they were too much 
 scattered by their way of life, but simply that 
 the same low levels of intellect which pre- 
 vented the woman from taking her proper 
 place in the family, and prevented the higher 
 organization of the family for industrial pur- 
 poses, also prevented the discovery of agri- 
 culture and its pursuits. At the utmost it 
 would seem that all we can say with certainty 
 is, that at an early stage of development we 
 find a particular form of the family connected 
 with agriculture, but that agriculture has per- 
 sisted long after the form of the family has 
 broken down, and that, therefore, the connec- 
 tion is not a permanent or essential one." 
 
 The second error is the assertion that our 
 institution of the family is a product of the 
 present industrial system and that with the 
 destruction of the latter the former must 
 change. Nearly every form of State Social- 
 ism has associated the family with a " bour- 
 geois society," and has declared that with the 
 sweeping away of private capital the family
 
 192 JVill the Home Survive 
 
 will disappear, the children being cared for by 
 the state, as will also be the man and the 
 woman. But this supposition is not true to 
 the facts of history. As Helen Bosanquet 
 says : •' Throughout all changes one husband 
 and one wife has been the constant type, all 
 other forms mere aberrations, and the process 
 of development has been always towards a 
 more deliberately conscious and therefore 
 higher form of monogamy. And through all 
 changes, again, the characteristic feature has 
 persisted that father, mother, and children 
 have formed one group, of which the father 
 has been the head in the sense not only of 
 being the master, but also of being responsible 
 for its protection and maintenance." If the 
 socialistic conception of the family ever gains 
 the ascendency in society it will not be as the 
 gradual evolution of the family but as a radical 
 break in the line of natural development. It 
 would not come, as all other social forms have 
 come, by growth, but by revolution, over- 
 throwing all the tendencies and instincts that 
 have been formed in humanity through the
 
 Socialism and the Family 193 
 
 ages of social development. The instinct of 
 parent for child is as old as history, or at least 
 exists as far back as we are able to read his- 
 tory. The appearance of the child has always 
 created an intimate relation between child and 
 parent and it is not probable that the Utopian 
 dreams of the pleasure that might come to the 
 parent who could desert the child to the care 
 of the state, would ever be strong enough to 
 break this tie between mother and babe. If 
 such could be accomplished, it would certainly 
 be the greatest upheaval that has ever been 
 known in the moral history of mankind. 
 
 The socialist, as well as the individualist, 
 can be no more conscious of the defects and 
 limitation of family Hfe, than those who are 
 not in sympathy with either of these schools 
 of thought. The man who has had any ob- 
 servation of family life does not have to be 
 reminded that " the family itself offers no guar- 
 antee of happiness," nor does he question that 
 there is great room for improvement. The 
 family life is full of imperfections and incon- 
 sistencies. All are conscious of this and long
 
 194 Will the Home Stirvive 
 
 for improvement, but the question arises, Will 
 socialism entirely eradicate these imperfec- 
 tions ? It is easy to write Utopias, picturing 
 a healthy generation in perfect harmony with 
 its environment, and so an ideal state of hap- 
 piness. But the defect of every Utopia from 
 Plato to Bellamy is that it has failed to take 
 account of the law of change and develop- 
 ment. Human conditions can never be per- 
 fect, and no human state can ever be static. 
 Disorder is inherent in the nature of things, 
 and not until man's mind is omniscient can it 
 be otherwise. Man's unhappiness is more the 
 fruit of his imperfect sympathy, love, wisdom, 
 than of his material surroundings. Wretched- 
 ness creeps into the homes of the rich as well 
 as into the homes of the poor. Divorce is 
 quite as common among the cultured and the 
 wealthy as among those in poverty and ig- 
 norance. This seems to argue that perfect 
 economic conditions could not assure happy 
 and useful homes unless there were corre- 
 sponding perfection in the spiritual natures of 
 men. This is where socialism fails. Its
 
 Socialism mid the Family 195 
 
 Utopias are broken over the stubborn fact that 
 under the best material conditions some men 
 are selfish, mean, cruel, and until these ele- 
 ments are eradicated from human nature the 
 golden age can never come. 
 
 Another inherent weakness of much pres- 
 ent-day agitation of socialism, as it touches 
 the family, is that it not only selects the most 
 degenerate types of family life but grossly 
 misrepresents the spirit of the best form of the 
 present-day family. Even such a sincere and 
 honest man as H. G. Wells cannot quite free 
 himself from this tendency. Writing in the 
 Independent of November i, 1906, he describes 
 the present institution of the family : " The 
 head of the family has been the citizen, the 
 sole representative of the family in the state. 
 About him have been grouped his one or 
 more wives, his children, his dependents. His 
 position towards them has always been — is 
 still, in many respects to this day — one of 
 ownership. He was owner of them all. . . . 
 He could sell his children into slavery, barter 
 his wives. The ownership of the head of the
 
 196 Will the Home Survive 
 
 family is still a manifest fact. . . . Every in- 
 telligent woman understands that, as a matter 
 of fact, underneath all the civilities of to-day, 
 she is actually and potentially property, and 
 has to treat herself and keep herself at that. 
 . . . The fact remains fundamental that she 
 is either isolated or owned." 
 
 This is glaringly unfair. The father of the 
 past may have been a tyrant. His authority 
 rested upon his physical strength and his wife 
 and children obeyed him because he had the 
 physical force to command them. But this is 
 not true to-day, except in very rare cases, and 
 should the father even attempt to base his au- 
 thority upon force, the laws of every civilized 
 nation would protect the weaker members of 
 the family. In lower social orders, the author- 
 ity of the father was based upon his monopoly 
 of wisdom. He was the adviser and teacher of 
 all the younger members of the family, but the 
 organization of schools, the printing of books, 
 the dissemination of newspapers and maga- 
 zines, have spread knowledge so widely that 
 paternal authority in this respect has become
 
 Socmlism and the Family 197 
 
 considerably weakened. In olden days the 
 father was priest and had the authority not 
 only of father but also of priest. But religious 
 ceremonies have passed to the church and the 
 head of the family is no longer priest. In fact 
 the authority of the tyrant-father is little more 
 than a tradition. Social changes have de- 
 throned the tyrant, if he was ever on the 
 throne, and to describe the wife as owned by 
 the husband in these days suggests the hu- 
 morist rather than the honest seeker for truth. 
 The authority of the head of the family, so 
 far as it exists as a reality, as an actual moral 
 force, is spiritual. He rules his children just 
 to the degree in which he is able intellectually 
 and morally to lead them. We called at a 
 home some time ago where the father, as a 
 tyrant, in coarse, harsh language, tried to 
 command his children, threatening them with 
 violence if they did not obey. One of the 
 boys, nine or ten years of age, turned and 
 cursed his father. The father was unfit 
 morally and intellectually to rule the house- 
 hold and he could not command the respect
 
 198 Will the Home Sm^ive 
 
 of his children. Our system of education de- 
 velops independence in the boy and the girl, 
 and they can be ruled only by a father who 
 makes himself worthy to rule. When he does 
 this he has not only the obedience but the 
 respect of his children, as he could not have 
 under the older tyranny of the father. 
 
 When we consider the relation between the 
 modern man and wife, we find it to be not that 
 of ownership but of partnership. The man 
 has learned that he can be happiest, and his 
 home most useful, when his wife is given the 
 freedom which leads to her highest develop- 
 ment ; that the end of the family life can be 
 best realized when both work harmoniously 
 for a common end. Their aims are not an- 
 tagonistic and their self-development can only 
 mean larger happiness for each. They are, as 
 Tennyson writes : 
 
 " Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 
 The man be more of woman, she of man ; 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews tliat throw the world; 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
 
 Socialism and the Family 199 
 
 Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 
 
 'Til at the last she set herself to man, 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words ; 
 
 And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 
 Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, 
 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
 
 Self-reverent each, and reverencing each. 
 
 Distinct in individualities, 
 
 But like each other ev'n as those who love." 
 
 These lines from The Priiicess breathe the 
 spirit of the best type of the modern family. 
 The fondest dreams of the socialist cannot 
 give us a picture of a family, beautiful in its 
 relations, freighted with happiness, which sur- 
 passes this picture. 
 
 Considered from a moral standpoint, the 
 extreme positions of socialism mean nothing 
 less than the destruction of the monogamous 
 family, and even some of the more modified 
 positions of socialism mean such a loosening 
 of the family ties that it is impossible to see 
 how anything of the sacredness and perma- 
 nence of the home would remain. Give men 
 and women absolute freedom in making or 
 breaking marriage relations, and the weaker 
 portions of humanity would certainly change
 
 200 Will the Home Survive 
 
 their partners as school children change their 
 lovers. Free union might do for angels, but 
 we are human, with passions which are 
 changeful and which need the steadying 
 hand of restraint. Any divorce-made-easy 
 system undermines the already weak natures 
 of man, lowers his moral standard, and works 
 havoc with the social betterment of the race. 
 Until we are a long way in advance of any- 
 thing we have ever yet exhibited as a race, 
 the state must continue to hold a steady and 
 firm hand upon this institution, which at its 
 highest is the source of our greatest blessing, 
 and at its worst is the source of sickening cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 If, however, there are fundamental defects 
 in the socialistic teaching concerning the 
 family, there are great truths which cry for 
 recognition. While the fundamental con- 
 dition of happiness is character, we must 
 not forget that there are material conditions 
 where high spiritual life is impossible. 
 
 Much has been said in these days, of our 
 prosperity. There is great prosperity among
 
 Socialism and the Family 201 
 
 certain classes, but there is another class over 
 which poverty hangs like a haunting ghost. 
 Mr. Hunter has given us some facts which 
 are a terrible unveiling of social conditions, 
 even after we have made full allowance for his 
 exaggerations. He quotes Jacob Riis as say- 
 ing that one third of the people of New 
 York were dependent upon charity at some 
 time during the eight years previous to 1890. 
 The report of the Hebrew Charities for 1901 
 reveals similar conditions among the Hebrews. 
 In 1903 twenty per cent, of the people of 
 Boston were aided in some way by charity. 
 Mr. Hunter makes the very astonishing state- 
 ment that one person out of every ten in 
 New York is given pauper burial at public 
 expense in Potter's Field. He says : " I 
 should not be at all surprised if the number 
 of those in poverty in New York, as well as 
 in other large cities and industrial centres, 
 rarely fell below twenty-five per cent, of all 
 the people." 
 
 Even if these figures be greatly exaggerated, 
 they still mean that a large percentage of our
 
 202 Will the Home Survive 
 
 population is surrounded by material condi- 
 tions where the best home life is impossible. 
 Time and energy must all be given to keeping 
 the wolf from the door, and there is no op- 
 portunity of entering into those walks of life 
 which quicken the higher spiritual elements of 
 manhood and womanhood. 
 
 Over against this fact must be placed this 
 other, that a small percentage of the families 
 of this country hold a major part of the 
 wealth. Mr. Spahr estimates that one per 
 cent, of the families of this country hold 
 more wealth than the remaining ninety-nine 
 per cent. Surely an economic system which 
 produces these extremes of life is not ideal. 
 Surely an economic system which builds for 
 one man a palace, surrounding him with 
 wasteful luxuries, while it leaves another man 
 to live on less than the barest necessities of 
 life cannot be the highest or the last stage in 
 the evolution of our Christian civilization. A 
 system under which great stores can pay girls 
 a wage on which they cannot live decently, if 
 they are thrown entirely on their own re-
 
 Socialism and the Family 203 
 
 sources ; which compels mothers to work 
 during the most critical periods of their life 
 that is, just before and soon after the birth 
 of a child ; which blasts the bloom of child- 
 hood, and makes possible the pathetic story 
 of the " little mothers," is not a system that 
 can endure much longer. As we shall show 
 later, the chief business of this generation is 
 to prepare for the next generation, to produce 
 conditions under which offspring can reach 
 the highest point of efficiency. The accom- 
 plishment of this end must be the test of any 
 human institution. In the future, social 
 systems must stand or fall by this test. All 
 that fail to contribute to this end are either 
 superficial, and hence useless, or wrong, and 
 hence to be abolished.
 
 VIII 
 
 H. G. WELLS: THE PROPHET OF THE 
 NEW ORDER 
 
 Man has discovered his place in the world. 
 It is the greatest discovery of all history. 
 Until recent times, man has never known his 
 place in the world-process. He has had no 
 interest in the past because it was past ; he 
 has had no interest in the distant future be- 
 cause he never expected to see it. He has 
 been an egotist, absorbed in the present, in- 
 terested alone in the present. The future 
 may have had interest for him religiously, 
 and the dream of the happy hunting-ground, 
 or the mysterious abode of the spirits, may 
 have led him to offer sacrifice to secure the 
 good will of his divinity. But in the future 
 of this breeding, toiling, loving, sorrowing 
 race of men, living in these same smoke- 
 baptized cities where we have lived, men have 
 
 204
 
 The Prophet of the Nciv Order 205 
 
 had little interest. Absorbed in the present, 
 the past and the future have been forgot- 
 ten. 
 
 The Christian doctrine of salvation has 
 been concerned chiefly with the individual. 
 The theology, the literature, and the art of 
 Christendom have been egoistic. Dante saw 
 the mills of God grinding for the purification 
 of the individual, while Michael Angelo saw 
 the entire world-process in the light of indi- 
 viduals who were to escape this wicked world 
 to find safety in some dimly strange and 
 curious region. Calvinist and Arminian, 
 Romanist and Protestant have never discov- 
 ered anything greater than an individual ab- 
 sorbed in the present, never thoughtful of pro- 
 jecting his life into the future of mankind, but 
 feverishly anxious to escape mankind to save 
 his own soul. 
 
 Man's political economy was the fruit of 
 the same egoism. His doctrine of the indi- 
 vidual found expression in the old theory of 
 uncontrolled competition. It was the cruel 
 doctrine which produced industrial despots
 
 206 Will the Home Survive 
 
 who kept women and children working in 
 factories from twelve to fifteen hours a day, 
 conditions under which, it is said, half of the 
 infants of Manchester, England, died under 
 three years, the mere story of which still 
 haunts England like an awful nightmare The 
 horizon of life was no larger than the im- 
 mediate needs and desires of the individual, 
 and his attitude towards the body politic was 
 determined by these facts. 
 
 Under this old theology and this old 
 economy, the future of mankind was not con- 
 sidered. Why should men build houses for 
 others to live in ? Why should men sacrifice 
 their labor to plant trees whose fruits they 
 would never taste ? It was this individualism 
 which made pessimistic Schopenhauer rebel- 
 liously ask : " Why must we be forever tor- 
 tured by this passion to reproduce our kind, 
 why are all our pursuits tainted with this ap- 
 plication, all our needs referred to the needs 
 of a new generation that tramples upon our 
 heels ? " To the older thinkers, this ruthless 
 passion hurled man on before it as the wave
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 207 
 
 hurls the swimmer. He might rebel, still he 
 was hurled on. 
 
 We are, however, beginning to see that the 
 individual lives for the future ; that he gets 
 his meaning from his relation to the future of 
 the race. He has significance in the present 
 onlybecause the present is productive of the 
 future. He has meaning to-day only because 
 to-morrow grows out of to-day. 
 
 One of the greatest prophets of this gospel, 
 a pagan and a visionist, yet a prophet who has 
 seen more clearly man's relation to the de- 
 velopment of the race than many who scoff at 
 the pagans, is H. G. Wells. He has seen 
 clearly that man gains his meaning for the 
 world-process in the production and develop- 
 ment of the next generation of men. Life, 
 as Mr. Wells sees it, is " essentially a matter of 
 reproduction ; first a growth and training to 
 that end, then commonly mating and actual 
 reproduction, and finally the consummation of 
 these things in parental nurture and educa- 
 tion." This is the chief end of man as it is 
 of all life. The world is a " great birthplace.
 
 2o8 Will the Home Survive 
 
 an incessant renewal, an undying fresh begin- 
 ning and unfolding of life." Take away this 
 fact and we have nothing but stagnation and 
 death, — no spring-time, no sweet-smelling 
 flowers, no laughing children, no waving har- 
 vests, no singing birds, but cold, monotonous 
 death. It is the promise of the spring-time 
 that makes winter endurable, and it is not the 
 amount of beer and cheese, or beef and rolls 
 that man can eat and drink that gives interest 
 to mankind. The most interesting thing 
 about the present race of men is that the next 
 generation of men is dependent upon them 
 for their production and nurture. This is the 
 real wonder in comparison with which all 
 others dwindle into insignificance. 
 
 This being true, the chief business of man- 
 kind is to create conditions under which off- 
 spring can reach the highest point of effi- 
 ciency. " The serious aspect of our private 
 lives, the general aspect of all our social and 
 cooperative undertakings, is to prepare as well 
 as we possibly can a succeeding generation, 
 which shall prepare still more capably for still
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 209 
 
 better generations to follow." This must be 
 the test of any human institution. In the 
 future, social systems must stand or fall by 
 their ability to produce conditions in which a 
 new-born child may realize the strongest and 
 best life. All that fail to contribute to this 
 end are either superficial and hence useless, or 
 wrong and hence to be abolished. 
 
 There has been an immense amount of 
 social quackery which has turned man away 
 from an intelligent pursuit of this primal object 
 of his existence. In his earlier life, Mr. Wells 
 himself was entrapped by one of these shams, 
 that of scientific marriage for the production 
 of a better race of men. The chief objection 
 to this idea is that it will not work. Shaw 
 may advocate the mating of a duke and a 
 charwoman, but there is one insuperable 
 barrier to the proposition, namely, that the 
 duke does not care for the charwoman, nor 
 does she care for him. Though the state 
 should forbid the marriage of diseased persons, 
 it could not prevent people " falling in love " 
 and living together in free union, and though
 
 2IO Will the Home Survive 
 
 the state offered large pensions to young men 
 SIX feet in height, strong of muscle, and sound 
 in every organ, who would marry women 
 with large chests and broad hips and rosy 
 cheeks, approved by the health officer, they 
 would spurn the pension and marry the first 
 invalid for whom they had a passion. 
 
 Another objection to this scientific marriage 
 is a lack of knowledge of how to breed to 
 secure the things desired. " We are not a bit 
 clear what points to breed for and what points 
 to breed out." The breeding of cattle is a 
 simple matter because the breeder knows what 
 he wants, — a certain grade of milk, or of good 
 beef. It is easy to breed for these simple 
 qualities ; but man is not used for beef, and 
 in these days of endless foods even woman is 
 dispensable as a giver of milk. In man we 
 must breed for beauty, health, ability, genius, 
 energy, all so complex that it is impossible to 
 define one of them, much less to breed for 
 them. The varieties of beauty are endless. 
 There is the delicate beauty of the English 
 woman, the homely beauty of the Dutch, the 
 
 \
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 211 
 
 tropic beauty of the tambourine girl following 
 the organ-grinder, and the quaint beauty of the 
 Japanese. For what type of beauty shall we 
 breed ? We are as unable to breed for perfect 
 health as for beauty, for what is health in one 
 person may not be health in another. 
 " Health is a balance, a balance of blood against 
 nerve, of digestion against secretion, of heart 
 against brain. A heart of perfect health and 
 vigor put into the body of a perfectly healthy 
 man who is built upon a slighter scale than 
 that heart, will swiftly disorganize the entire 
 fabric and burst its way to a hemorrhage in 
 lungs, perhaps, or brain, or wherever the 
 slightest relative weakness permits." The 
 perfect health of an American Indian is not 
 the same as the perfect health of a New 
 Yorker, nor the health of the negro in the 
 plantation cabin the same as that of the 
 Prince of Wales. All of this talk of breeding 
 for better men breaks down because we do 
 not know enough. Whether men will ever 
 know enough remains to be seen, but this 
 much is certain, if ever men do know enough,
 
 212 Will the Home Survive 
 
 the novelist will still not be deprived of 
 material for his books, for youth and maiden 
 will still love, still elope, still make their own 
 choice, while the scientist goes on spinning his 
 theories. 
 
 The particular social quackery which is just 
 now blinding men to the real issue of life is 
 the delusion of •' race-suicide," a sham which 
 has never been better exposed than by Mr. 
 Wells. The alarmist is crying that long before 
 the sun has a chance to burn up his carbon 
 and leave the earth in darkness, mankind will 
 have been extinguished by the fall of the birth- 
 rate. Skepticism and materialism, love of 
 ease and luxury, are all blamed by this alarm- 
 ist for this decline. These things have re- 
 sulted in the loss of seriousness, it is said, and 
 with the loss of this Puritan virtue women are 
 losing their courage and men are wasting 
 themselves in their selfish pleasures. Such a 
 statement is not true. It is because the race 
 is becoming more religious, and our women 
 more courageous, that the birth-rate is declin- 
 ing. A fundamental religious conviction is
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 213 
 
 taking possession of the race that if govern- 
 ments will serve the highest interests of man- 
 kind it will not be necessary to produce so 
 many children. When a government permits 
 conditions to exist where one half of the infants 
 die before they reach maturity ; when wars 
 drain the population, every generation, of its 
 strongest men ; when wasteful governments 
 spend every year for the maintenance of armies 
 and navies, millions which ought to be spent 
 in improving the homes of the poor and in 
 creating an environment where the mortality 
 will decrease ; spending them upon instruments 
 for the murder of the poor creatures who 
 happen to survive unsanitary conditions, then 
 women must be turned into perennial breeding 
 animals to furnish a fresh supply. The relig- 
 ious consciousness of the race will not permit 
 it to continue in this ungodly way. The con- 
 science of the race has not become flabby. 
 The instinct of motherhood has not been lost. 
 There are sterile women and giddy women 
 who will not bear children, and there always 
 have been, but in the race the conscience is
 
 214 Will the Home Survive 
 
 becoming stronger as it is becoming more en- 
 lightened, and the instinct of motherhood 
 centres upon a few children that can be well 
 cared for and nurtured to produce in the future 
 a better race of men. The maternal instinct 
 refuses to bear sons to be shot or daughters to 
 die in the poisonous air of cheap tenements 
 before they reach their teens. 
 
 The little that governments have done only 
 serves to strengthen people's convictions. The 
 slight improvements made in the conditions 
 has increased the population in spite of the 
 decrease of birth-rate. In England and Wales, 
 between 1846 and 1850, there were 33.8 births 
 per 1,000 ; between 1896 and 1900, there were 
 28.0 per 1,000, a decrease in the birth-rate of 
 5.8. But between 1846 and 1850, the death- 
 rate was 23.3 per 1,000; between 1896 and 
 1900, it was 17.7 per i,ooo, a decrease of $.6, 
 leaving only .2 decrease in population. Now 
 comes another fact, discouraging to the alarm- 
 ist, who sees all good in the past. The 
 illegitimate births between 1846 and 1850 
 numbered 2.2 per 1,000; between 1896 and
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 215 
 
 1900, they numbered 1.2 per 1,000. Had it 
 not been for the fall in the number of illegiti- 
 mate births the population would have in- 
 creased .8, The increase in the morality of the 
 people was the cause in the slight decrease in 
 population. The prolongation of the average 
 time of life almost overcame the decrease in 
 birth-rate. Considering the little that has been 
 done to better the conditions of the poor, this 
 is a marvelous record. When governments 
 spend less upon champagne and the millinery 
 of state, less upon instruments of destruction, 
 and turn their millions to the preservation of 
 life, then it will not be necessary to produce 
 so many children. 
 
 Mr. Wells has clearly demonstrated the pos- 
 sibility of further reducing the mortality of 
 infants in England, and what is true in Eng- 
 land is true also in America, In Rutlandshire, 
 in 1900, 103 children out of 1,000 died under 
 five years of age; in Dorsetshire 133 out of 
 every 1,000, and in Lancashire, 274 out of 
 every 1,000. " Unless we are going to assume 
 that the children born in Lancashire are in-
 
 2i6 Will the Home Survive 
 
 herently weaker than the children born in 
 Rutland or Dorset — and there is not a shadow 
 of reason why we should believe that — we 
 must suppose that at least 171 children out of 
 every 1,000 in Lancashire were killed by the 
 conditions into which they were born." The 
 government, absorbed in its imperialism, sur- 
 rounding itself with guns and dynamite, and 
 the politicians busy with measures that would 
 get them votes, permitted this " perennial 
 massacre of the innocents." 
 
 There is no reason why the 103 deaths out 
 of each 1,000 in Rutland might not be con- 
 siderably reduced. Grant that some are born 
 who are not fit to live because of inherent de- 
 fects. This " leaves untouched the fact that a 
 vast multitude of children of untainted blood 
 and good mental and moral possibilities, as 
 many, perhaps, as 100 in each 1,000 born, die 
 yearly through insufficient food, insufficient 
 good air, and insufficient attention. The plain 
 and simple truth is that they are born need- 
 lessly. There are still too many births for our 
 civilization to look after ; we are still unfit to
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 217 
 
 be trusted with a rising birth-rate." Until 
 governments can deal more wisely with the 
 children already produced, they would do well 
 to urge less upon parents the production of 
 innocents for the slaughter. 
 
 ■ What Mr. Wells has so clearly revealed con- 
 cerning the conditions in England is equally 
 true of the continent of Europe and of America. 
 In Chicago the death-rate varies from about 
 twelve per thousand in the wards where the 
 rich reside, to thirty-seven per thousand in the 
 tenement wards. The poor man's district in 
 Paris has a death-rate twice as high as that of 
 the Elysee. The " Back-Bay " district of Bos- 
 ton had in one year 9.44 per cent, as against 
 25.21 per cent, in the thirteenth ward, which 
 is a typical working-class district. Dr. Charles 
 R. Drysdale, senior physician of the Metro- 
 politan Free Hospital, declared some years 
 ago that the death-rate among the rich was 
 not more than eight per cent., while among 
 the very poor it was as high as forty per cent. 
 Along with these alarming facts we must 
 
 place this fact, which is held by many of the
 
 2i8 Will the Home Survive 
 
 leading physicians who have had opportunity 
 to observe, that the babe born in the tenement 
 is equal physically to the babe born in the 
 palace. Nature starts both in the world with 
 an equal chance. The large increase in the 
 death-rate in the poorer districts is the result 
 of poor food, ignorant care, poor houses, 
 meagre clothing. These affect the child not 
 before but after it is born. 
 
 Again we have to consider the large num- 
 ber of children who are incapacitated for life's 
 struggle because of the work to which they are 
 compelled to submit in years when they should 
 be developing physically and mentally. The 
 United States census shows that nearly two 
 million child breadwinners under fifteen years 
 of age are now at work. Of these almost 
 700,000 are engaged in work other than agri- 
 culture. Child labor on the farm, in the open 
 air, does not injure the child, but the great 
 majority who are working in the cotton mills 
 of the South, in glass factories, and other 
 places, are unfitted by the very nature of their 
 labor for the struggle for hfe. Appalling as
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 219 
 
 these figures are, they are much below the 
 truth. 
 
 Thus it is evident that the real race-suicide 
 is not in the fall of the birth-rate but in the 
 murder of the infants for whom we have not 
 yet learned to care. Instead of encouraging 
 large families, many of them in a condition of 
 poverty and want, we would do better to give 
 ourselves more seriously to the problem of 
 properly housing, clothing, and feeding the 
 infants already born, and making laws for the 
 protection of children from labor. The ruin 
 of America's children is too high a price to 
 pay for making still richer a few men who are 
 already too rich. It may be well enough for 
 statesmen to urge upon American mothers the 
 bearing of many children as a high moral and 
 religious duty, but it seems a higher moral and 
 religious duty to make conditions in which a 
 smaller number can grow into the largeness 
 and beauty of manhood and womanhood. 
 
 It will be a part of the ethical code of the 
 future that poor families, at least, shall have 
 fewer children ^nd care better for the devel-
 
 220 Will the Home Survive 
 
 opment of their lives. Towards this end, it 
 may not be amiss for charity workers and min- 
 isters, who come much into contact with poor 
 fathers and mothers, to teach the moral obli- 
 gation of preventing pregnancy after the birth 
 of two or three children. 
 
 Every child born into the world is entitled 
 to good food, good air, and a bright and 
 cheerful house, where it can grow to the best 
 advantage, and it should be the business of 
 government to see that every mother is sup- 
 plied with these things, both for herself and for 
 her child. The institutions of charity founded 
 for this purpose are not successful. They not 
 only lessen parental responsibility, and give 
 the child a mechanical rather than a sympa- 
 thetic environment, but they encourage births 
 among the class where they are least desirable. 
 The best charity is an imperfect makeshift and 
 cannot solve the great problem of the care and 
 training of children. 
 
 There are several things which touch the 
 problem directly, and which, if enforced, would 
 produce a better race. First, reckless parent-
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 221 
 
 age should be discouraged. This can be done, 
 Mr. Wells thinks, by making " the parent the 
 debtor to society on account of the child for 
 adequate food, clothing, and care, for at least 
 the first twelve or thirteen years of life, and in 
 the event of parental default to invest the local 
 authority with exceptional powers of recovery 
 in this matter. It would be quite easy to set 
 up a minimum standard of clothing, cleanli- 
 ness, growth, nutrition, and education, and 
 provide that if that standard was not main- 
 tained by a child, or if the child was found to 
 be bruised or maimed without the parents 
 being able to account for these injuries, the 
 child should be at once removed from the 
 parental care, and the parents charged with 
 the cost of a suitable maintenance — which 
 need not be excessively cheap. If the parents 
 fail in the payments, they should be put into 
 celibate labor establishments to work off as 
 much of the debt as they could, and they 
 would not be released until the debt was fully 
 discharged. Legislation of this type would 
 not only secure all and more of the advantages
 
 222 Will the Home Survive 
 
 children of the least desirable sort now get, 
 but it would certainly invest parentage with a 
 quite unprecedented gravity for the reckless, 
 and it would enormously reduce the number 
 of births of the least desirable sort." 
 
 The government could establish a minimum 
 standard of sanitary conditions in houses and 
 make it illegal for any man to inhabit a house 
 which fell below this standard. Rooms of a 
 certain size, necessary ventilating appliances, 
 plenty of light and good air, are things which 
 should belong to every house. These houses 
 should be kept in good repair, and in no case 
 should they be crowded. "The minimum 
 permissible tenement for a maximum of two 
 adults and a very young child is one properly 
 ventilated room capable of being heated, with 
 close and easy access to sanitary conveniences, 
 a constant supply of water and easy means of 
 getting warm water. More than one child 
 should mean another room, and it seems only 
 reasonable, if we go so far as this, to go fur- 
 ther and require a minimum of furniture and 
 equipment, a fire-guard, for instance, and a
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 223 
 
 separate bed or cot for the child. In a civi- 
 lized community, children should not sleep 
 with adults, and the killing of children by 
 ' accidental ' overlaying should be a punishable 
 offense. If a woman does not wish to be 
 dealt with as a half-hearted murderess she 
 should not behave like one." 
 
 It may be objected that these demands are 
 unreasonable, that it would make it impossible 
 for the poor to have children, as they could 
 not meet these conditions. Under present 
 conditions it might be impossible, but if this 
 standard is right the government should cor- 
 rect the conditions which make the ideal im- 
 possible. It should be corrected by establish- 
 ing a minimum wage. No man ought to be 
 permitted to labor for a wage which would 
 not allow him to live a wholesome, healthy, 
 and reasonably happy life. The industry 
 which cannot afford to pay such a wage is a 
 positive curse to civilization. Rather than 
 being a source of wealth to the nation it is a 
 " disease and a parasite upon the public body." 
 Hence all such industries should be abolished,
 
 224 Will the Home Survive 
 
 only those being permitted to exist that can 
 pay a wage large enough to permit a man to 
 rent a tenement in the best condition, one of 
 sufficient size to accommodate three or four 
 children ; large enough " to maintain himself 
 and wife and children above the minimum 
 standard of comfort, his insurance against 
 premature and accidental death or temporary 
 economic or physical disablement, some mini- 
 mum provision for old age and a certain 
 margin for the exercise of his individual 
 freedom." 
 
 Mr. Wells also sees a way out of this dif- 
 ficulty through some scheme of paid mother- 
 hood. He believes that woman suffers to-day 
 because of a wrong standard of comparison 
 with man. Her value is measured by her 
 ability to produce wealth, and as she has 
 neither the physical strength nor general fit- 
 ness for this work, she must be considered 
 inferior to man in precisely the measure in 
 which she differs from him. Her real value 
 to the state is to be found in her possibility of 
 motherhood, and until this is recognized, and
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 225 
 
 she is paid for it, she will be dependent upon 
 man and in some sense his property. But 
 " suppose the state secures to every woman 
 who is, under legitimate sanctions, becoming 
 or likely to become a mother, that is to say 
 who is duly married, a certain wage from her 
 husband to secure her against the need of toil 
 and anxiety, suppose it pays her a certain 
 gratuity upon the birth of a child, and con- 
 tinues to pay at regular intervals sums suffi- 
 cient to keep her and her child in independent 
 freedom, so long as the child keeps up to the 
 minimum standard of health and physical and 
 mental development. Suppose it pays more 
 upon the child when it rises markedly above 
 certain minimum qualification, physical or 
 mental, and, in fact, does its best to make 
 thoroughly efficient motherhood a profession 
 worth following. And suppose, in correla- 
 tion with this, it forbids the industrial em- 
 ployment of married women and of mothers 
 who have children needing care, unless they 
 are in a position to employ qualified, efficient 
 substitutes to take care of their offspring.
 
 226 Will the Home Survive 
 
 What differences from terrestrial conditions 
 will ensue?" 
 
 Wells thinks that at least some of the evils 
 of civilization would be abolished and three 
 or four very helpful things would be ac- 
 complished. " It will abolish the hardship 
 of a majority of widows, who on earth are 
 poor and encumbered exactly in proportion 
 as they have discharged the chief, distinctive 
 duty of a woman, and miserable, just in pro- 
 portion as their standard of life and education 
 is high. It will abolish the hardship of those 
 who do not now -marry on account of poverty, 
 or who do not dare to have children. The fear 
 that often turns a woman from a beautiful to 
 amercenary marriage will vanish from life. . . . 
 A career of wholesome motherhood would be, 
 under such conditions as I have suggested, the 
 normal and remunerative calling of a woman." 
 
 There are some inherent weaknesses about 
 this scheme of paid motherhood which must 
 be considered. We have already pointed to 
 the fact that Wells misrepresents the relation 
 which woman holds to man in the best type
 
 Tlie Prophet of the New Order 227 
 
 of family life at the present time. She is not 
 man's property in any sense and is not by 
 him considered to be in any way inferior to 
 man. The idea of woman's inferiority to 
 man is one of the straw-men the emancipators 
 of women set up to knock down. Beings 
 who are utterly unlike cannot be compared as 
 inferior or superior. A violet cannot be 
 called inferior to a rose or a rose to a violet. 
 Each has its own perfume and beauty. The 
 woman is not inferior to man, she is different 
 from man. Each has a mission to fulfil and 
 each is dependent upon the other for the per- 
 fect fulfilment of that mission. Woman's 
 position could not be more exalted by making 
 her a subject of state aid. It would cheapen 
 her entire life. 
 
 Yet it does not seem unreasonable that 
 mothers with small incomes, and widows who 
 are left with children but with no means of 
 support except labor which would take them 
 away from the care of their children, should 
 be guaranteed a reasonable amount for the 
 care of each child until it reaches a certain age,
 
 228 Will the Home Survive 
 
 when it can care for itself. The government 
 already guarantees a certain amount of money 
 for the education of the child. The city 
 spends a certain amount of money upon 
 public parks where the child can play; a 
 large amount upon sanitation and other means 
 of preventing disease. It is only a small step 
 to go a little further and guarantee enough for 
 the proper feeding and clothing of the child, 
 so that the tremendous death-rate below five 
 years of age may be reduced. Truly this is 
 not more unreasonable than that governments 
 should spend large amounts upon armies and 
 navies for the destruction of life. 
 
 Men scoff at this as a meagre materialistic in- 
 terpretation of life and stamp Wells as a pagan. 
 He is certainly not a flawless leader towards 
 our social redemption. Much that we said 
 concerning socialism and the family would 
 apply to Wells, as he is a socialist. We be- 
 lieve his conception of the marriage contract 
 is fundamentally wrong. If, however, these 
 scoffers at Wells' materialism could be placed 
 in the home of the poor man, be compelled to
 
 The Prophet of the New Order 229 
 
 live on his wage, to bear children and support 
 them in such meagre surroundings, he might 
 suddenly discover in the doctrine a sublime 
 idealism, with a spiritual dynamic for the re- 
 deeming of souls which has not been attached 
 to more pretentious doctrines of salvation. 
 Others scornfully brush Wells aside as a vi- 
 sionist. And so he is, but the curse of the 
 world is that there are so few who see vi- 
 sions. Men are so concerned with tariff and 
 ship-subsidy bills, with the building of canals, 
 and the regulation of their beer and whiskey, 
 that they never consider the real problem of 
 life, the making of men. It is to the credit of 
 Mr. Wells that he has seen that this is the 
 business of mankind, that all other business 
 should centre about this great undertaking, 
 that the business of the man of to-day is to 
 work for the man of to-morrow. 
 
 It is objected that Wells is scornful of re- 
 ligion and contemptuous of religious instruc- 
 tion. Here he may be weak as a public leader. 
 The heart must not be left cheerless and cold. 
 Neither must the body be left hungry, nor the
 
 230 Will the Home Survive 
 
 development of the physical sacrificed to the 
 spiritual. In emphasizing the former, Wells 
 has done a work neglected by enthusiasts in 
 religion.
 
 IX 
 
 SOME CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 The question was raised at the beginning of 
 this inquiry, Will the home survive ? It was 
 made evident that the home of our fathers has 
 not survived without great modifications, be- 
 cause of certain industrial conditions that have 
 existed. Nor can we have considered the 
 various attacks that have been made upon the 
 home without feeling that there will be in the 
 future further modifications in the institution 
 of the family. It is inconceivable that so 
 many sincere minds could attack this institu- 
 tion at so many more or less vulnerable points 
 without causing some further change. 
 
 All social institutions, from their very 
 nature, must be in a constant state of change. 
 The history of government is the history of 
 change, the history of new governmental 
 plans to meet new social conditions. What is 
 
 231
 
 232 Will the Home Survive 
 
 true of the state is true of the family. While 
 the essential type of the family, that is, father, 
 mother, and child, has existed from the earliest 
 records of human history, the modifications of 
 that type have been almost as numerous as 
 have been the tribes and races which have 
 covered the earth. Nomadic life has always 
 meant a certain kind of family life, while agri- 
 culture has meant another type. A rich, pro- 
 ductive soil, which made easy the obtaining of 
 food, sometimes, in the early history of the 
 race, as with Israel, meant polygamy, while a 
 sterile, unproductive soil has sometimes been 
 the cause of polyandry. The family under the 
 old feudal system was a modified type of the 
 Roman and Teutonic families, but the feudal 
 family has been completely modified, not only 
 by the industrial changes, but even more by 
 the intellectual movements of the modern age. 
 If the family, like other social institutions, has 
 been in a constant process of change, it is only 
 reasonable to suppose that in the future these 
 changes will continue. The family, a hundred 
 years from now, will probably be as different
 
 Some Concluding Words 233 
 
 from the family of to-day as the family of to- 
 day is different from the family of a hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 One of the most important forces in effect- 
 ing a change in the family of the future will 
 be the attitude of both man and woman to 
 marriage. To the woman of a hundred years 
 ago, marriage was the chief end of existence. 
 She lived to get married. Her art in life was the 
 art of winning a husband. Economically she 
 was compelled to follow this art. There was 
 no vocation for her other than the home, 
 hence she was dependent upon man for her 
 support. But this is no longer true. Mar- 
 riage to-day is an incident in the life of 
 woman as well as in the life of man. To be 
 sure, marriage is one of the most important 
 incidents in life, but still it is not an absolute 
 necessity. This is indicated by the decrease 
 in marriages in all the States of Europe. In- 
 creasing numbers of men and women are refus- 
 ing to enter the marriage relationship. 
 
 This is due to several causes. First, man is 
 independent of woman to a larger degree than
 
 234 Will the Home Survive 
 
 ever in history. The club affords him a 
 pleasant home. There are places where his 
 clothes can be made and mended. The world 
 of amusement gives him a place to spend his 
 evenings. Thus he is not compelled by- 
 domestic needs to seek a home. When he 
 faces the serious question of forming a home, 
 he finds himself face to face with two or three 
 very stubborn considerations. The first is a 
 financial one. Though he may have what our 
 fathers would have regarded a large income, 
 this income is not enough to enable him to 
 form a home of the type to which he has been 
 accustomed. The salary of clerks, for example, 
 is often much less than that of first-class 
 mechanics, yet the social demands made upon 
 them are much greater. The society in 
 which they move requires a dress suit and a 
 certain amount of money for entertaining. If 
 they are married and preserve the same social 
 standing, equally exacting demands will be 
 made upon their wives. But their income is 
 not adequate to this. Hence the man of this 
 type is compelled to choose between cehbacy
 
 Some Concluding Words 235 
 
 and married life on a little lower social plane 
 than the one in which he has always moved. 
 
 This alternative is inseparable from the 
 disease of the time, the disease which has 
 taken possession of our over-rich, and from 
 them has worked down through all classes of 
 society, the disease of wasteful luxury and 
 high living. It is the disease of our social 
 system, and there is no possibility of over- 
 coming it until the cause is eradicated. 
 
 There is even more to be said from the 
 standpoint of woman, for the reduction in the 
 number of marriages in proportion to the 
 population is due to the attitude of woman 
 even more than to that of man. This is true 
 because woman has suddenly come to a posi- 
 tion of financial independence. She is no 
 longer compelled to marry, as were our grand- 
 mothers. We have been hearing a great deal 
 about the college woman, a class only about 
 half of whom, it is said, enter marriage. What 
 is true of the college woman is true in some 
 degree of all women. They can now care for 
 themselves, and some of them much better
 
 236 Will the Ho))ie Survive 
 
 than men can care for them. Hence they are 
 refusing to view marriage as their soul voca- 
 tion. They are viewing it, as we have already 
 said, as only one of the incidents of their 
 existence, an important one, but still only an 
 incident. They are not trying to avoid mar- 
 riage, but they are so independent that they 
 are trying to avoid the wrong kind of mar- 
 riage. They are determined that if they 
 marry at all they shall have the right kind of 
 marriage. If they take a man as a life partner 
 they are determined that he shall be a worthy 
 partner. They are determined that into their 
 marriage shall enter intellectual and moral 
 sympathy which shall survive the mere 
 demands of sex. In short, for the first time in 
 the history of the world, women, that is, self- 
 respecting and intelligent women, have 
 reached a place where they can make a choice 
 of their life- mates, and they are exercising 
 their right to choose. 
 
 So far from being hostile to the family, these 
 tendencies are only preparing the way for a 
 higher and purer form of family life. The
 
 Some Concluding Words lyi 
 
 best type of modern woman, when she walks 
 up the long church aisle to be joined to man, 
 does not stand before the altar to promise to 
 obey and cower before his sovereign will, she 
 comes to give herself to him only as he gives 
 himself to her. She asks that he be as pure 
 as she is, be as holy as she is, be as worthy as 
 she is. It is inevitable that when woman 
 takes this position there must be some fall in 
 the proportion of the marriages to the popula- 
 tion, but we must believe that in the end the 
 result will be good, that by it humanity will 
 be lifted. 
 
 These conditions, however, have resulted in 
 another radical change in our family customs. 
 Our fathers, both Protestant and Catholic, 
 urged upon the young the advisability of 
 marrying early, and the marriage of girls 
 seventeen years of age was not an uncommon 
 thing in the early history of our country. 
 While our fathers taught the advisability of 
 early marriage, they also taught the moral 
 and religious duty of bearing large families. 
 They also whispered, " Marry early lest ye
 
 238 Will the Home Survive 
 
 sin." There is much to be said in favor of 
 early marriage, but however much may be 
 said in favor of it, society is more and more 
 tending to the late marriage. And on the 
 whole this seems far preferable. 
 
 After men and women have reached the 
 age of maturity, the age of strong mental 
 and moral development, the mental and moral 
 natures are apt to play a larger part in the 
 choice of a mate than the purely physical 
 instincts. The mature woman knows more 
 about the meaning of life, those permanent 
 qualities which go to make up the happiness 
 of life, the place of intellectual and moral 
 sympathies. She is better able to judge of the 
 tastes and ambitions of the one she is to 
 choose for her mate. Furthermore, when 
 parents are well developed, intellectually and 
 morally, they are better able to care for their 
 children, to give them the education that is 
 necessary for their development and the care 
 which is necessary for their health. 
 
 Thus the tendency towards late marriage, 
 the refusal to marry if the right party cannot
 
 Some Concluding IVords 239 
 
 be found, is not such an alarming tendency as 
 at first it may seem. The tendency may at 
 times grow out of selfishness, the love of ease 
 and pleasure, but on the whole it is a part of 
 the general modern tendency to demand the 
 best or nothing. In the end it will uplift Hfe, 
 will make better homes, and purer and more 
 intelligent communities. 
 
 This independence of the sexes, which has 
 created a new marriage relationship, must 
 inevitably cause certain changes in the mar- 
 riage ceremonies which are used by most 
 churches. The inferior position held by 
 woman, man's proprietorship in some sense 
 over her, may clearly be seen in almost all 
 early marriage rites. Among the Ewe-speak- 
 ing peoples, the man was betrothed to the 
 woman by sending two large flasks of rum to 
 her father's house. If the father accepted the 
 proposal, the flasks were returned empty. 
 Two more flasks were then sent, together 
 with other gifts, and this completed the 
 betrothal. On the wedding-day, about sun- 
 down, the parents escorted the bride to the
 
 240 Will the Home Survive 
 
 groom's house. Feasting continued until 
 about midnight, when four women conducted 
 the bride to the groom's room and said : " If 
 she pleases you and behaves well, treat her 
 kindly. If she behaves ill, correct her." She 
 lived with her husband seven days, after 
 which she went to the home of her parents 
 for seven days, when she returned to live 
 permanently w'ith her husband. 
 
 This ceremony is based upon two principles. 
 First, that the wife is, in some sense, the 
 property of the husband. He may treat her 
 well. The laws of some tribes provide that 
 in case of ill treatment, the woman shall be 
 returned to her parents. Still there is a clear 
 recognition of the fact that he pays a price for 
 the woman and that she is his property, to 
 use as he desires. He is, also, her master. 
 He is the judge of her conduct. In some de- 
 gree he is accountable for her actions ; if she 
 does not behave well it is his duty to correct 
 her. 
 
 These two principles, the authority of the 
 husband over the wife, and his ownership of
 
 Some Conchiding Words 241 
 
 her, are reflected in the marriage customs of 
 almost all people down to the present time. 
 From the earliest periods of which we have 
 any records among the English and Teutonic 
 peoples, marriage took the form of a sale of 
 the bride by her father to the bridegroom. 
 While this principle was greatly modified, the 
 contract being more natural and liberal, it was 
 still clearly recognized in the period when 
 the civil power in regulating marriage was de- 
 clining and the power of the church was 
 growing. 
 
 Our ecclesiastical marriage ceremonies had 
 their rise in the tenth century, a period when 
 man was still regarded as the lord of his house- 
 hold, with absolute authority over his wife and 
 children. All civil laws recognized this. 
 Woman had few rights. She was represented 
 by her husband. It was natural that ecclesias- 
 tical ceremonies, so far as they reflected social 
 conditions, should embody the principles then 
 dominating society. This is what we do dis- 
 cover when we turn to any one of the earliest 
 marriage forms used by the Church in Eng-
 
 242 Will the Home Survive 
 
 land. We may use the York service as an 
 illustration. The priest says to the man : 
 
 " N., wylt thou haue this woman to thy 
 wyfe and loue her (and wirschipe hir) and 
 keep her, in sykenes and in helthe, and in all 
 other degrese be to her as a husbande shoulde 
 be to his wyfe, and all other forsake for her, 
 and holde the only to her to thy lyues ende." 
 
 The man is to answer : " I wyll." The 
 priest then says to the woman : 
 
 " N., wylt thou haue this man to thy hus- 
 bande, and to be buxum to hym (luf hym, 
 obeye to him, and wirschipe hym), serue hym 
 and kepe hym in sykenes and in helthe: and 
 in all other degrese be unto him as a wyfe 
 shulde be to her husbande, and all other to 
 forsake for hym, and holde the only to hym 
 to thy lyues ende." 
 
 The woman is to say : " I will." 
 
 It is evident that this ceremony is the clear 
 expression of the social standing of woman in 
 this period. She must promise to obey and 
 serve her lord, while he is only under obliga- 
 tion to keep her.
 
 Some Cojicluding Words 243 
 
 This same ceremony has come down to the 
 present time and is used by many churches. 
 The husband promises that he will love, com- 
 fort, and keep his wife, but the wife promises 
 not only to love, honor, and keep her husband, 
 but also to obey and serve him. The cere- 
 mony makes his will still supreme, and her 
 hfe one of obedience and service. It is a sur- 
 vival from a social condition that has long 
 ago actually passed from life, and the churches 
 ought to adjust their ceremonies to the new 
 spirit which exists between man and woman 
 in the married state. 
 
 Such change would not involve any weak- 
 ening of marriage obligations, but would 
 rather involve a strengthening of them. In 
 the first place, it would destroy all possibility 
 of argument on the part of those who would 
 abolish marriage ceremonies on the ground 
 that they imply a degree of bondage for 
 women. In the second place, it would em- 
 phasize the spiritual nature of the union, in 
 harmony with the best thinking and feeling 
 of our time, and would declare man's equal
 
 244 Will the Home Survive 
 
 obligation with woman to exhibit those ele- 
 ments of conduct which would make the union 
 all it ought to be. Both parties would be 
 united for better or for worse, with equal 
 responsibility to make it for better. They 
 would be united as one in thought, pur- 
 pose, and sympathy, each recognizing the fact 
 that only as they both wisely studied to bring 
 about this oneness could their marriage be 
 happy and useful. 
 
 The appalling defect of much of the litera- 
 ture connected with the so-called emancipa- 
 tion of women is its emphasis of the inde- 
 pendence of both parties to the marriage 
 contract. This is evidently a reaction, and a 
 very natural one, from the older emphasis on 
 the dependence of the woman upon the man. 
 But the reaction has gone to absurd extremes. 
 No permanent family life can be built upon the 
 emphasis of the independence of both parties to 
 the marriage contract. The home from its very 
 nature is not an institution that can be con- 
 ducted in such a spirit. The home would be 
 divided against itself and would fall. Unity
 
 Some Concluding Words 245 
 
 of purpose, of sympathy, of love, must be the 
 foundation of the home, a unity that forgets 
 difference, a love that is blind to rights. Not 
 otherwise can permanent and happy families 
 be formed. 
 
 No Utopia has ever been written which 
 gives us such an inspiring picture of the family, 
 beautiful in its relationships, full of hope and 
 promise, as the story of the slow, painful, but 
 glorious evolution of the monogamous family 
 out of the chaos of early social life into the 
 present institution of the home. The very 
 complexity of it is a part of its beauty, while 
 the poverty of many Utopias is their attempt 
 to reduce life to a monotonous simplicity. 
 Complexity is a part of life's richness, and the 
 endless variety of problems and surprises con- 
 nected with the monogamous family are its 
 increasing contributions to the development of 
 mankind. 
 
 It is only this complex monogamous type of 
 family that produces the best type of woman- 
 hood. Polygamy degrades certain classes of 
 the community, which it sets aside for certain
 
 246 IVill the Home Survive 
 
 purposes. Some women are used only for 
 sexual sympathy, while others are used for 
 reproduction. Monogamy alone cornbines all 
 of the womanly functions in one woman, thus 
 fitting her to the best advantage for parent- 
 hood and the education of her children. It 
 develops a higher moral and intellectual type 
 than is possible under any other system of 
 marriage. 
 
 It is just at this point that such a Utopian 
 writer as Mrs. Charlotte Gilman fails. She 
 deplores Mr. H. G. Wells' scheme of paid 
 motherhood, thinking it would be degrading 
 to women. In the place of such a scheme, 
 she proposes that all married women bear 
 children, but only those who have certain in- 
 clinations and gifts for the care of children be 
 trusted with the training ; others to be per- 
 mitted to follow the line of work for which 
 they have a liking. Nothing, however, would 
 be more fatal to the development of her 
 womanhood than this proposal to have woman 
 follow the line of least resistance. She would 
 become a mere breeding animal, not a mother.
 
 Some Concluding Words 247 
 
 The richness of character which comes from 
 Ufe's complexity would be lost. The strength 
 of character, as well as its tenderness and the 
 breadth of its outlook, comes not from run- 
 ning away from life but from meeting it. Out 
 of the struggle of the home made by one man 
 and one woman, " self-reverent each and rev- 
 erencing each," has come the highest and 
 best type of life the world has yet seen. As 
 one writer puts the matter : " The family af- 
 fords scope for the qualities peculiar to the re- 
 lations between strong and weak, old and 
 young, male and female, and tends to deepen 
 and accentuate them. Whether or not it exag- 
 gerates them wiirdepend upon whether the spir- 
 itual forces in the family have been well or ill 
 balanced. The child who is never encouraged 
 to develop his own initiative and assert his 
 own individuality, the woman whose inflexi- 
 bility is subdued into feebleness, the man 
 whose strength is perverted into tyranny, are 
 all products of an ill-balanced family life. But 
 where the spiritual forces are well balanced 
 within the family, then, out of all the stress
 
 248 Will the Home Survive 
 
 and strain arise qualities of mutual respect, 
 forbearance, and self-control which the solitary 
 individual has little chance of acquiring," and 
 we would add, which the individual, who by 
 any simplifying process tries to take himself 
 out of this complexity, has little chance of ac- 
 quiring. 
 
 Civilized life seems to demand the perma- 
 nent union of man and woman in the home. 
 Nature makes this imperative by sending the 
 helpless infant, which demands the care of the 
 parents for a long period of time. This care 
 cannot be bestowed by any other than the 
 true father and mother, without serious loss to 
 the child. The highest and finest instincts of 
 man call for such a union. However these in- 
 stincts came, whether by heredity, or whether 
 they are a part of the primal instincts of the 
 race, they rebel against the thought of " suc- 
 cessive polygamy." Nature by this primal 
 instinct binds man and woman together for a 
 permanent union. Experience has taught us 
 the superiority of the union made " until death 
 do ye part." It is the type of marriage which
 
 Some Concluding Words 249 
 
 calls on man and woman to exercise self-con- 
 trol, to minimize differences, and to be true to 
 one another for the sake of children and the 
 state. Furthermore, the history of our own 
 time and of the past clearly teaches us that 
 loose marriage ties have always meant licen- 
 tiousness and social corruption. The whole 
 process of evolution has culminated in this 
 type of family life. Unless nature is unrea- 
 sonable, unless the movement of history is 
 blind, the monogamous family will prevail. 
 The type will undergo constant modification, 
 but for the sake of society, and of the unborn 
 and growing generation of children, the 
 changes will be in the line of greater perma- 
 nence, and of social conditions fitted to pro- 
 duce a higher type of Ufe.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 IN 
 
 NOV 2 1 «^^ 
 (tVd U.L. 11-2- 
 
 JAN 1 6 ,#" 
 
 Z MAR 2 2 1971 
 
 MAR 121971 
 
 '° AUG 2 4 197 
 
 URL f^^ ^ 
 
 -ERLIBRAHY LOANiS 
 
 REE WEEKi^W^ DATE OF RE:EIPT 
 
 a- HNTlStM^ 
 
 OL AP^ 
 
 •n 
 
 ■#" 
 
 or up k": 
 
 FEB 
 
 # 
 
 (2 
 
 DiscQt«GE'-y(i!i; 
 
 SEP 1 5 1982 
 
 r- in -7 
 
 Form L9-25ot-9,'47(A5618)444 
 
 UNlViUKSlTl UK CALli-UKWU 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGSLSS 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 / 
 
 ro 
 
 If 3 1158 001 
 
 8 5205 
 
 HQ 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 430 670