•m
 
 Love, MARiiiAi.E, and Divorce, 
 
 The Sovereignty of the Individual. 
 
 A DISCUSSION 
 
 BETWBEN 
 
 HENRY JAMES, HORACE GREELEY, 
 
 AND 
 
 STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 
 
 INCLUDING TDE FINAL REPLIES OF MR. ANDREWS, REJECTED BY THE NEW 
 
 YORK TRIBUNE, AND A SUBSEQUENT DISCUSSION, OCCURRING 
 
 TWENTY YEARS LATER, BETWEEN MR. JAMES 
 
 AND MR. ANDREWS. 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. : 
 
 BENJ. K. TUCKKH, PUBLISHER. 
 
 1889.
 
 Gift oi 
 S. Jay Levey
 
 LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE, 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 The columns of the New York "Tribune" have been abruptly, though not alto- 
 getlier unexpectedly, closed to nie, in the midst of a discussion upon the subjects 
 named in the title-page to this pamphlet, which had been courted and invited by 
 Mr. Horace Greeley, tlie responsible editor of that inlluential journal. After de- 
 taining my I'eplies to himself and to Mr. James from four to eight weeks, Mr. 
 Greeley at length returns tliem to me, accompanied by a private note, approving 
 my criticisms upon Mr. James, but assigning reasons for the declination of botli of 
 my communications. 
 
 The ostensible grounds for excluding my comments upon positions assumed and 
 arguments in sui>port of these positions are, first, that my replies "do not get the 
 discussion one incli ahead." I obviously could not put the discussion ahead by 
 stating and developing new positions, until I liad answered those assumed by my 
 opponent. Whether the real reason for "burking" ray rejoinder was that I did 
 not do the last well enough, or that I did it rather too effectively and conclusively 
 for my continued popularity at the "Tribune" office, so many readers as I shall 
 now be able to reach, with some little industry on my part, will have the opportun- 
 ity to decide. Second, that expressions are employed by me which are offensive to 
 the public sense of decency, and especially that the medical illustration of my lady 
 correspondent is unfit for publication. I propose now to publish the rejected re- 
 plies as written, that the world may judge whether anything I have said or em- 
 bodied in them is of a nature which might reasonal)ly be supposed likely "to dash 
 the modesty" of Mr. Greeley or tlie habitual readers of the "Tribune." 
 
 The defenders of slavery, and the fastidious aristocratic classes everywhere, make 
 a similar objection to that here urged, to displaying the unsightly accompaniments 
 of the systems they uphold. Aluch, however, as I dislike to have my feelings or my 
 tastes offended, I cannot help regarding the actual flogging of women, for example, 
 in Austria, and the salt and pepper applications to tlie torn backs of negroes in tlie 
 Soutli, as not only in themselves worse than the jwn and ink descriptions of the same 
 transactions, but as fully justifying the latter, and actually demanding them, as a 
 means of shaming the facts out of existence. So of the disgusting aud intolerable 
 
 914GD1
 
 4 Love^ Jfarrififfc^ and Divorce. 
 
 features of any oppressive social institution. It is tnio that scenes of abhorrent 
 and enforced debauchery, although coveie<l by the resiioctuhle garb of legality, are 
 not pleasing subjects for contemplation ; but to my mind they are still less fitting 
 to exist at all. If the denial of the latter fact cannot in conscience be made, I 
 have little respect for that sickly suggestion of virtue which, by turning its face 
 to the wall, refuses to see, and hopes for the best, w ithout so much as a protest 
 against the enormous degradation of our common humanity. The position is one 
 not often assumed by Mr. Greeley, and does not seem to me either natural or be- 
 coming to him. 
 
 The third objection is that he (Mr. Greeley) cannot permit his paper to be made 
 the organ of repeatedly announcing and defending doctrines so destructive to the 
 public well-being, and especially that lie caimot tolerate the reiterated assumption 
 that fornication, adultery, etc., are no crimes. I can hardly conceive wijy the first 
 statement of a dangerous or offensive set of opinions should be innocent enough 
 for the columns of the "Tribune," and a re-statement of the same thing for the 
 purpose of answering the objections or misrepresentations of an opponent should 
 be too bad for the same columns. 
 
 I can discover no reason, consistent with good faith, for prohibiting a writer who 
 has been permitted so to commit himself to unpopular doctrines from explaining 
 his meaning until he is entirely comprehensible to all who desire to understand 
 him. 
 
 But if this objection were really such as weighs with the editor of the "Tribune," 
 which I will show presently it is not, it could only be founded in misapprehension. 
 I am as honestly and thoroughly opposed to adultery, for example, as the editor 
 of the "Tribune" can be, except that we might differ in the definition. I charge 
 adultery upon nine-tenths of the married couples in this city, committed not out 
 of, but within the limits of, their marriage bonds. 
 
 Let me endeavor to make myself clear upon this point. If I were in a Catholic 
 country, and derided or denounced the mass and the other ceremonies of the 
 Church, I should clearly be held by the whole people to be an opposer of 
 religion. Indeed, such a deportment might even be found described in the 
 dictionary definition, in that country, of irreligion or atheism; and yet it 
 is quite conceivable by us that just such a course would be, or might be, dic- 
 tated by a zeal for religion beyond anything prompting the defence of the stere- 
 otyped formalities of the place. The ambiguity exists in the diversity of 
 understanding of the word religion. The one believes the thing signified to con- 
 sist in, or at least only to coexist with, certain rights and ceremonies with whicli 
 it has always been associated in his mind; the other has a much higher, and, as we 
 think, a much purer conception of the idea to which the word corresponds. The 
 former is, nevertheless, confirmed in his impression by the outward fact that those 
 whom he has hitherto seen least regardful of the external worship to which he is
 
 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 5 
 
 himself addicted are the lawless and vagabond, who are fitted for every species of 
 criminal act. He is not suflBciently developed in intellect and expansive in com- 
 prehension to discriminate and individualize, and by generalizing too early con- 
 founds me, the religious philosopher and enthusiast, with tlie vulgar herd of the 
 godless and abandoned, — the man who is above him with the man who is below 
 him, — because they both dijfer from him, and in one feature of that difference, to 
 his cloudy understanding, they seem to agree. In the same manner there are those 
 who are below the restraints of the marriage institution, and those who are above 
 their necessity; while the majority in civilized countries are as yet upon a level 
 with the institution, and manufacture the public sentiment in conformity with 
 that fact. 
 
 At the commencement of the Protestant Reformation three centuries ago, the 
 world lay bound by three strong cords of superstition, — the Ecclesiastical, the 
 Governmental, and the Matrimonial. The Church, the State, and the Family, each 
 claimed to l)e of divine origin and to exist by divine right. 
 
 The claim of the Church was shaken by Luther, and from his day to ours, reli- 
 gion and ecclesiastical organization have been separating themselves, as ideas, 
 wider and wider in men's minds. Washington and the American Revolution mark 
 a similar era in political affairs, and modern Socialism foreshadows a corres^Kind- 
 ing change in the sphere of the domestic relations. Men now distinguish pretty 
 clearly that elevation of aims and that devotion to the good and true, which thev 
 now mean by religion, from a church establishment or an organization of any sort. 
 They distinguish, in like manner, the prosperity, the well-being, and civic order 
 of the community from crowns, and cabinets, and parliaments, and standing armies 
 of politicians and soldiers. In like manner, they begin to distinguish purity in the 
 sexual union of loving souls from the sordid considerations of a marriage settle- 
 ment, and even from the humane, pradential, and economical arrangements for 
 the care of offspring. 
 
 The fallacy — exploded by the development of mind — consists in the assumption 
 that " The Church" is essential to the existence of elevated sentiments toward God 
 and one's fellow-beings; that the love of spiritual truths and of the social virtues is 
 not naturally in men, growing with their growth, but that it has to be put into 
 them and kept in them by the constant instrumentality of popes, cardinals, 
 l>ishops, and priests, Councils, Inquisitions, Constitutions, and Synods; that men 
 do not, by nature, love order and justice and harmony in their civic relations, and 
 love it the more in prop ortion to their refinement, education, and development, and 
 only need to know how they are to be attained, and to l^ relieved from hindrances 
 and overmastering temptations adversely, to give themselves gladly to the pursuit 
 of those virtues; but that, on the contrary, these elements likewise have to l>e pr»>- 
 vided and administered by magistrates and bailiffs and all the tedious machinery 
 of govemme;it; and, finally, that men do not, naturally, love their own offspring.
 
 6 Love^ Jlarriage^ (aid Divorce, 
 
 and the mothers of their children, and defereuce for the sex, aud sexual purity, 
 and all the beautiful and rehning influences of that the purest and holiest of all our 
 intercourse on earth, and gravitate powerfully toward the realization of those loves, 
 in proi)ortiou as they become, through all elevating influences, more perfect men, 
 but that those virtues again have to be made, injected, and preserved in human Le- 
 ings by legislation, which, strangely enough, is merely the collective action of the 
 same beings who, taken individually, are assumed to be destitute of those same 
 ipialities. So opposite is the truth that it is the love of these very virtues which 
 cheats and constrains men to endure the organizations and systems under which 
 they groan, because they have been taught that those systems are the only condi- 
 tion of retaining the virtues. It is the discovery of this sham which, I have said, 
 marks the development of mind. The cheat, thus exposed, is to be taken in con- 
 nection with another. It is assumed that just those forms of action which these 
 artificial organizations or patent manufactories of virtue prescribe are the sole true 
 forms of action, that their product is the genuine article, and that every other 
 product is vice. Hence the attention of mankind is turned wholly away from the 
 study of nature, and the human mind gradually trained to the acceptance of au- 
 thority and tradition without question or dissent. 
 
 In this manner, piety is made to signify zeal for the Church or a sect, patriotism" 
 loyalty to a sovereign, and purity fidelity to the marriage bond. In the sanie man-^* 
 ner, irreligion is identified with heresy, treason with the rights of the people, and 
 debauchery with the freedom of the affections. It suits the bigot, the despot, and 
 the male or female prude to foster this confusion of things dissimilar, and to de- 
 nounce the champions of freedom as licentious and wicked men, — the enemies of 
 mankind. 
 
 In the case supposed, the Catholic denounces the Protestant as guilty of im- 
 piety, and so, in this case, oMr. Greeley denounces me, as favoring impiety and 
 adultery. It is clear, as I have said, that whether I do so or not depends upon the 
 definitions of the terms. If by adultery is meant a breach of a legal bond, bind- 
 ing a man and woman between whom there are repugnance and disgust instead <^ 
 attraction and love, to live together in the marital embrace, then there may be 
 some grounds for the charge; but if, as I choose to define it, adultery means 3l 
 sexual union, induced by any other motive, however amiable or justifiable in itselfl 
 than that mutual love which by nature prompts the amative conjunction of tha 
 sexes, materially and spiritually, then do I oppose and inveigh against, and then 
 does Mr. Greeley defend and uphold, adultery. As to purity, I have no idea 
 whatever that Mr. Greeley knows, owing to the perverting influence of authoritj' 
 or legislation, what purity is. Xor does he know what impurity is, for, since all 
 things must be known by contrasts, no man v. hose conceptions upon this subject 
 do not transcend the limits of legality can know it, nor loathe it, 'as those do who, 
 having conceived of or experienced a genu ine fi'eedom, come to distinguish a pru-
 
 Love., 3fai^iage, and Divorce. 7 
 
 rient faucy from a genuine affection, and learn to make the highest and most per- 
 fect affinities of their nature the law of their being. 
 
 But, liowever pernicious my views may be lield to be, the fact of their being so 
 is no reason, according to Mr. Greeley, why they should not be given to the world. 
 At least, although he now urges it as a reason, it is only a few weeks since he 
 stoutly defended the opposite position; and if there be any settled principle or 
 policy to which he has professed and attempted to adhere, it has been, more tliun 
 any other, that all sorts of opinions, good, bud, and "detestable" even, should have 
 a chance to be uttered, and so confirmed or refuted. It has been his favorite doc- 
 trine, apparently, that " Error need not be feared while the Truth is left free to 
 combat it." Very recently, in stating the policy of the "Tribune" he gave the 
 noblest estimate ever pronmlgated of the true function of the newspaper, — namely, 
 "To let every body know what every body else is thinking." To a writer, calling 
 himself "Young America," who objected to the "Tribune" reporting the argu- 
 ments of Catholics, Mr. Greeley replied, in substance, that he should just as read- 
 ily report the doings and arguments and opinions of a convention of atheists, as 
 he should do the same service for his own co-religionists. In this very discussion 
 he says: "We are inflexibly opposed, therefore, to any extension of the privileges 
 of divorce now accorded by our laws, but we are not opposed to the discussion of 
 the subject; on the contrary, we deem such discussion as already too long ne^'- 
 lected." Of Mr. James he says : "We totally differ from him on some quite fun- 
 damental questions, but that is no reason for suppressing what lie has to say." In 
 his reply to me, published herein, he repudiates the right to suppress what I have 
 to sai/, while he avers that he would aid to suppress me if I attempted to act on mv 
 own opinions. Finally, in various waj-s and upon various occasions, the columns 
 of the "Tribune" were formally thrown open for the full discussion of this subject 
 of marriage and divorce, as well for those views of the subject which the editor 
 deems pernicious as for the other side. The editor of the "Observer" reproached 
 him for so doing, and he defended the course as the only truth-seeking and honor- 
 able procedure. He wished especialli/ to drag to the light, in their full extension 
 and strength, those "eminently detestable" doctrines of one phase of which he 
 seems to regard me as a representative, in order that they might forever after have 
 got their quietus from a blow of the sledge-hammer of his logic. If, now, the 
 valiant editor proves shaky in his adherence to this truly sublime position, — of 
 justice and a fair hearing to all parties, — shall we, in kindness to him, find the so- 
 lution in the supposition that he was dishonest in assuming it, or give him the 
 benefit of the milder hypothesis, — that he found himself rather farther at sea than 
 he is accustomed to navigate, and betook himself again in alarm to the coast 
 voyage ? 
 
 I shall leave it to the public to decide, finally, what was the real cause of my 
 getting myself turned out of court before I had fairly stated, much less argued, tny
 
 8 Love^ Marriacje^ and Divorce. 
 
 defence. I shall not, in the meantime, however, hesitate to say what I think of 
 tlie matter myself. I have not the slightest idea that any one of the reasons as- 
 signed inliuenced the decision a straw's weight. The sole cause of my extrusion 
 was that ^Ir. Greeley found himself completely "headed" and hemmed in in the 
 argument, with the astuteness clearly to perceive that fact, while he had neither 
 the dialectical skill to obscure the issues and disguise it, nor the magnanimity 
 frankly to acknowledge a defeat. Hence, there was no alternative but to apply 
 "the gag" and "suppress" me by the exercise of that power which the present or- 
 ganization of the press, and his position in connection with it, lodges in his hands. 
 Ilud fortune made him the emperor of Austria, and me a subject, he would have 
 done the same thing in a slightly different manner, iu strict accordance with his 
 character and the principles he has avowed in this discussion. Such men mistake 
 themselves when they suppose that they have any genuine affection for freedom. 
 They laud it only so far as prejudice or education incline them to favor this or that 
 instance of its operation. They refer their defence of it to no principle. No secur- 
 ity has yet been achieved for the continuance of the enjoyment of such freedom 
 and such rights as we now enjoy; no safeguard even against a final return to des- 
 potism, and thence to barbarism, until the Principle upon which the right to free- 
 dom rests, and the scope of that principle, are discovered, nor until a public 
 sentiment exists, based upon that knowledge. Americans, no more than bar*v 
 barians, have as yet attained to the fulness of that wisdom, and as little as anjf/ 
 does Mr. Greeley know of any such guide through the maze of problems which en- 
 viron him, and perhaps less than most is he capable of following it. 
 
 Circumstances — the fact that he is a prominent editor, that he has strenuously 
 advocated certain reformatory measures, and that he has the reputation of great 
 benevolence — have given to Mr. Greeley somewhat the position of a leader of the 
 reform movement in America. The lovers of progress look to him in that capacity. 
 The publicity and the immense importance of such a position will justify me, I 
 think, in giving my estimate of the man, and of his fitness for the work he is ex- 
 pected to perform, in the same manner as we investigate the character of a politi- 
 cian, or as Mr. Greeley himself would analyze for us the pretensions of Louis 
 Napoleon or the Duke of Wellington. Similar considerations will authorize me in 
 mingling with the portraiture of Mr. Greeley a few shadowy outlines of Mr. James, 
 contrasting them a la Plutarch in his " Lives of the Great Men." 
 
 Li the first place, then, Horace Greeley is not a philosopher, — the farthest from 
 it in the woild. No greater misnomer could seriously be applied to him. He is a 
 man of statistics and facts, but not of principles. He sees broadly over the sur- 
 face, but never down into the centre of things. As a phrenologist would say, the 
 perceptive preponderate over the reasoning faculties. He has no grasp of the 
 whole of anything as a system, but only of detached portions or fragments. 
 Hence, instead of principles, he has whims, and acts from them as if they were
 
 Love^ Marriage, and Divorce. 9 
 
 principles. He does not see clearly the relation of cause and effect. He has no 
 logical, or, what is the same thing, no mathematical mind. He is one of the class 
 of men who will admit candidly that A is equal to IJ, and tliat B is equal to C, 
 and then cavil over or deny point blank that A is equal to C. Hence, he earns 
 the reputation of inconsistency, and a large portion of the puMic believe him dis- 
 honest. This last is, I think, a mistake. ^Ir. (xreeley is a bigot, and bigotry is 
 generally honest. His tergiversation is organic, not intentional. His incapacity 
 for system is shown in the fact that, altliough he has been regarded as the grand 
 embodiment of Fourierism in this country, he never accepted and never gave 
 any intimation that he even understood the fundamental principle of Fourier's 
 whole social theory. 
 
 Fourier (who was really about the most remarkable genius who has yet lived) 
 claims as his grand discovery that Attraction, which Newton discovered to be the 
 law and the regulator of the motions of material bodies, is equally the law and the 
 God-intended regulator of the whole affectional ami social sphere in human affairs ; 
 in other words, that Newton's discovery was partial, while his is integral, and 
 lays the basis of a science of analogy between the material and the spiritual world, 
 so that reasoning may be carried on with safety from one to the other. 
 
 This principle, announced by Fourier as the starting point of all science, has 
 been accepted by Mr. Greeley in a single one of its applications, — namely, the or- 
 ganization of labor, — and wholly rejected by him in its universality, as applicable 
 to the human passions and elsewhere. The farthest he seems ever to have seen in- 
 to the magnificent speculations of Fourier is to tlie economy to be gained by labor 
 done upon the large scale, and the possibility of the retention of profits by the la- 
 borers themselves by means of association. It is as if a man should gain the re- 
 putation of a leader in the promulgation of the Copernico-N"ewtonian system of 
 astronomy by publishing his conviction that tlie moon is retained in her orbit by 
 gravitation toward the earth, while denying wholly that the earth is round, or that 
 the sun is the centre of the system, or that attraction can be supposed to operate 
 at. such an immense distance as that body and the planets. In the same manner, 
 Mr. Greeley can understand the sovereignty of the individual in one aspect, as the 
 assertion of one's own rights, but not at all in the other, — namely, as the conces- 
 sion of the rights of all others, ami tiirough its limital io-i, " to be exercisei] at one's 
 own cost," — the exact deinarcator b 'tween wliat one may and what he may not do. 
 He is a man of great power, antl strikes hard blows when he fairly gets a chance 
 to strike at all, but with his prevailing inconsistency he reminds one of a blind 
 giant hitting out at random in a fray. 
 
 Mr. Greeley has never been able to see anything in the "Cost Principle" except 
 the fact that it abolishes interest on money, and hence he begins at once by oppos- 
 ing it. He has worked hard for his money, and it seems to him a very natural, 
 convenient, and proper thing that that money, so earned, should go on earning more
 
 10 Lcyve, JfarriiKjc, and Divorce, * 
 
 for him while he sleeps. This one cousideration settles, with him, the whole ques- 
 tion. He does not coinprelieiul in this sublime and simple principle a universal 
 law of equity, which distributes wealth exactly according to Right; reduces all 
 products to the miuiinum price, thereby iuunensely augmenting consuniption; re- 
 moves all obstacles to the adjustment of supply and demand; brings all human 
 laber into steady demand; exchanges it for exact equivalents; organizes industry; 
 places evt^ry human being in his or her appropriate work or function; substitutes 
 universal cooperation in the place of universal antagonism ; renders practicable 
 the economies of the large scale, ami the division of labor in every department; 
 houses the whole people iu palaces, surrounds them with luxury and refinement, 
 and hundred-folds the wealth of the world. Such manifold and magnificent results 
 from a simple change iu the method of conducting ordinary trade transcend the 
 capacity of Mr. Greeley and the philosophers of the "Tribune"; while there are 
 now boys, aud girls too, not twelve years of age, who can scientifically demonstrate 
 these results as legitimate and certain, and can, by the aid of this key, solve with 
 facility all the problems of political economy with a clearness, comprehensiveness, 
 and precision never dreamed of by Say, Adam Smith, or Ricardo. 
 
 Mr. Greeley is, undoubtedly, a man of benevolence. lie is profusely, perhaps 
 '^even foolishly, lavish, as he begins, doubtless, himself to think, in his expenditures 
 for the relief of suffering, and for random experiments, without system, or coherent 
 design, for the improvement of the condition of mankind. He is benevolent, too, 
 chiefly in the lower and material range of human affairs. His thought rises no 
 higher, apparently, than supplying men with food for the body, raiment, and shelter. 
 At most he aspires after so much education as will enable them "to cipher" and 
 make profit. He has no experience of, no sympathy with, and no ability to conceive 
 that immense hunger of the soul which craves, and will have, despite all the conven- 
 tionalities of the universe, the gratification of spiritual alfinities, the congenial at- 
 mosphere of loving hearts. The explosive power of a grand passion is all Greek 
 to him. So of all the delicate and more attenuated sentiment which forms the ex 
 quisite aroma of Imman society. He understands best, and appreciates most, the 
 ^coarse, material realities of life. Purely mental exercitation is repugnant to him. 
 
 In this latter characteristic Mr. Greeley is the exact antipodes of Mr. James. 
 This latter gentleman tends powerfully toward metaphysical subtleties and spiri- 
 tual entities, until he is completely lifted off the solid earth, and loses all know- 
 ledge of practical things. The latter is of the class of purely ideal reformers, men 
 who will lounge at their ease upon damask sofas and dream of a harmonic and 
 beautiful world to be created hereafter, while they would be probably the very last 
 to whom the earnest worker, in any branch of human concerns, could resort for 
 aid with any prospect of success. He hates actual reform and reformers, and re- 
 gards benevolence as a disease. 
 
 With the points of difference above indicated, the two men we are now compar-
 
 Love^ 3Iarriafj€^ and Divorce. 11 
 
 ing are alike in the fact that within their respective and opftosite spheres their 
 vision is Icaleidoscopic. This is the word to describe them. It is not a microscope, 
 nor a telescope, nor the healthy natural e}'^ wliich they employ in the examination 
 of a subject. Broken fragments of prejudice reflect the light at a thousand angles 
 of incidence, producing effects which, in the earthy world of Mr. Greeley, are dull 
 and sombre and conmionplace, and in the ethereal region inliabited l)y Mr. James, 
 splendid, sparkling, and beautiful. Neither can be relied on as a guide to anything 
 exact or true. Both are suggestive, inspiring, and disappointing. Neither is a 
 whole man, and the lialves which they do i)resent are not homogeneous and con- 
 sistent. Mr. Greeley would have been greatly improved in exactitude and ta.st« by 
 a mathematical and classical, or even a legal, training; Mr. James, ui\ the con- 
 trary, by an education in a workshop or a counting-house, or the scramble of poli- 
 tical life, anything which would have related him to the actual world around him. 
 Both are superior men, measured by comparison with the still smaller fragments 
 of men which compose the mass of society in its present state of social chaos; 
 both are exceedingly small men, measured by the ideal one may form of integral 
 and well-developed manhood; mens sana in corpnre sano. Let not the selfish ego- 
 tist, whose highest thought has never risen to the well-being of mankind in any 
 shape, "chuckle" over this criticism ui)on Horace Greeley, a man who compares 
 with him as "Hyperion to a SatjT," a man who has done something, and attempted 
 much, with powerful endeavor and honest enthusiasm, for the elevation of human- 
 ity. The criticism is not dictated l)y any disposition to depreciate such a man, 
 but only to ascertain the fitnesses and the unfitnesses of things. IIow far can the 
 great and already powerful and ever-growing party of American social reformers 
 or progressives look to Horace Greeley as a competent conductor through the laby- 
 rinth of problems which the complicated and obviously vicious constitution of so. 
 ciety, resting as a basis upon the depression, wretchedness, and semi-barbarism of 
 the masses of the people, presents to them for resolution. My answer is. Not at 
 all. He lias been a sort of John the Baptist, if you will, — one crying, literally, in 
 the wilderness, "Prepare the way," but with no power to lead the way himself. 
 His mission was to agitato powerfully and successfully, — not to organize. He has 
 no complete theory of his own, cannot compreliend the theories of others, and has 
 little practical talent for construction. He feels keenly the evils aroun<l him, — 
 those, at least, growing out of the first grade of luunan wants, — and grasps 
 eagerly at the first contrivances suggested by anybody for immediate or apparent 
 relief. In all this he differs from Mr. Janu-s, who ranges ideally in a much higher 
 .sphere, who is an astute and terribly searching and merciless, though not alto- 
 gether a sound and reliable, critic of the old, and who, as resin-cts the future, be- 
 longs to the school of seers and prophets, not that of tin' j>hiloso]thers or rational 
 thinkers, — a mere jet il'ean of a>*piration, reaching a liiglu-r elfvafion at soni.» 
 points than almost any other man, but breaking into spray and inipal|>ublu mist.
 
 12 Love^ Marriafje^ and Divorce. 
 
 glittering in the sun, and descending to earth with no weight or mechanical force 
 to effect any great end. It is not such men, one or both, whom the world now 
 chiefly needs. 
 
 JosiAii Warren, an obscure, plain man, one of the people, a conunon-sense 
 thinker, the most profoundly analytical thinker who has ever dealt with this class 
 of subjects, has discovered principles which render the righteous organization of 
 society as simple a matter of science as any other. "The Sovereignty of the Indi- 
 vidual," with its limit, and "Cost the limit of Price," will make his fame, and 
 mark an epoch in the world's history. The realization of the results of those prin- 
 ciples is already begun upon a scale too small, and with a quietness too self-reliant, 
 to have attracted much of the public notice; but with a success satisfactory and 
 inspiring to those practically engaged in the movement. It is somethuig to be 
 able to affirm that there is at least one town in existence where women and chil- 
 dren receive equal remuneration for their labor with men, not from benevolence, 
 bnt upon a well-recognized principle of justice, and by general concurrence, with- 
 out pledges or constraint. 
 
 Mr. Warren is the Euclid of social science. He may not understand algebra, the 
 differential calculus, or fluxions, but all social science, and every beneficent, suc- 
 cessful, and permanent social institution ever hereafter erected, must rest upon the 
 principles which have been discovered and announced by him. There is no alter- 
 native; and reformers may as well begin by understanding that they have a science 
 to study and a definite work to perform, and not a mere senseless, and endless, 
 and aimless agitation to maintain. The work demands pioneers, men who have 
 muscles, and brains, and backbones. It needs men who are architects, and can see 
 intellectually the form, and proportions, and adaptations of the whole immense 
 edifice to be erected; and stone-cutters, and masons, and builders of every grade; 
 men, especially at this stage, wlio can go down to the foundations and excavate 
 the dirt and lay the mud-sills of the social fabric. The Greeleys and the Jameses 
 are not such men. They belong to neither the one nor the other of these classes. 
 They must bide their time, and when the work is done, they will, perhaps, tardily 
 recognize the yac<, though they could not, a priori, comprehend tho principles upon 
 which it was to be accomplished. 
 
 It was for the purpose of foreshadowing the eutire extent of the work to be per- 
 formed, of expounding the principles that are now known, of provoking discussion, 
 opposition, criticism by the ablest pens, of every point I had to propound, that I 
 desired the use of the columns of the "Tribune." It was mere accident — the fact 
 that a discussion was already pending, and that further discussion was invited — 
 which determined tlie point of beginning to be the subject of Marriage and Di- 
 vorce. It is such information as I possess \ipon the whole scope of subjects in 
 wliicli Mr. Greeley is supposed to take a special interest, and of which the "Tri- 
 bune" newspaper is regarded as, in some sense, the organ in this country, that I
 
 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 13 
 
 desired to lay before the world, through its instrumentality. It is that information 
 which, worth much or little, Mr. Greeley refuses to permit his readers to obtain. 
 How far the narrowness of such exclusion comports with the pretensions of that 
 sheet will be judged of differently, doubtless, by different individualities. 
 
 Mr. Greeley has no conception, and never had, of the entirety of the Social Re- 
 volution which is actually, if not obviously, impending; which, indeed, is hourly 
 progressing in our modern society. lie is not a Socialist in any integral, revolu- 
 tionary, and comprehensive sense. He has no apprehension of so broad an idea as 
 a Universal Analogy. He does not know that it is impossible that some one grand 
 department of social affairs — the love relations, for example — should be exactly 
 right upon their old chance foundation, in the absence of science, reflective or fore- 
 seeing, and that all other departments have been radically wrong; just as impos- 
 sible as it is for one member of the human body to be in a state of perfect health, 
 and all the rest to be grievously, almost mortally, diseased. Ignorant of this great 
 fact, and mistaking doctrinal preconceptions or personal preferences for princi- 
 ples, his opinions are a mosaic of contradiction. He is a queer cross between ultra 
 Radicalism and bigoted Orthodoxy, vibrating unsteadily betwixt the two. Hence, 
 as I have said, he is totally unreliable as a leader, and must be an object of constant 
 annoyance and disappointment to his followers and friends, as he is of mingled 
 ridicule and contempt to personal enemies who recognize no compensations in the 
 really excellent traits of the man. 
 
 As an antagonist, or an umpire between antagonists, Mr. Greeley is unfair, 
 tricky, and mean. Owing to the want of consistency in his own mind, and his li- 
 ability to side-influences of all sorts, he is practically dishonest to an eminent 
 degree. It is with reference to unconsciousness and want of design in his prevari- 
 cations that I have pronounced liim honest. Honorable, in the chivalric sense of the 
 term, he has no pretensions of any sort to be regarded. He is lamentably wanting 
 in the more gentle manly attributes of the man. Whoever looks for delicate con- 
 sideration for the sensibilities of another, urbanity of manners, magnanimity, or 
 even that sturdy sense of fair-dealing of which noble specimens maybe seen in the 
 English peasant or prize-fighter, must look elsewliere. Perhaps no better illustra- 
 tions can be given of some of these defects as an impartial journalist and high- 
 minded opponent than the two following facts. !My communications in this 
 controversy were freely placed at the disposition of Mr. James before they were pub- 
 lished, to be conned and studied by him, and were so conned and studied by this 
 latter gentleman, and one of them written round and half replied to in an answer 
 by him to "The Observer," in order that his reply to mo might be dispatched by 
 a dash of the pen and as mere reference to what he had already written. 
 
 The other illustration is the fact that, while I^Ir. Greeley has refused to allow me 
 to reply to his own and Mr. James's arguments, he haa reserved from the public 
 all knowledge of such refusal. He has not liad the decency to inform his readers
 
 14 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 that he has cliosen to close the discussion, abruptly, aud that / am not permitted 
 to reply. lie has done what he could, therefore, to leave the impression upon their 
 minds that I have been silenced, not by the tyrannical use of arbitrary power, but 
 by the force of logic, thus stealing the reputation for victory in a battle which ho 
 was wanting in the courage to fight. Such an issue with Mr. Greeley was, perhaps, 
 not very surprising from the estimate I am now inditing of his organization, pro- 
 pensities, and order of culture. With Mr. James I confess it was somewhat differ- 
 ent. I thought him to have been bred in a circle which, with other faults in 
 abundance, cherishes, nevertheless, a high-minded and chivalric bearing toward 
 antagonists, no less than gentle courtesy toward one's friends. Fidgety exertions, 
 by personal influence in that quarter, to suppress the criticism of an opponent, 
 and an unmannerly readiness to avail one's self of the improprieties of editors and 
 sub-editors in communicating information which ought to be reserved, were ob- 
 stacles in the way of a fair hearing which I did not anticipate. 
 
 It is appropriate that I should mention the origin and antecedents of this dis- 
 cussion. Mr. James published in the "Tribune" a very saucy and superficial re- 
 view of a work by Doctor Lazarus, entitled, "Love vs. Marriage," in which the 
 whole gist of the argument lay in the sheer and naked assumption that the Family, 
 not the Individual, is the nucleus of society. Out of this grew up a discussion be- 
 tween hira and the editor of the New York "Observer," an influential and highly 
 respectable religious newspaper of this city, of the Presbyterian denomination, who 
 took Mr. James to task for some of his heresies, and Mr. Greeley also, for allow- 
 ing the discussion of such subjects at all in his paper. The replies of Mr. James, 
 in which he stated his own positions on the marriage question, seemed to me, while 
 abounding certainly in vigorous invective, so inconsequential and loose in their rea- 
 soning that I ventured, under the general statement of Mr. Greeley that he wished 
 the whole subject thoroughly discussed, to put to IMr. James a few questions, con- 
 sistent replies to which would have greatly cleared the understanding of his posi- 
 tions and strengthened the cause of Freedom, which he assumed to defend. What 
 followed will appear by the discussion itself. 
 
 The scope of my present design does not include the publication of the discus- 
 sion between Mr. James and the "Observer." I shall begin, nevertheless, with one 
 of the replies of Mr. James to that opponent, as well from its necessary connection 
 with what follows as for the purpose of enabling the reader to judge to what de- 
 gree IMr. James entitles himself to delicate and considerate treatment by his own 
 habitual suavity of manner. I regret any appearance of unfairness in omitting 
 the exceedingly able and caustic replies of the " Observer," but my limits preclude 
 so extensive a republication, my purpose being to present here what was excluded 
 from publication elsewhere. 
 
 Before closing this Introduction, I wish to make a few remarks upon the general 
 subject, and especially as respects the dangerous and eminently detestable nature 
 of my principles and views.
 
 Love, 31arriage, and Divorce. 15 
 
 The priestly bigot and intellectual tyrant believes in all honesty that freedom of 
 thought and of conscience are dangerous things for those over whom his influence 
 rules, because he begins by the assumption that he is a useful person, and that the 
 function he performs and the influence he exerts are essential, indispensable even, 
 to the well-being of the people. He cannot be pronounced dishonest on the mere 
 ground that his interest is involved, since the people themselves, whose interest is 
 really adverse, admit and entertain the same idea. It is usually ignorance on both 
 sides; more rarely the relation of impostor and dupe. It is the first assumption 
 which vitiates both his and their whole subsequent chain of reasoning. It is ob- 
 vious enough that freedom of thought and conscience do tend to shake that Author- 
 ity which all parties have begun by admitting it to be indispensable to maintain. 
 Hence freedom of thought and conscience are bad things. No reasoning can be 
 more conclusive, the premise being assumed. Hence investigation is stifled, until 
 men grow bold enough to ask : What is the use of the priestly bigot and intellec- 
 tual tyrant at all? 
 
 So in the political sphere. The petty prince of some obscure principality per- 
 haps honestly desires the education and advancement of his subjects. He encou- 
 rages schools, literature, and the freedom of the press; but he has never had any 
 other thought than that all this is to go along with the statu quo, in relation to him- 
 self and his right to reign. Presently the diffusion of learning and the awakening 
 of mind begin to show themselves in bold and still bolder speculations about self- 
 government, monarchical usurpations, and other matters which threaten danger to 
 statu quo. Our benevolent despot, who has all along tacitly assumed, in perfect 
 good faith, the indispensableness of his own princely services, is alarmed, and at- 
 tempts to impose limits and restraints upon discussion, for the good of the people. 
 This is all the more diflicult for the education they have already received. Specu- 
 lation grows bolder and resistance more rampant as the result of the attempt. 
 Repression, at all hazards, then becomes the only resort of the unconscious tyrant, 
 who at every step has acted, as he thinks, for the best good of his thankless and 
 rebellious subjects. Submission, or bloodshed and butchen,', are their only alter- 
 native. Reaction and Revolution are arrayed in deadly hostility against each 
 other, and the monarch and the conservative portion of the people arc driven to the 
 only conclusion to which they ca.n arrive, — that education and mental enlargement 
 are destructive and bad things, a diabolical element in human society. The fatal 
 blunder is the assumption, as a starting-point, that there is something now exist- 
 ing which must not, in any event, be changed. To keep good this assumption uo- 
 thitu; must be changed, for, when change begins, it will not respect your bounds 
 and limits. Hence ignorance and universal immobility must be .sedulously pre- 
 served. No sound philosophy can ever exist which is tainted by veneration for the 
 sanctities of the old. 
 
 The new in one thing necessitates the new in all things, to the extent that adap-
 
 IG Love^ 3farriage, and Divorce. 
 
 tation and adjustment may demand. Let him who is unready for such sweeping 
 revolution withliold liis hand before he begins to agitate for reform. Prejudice 
 and philosophy do not and cannot comport with each other. 
 
 In the same manner freedom is the open boast, the watchword, and the rallying 
 cry of all the most advanced nations of Christendom. But there is a tacit assuinj> 
 tion in the midst of all this that the family institution must forever remain in- 
 tact. It is the social idol, as royalty has been the political and the Church the 
 religious idol of mankind. This assumption rests, as in the other cases, upon an- 
 other, — namely, tlie utility, the indispensableness of that institution, ^?-.s7, to the pre- 
 servation of purity in the intercourse of the sexes, and, secondly, to the proper care 
 and affectionate culture of children, and, Jinalli/, to the protection and support of the 
 weaker sex. Sexual purity, the preservation of offspring, and the security of the 
 weaker sex are intuitively felt to be right and good; hence the family, it is as- 
 sumed, is sacred and divine, and hence, again, that in no case must it be questioned 
 or assailed. But freedom for the affections is liable to pass the limits of the family, 
 and freedom (of this sort) is therefore a bad thing. Hence, at this point, a reac- 
 tion against freedom. 
 
 The general human mind seldom mistakes in reasoning. The error, if there be 
 one, is more commonly the false assumption of some fact or facts to reason from, 
 or else incompleteness in carrying on the process to its final results. If the fact be 
 so that purity can be cultivated and preserved, children properly reared, and women 
 protected only in the family, all the other consequences logically follow; and there 
 is one species of human freedom — an exception to the general estimate of that at- 
 tribute of manhood — a curse and a blight instead of a blessing, a thing to be 
 warred on and exterminated, not to be aspired after, lauded, and cherished. 
 
 It is certainly a legitimate question to ask. Is the fact really so? Are the three 
 desiderata I have indicated only attainable through a certain existing institution 
 which mankind have, marvellously enough, had the wisdom to establish — in the 
 midst of their general ignorance and undevelopment in all other respects — up- 
 on precisely the right basis? 
 
 First, then, as respects the first point, the preservation of sexual purity. To de- 
 termine whether perpetual and exclusive marriage is essential to that end, we must 
 first answer the question: What constitutes purity? To this question, the com- 
 mon, I may say the vulgar answer, Mr. Greeley's answer, is fidelity to the mar- 
 riage relation (or, in the absence of that bond, no sexual relations at all). Put in- 
 to categorical formula, the two propositions are then simply as follows : 1. The 
 marriage institution is sacred because it is indispensable to the preservation of 
 purity. 2. Purity is the preservation of the marriage institution. Of course this 
 rotary method of ratiocination is simply absurd and cannot for a moment satisfy 
 the really philosophical or inquiring mind. 
 
 Let me, then, give a different answer to this question, and see who will demur.
 
 Love^ Marriaye^ and Divorce. 17 
 
 Sexual purity, I will say, is that kind of relation, whatever it he, between the sexes which 
 contributes in the highest degree to their mutual health and happiness, taking into account 
 the remote as well as the immediate results. 
 
 If this deliiiition is accepted, theu clearly the whole field is open to new, radical, 
 and scientific iuvestigation, physiological, psychological, and economical, infinitely 
 broader and more thorough than the world has ever yet even thought of applying; 
 and he nmst be a fearful egotist who, in the present stage of our experience, can ven- 
 ture to afluni that he knows the whole truth, the final word of science, on the sub- 
 ject. One thing only is certain, — namely, that absolute freedom, accompanied, 
 too, by the temporary evils of an ignorant use of that freedom, is a condition pre- 
 cedent even to furnish the facts upon wliich to reason safely at all upon the matter. 
 Any settlement of the question by us now would have hardly as much value as a 
 decision made in the heart of Russia upon the best form of human government. 
 Xo pretension can be made that purity, in the sense in which I use the term, has 
 ever yet been attained by laws to enforce it. Prostitution, in marriage and out of 
 it, and solitary vice, characterize society as it is. 
 
 If the workings of freedom should prove that purity in this sense is attainable 
 otherwise, this argument in behalf of compulsory marriage fails. On the contrary, 
 if freedom is forever prohibited hereafter, as it forever has been prohibited hereto- 
 fore, how is it to be known that such a result would not come of it? One portion 
 of mankind believe there would, and another that there would not, while the op- 
 portunity is refused to submit the question to the test of experiment and fact. 
 
 The second point is the care and culture of children. Certainly small boast can 
 be made of the success of mankind hitherto in the practice of that art, when sta- 
 tistics inform us that nearly one-half the whole human family die in infancv! 
 And when nine-tenths of the remainder are merely grown-up abortions, half made 
 before birth, and worse distorted and perverted by ignorant mismanagement and 
 horrible abuses afterward! Alas! Do children get cared for and reared in the 
 family arrangement now with any skill, any true science, any just appreciation of 
 the real nature of that sublime but delicate task, whicli demands more precise 
 knowledge, more refined instincts, and more prudence an<l judgment than any 
 other? Do our existing domestic institutions commend themselves by their fruits, 
 or are the wholesale infanticides and the dreadful tortures of childhood now pre- 
 valent of a kind, the bare repetition of which will cause the ears of a later and 
 wiser generation to tingle? Is it not possible that our most cherished social usages 
 may be as terrible to them to contemplate as the hecatombs of political murders 
 by the Neapolitan Government are at this day to us? 
 
 Supi)Ose, now, that a future experience should demonstrate the fact that, of chil- 
 dren reared in unitary nurseries, conducted by skilled and professional nurses, 
 matrons, and physiologists, the mothers — except those engaged by choice in the 
 nui-sery — being, at most, within reach for the purpose of suckling their infnnts at
 
 18 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 given hours, not one in a hundred died during the first five years; suppose that, 
 by such an arrangement, the same labor that now requires the time of fifty women 
 could be 80 systemised as to occupy no more than that of five, leaving forty-five 
 persons free for productive industry in other departments; suppose that the chil- 
 dren so reared grew up with larger frames and sounder constitutions, brighter in- 
 tellects, livelier affections, and superior faculties in every way; suppose that all 
 this were so obvious and incontestable that no one ventured to dispute it, and so 
 attractive that hardly any mother would desire or venture to attempt the isolated 
 rearing of her babe, — what would become of this second ground upon which the 
 family institution is maintained by force of arms as the sole means of appropriate 
 guardianship for childhood? 
 
 The third and last basis of the family is the protection and maintenance of 
 women themselves. Here again it does not seem to me that the system in vogue, 
 by which the husband and father earns all the money and doles it out in charitable 
 pittances to wife and daughters, who are kept as helpless dependents, in ignorance 
 of business and the responsibilities of life, has achieved any decided title to our 
 exalted admiration. The poor stipendiaries of paternal or marital munificence are 
 liable at any time to be thrown upon their own resources, with no resources to be 
 thrown upon. The absence of all prior necessity for the exercise of prevision un- 
 fitting them for self-support and protection, and the system affording them none 
 but the most precarious assurances, their liabilities are terrible, and daily experi- 
 ences are cruel in the extreme. At the best, and while the protection endures, its 
 results are mental imbecility and bodily disease. There is hardly one woman in 
 ten in our midst who knows from year's end to year's end what it is to enjoy even 
 tolerable health. The few who, despite the system, attain some development, are 
 tortured by the consciousness and the mortific&tion of their dependancy, and the 
 perpetual succession of petty annoyances incident to it; of which their lordly com- 
 panions, self-gratulatory for thek own intentions of kindness, are profoundly un- 
 conscious. Shut up to the necessity of this continuous and exhausting endurance, 
 wives have the same motives that slaves have for professing contentment, and 
 smile deceitfully while the heart swells indignantly and the tear trembles in the 
 eye. Man complains habitually of the waywardness and perversity of woman, and 
 never suspects that he himself, and his own false relations to her, are the key to 
 the thousand apparent contradictions in her deportment and character. The last 
 thing that the husband is likely to know, in marriage as it is, is the real state of 
 the heart that throbs next him as he lays his head upon his own pillow. Woman, 
 as well as the slave, must first be wholly free before she can afford to take the risk 
 to speak freely. She dare not utter boldly her own complaint, and she will even 
 denounce openly, while she prays fervently in secret for the God-speed of the friend 
 who does it for her. 
 
 The great lesson for the world to learn is that human beings do not need to he taken
 
 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 19 
 
 care of. What they do ueed. is such couditious of justice and freedom and friendly 
 cooperation that they can take care of themselves. Provided for l>y another, and sub- 
 ject to his will as the return tribute, they pine, and sicken, and die. This is true 
 equally of women as of men; as true of wives as it is of vassals or serfs. Our 
 whole existing marital system is the house of bondage and the slaughter-house of 
 the female sex. Whether its evils are inherent or incidental, whether they belong 
 to the essence or the administration of the institution, whether they are remediable 
 without or only by means of revolution, are the questions that have now to be 
 discussed. 
 
 Suppose, then, that in some future day, under the operation of equity, and with 
 such provision as has been hinted at for the care of children, women find it as easy 
 to earn an independent living as men ; and that, by the same arrangement, the ex- 
 j^nse of rearing a child to the early age at which, by other corresponding arrange- 
 ments, it is able to earn its own living, is reduced to a minimum, — a slight 
 consideration for either parent. Suppose that suggestions of economy have sub- 
 stituted the large unitary edifice for the isolated home, and that, freed by these 
 changes from the care of the nursery and the household, woman is enabled, even 
 while a mother, to select whatever calling or profession suits her tastes, and pursue 
 it with devotion, or vary it at will; and suppose that, under this system of living, 
 universal health returns to bloom upon her cheek, and that she develops new and 
 unexpected powers of mind, exquisiteness of taste, and charms of person ; that, in 
 fine, while relieving the other sex entirely from the responsibility and burden of 
 her support, she proves incontestably her equality with man in points where it has 
 been denied, and her superiority in a thousand beautiful endowments which free- 
 dom alone has enabled her to discover and exhibit, — what, under these circuni- 
 stances, becomes of the third and last necessity for the maintenance of the 
 institution of exclusive and perpetual and compulsory marriage? 
 
 Carry this supposition still further; assume, for illustration, that in freedom the 
 tendency to perpetual conjugal partnership should vindicate itself, as supposed by 
 Mr. James, as the natural law of the subject; or contrariwise, let it be assumed 
 that a well-ordered variety in the love relations is shown by experience to be just 
 as essential to the highest development of the human being, both spiritually and 
 materially, as variety in food, occupation, or anmsement; or suppose, to render the 
 case still stronger, that some new and striking pathological fact is discovered and 
 put beyond doubt; for example, that a specific disease, at present a scourge of 
 mankind, like consumption or scrofula, is wholly due to the want of certain subtile 
 magnetic influences, which can only come from a more unrestrained contact and 
 freedom of association between the sexes. Let us add that just that freedom of 
 contact and association are found to moderate the passions instead of inflaming 
 them, and so to contribute, in the hii^liest degree, to a general purity of life and the 
 prevalence of the most fraternal and tender re'_r:uil. Suppose. uMin, fliat woman,
 
 20 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce, 
 
 when free, should exhibit au inherent, God-given tendency to accept only the no- 
 blest and most highly endowed of the opposite sex to be the recipients of her choic- 
 est favors and the sires of her offspring, rejecting the males of a lower degree, as 
 the females of some species of the lower animals (who enjoy the freedom that 
 woman does not) are known to do ; and that the grand societary fact should appear 
 in the result that by- this means Nature has provided for an infinitely higher deve- 
 lopment of the race. Suppose, indeed, finally, that the freedom of woman is found 
 by experience to have in every way a healthful, restraining, and elevating influence, 
 in the same degree that the freedom of man, to subjugate her, as in polygamic na- 
 tions, has had an influence to degrade and deteriorate the race; and that, gene- 
 rally, God and nature have evidently delegated to woman the supremacy in tlie 
 whole affectional realm of human affairs, as they have consigned it to man in the 
 intellectual, — a function she could never begin rightly to perform until first freed 
 herself from the trammels of conventionalism, the false sanctities of superstition 
 and custom. Suppose all this to have been thoroughly well-established both by 
 reason and fact, what then becomes of this last ground of necessity for the institu- 
 tion of legal marriage, or of marriage at all? 
 
 When purity, in its best sense, should be far better understood, and more pre- 
 valent without it than with it, and women and children better protected and pro- 
 vided for, where would be the continued demand for the maintenance of the now 
 sacred and inviolable family institution? What, indeed, would render it impossi- 
 ble that that institution should fall into contempt, as other institutions, hallowed 
 in former times by equally sacred associations and beautiful idealizations, have 
 done? 
 
 Who can foretell that isolated families may not come hereafter to be regarded 
 as hot-beds of selfishness and narrow prejudice against the outside world, separat- 
 ing and destroying the unity of the human race; the same thing as between neigh- 
 bors that patriotic prejudices and antipathies and "mountains interposed" are 
 between nations? Who shall say that it may not, perchance, be quoted upon us 
 one or more generations hence, as some evidence of our barbarism, that a rich and 
 religious citizen could sit down in quiet and happiness, surrounded by his wife and 
 children, in the midst of comfort and luxury, bless God for his abundant mercies, 
 and cite the Scripture that " He who provides not for his own household hath de- 
 nied the faith, and is worse than au infidel," while wretched women and babes, 
 with sensibilities as keen and capacities for happiness as great as those possessed 
 by his own swee* lambs, sit in their desolate houses within a stone's throw of his 
 own aristocratic door, shivering with cold, pinched with hunger, and trembling 
 with apprehension of the sharp knock and gruff voice of a landlord's agent, come 
 to thrust them out of even those miserable mockeries of homes? Who can assert 
 with confidence that a larger conception of the bvotlierhood of humanity than now 
 prevails — except as a traditional reminiscence of the teachings of Christ or the
 
 Love, ]\farrl(ffip, and Divorce. 21 
 
 Utopian dreams of the visionary — may not, in a few years, with the rapid progress 
 of events in these modern times, be translated into fact? And who can affirm 
 positively that the discovery may not be made hereafter that the last grand hin- 
 drance and obstacle to the realization of that noble ideal of human destiny was the 
 superstitious sanctification in the popular mind of marriage and the family institu- 
 tion, which refused to permit them to be examined and an^nded, or abolished, 
 according to the dictates of sound reason and the exigencies of the case, in the 
 same manner as the like veneration for ecclesiastical establishments and royalty 
 have hindered the race, at earlier stages, in the same onward and upward 
 progression ? 
 
 Observe, I am not dogmatizing in anything that I say here. I am not even af- 
 firming that any one of these suppositions is likely to come true. I am simply es- 
 tablishing the fact that the righteousness and permanency of marriage and the 
 family institution are fair subjects, like any other, for thought, for questioning, for 
 investigation. I am entering my calmly-stated but really indignant protest against 
 the assumption that there is any possible subject, in this age and nation, with our 
 antecedents and pretensions, too sacred to be discussed. I am adding my testi- 
 mony to the truth of the position assumed by the despotist and the slaveholder 
 that the same evils which exist under the institutions of despotisms and slavery 
 exist likewise under the institution of marriage and the family, and that the same 
 principles of right which men seek to apply in this day to the former will not leave 
 the latter unquestioned or unscathed. I am giving to the lazy public some intima- 
 tion that there are more thing.s in heaven and earth than have yet been dreamed 
 of in their philosophy. I am breaking into ripples the glassy surface of that dead 
 sea of conservatism which reflects Socialism as a bugbear to frighten children with. 
 I am giving to the world a sample of the ideas, and trains of reasoning, facts, and 
 principles which the New York "Tribune," professedly the organ of new thought, 
 refuses to permit to be communicated to its readers, as matter too bad to be pub- 
 lished. And finally, and specially, I am making an historical note of the fact, for 
 future reference, that such ideas as these were too far in advance of public senti- 
 ment, at the middle of this century, at the metropolis of the most progressive 
 country in the world, to find utterance anywhere through the public press, the 
 "Tribune" being, after all, the most liberal journal we have yet established 
 among us. 
 
 What I am able to say in this brochure is, of course, a mere fragment of the so- 
 cial theories which I wished to propound. What I needed was a continuous year 
 of discussion, through such a medium a.s the " Tribune," in conflict with the first 
 minds in the country, — philosophers, politicians, and theologians, invited or pro- 
 voked into the fray, — at the end of which time the public would have begun to 
 discover that their current social dogmas must give way before the sublime principles 
 of a new and profoumlly important srionce. wliirh d.'fcriiiiiif-^ nT-u-tlv the true
 
 22 Love^ JIarriogc, and Divorce. 
 
 basis of all social relations. I wanted especially to propound a few questions to 
 the Rev. Dr. Bethuiie, to test the good faith of liis broad statement of the doctrine 
 of religious freedom, made in his assault upon Bisliop Hughes at the Madiai meet- 
 ing at Metropolitan Hall. Does he include the Mormons and tlie Turks, with their 
 polygamy, and the Perfectionists, with their free love, in his toleration, or would 
 he, with Mr. Greeley, make his exceptions when it came to the pinch, and go with 
 Mr. Greeley for re-lighting on American soil the fires of religious persecution, ami 
 thrust those whose conscience differs from his upon certain points into prison, or 
 burn them at the stake? 
 
 The question is rapidly becoming a practical one in this country, when a whole 
 territory is already in the possession of a sect of religionists who openly profess 
 and are ready to die for the doctrine of a plurality of wives. Honor to General 
 Cass, the patriarch of the senate, who has recently stated the true and the truly 
 American principle, — virtually the Sovereignty of the Individual. He speaks as 
 follows : 
 
 Independent of its connection with the human destiny hereafter, I believe the fate of re- 
 publican governments is indissolubly bound up with that of the Christian religion, and that 
 people who reject its holy faitli will find themselves the slaves of evil passions and of arbi- 
 trary power, and I am free to acknowledge that I do not see altogether without anxiety some 
 of the signs which, shadowed forth around us by weak imaginations with some, and irregu- 
 lated passion with others, are producing founders and followers of strange doctrines, whoso 
 tendencies it is easier to perceive than it is to account for their origin and progress; but they 
 icilljind their remedy, not in legislation, but in a sound religious opinion, whether they in- 
 culcate an appeal to God by means of stocks, and stones, and rappings (the latest and most rid- 
 iculous experiment upon human credulity), or whether they seek to pervert the Scriptures 
 to the purposes of their libidinous passions, by destroying that safeguard of religion and so- 
 cial order, the institution of marriage, and by leading lives of unrestrained intercourse, — 
 thus making proselytes to a miserable imposture, unworthy of our nature, by the temptations 
 of unbridled lust. This same trial was made in Germany some three centuries ago, in a 
 period of strange abominations, and failed. It will fail here. Where the Word of God is 
 free to all, no such vile doctrine can permanently establish itself. 
 
 This is a genuine though indirect recognition of individual sovereignty; and, 
 while marred by a few ungentlemanly flings at what the speaker obviously docs 
 not understand, it is as much above the puny and miserable suppression doctrines 
 of Mr. Greeley — the sickly relics of the dark ages — as the nineteenth century is 
 in advance of the twelfth. 
 
 By my reference to Dr. Bethune, it is but justice to say that I have no reason to 
 doubt that he, too, is honest in his statement of the doctrine of religious freedom, 
 and that he would, in practice, recognize my right to live with tliree women, if my 
 conscience approved, as readily and heartily as he would contend for the right to 
 read the Protestant Bible at Florence. If not, I hope he will take an opportunity 
 to restate his position. I needed a lengthened discussion, as I said, not only to ex-
 
 Lovc^ j\farrl(irje^ (ind Divorce. 23 
 
 press my own ideas, but also to fiiul where others actually stand upon this most 
 vital question, — the legitimate limit of human freedom. Hut such discussions, 
 carried on with the dauntless intrepidity of truth-seeking, are not for the columns 
 of the "Tribune." The readers of that journal must be kept in the dark. I 8ul> 
 mit, and await the establishment of another organ. Meantime, those who may 
 chance to become interested in ta more thorough exhibit of principles stated or ad- 
 verted to in these pages are referred to "Equitable Commerce" and "Practical 
 Details in Equitable Commerce," by JosiAii Warre.v, and "The Science of So- 
 ciety," by myself, published by Fowlers & Wells, New York,* and John Chapman, 
 London, which I take this opportunity thus publicly to advertise, since the news- 
 paper press generally declines to notice them, and to such other works as may be 
 hereafter announced on the subject. 
 
 Stephen Peaul Andrews. 
 New York, April, 1853. 
 
 •" The Siienco of Society " is now imblished by Sarah E. Uolmes, Box 33C6, Boston, Maa»
 
 24 LovCs Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 DISCUSSION. 
 
 MR. JAMES'S KEPLY TO THE NEW YOUK OBSEUVER. 
 
 To the Editor of the New York Tribune: 
 
 Please :illo\v me the liospitality of youv paper to right myself with the New York 
 "Observer," and so add to the inauy obligations I already owe you. 
 
 Yours truly, H. James, 
 
 novemueu 15. 
 
 New 1''ouk, Saturday, Nov. 13, 1852. 
 To the Editor of the New York Observer: 
 
 All article in your paper of today does me so much injustice that I cannot afford 
 to let it pass unnoticed. 
 
 The drift of your assault is to charge me with hostility to the marriage institu- 
 tion. This charge is so far from being true that I have invariably aimed to ad- 
 vance the honor of marriage by seeking to free it from certain purely arbitrary and 
 conventional obstructions in reference to divorce. For example, I have always 
 argued against Mr. Greeley that it was not essential to the honor of marriage that 
 two persons should be compelled to live together when they held the reciprocal 
 relation of dog and cat, and that in that state of tilings divorce might profitably 
 intervene, provided the parties guaranteed the State against the charge of their 
 offspring. I have very earnestly, and, as it appears to me, very unanswerably, 
 contended for a greater freedom of divorce on these grounds, in the columns of the 
 "Tribune," some years since; but I had no idea that I was thus weakening the 
 respect of marriage. I seemed to myself to be plainly strengthening it, by remov- 
 ing purely arbitrary and damaging obstructions. The existing difficulty of divorce 
 is one of those obstructions. You will not pretend to say that the legislative sanc- 
 tion of divorce now existing discharges the marriage rite of respect? How, then, 
 shall any enlargement of that sanction which I propose avail to do so? Is it pos- 
 sible that a person exposed to the civilizing influences of a large city like this so 
 long as you have been should see no other security for the faithful union of hus-
 
 Love^ Marrlfifjp^ and Divorce. 25 
 
 band and wife than that which dates from the police office? I can not believe it. 
 You must know UKuiy married parliiers, if you have been even ordinarily fortunate 
 in your company, who, if tin; marriage institution were formally abolislied tomor- 
 row, would instantly annul that legal abolition again by the unswerving constancy 
 of their hearts and lives. 
 
 No man has a more cordial, nor, as I conceive, a more enlightened respect for 
 marriage than I have, whether it be regarded, 1st, as a beautiful and very perfect 
 symbol of religious or metaphysic truth, or, 2d, as an independent social institu- 
 tion. I have fully shown its claim for respect on both these grounds in a number 
 of the "Tribune" which you quoted at the time, but which it serves your dishon- 
 est instincts now to overlook. You probably are indifferent to the subject in its 
 higher and primary point of view, but your present article proves that you have 
 some regard for it in its social aspects. If you regard marriage, then, as a social 
 institution, you will, of course, allow that its value depends altogether upon the 
 uses it promotes. If these uses are salutary, the institution is honorable. If, on 
 the contrary, they are mischievous, the institution is deplorable. Now, no one 
 charges that the legitimate uses of the marriage institution are otherwise than 
 good. But a social institution, whose uses are intrinsically good, may bo very 
 badly administered, and so produce mischief. This, I allege, is the case with the 
 marriage institution. It is not administered livingly, or with reference to the pre- 
 sent need of society, but only traditionally, or with reference to some wholly past 
 state of society. In a disorderly condition of society, like that from which we have 
 for the last two centuries been slowly emerging, men of wealth and power, men of 
 violence and intrigue, would have laughed at the sacredest affections, and rendered 
 the family security nugatory, had not society fortified marriage by the most strin- 
 gent safeguards. The still glaring inequality of the sexes, moreover, would have 
 led kings and nobles into the most unrebuked licentiousness, and consequently into 
 the most brutal contempt for woman, had not the politico-ecclesiastical regime 
 almost utterly inhibited divorce. The elevation of woman in Christendom has 
 thus been owing exclusively to a very rigid administration of the marriage insti- 
 tution in the earlier periods of our social history, But what man of wealth and 
 power, what man of violence and intrigue, is there now to take away a man's wife 
 from him? (No doubt there is a very enormous clandesthie violation of the mar- 
 riage bond at the present time; careful observers do not hesitate to say an almost 
 unequalled violation of it; but that is an evil which no positive legislation can 
 pnivent, because it is mnnifestlij based upon a popular contempt for the present indolent 
 and vicious administration of the late. The only possible chance for correcting it 
 depends, as I have uniformly insisted, upon a change in that administration, — 
 that is to say, upon freely legitimating <Hvorcc, within the limits of a complete 
 guarantee to society against the support of offspring; because in that case you 
 place the inducement to mutual fulelity no longer in the base legal bondage of the
 
 26 Love^ ^rarrlafjc^ and Divorce. 
 
 parties merely, but in their reciprocal inward sweetness or human ity. And this is 
 an appeal which, when frankly and generously made, no man or woman will ever 
 prove recreant to. 
 
 Again, in the "Tribune" article of last summer which you quote (or, ratlur, 
 shamelessly misquote) it seemed to me the while that I was saying as good a wor.! 
 for marriage as had ever been said beneath the stars. I was writing, to be sure, 
 upon a larger topic, and alluded to marriage only by way of illustration. But 
 what I said about it then seems to me still completely true. And, true or untrue, 
 why do you not cite me before your readers honestly? You allow your printer to 
 turn the first quotation you make into sheer nonsense, and you so bedevil the; 
 second with ostentatious and minatory italics that a heedless reader will look upon 
 the imbecile tumefaction as so much solid argument, and infer that any one who 
 can provoke that amount of purely typographic malediction from a pioiis editor 
 must needs be closely affiliated — you know where. 
 
 Now, as a matter of speculation merely, why should you desire to prejudice me 
 before the community? I am a humble individual, without any influence to com- 
 mend ray ideas to public acceptance, apart from their intrinsic truth. And if, as 
 you allege, my desire and aim be to destroy the marriage institution, I am at least 
 not so foolish as to attempt that labor by a mere exhibition of will. I must have 
 adduced some colorable reasons for its destruction. Will you be good enough to 
 tell me where I have exhibited these reasons? Or, failing to do so, will you be 
 good enough to confess yourself a defeated trickster, unworthy the companion- 
 ship of honest men? 
 
 Doubtless, Mr. Editor, you address an easy, good-natured audience, who do not 
 care to scan too nicely the stagnant slipslop which your weekly ladle deals out to 
 them. But the large public perfectly appreciates your flimsy zeal for righteous- 
 ness. Every reasonable man knows that, if I assail a cherished institution with- 
 out the exhibition of valid reasons, I alone must prove the sufferer, and that 
 immediately. Every such person therefore suspects, when a pious editor goes out 
 of his way to insult me for this imputed offence, that his apparent motive is only 
 a mask to some more real and covert one. And this suspicion would be palpably 
 just in the present instance. You are by no means concerned about any hostility, 
 real or imaginary, which I or any other person may exhibit toward the mariiaL;e 
 institution. I do you the justice, on the contrary, to believe that you would only 
 be too happy to find me and all your other fancied enemies "bringing up" — to 
 use your own choice expression — "against the seventh commandment." But vvj 
 benevolence, at least, is quite too weak to afford you that gratification. Natural- 
 ists tell us that the sepia, or cuttle-fish, when pursued, is in the habit "of ejecting 
 an mky fluid, which colors the adjacent waters so deeply as to afford it an easy 
 means of escape." Now, science, in revealing to us the splendid analogies of 
 nature, teaches us that the sepia, or cuttle-fish, of these watery latitudes is only an
 
 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 27 
 
 oblique or imperfect form of the tricky sectarian editor of higher ones : even as 
 that tricky editor is himself only an oblique or imperfect prophecy of the integral 
 MAN of still higher latitudes. Accordingly, if we take the trouble to explore the 
 inky and deceptive puddle you have trajected in our path, we shall find that the 
 origin of your ill-will lies very much behind that. We shall find that it lies alto- 
 gether in the criticism which I have occasionally brought to bear upon that fossil 
 and fatiguing Christianity, of which the "Observer" is so afflictive a type, and its 
 editor so distinguished and disinterested a martyr. Indulge mo with a few lines 
 upon this topic. 
 
 Christianity, in its only real or vital apprehension, seems to me to imply a ver}' 
 perfect life for man, or one which safely disuses all professional knavery, as it is 
 sure to disappoint all merely professional or private ambition. I have expressed, 
 poorly enough I allow, my dawning conception of this majestic life. It is at last 
 the veritable life of God in the soul of man, and one must celebrate it with stam- 
 mering lips rather than be wholly silent. It runs through one's veins like new 
 wine, and, if one's speech thereupon grew lyrical and babbling, it should rather 
 be an argument of praise to the late-found and authentic Bacchus than of blame 
 to his still unfashioned worshipper. I have tried to put this miraculous and divine 
 wine into our old customary bottles, but the bottles pop, whiz, sputter, and crack 
 so on every side, that my wife and children and servants laughingly protest that 
 we shall have no rest short of absolutely new bottles. Now, these bottles admit 
 of no private manufacture. They are so vast in compass, and so costly in material, 
 that they claim all the resources and all the wit of society to fashion them. There 
 is no harm, of course, in a patient citizen like me occasionally stirring up the pure 
 mind of his brethren by way of remembrance, or indulging a word now and then 
 upon the pattern the fabric should follow. Accordingly, I do drop an occasional 
 word in the columns of the " Tribune," and would be happy to do the same in 
 those of the "Observer," on this interesting topic: hinting how, as I conceive, our 
 good o\i\favnly bottle, conjugal bottle, and social bottle generally — might be des- 
 troyed f — no I might bo saved from destruction, renewed, regenerated, and reformed, 
 by wise and timely legislation. I am happy to say, too, that my efforts seem to be 
 taken in growing good part. Virtuous and genial Presbyterians even, as well as 
 mere unregimented sinners, are beginning to express an interest in the attractive 
 theme, and a hope of good fruit to come out of its seasonable agitation. For it is 
 evident to every honest mind that, if our conjugal, parental, and social ties gene- 
 rally can be safely discharged of the purely diabolic element of outward force, tlicy 
 mast instantly become transfigured by their own inward, divine, and irresistible 
 loveliness. 
 
 Hinc illae lachrymce! This is the open source of your tribulation, the palpable 
 spring of your ineffectual venom. With the instinct unhappily of self-preserva- 
 tion, you perceive that, if our social relations once become orderly, not by con-
 
 28 Love^ Marriage, and Divorce, 
 
 straint, but of an inherent and divine necessity, there will bje a speedy end to the 
 empire of cant and false pretension. For if a living piety once invade the human 
 mind, a piety attuned to the ministries of science, a piety which celebrates God no 
 longer as the mere traditional source of lapsed and contingent felicities, but as tlie 
 present and palpable doer of divinest deeds, — such as feeding the starving hordes 
 of the earth's population, clothing the naked, enlightening the ignorant, comfort- 
 ing the dejected, breaking the yoke of every oppression, cleansing the diseased 
 conscience, banishing want, and sickness, and envy, and diffusing universal plenty, 
 peace, and righteousness, — what, in Heaven's name, will become of that vapid 
 piety which now exhales only in the form of selfish and mendicant supplication, 
 or else of impudent interference with the privacies of other people's souls? 
 
 I have not yet had the pleasure of reading any of Mrs. Smith's publications, and 
 can not, therefore, estimate your candor in associating her labors with mine. But 
 inasmuch as I perceive from the newspapers that that well-intentioned lady is 
 engaged in a very arduous crusade against the natural and obvious distinction of 
 the sexes, the which distinction I meanwhile set great store by, I presume your 
 good will in this instance to be as transparent as I have found it in others, and 
 thank you accordingly. 
 
 As to your attempt to insinuate a community of purpose or tendency between 
 myself and that ramification of your own religious body, known as the Oneida 
 Perfectionists, I may safely leave it to the scorn of those among your readers who 
 can estimate the cowardice which, in wanton disregard of a neighbor's good name, 
 hints and insinuates the calumny it dares not boldly mouth. These men, as I 
 learn from their own story, are ultra — that is to say, consistent — Calvinists, who 
 have found in the bosom of the doctrines you yourself profess the logical warrant 
 of the practices which you nevertheless condemn. From a conversation or two 
 which I have had with some of their leaduig men, I judged them to be persons of 
 great sincerity, but of deplorable fanaticism, who were driven to the lengths whicli 
 you so sternly reprobate strictly because they exemplify what you do not, — a logi- 
 cal abandonment to their own religious convictions. I told them candidly that 
 any man of common sense must give short shrift in his regard to a deity who 
 elected men to the privilege of leading disorderly lives; but at the same time I saw 
 that they were no way amenable to the tribunal of common sense. An unhappy 
 religious fanaticism, the flowering of your own fundamental principles, has lifted 
 them out of that wholesome judicature, and they must henceforth drift whitherso- 
 ever the benignant powers — who, after all, are paramount in this world, spite of 
 many "Observers " — will let them. But at the same time I must avow that these 
 strenuous and unhandsome sectarists appeared to me far worthier of tender com- 
 passion than of brutal public vituperation. Honest, upright souls they seemed at 
 bottom, though sadly misguided by an insane sense of duty, and delicate women 
 were among them, too, full no doubt of woman's indestructible truth. They were
 
 Love^ Marriafje^ and Divorce. 29 
 
 fathers, and husbands, and brothers, like njyself, disfigured, to be sure, by a mor- 
 bid religious conscience, but no less capable of suffering on that account whatever 
 I suffered. And so I could not help saying to myself how surely must errors like 
 these involve this poor unprotected people in permanent popular disgrace, or what 
 is worse, perhaps, provoke the fatal violence of a disgusting pharisaic mob; and 
 how gladly, therefore, must good men of every name rather lessen than deei)en the 
 inevitable odium in which they stand I Accordingly it appears to me about as un- 
 manly a sight as the sun now shines upon to see a great prosj)erous newspaper like 
 the New York "Observer" gathering together the two wings of its hebdomadal fla- 
 tulence, "secular" and "religious," for a doughty descent ujjon this starveling and 
 harmless field-mouse! 
 
 And this reminds me, by the way, to adore the beautiful Nemesis — beautiful and 
 dread! — which in every commotion of opinion infallibly drives you, and persons 
 like you, into a significant clamor for the interests of the Seventh Commandment. 
 Whence this special zeal, this supererogatory devotion to the interests of that in- 
 stitution? Have you, then, a fixed conviction that no man, however refined by 
 God's culture and the elevation of our present social sentiment, could l)u exempted 
 from police regulation without instantly rushing into adultery? It would really 
 seem so. But if that be your state of mind, it only furnishes another striking 
 proof of the power which your friends the Socialists attribute to constraint in en- 
 hancing and inflaming the normal appreciation of sensual delights. 
 
 And here I drop my pen. I have used it freely to express the indignation which 
 every true man must feel at seeing an eminent public station, like that of the edi- 
 tor of a religious newspaper, perverted to the wanton defamation of private clia- 
 racter and the profligate obstruction of humane enterprise. 
 
 I am yours, etc., 
 ^ Henry James. 
 
 Then followed several comnuuiications between the "Observer" and Mr. James, 
 which are omitted. Anything in them pertinent to this discussion is contained in 
 the excerpts indicated by quotation marks.
 
 30 Xtove^ Marriage^ and Divorce, 
 
 I 
 
 n. 
 
 queries to mr. james, by mli. andrews. 
 
 New York, Friday, Nov. 26, 1852. 
 To the Editor of the Tribune: 
 
 I have read with some interest a recent article in the "Tribune," by Henry 
 James, in reply to an " assault " upon him, made by the editor of the New York 
 " Observer," on the Marriage Question. Perhaps it would be discourteous to say 
 that, in relation to the issue of the conflict between these parties, I am quite indif- 
 ferent. My own opinions differ considerably from those avowed by either of tlie 
 contestants. My curiosity is piqued, however, by the positions assumed by Mr. 
 James, to see how he will maintain himself, and I find myself given over to a sort 
 of "hope-I-don't-intrude" propensity to ask questions. Without venturing on pole- 
 nucs, I may perhaps be allowed, as a third party, the Socratic privilege of propound- 
 ing difiiculties and seeking for further information. 
 
 It was a saying of Daniel Webster that, "if a thing is to be done, a wise man 
 should be able to tell how it is to be done." Hence, I cannot but hope that Mr. 
 James may be able to remove some of the darkness which obscures my perceptions 
 of the tenability of his positions. I confess that, comparing my recollections of 
 his earlier writings in the "Harbinger" and the " Tribune" upon the same subject 
 with the somewhat rampant and ferocious morality of a recent article in the "Tri- 
 bune," in review of the book of Dr. Lazarus, called "Love vs. Marriage," which I 
 attributed to his pen, I said to myself, "My friend, Mr. James, is certainly coming 
 up on both sides of the same question." But I now stand corrected. This still 
 more recent manifesto defines him with respect to his position, if the position itself 
 proves susceptible of definition. He is a "cordial and enlightened respecter of 
 marriage," — a champion, indeed, of the institution of marriage, — but at the same 
 time he is in favor of entire freedom of divorce, "provided only the parties gua- 
 rantee the State against the charge of their offspring." He is surprised that an 
 intelligent man should "see no other security for the faithful union of husband and 
 wife than that which dates from the police office." "By freely legitimating di-
 
 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 31 
 
 vorce within the limits of a complete guarantee to society against the support of 
 offspring," you do, according to him, "place the inducement to mutual fidelity no 
 longer in the base legal bondage of the parties merely, but in their reciprocal in- 
 ward sweetness or humanity." 
 
 In afl&rming all this, it seems to him the while that "he is saying as good a word 
 for marriage as has ever been said beneath the stars." He indignantly repudiates 
 all affiliation of his doctrines with the laxer kind of morality, or the systematic 
 enlargement of marital privileges by certain religious sectarians, whom he scorn- 
 fully pronounces destitute of common sense, for no better cause, so far as he en- 
 ables us to discover, than that their views differ from his, and whom, he informs 
 us, he, moved by the divine afflatus, lectured for their " disorderly lives." As Mr. 
 James professes himself ready and apt to instruct the public, and desirous withal 
 to forward "the good time coming" by reforming the abuses of the institution of 
 marriage, I flatter myself that he cannot object to relieving a few doubts and hon- 
 est difficulties which perplex my understanding of his doctrine upon the subject. 
 
 These doubts and difficulties are stated in the following list of queries : 
 
 1. "What does ^Ir. J. understand to be the essential and determining element of 
 marriage, the kernel or s'me qua non of the marriage institution, after the complete 
 removal of the characteristic feature of "legal bondage" or "outward force," by 
 the repeal of all laws sanctioning and enforcing it, and after the featm'c of neces- 
 sary perpetuity is removed by the entire freedom to end the relation by the will of 
 the parties at any instant? Noah Webster informs us that to marry is to "join a 
 man and woman for life, and constitute them man and wife according to the laws 
 and customs of a nation." Xow, any constraint from custom is as much au outward 
 force as a constraint by law, and, iu case both these species of constraint are re- 
 moved, — that is, if the man and woman are joined with no reference to either, but 
 simply with regard to their mutual or individual choice and wishes, the miion 
 occurring not for life, but to be dissolved at the option of the parties, — both limbs 
 of the definition are eliminated, reminding one of the oft-quoted expurgation of the 
 tragedy of Hamlet. It seems to me, then, that I am quite in order to call for a 
 new specification of the essentials of matrimony. But I am forgetting that Mr. J. 
 still provides for the ghost of a legal tie, in the bond to be given as a guarantee to 
 society against the support of offspring. This brings me to my second query. 
 
 2. Why — if the maintenance of the unswerving constancy of husband and wife 
 can be .safely intrusted to the guardianship of " their r( nprocal inward sweetness 
 or humanity," with no "base legal bondage" superadded — why may not the care 
 and maintenance of offspring be, with equal safety, intru.sted likewise to that same 
 "inward sweetness or humanity," without the supcraddition of a "base legal bon- 
 dage" or "outward force "? If the first of these social relations may with safety 
 not only, but with positive advantage, be discharged of accountability to the police 
 office, why not the second? Why, indeed, be at the trouble and expense of main-
 
 32 Love^ 3Iarria(/e, and Divorce. 
 
 taiuing a police office at all? Indeed, if I understaud Mr. J. rightly, after imi:)os- 
 ing this limitation upon the absolute freedom of divorce, or, in other words, upon 
 the extinction of legal marriage, — ex gratia modestice, perhaps, lest the whole truth 
 might not be fitting to be spoken openly, — ;he again dispenses with the limitation 
 itself, and delivers the parental relation over to the same securities to which he has 
 previously consigned the conjugal; for I find in a subsequent paragraph of the 
 same article the following sentence: "It is obvious to every honest mind that, if 
 our conjugal, parental, and social ties (jeneralbj can be safely discharged of the 
 purely diabolic element of outward force, they must instantly become transfigured 
 by their own inward divine and irresistible loveliness." Here it is not marriage only, 
 but the maintenance of oil'spring also, which is to be intrusted to the "inward 
 sweetness or humanity" of the individuals to whom the relation appeals, which 
 seems to me much the more consistent view of the matter, inasmuch as, if the prin- 
 ciple is good for anything in one case, it is certainly equally applicable in the 
 other. But here, again, we come back to the point I have made above, — the query 
 whether marriage, discharged of all law, custom, or necessary perpetuity, remains 
 marriage at all? and if so, what is the essential and characteristic element of such 
 marriage? — upon which point I crave further information. 
 
 3. If the inception and the dissolution of marriage is to be left to the option of 
 the parties on such grounds as are stated by Mr. J., is the expansion or contraction 
 of the relation also to be abandoned to the altogether private and individual judg- 
 ment of the same parties in logical deference to the same principle? That is to 
 say, if more than two parties are taken into the conjugal partnership, is that degree 
 of license to be tolerated likewise? or are we still to retain a police office to pro- 
 vide against such cases? We are aware that men have differed in theory and 
 practice in divers ages and nations, — between monogamy and polygamy, for 
 example, — and with all restraints, both of custom and of law, removed, possibly they 
 may differ in like manner again. What, then, is to happen under the new re'yime? 
 Who is to be the standard of proprieties ? Is Mr. James's definition of a " disorderly 
 life " to be my definition becaixse it is his ? If not Mr. James's definition, whose then ? 
 What is the limit up to which Man, simply in virtue of being Man, is entitled, of right, to 
 the exercise of his freedom, without the interference of society, or — iohich is the same 
 tjiing — of other individuals? This last, it seems to me, is about the most weighty 
 question concerning human society ever asked, and one which a man who, like Mr. 
 Jaines, attempts to lead the way in the solution of social difiiculties, should be pre- 
 pared to answer by some broader generalization than any which relates to a single 
 one of the social ties, and by some principle more susceptible of definition than a 
 general reference to humanitary sentiment. There are some acts which the indi- 
 vidual is authorized to do or not to do, at his own option, and in relation to which 
 other individuals have no right to interfere to determine for him whether he shall 
 or shall not do them; as, for example, whether he shall go p&rsonally to the post
 
 Love^ Marriage.) and Divorce. 33 
 
 office or send a boy. There are certain other acts, on the other hand, which the 
 individual cannot do without directly authorizing interference, resistance, or con- 
 straint, on the part of others. If a man plant his fist in the features of another, 
 or tweak his nose, I take that to be sucli an act. What, now, is the clear and de- 
 finable line which social science, as understood by Mr. James, reveals, as running 
 between these two classes of acts? If that can be discovered, perchance it may 
 settle the marriage question, not singly and alone, but along with every other 
 question of human freedom. Hoping that Mr. J. will consent to enlighten me 
 and others by any knowledge he may have upon the subject, I submit my 
 interrogatories. 
 
 Stephen Pearl Andrews.
 
 34 JjOVBt Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 m. 
 
 MR. Greeley's comments. 
 
 Having given place to the essays on Marriage and Divorce by Mr. Henry Jamea, 
 in reply to attacks upon him in the "Observer," we have concluded to extend like 
 hospitality to the queries of Mr. S. P. Andrews, suggested by and relating to the 
 essays of !Mr. James. Our own views differ very radically from those of both these 
 gentlemen; but we court rather than decline discussion on the subject, and are 
 satisfied that the temper and tende ncies of our times render such discussion emi- 
 nently desirable, if not vitally necessary. Let us now briefly set forth our own 
 idea of the matter. 
 
 This is preeminently an age of Individualism (it would hardly be polite to say 
 Egotism), wherein "the Sovereignty of the Individual" — that is, the right of 
 every one to do pretty nearly as he pleases^ is already generally popular, and 
 visibly gaining ground daily. " Why should not A. B., living on our side of the 
 St. Lawrence, and making hats, exchange them freely with C. D., living on the 
 Canada side, and growing wheat, without paying a heavy impost or violating a 
 law?" — "Why should not E. F. lend his money at ten or twenty per cent, to G. 
 II., if the latter is willing to pay that rate, and sees how he can make more by it? " 
 — " Why may not I. J. educate his own children, if he sees fit, and decline paying 
 any School Tax?" — "And why should not John Nokes and Lydia Nokes be at 
 liberty to dissolve their own marriage, if they have no children, or have provided 
 for such as they have, and believe that they may secure happiness in new relations 
 which is unattainable in the present?" These questions all belong to the same 
 school, though the individuals who ask them may be of superficially different creeds 
 or persuasions. They all find their basis and aliment in that idea of Individual 
 Sovereignty which seems to us destructive alike of social and personal well-being. 
 
 The general answer to these questions imports that the State does not exist for 
 the advantage and profit of this or that individual, but to secure the highest good 
 of all, — not merely of the present, but of future generations also ; and that an act 
 which, in itself, and without reference to its influence as a precedent, might be
 
 Love^ MarAarje^ and Divorce. 35 
 
 dt'eniprl iiiiiocput, is often rendered exceedingly hurtful and culpable by its rela- 
 tion to other acts externally undistinguishable from it. A hundred cases might be 
 cited in which the happiness of all the parties immediately concerned would be 
 promoted by liberty of divorce; and yet we have not a doubt that such liberty, if 
 recognized and established, would lead to the most flagrant disorders and the most 
 pervading calamities. "We insist, then, that the question shall be considered from 
 the social or general rather than the individual standpoint, and that the experience, 
 the judgment, and the instincts of mankind shall be regarded in framing the 
 decision. 
 
 Polygamy is not an experiment to be first tried in our day; it is some thousands 
 of years old; its condemnation is inscribed on the tablets of Oriental history; it is 
 manifest in the comparative debasement of Asia and Africa. The libi^rty of di- 
 vorce has been recognized by great historians as one main cause of the corruption 
 and downfall of the Roman Empire. The sentiment of chastity becomes ridiculous 
 where a woman is transferred from husband to husband, as caprice or satiety may 
 dictate. 
 
 Two persons desire to be joined in Marriage, and invoke the sanction of the 
 State — in other words, the approbation and respect of the community — for their 
 union. The State substantially asks them : " Is there no impediment to such union 
 in the existing engagements of one or both of you? " — " No." — " Does your know- 
 ledge of and affection for each other warrant you in promising to love and cherish 
 eacli other exclusively as husband and wife till death siiall part you?" — "Yes." — 
 " Then we pronounce and consecrate jou man and wife, and enjoin all persons 
 to honor you as such." And this is marriage, "honorable in all," and always 
 honored accordingly, because it recognizes and provides for the permanent claims 
 of society in the preservation of moral purity and the due maintenance and educa- 
 tion of children; while any sexual union unsanctified by the mutual pledge of per- 
 petuity or continuance ever has been and ever must be esteemed ignoble and 
 dishonoring when contrasted with this; for its aims are manifestly selfish and its 
 character undistinguishable from the purely sensual and brutal connections of un- 
 disguised lewdness, where no pretence of affection or esteem is set up, and whose 
 sole object is animal gratification. In other words, society, by the institution of 
 indissoluble marriage, exacts of the married the strongest practical guarantee of 
 the purity and truth of their affertioTi, and thereupon draws the broadest possible 
 line of demarcation between them and the vile crew whose aspirations are purely 
 selfish, and whose unions are dissolved, renewed, and varied as versatility or satiety 
 may dictate, 
 
 ^\'e have no doubt this wise law, while essential to the progress of the race in in- 
 telligence and virtue, is eminently conducive to the happiness of individuals. True, 
 there are unhappy marriages, discordant marriages, unions sanctioned by law 
 \shich lack the soul of marriage, — but these occur, not through any inherent vice
 
 36 Xove, Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 or defect in the institution, but through the levity, rashness, avarice, or over- 
 mastering appetite of one or both of the parties, who marry in haste, or from the 
 impulse of unworthy motives, when the law counsels deliberation and demands 
 pm-e affection. If a general proclamation were issued to morrow, with the sanction 
 of all our civil and ecclesiastical authorities, authorizing every married couple to 
 obtain a divorce by merely applying for it within two montlis, and, in default of 
 such asking, to remain undivorced ever afterward, we do not believe one couple 
 in ten would apply for divorce. But let it be understood that marriages would 
 hereafter be ganctioned and honored, binding the parties to regard each other as 
 husband and wife only so long as should be mutually agreeable, and leaving them 
 at perfect liberty to dissolve this tie and for m new ones at pleasure, and we believe 
 marriages would be contracted and dissolved with a facility and levity now unima- 
 gined. Every innocent young maiden would be sought in marriage by those who 
 now plot her ruin without marriage, and the facility of divorce would cover the 
 ajts and the designs of the libertine with all the panoply of honorable and pure af- 
 fection. How many have already fallen victims to the sophistry that the ceremony 
 of marriage is of no importance, — the affection being the essential matter? How 
 many are every day exposed to this sophistry? Marriage indissoluble may be an 
 imperfect test of honorable and pure affection, — as all things human are imper- 
 fect, — but it is the best the State can devise; and its overthrow would result in a 
 general profligacy and corruption such as this country has never known and few 
 of our people can adequately imagine. 
 
 We are inflexibly opposed, therefore, to any extension of the privileges of divorce 
 now accorded by our laws ; but we are not opposed to the discussion of the subject. 
 On the contrary, we deem such discussion vitally necessary and already too long 
 neglected. The free trade sophistry respecting marriage is already on every lib- 
 ertine's tongue; it has overrun the whole country in the yellow-covered literature 
 which is as abundant as the frogs of Egypt and a great deal more pernicious. It 
 is high time that the press, the pulpit, and every other avenue to the public mind, ' 
 were alive to this subject, presenting, reiterating, and enforcing the argument in 
 favor of the sanctity, integrity, and perpetuity of marriage.
 
 LovCy Marriage^ and Divorce. 87 
 
 IV. 
 
 EXTRACT OF REPLY OF MR. JAMES TO THE OBSERVKR. 
 
 To Mr. Greeley: 
 
 I do not see that Mr. Andrews's queries need detain ns. The numerous fallacies 
 and misconceptions on which they are grounded either suggest their own correc- 
 tion to the observant reader or else stand fully corrected in my replies to the 
 "Observer" and yourself. Besides, the entire "indifference*' which Mr. Andrews 
 professes as to any possible issue of the discussion between the "Observer" and 
 myself gives a decided shade of impropriety to his interference in it. I value my 
 time and thoughts much too highly to bestow them upon those who can afford to 
 be indifferent to them; and, accordingly, I shall hold myself excused if I confine 
 my attention to yourself and the " Observer."
 
 38 Xoue, Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 V. 
 
 MR. GREELEY'S COMMENTS. 
 
 We do, indeed, believe that most parties are now as happy and contented in their 
 marriage relations as their own natures will allow; because we believe that mar- 
 riages are now contracted with a very general understanding that they are prac- 
 tically indissoluble; that nothing short of death or the deep demoralization and 
 lasting infamy of one of the parties can ever dissolve them. But let it be under- 
 stood that marriages -may be dissolved whenever the parties are tired of each 
 other, — and we can conceive no essential modification of our pi'esent system which 
 will not amount practically to this, — and we believe more false than true mar- 
 riages would be contracted; because libertines would resort to marriage as a cloak 
 for their lecherous designs, which the legal penalties of bigamy and adultei-y now 
 compel them to pursue by a more circuitous and less shaded path. Apprise sen- 
 sualists that they may at any time be rid of the obligations of marriage by simply 
 dishonoring them, — and if Mr. James does not intend this, we cannot understand 
 him, — and thousands would incur those obligations with deliberate intent to 
 throw them off whenever they should be found irksome, as, with their appetites, 
 they are morally certain soon to become. We insist, then, that what Mr. James 
 intends or contemplates may be ever so innocent and practically just without at all 
 discharging his proposition of the responsibility of such use as tlie carnal and un- 
 principled would inevitably make of it. And this use we determine by the ruin 
 they are now too often enabled to eifect through the influence of the sophism that 
 the ceremony of marriage is of no account where the essential marriage of heart and 
 soul has already taken place. We determine it also by the demoralization and de- 
 generacy of the Romans, especially the Patricians, following closely on the heels of 
 the liberty of divorce accorded by their laws in the last days of the republic. We 
 find, also, that the most flagrant social disorders were diflused and aggravated in 
 France by the liberty of divorce accorded during the frenzy of the first Revolution. 
 In short, we believe this liberty always did create or immensely inflame such dis- 
 orders wherever it has been legalized, and we think it always must do so; at least un- 
 til the human race shall have been very differently trained and developed from aught 
 the world has yet seen. If there ever shall come a time when the whole race shall 
 profoundly realize that lewdness, with aU transgression of the laws of God, is a ruin-
 
 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 39 
 
 ous mistake, destructive of the happiness of the transgressor, there will then be no 
 need of human laws or penalties, and they may be dispensed with altogether. But 
 so long as there shall exist a social necessity for interdicting and punishing murder, 
 — which we reckon will be rather longer than either Air. James's or our writings 
 will continue to lie read, — so long we believe there will be a necessity for punish- 
 ing seduction and adultery and forbidding divorce. 
 
 We contend that Mr. James's liberty of divorce, no matter what Ma mtent may 
 be, or what hedges he might seek to set about it, would practically open to the li- 
 centious and fickle a prospect of ridding themselves of the obligations of marriage 
 at pleasure, — would say to them, "Get married, if that will su^jserve the ends of 
 today; and you may get immarried again tomorrow, or as soon as you shall think 
 proper." And we regard Mr. Andrews's queries aiid well-understood position as 
 most significant and pertinent, pointing, as they do, to a slill larger (or looser) 
 liberty than Mr. James contemplates. Once admit divorce on Mr. James's basis, 
 and it will be utterly impossible to confine it within his limits. 
 
 Our own conviction and argument decidedly fator "indissoluble marriage," any 
 existing law to the contrary notwithstanding. But for the express words of 
 Christ, which seem to admit adultery as a valid ground of divorce, we should stand 
 distinctly on the Roman Catholic ground of no divorce except by death. As it is, 
 we do not object to divorce for the one flagrant and gross violation of the marriage 
 covenant, though we should oppose even that, if it did not seem to be upheld by 
 the personal authority of Christ. Beyond it we are inflexible.
 
 40 Love, Marriaae, and Divorce, 
 
 VL 
 
 NOTICE BY MR. GREEl,EY. 
 
 We acknowledge the receipt of Mrs. E. Oakes Smith's promised exposition of 
 her views on the divorce question, which we shall publish soon. But we have had 
 one much longer on hand from Mr. S. P. An drews, which we shall print first, 
 thout^h we consider its doctrines eminently detestable, while Mrs. Smith's conclu- 
 sions are just, though her way of looking at the question dillers somewhat from 
 ours. 
 
 The world is full of perilous fallacies and sophisms respecting marriage and 
 divorce, which, we are confident, are mischievous only because they burrow in dark- 
 ness and are permitted to do their deadly work unopposed. Let them be exposed 
 to the light of discussion, and they will, they 7nust, be divested of their baneful 
 power. We hope to do our share toward this consummation.
 
 Love, MaiTiacjc^ and Divorce. 41 
 
 vn. 
 
 MR. ANDREWS' REPLY TO MR. JAMES AND MR. GREELEY. 
 
 To the Editor of the New York Tribune: 
 
 Mr. Jaiuos declines answering my questions on the ground that I expressed 
 indifference to the issue of a discussion between him and another party. I did not 
 express any indifference to the information which / sought from him. By this 
 expert quibble he gracefully waves aside queries to which it is simply impossible 
 for him' to reply without committing himself, by inevitable sequence, to conclu- 
 sions which he seems either not to have the willingness or the courage to avow. 
 It would be cruel to insist any further. So let Mr. James pass. Before doing so, 
 however, since he charges "fallacies and misconceptions" upon my article, and 
 refers me obliquely to his replies to the "Observer," permit me to recapitulate the 
 positions at which he has tarried temporarily while boxing the circle of possibilities 
 in that discussion. I quote from Mr. James's various articles on the subject 
 
 Position No. 1. "Marriage means nothing more and nothing less than the legal 
 union of one man and one woman for life." "It does not mean the voluntary 
 union of the parties, or their mutual consent to live together durante placito" 
 (during pleasure), "but simply a legally or socially imposed obligation to live 
 together durante vita" (during life). 
 
 That is to say, if I understand, that it is "the base legal bondage," or "outward 
 force," which characterizes the union, and not the internal or spiritual union of 
 loving hearts which constitutes the marriage. 
 
 Position No. 2. "It is evident to every honest mind that, if our conjugal, paren- 
 tal, and social ties generally can be safely discharged of the purely diabolic element 
 of outward force, they nmst instantly become transfigured by their own inward, 
 divine, and irresistible loveliness." "No doubt there is a very cnornjous clandes- 
 tine violation of the marriage bond" [legal bond, of course, as he has defined mar- 
 riage] "at the present time The only possible chance for correcting it 
 
 depends upon fully legitimating divorce. . . . because, in that case, you place the 
 inducement to mutual fidelity no longer in the base legal bondage of the parties 
 merely, but in their reciprocal inward sweetness or humanity." "You must know 
 many married partners who, if the marriage institution" [the legal bond] "were
 
 42 , Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 formally abolished tomorrow, would instantly annul that legal abolition again by 
 the unswerving constancy of their hearts and lives." That is, without marriage. 
 
 Position No. 3. " I have. . . . contended for greater freedom of divorce on these 
 grounds; .... but I had no idea that I was thus weakening the respect for mar- 
 riage. I seemed to myself to be plainly strengthening it," etc. "It seemed to me 
 the while that I was saying as good a word for marriage as was ever said beneath 
 the stars." 
 
 To resume : These three positions are, if language means any thing, as follows : 
 
 1. The whole and sole substance of marriage is the legal bond or outward force 
 which unites the parties for life. 
 
 2. This legal bond or outward force is a diabolical element, and should be 
 wholly abolished and dispensed with. 
 
 3. By dispensing with marriage altogether — that is, with all outward form or 
 legal bond — you do thereby strengthen the respect for marriage, and purify and 
 sanctify the institution 1 
 
 Position No. 4 goes a step further, if possible, in absurdity, and proposes not 
 merely to allow parties to unmarry themselves ad libitum, but to still further purify 
 what remains of marriage (after the whole of it is abolished) by turning disorderly 
 members out, as they turn members out of church. See last article, passim. 
 
 Position No. 5 entreats of the editor of the " Observer " to let him off from 
 the discussion — declines to answer my interrogatories — and, to make a verb of 
 one of his pet substantives, he cuttle-fishes, by a final plunge into metaphysical 
 mysticism. 
 
 When a writer, claimmg distinction as a philosophical essayist, is content to rest 
 his reputation upon a collation of his avowed positions such as the above, culled 
 from his own statements made during the course of a single discussion, he shall not 
 be compelled by any "shade of impropriety " on my part to undertake the distaste- 
 ful task of disentangling himself from the perplexing embroglio. 
 
 Dismissing Mr. James, permit me now to pay some attention to your opinions. 
 You, at least, I thmk, have the pluck to stand by your own conclusions, unless 
 you are fairly driven off from them. 
 
 You affirm, with great truth, while you deplore it, that this is preeminently an 
 age of "individualism," wherein the "sovereignty of the individual" — that is, 
 "the right of every one to do pretty much as he pleases" — is already generally 
 popular and obviously gaining ground daily. Let us, then, define our positions. 
 If I mistake in assigning you yours, you are quite competent to correct me. You 
 declare yourself a reactionist against this obvious spirit of the age. Y''ou take your 
 position in opposition to the drift — I think you will find it the irresistible drift — 
 of that social revolution which you recognize as existing and progressing toward 
 individualism and the sovereignty of the individual. Y'ou rightly refer free trade, 
 freedom of the finances, freedom from State systems of religion and education,
 
 Love^ Marriage, and Divorce. 43 
 
 and freedom of the love relations, to one and the same principle, and that 
 principle you recognize as the spirit of the age, — the spirit of this, the most 
 progressive and advanced age in the world's history. To this element of progres- 
 sion you put yourself in a hostile attitude. You rightly say that all these varieties 
 of freedom "find their basis and element in that idea of 'individual sovereignty' 
 which seems to us alike destructive of social and personal well-being." I rejoice 
 that you so clearly perceive the breadth and comprehensiveness of that principle, 
 and that all the ruling questions of the day are merely branches of one and the 
 same question, — namely, whether the '-sovereignty of the individual," or, what is 
 the same thing, the individual right of self-government, be a true or a false, and 
 consequently whether it be a safe or a dangerous principle. This will greatly nar- 
 row the limits of tl>e discussion; besides, it is much pleasanter to reason about 
 general principles with one who is capable of grasping them than to be carried 
 over an ocean of particulars, apparently different, but really belonging to the same 
 category. 
 
 This same principle of individual sovereignty, which to you seems destructive 
 alike of social and personal well-being, is to me the profoundest and most valuable 
 and most transcendcntly important principle of political and social order and in- 
 dividual well-being ever discovered or dreamed of. Xow, then, wo differ. Here, 
 at the very start, is an illustration of individuality or diversity of opinion, and, 
 growing out of that, of action also. We are both, I believe, equally honest lovers 
 of the well-being of our fellow-men ; but we honestly differ, from diversity of or- 
 ganization, intellectual development, past experiences, etc. Who, now, is the legi- 
 timate umpire between us? I afhrm that there is none in the universe. I assert 
 our essential peerage. I assert the doctrine of non-intervention between indivi- 
 duals precisely as you do, and for the same reasons that you do, between nations, 
 as the principle of peace and harmony and good-fellowship. Upon my principle I 
 admit your complete sovereignty to think and act as you choose or miist. I claim 
 my owni to do likewise. I claim and I admit the right to differ. This is simply 
 the whole of it. Xo collision, no intervention can occm- between us, so long as 
 both act on the principle, and only to prevent intervention when either attempts to 
 enforce his opinions upon the other. How now is it with your principle? You de- 
 termine, you being judge, that my opinions are inmioral, or that the action grow- 
 ing out of them would be injurious to otheV living individuals, or even to remote 
 posterity. You, as their self-constituted guardian, summon to your aid the major- 
 ity of the mob, who chance to think more nearly with you than with me for the 
 nonce; you erect this unreflecting mass of half-developed mind, and tlio power 
 thenco resulting, into an abstraction which you call ''The State," and, with that 
 power at your back, you suppress me by whatever means are requisite to the end, 
 — public odium, the prison, the gibbet, the hemlock, or the cross. A subsequent 
 age may recognize me as a Socrates or a Christ, and, while they denounce your
 
 44 Love^ Marriaye^ and Divorce. 
 
 conduct with bitterness, never yet discover the falsity of the principle upon which 
 you hunestly acted. They go on themselves to the end of the chapter, repeating 
 the same method upon all the men of their day who differ, for good or for evil, from 
 the opinions of that same venerable mob, called " The State." Or, perchance, the 
 mob, and consequently "The State," may be on my side, — if not now, by-and-by, 
 — and then I suppress you. Which, now, of these two, is the principle of order in 
 human affairs? That 1 should judge for you, and you for me, and each summon 
 what power he may to enforce his opinions on the other ; or that each begin by 
 admitting the individual sovereignty of the other — to be exercised by each at his 
 own cost — with no limitation short of actual encroachment? 
 
 With what force and beauty and truth does Mr. James assert that "freedom, in 
 any sphere, does not usually beget disorder. He who is the ideal of freedom is al- 
 so the ideal of order." lie seems, indeed, wonderfully endowed by the half-light 
 of intuition to discover the profoundest truths and to clothe them in delightful 
 forms of expression. It is lamentable to see how, when he applies his intellect 
 to deduce their conclusions, they flicker out into obscurity and darkness. You see, 
 on the contrary, that this simple statement alone involves the whole doctrine that 
 I have ever asserted of individual sovereignty. Hence the line of argument as be- 
 tween you and me is direct, while with him it leads nowhere. Your positions are 
 intelligible; so, I think, are mine; Mr. James's are such as we find them. I am a 
 democrat. You, though not a despotist consciously, and calling yourself a pro- 
 gressive, are as yet merely a republican; republicanism, when analyzed, coming 
 back to the same thing as despotism, — the arbitrary right of the mob, called the 
 State, over my opinions and private conduct, instead of that of an individual des- 
 pot. I am no sham democrat. I believe in no government of majorities. The 
 right of self-government means with me the right of every individual to govern 
 himself, or it means nothing. Do iK)t be surprised if I define terms differently 
 from the common understanding. I shall make myself understood nevertheless. 
 
 There are in this world two conflicting principles of government. Stripped of 
 all verbiage and aU illusion, they are simply: 1, that man is not capable of govern- 
 ing himself, and hence needs some other man (or men) to govern him; 2, that man 
 is capable of self-government, potentially, and that, if he be not so actually, he 
 needs more experience in the practice of it, including more evil consequences from 
 failure; that he must learn it for himself, as he learns other things; that he is en- 
 titled of right to his own self-government, whether good or bad in the judgment 
 of others, whenever he exercises it at his own cost, — that is, without encroacli- 
 ment upon the equal right of others to govern themselves. This last is the doctrine 
 of the sovereignty of the individual, which you denounce and oppose, and which I 
 defend. It is simply the clear understanding, with its necessary extension and 
 limitations, of the affirmation in the American Declaration of Independence that 
 "all men are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The principle
 
 Love^ Marrkifje^ and Divorce. 45 
 
 of Protestantism is tho same in the religious sphere, — "the right of private jmlg- 
 ment in matters of faitli and con.scionce." Either assertion includes virtually and 
 by direct consequence tlie wliole doctrine of the sovereignty of the indivi.lual, or 
 "the right of men to do pretty much as tliey please." Tlie right or wrong of this 
 principle, dimly understood lieretofore, has been the world's quarrel for some cen- 
 turies. Clearly and distinctly understood, with the full length of its reach before 
 men's eyes, it is to be the worhl's quarrel ever hereafter, until it is fairly and 
 finally settled. All men arc now again .summoned to take sides in the figlit, witli 
 the new light shed upon the length and breadth of the quarrel, by the development 
 of modern ideas, and especially by Socialism, which you, sir, have done something 
 to foster. Let tho.se who wish to draw back do so now. Hereafter there will be 
 less and less pretext of misunderstanding or incautious committal to tho side of 
 freedom. 
 
 Still, you are not upon the opposite side in this contest. So far as any guiding 
 principle is concerned, it seems to me that you, in common with the great mass of 
 progre.ssives, or half-way reformers in the world, are simply without any — which 
 you are willing to trust. The conservatives are a great deal better off. So far as 
 you adopt a principle at all, it is generally that of this very individual sovereignty, 
 which, nevertheless, you fear in its final carrying out; and hence you join the re- 
 action whenever the principle a.sserts a new one of its applications. The petty 
 despot and tho comfortable hounjeois, in Kurope, fear, from the same standpoint, 
 in the same manner, just as honestly, and with just as good reason, the freedom of 
 the press. 
 
 A liberty which anybody else in the universe has a right to define is no liberty 
 for me. A pursuit of happiness which some despot, or some oligarchy, or some 
 tyrannical majority, has the power to shape and prescribe for me, is not the pursuit 
 of viy happine.ss. Statesmen, politicians, religious dissenters, and reformers, who 
 have hitherto sanctioned the principle of freedom, have not seen its full reach and 
 expansion; hence they become reactionists, conservatives, and "old fogies," when 
 the whole truth is revealed to them. They find themselves getting more than they 
 bargained for. Nevertheless, the principle, which already imbues the popular mind 
 instinctively, though not as yet intellectually, will not wait their leave for its de- 
 velopment, nor stop at their bidding. Ilenco all middle men, far more than the 
 conservatives, are destined in this age to be exceedingly unhappy. 
 
 A mere handful of individuals, along with myself, do now, for the first time in 
 the world, accept and announce the sovereignty of tho individual, with all its con- 
 sequences, as tho principle of order as well a.M of lil>erty and happine.-w among men, 
 and challenge its acceptanoo by mankind. The whole world is drifting to our po«i- 
 tion under tho influence of forces too powerful to bo resisted, and wo have had 
 merely the good or ill fortune to arrive intellectually at the common goal in ad- 
 vance of the multitude. It gives us at lea-st this happines.s, that we look witlj ple»-
 
 46 Love., Marriage., and Divorce. 
 
 s\ire and a sense of entire security upon the on-coming of a revolution wliicli to 
 others is an object of terror and dismay. In our view, the ultra-political Demo- 
 crat of our day has only half taken his lessons in the rightful expansion of human 
 freedom. He, too, is, relatively to us, an " old fogy." Nor do we trust the safety 
 of the final absence of legislation to any vague notions of the natural goodness of 
 man. We are fully aware that no sum total of good intentions, allowing them to 
 exist, amounts to a guarantee of right action. We trust only to the rigid principles 
 of science, which analyzes the causes of crime and neutralizes the motives whicli 
 now induce or provoke men to commit it. 
 
 You speak in the most hopeless manner of the final removal of murder from the 
 face of the earth. Do you reflect that already among us one-half the crimes of the 
 Old World, or of other countries, are entirely unknown as crimes. Such are Vese 
 jnajesle and heresy, (he utterance of treason, etc. Thirty hours' ride south of us, the 
 crime which actually shocks the public mind more than any other is nogro-stealing. 
 Throughout the Southern States it is pretty much the only crime that is rigorously 
 punished. Here it is unknown, even by name, among the common people. What, 
 now, is the cause of this wonderful phenomenon, — that one-half of the known 
 crimes of the world are actually gone out and extinguished in this the freest spot 
 (observe the fact) upon the face of the earth? It is simply this, — that the artifi- 
 cial institutions against which these crimes are but the natural protest of oppressed 
 and rebellious humanity have themselves gone out — not, as is thoughtlessly sup- 
 posed, to be replaced by better institutions, but by the absence of institutions — by 
 the natural and untrammeled action of individuals in a state of freedom. There is 
 no Ihe majeste, because there is no institution of majesty to be insulted or offended ; 
 there is no heresy, because there is no instituted or established church ; there is no 
 verbal treason, because there is so little of government that it seldom provokes re- 
 sistance, and can afford to wait till the resistance becomes overt ; there is no negro- 
 stealing, because there is no institution of slavery, there is no publication of 
 incendiary documents as a crime, because there is no institution so conscious of its 
 own insecurity as to construe freedom of the press into a crime ; there will be no 
 seduction, and no bigamy, and no adultery, when there is no legal or forceful in- 
 stitution of marriage to defend, when woman is recognized as belonging to herself 
 and not to a husband, when she is expected simply to be true to herself and not to 
 any man, except so far as such fidelity results from fidelity to herself as the prior 
 condition, ol£, which she alone of all human beings is a competent judge; and when, 
 by the principle of "commercial equity," which, thanks to the same science of so- 
 ciety, is now known in the world, woman shall be placed upon a footing of entire 
 pecuniary independence of man and installed in the actual possession, as well as 
 admitted to the right, of being an individual. 
 
 There is already far less murder among us than elsewhere in the world, because 
 there are less institutions to be offended against. With still less iustitutions there
 
 Love^ Marriarje^ and Divorce. 47 
 
 will be still less murder, and, with the addition of equitable relations between cap- 
 ital and labor, there will bo none. Crime is just as much a matter of cultivation 
 as potatoes. The way to produce it and the way to prevent it is a matter of science, 
 just as much as any chemical process. Chemical processes go on and fail to go on 
 in nature without our knowledge, but we can learn them and hasten or prevent 
 them. Crime springs solely from two causes. 1. The existence of arbitrary in- 
 stitutions, and the ignorant and false ideas in men's minds growing out of our rela- 
 tion to those institutions, whereby acts are construed to be crimes, which, by the 
 institutes of natural law, are no crimes ; and, 2. The denial of equity, growing 
 out of ignorance of the scientific principle of equity, and out of the want of suffi- 
 cient intelligence and expansion of the intellect to enable men to see that their in- 
 terests lie in adopting and acting upon that principle, nnIumi known. In other 
 words, out of the denial of the sovereignty of the individual in all things, and out 
 of a false or unscientific commercial system. 
 
 I see clearly, and even sympathize with, while I do not partake of, the fears of 
 the conservative and half-way progressive, from the growth of the sovereignty of 
 the individual. Still further, I recognize that evils and disorderly conduct grow 
 out of its growth, when unattended, as it is hitherto, by "equity" in the distribu- 
 tion of the burdens and benefits of life. Ibit I see just as clearly that the n-iuedy 
 for those evils does not lie in the direction of repression or forcible constraint, but 
 in the acceptance and addition of an entirely new principle of order; not in going 
 backward to a system wliich has been tried, and disastrously failed, for thousands 
 of years, but in going forward to the discovery and application of a new and etBca- 
 cious system. 
 
 You expressly acknowledge, you can not but acknowledge, that marriage does 
 not work well for all tlu; parties concerned, — only for some of them; and the first 
 must be content to sacrifice their life-long happiness and well-being for the good of 
 the others. No such system will ever content the world, nor ever should. It does 
 not meet the wants of man. Your line of reasoning is after the old sort, — that 
 the State exists not for the good of this or that individual, but for the gooil of all, 
 when you begin by admitting that the good of all is not secured. You are, of 
 course, aware that this is the argument of every despot and despotism in the world, 
 under which the liberties of mankind have always been stolen. The argument is 
 the same, and just as good, in the mouth of Louis Xapoleon as it is in yours. It is 
 just as good as a reason for depriving mo of the freedom of the press, as it is when 
 urged as a reason for depriving me of freedom in the most sacretl afTections of the 
 heart. The most stupendous mi.'jtake that this world of ours has ever nuule is that 
 of erecting an abstraction, the State, the Church, Public Morality according to some 
 accepted standard, or some other ideal thing, into a realjx»rsonality, and making it 
 paramount to the will and happiness of the individual. 
 
 So much for principles. Now, then, there is another thing in the workl which
 
 48 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 is called expediency, •which is just as right and just as good a thing, in its place, as 
 principle. Principle indicates the true and right toward which we are to aim, and 
 whicli we are finally to attain ; expediency, what we are to do provisionally, or as 
 the nest best thing, in the midst of the wrong by which we are surrounded, while 
 working to vindicate principle, or to secure the final right. If your tariff doctrines, 
 for example, and other repressive measures, were put fairly on the basis of expe- 
 diency, or present exigency, and admitted to be wrong in principle, evils them- 
 selves, to be zealously overthrow-n as soon as practicable, I might go a great way 
 along with yoii. Extremes meet. Ultra and intelligent radicalism has many 
 points of relationship to rigid conservatism. Its surface action is often just the 
 reverse of its deeper and more persistent movement. You certainly do not mean 
 to assert that free trade is a wrong thing in itself; that it is a breach of one of 
 nature's laws, a thing to be feared and defended against, if the whole world were 
 dealing fairly and honestly in the reward of labor and in their interchanges with 
 each other. You mean that, because the European capitalist deals with his laborer 
 upon such terms as render him a pauper, American laborers are compelled, by 
 tlieir wrong, to resort to another wrong, and refuse to buy those starvation pro- 
 ducts, in order to protect their own labor from the same depression through the 
 medium of competition. They are compelled by the wrong of others to deprive 
 themselves of one right, as an expediency, to secure themselves in the possession of 
 another right. Hence you are found defending a tariff on the ground that it is 
 the most speedy avenue to free trade with safety, — free trade and safety being 
 both goods to be sought after and attained. 
 
 So, again, you do not and can not mean that the time is never to come when 
 woman shall possess the freedom to bestow herself according to the dictates of her 
 own affections, wholly apart from the mercenary considerations of shelter, and food, 
 and raiment, and to choose freely at all times the father of her own child. You 
 do not, of course, mean that the free play and full development and varied experi- 
 ence of the affections is intrinsically a bad thing, any more than the development 
 of the bodily strength or of the intellect ; but only that it is bad relatively to the 
 present depressed and dependent condition of the woman ; just as intellectual 
 development is a misfortune to the slave, only tending to render him unhappy 
 until the final period approaches for his emancipation. You certainly do not be- 
 lieve that human society, in the highest state of well-being it is destined to attain, 
 is ever to be attended by an army of martyrs, who must sacrifice their own highest 
 happiness and "the highest happiness of all the parties immediately concerned" 
 to the security and well-being of somebody else remotely interested. 
 
 Do you, or do you not, then, advocate restrictions upon the exercise of the aSeo- 
 tions as you do the tariff, — merely as a means of arriving the more speedily at 
 complete "free trade"? 
 
 Dismiss, I entreat you, all your fears of the sovereignty of the individual. Cher-
 
 l/ove, 3farriaffe^ and l}ivorce. 49 
 
 isli it ratlier as the glorious realization of the golden age of the future. Instead of 
 whitewashing repression and reaction and niartjrdoni, and holding them up as 
 things to admire and love and fight for, resort to them, if you must, as the unlovely 
 expedients of the bad ages that are past or passing away. Fight for and defend, 
 if you so judge right, as present necessities of the times, the censorship of the press, 
 the police organization of domestic spies upon word and act, the passport system, 
 tariffs, prohibition of divorce, laws regulating the affections of men and women, 
 Maine liquor laws, and the whole system of arbitrary constraint upon individual 
 freedom ; but cherish in your heart, nay, proclaim openly, as the ideal, not of a 
 remote, imcertain, and fanciful utopia, but of the imminent, of the actually dawn- 
 ing future, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of locomotion, free 
 trade, freedom of intellectual inquiry, and freedom of the affections. Defend your 
 restrictions upon the only ground upon which they are tolerable, — namely, that a 
 temporary enforced order is only the more direct road to the more i>erfect order of 
 complete freedom. Pursue that road, or any road which in your judgment will 
 bring you fastest and farthest toward universal freedom, or the sovereignty of the 
 individual, — not rashly but surely, not inexpediently but expediently, not danger- 
 ously but safely and wisely and well. It is this freedom which the whole world 
 aspires after. It is the dream of universal humanity, whether men or women. It 
 is the goal of all reformation," and the most sublime and the most beautiful hope of 
 the world. 
 
 You refer to my position on the marriage question as well understood. Unfor- 
 tunately it is not so, and can not be so, if that question is considered by itself. I 
 liave no special doctrine on the subject of marriage. I regard marriage as being 
 neither better nor worse than all other of the arbitrary and artificial institutions of 
 society, — contrivances to regulate nature instead of studying her laws. I ask for 
 the complete emancipation and self-ownership of woman, simply as I ask the same 
 for man. The "woman's rights women" simply mean this, or do not yet know 
 what they mean. So of Mr. James. So of all reformers. The "Observer" is log- 
 ical, shrewd, and correct when it affirms that the whole body of reformers tend the 
 same way and bring up sooner or later against the legal or prevalent theological 
 idea of marriage. It is not, however, from any special hostility to that institution, 
 but from a growing consciousness of an underlying principle, the inspiring soul t)f 
 the activities of the present age, — the sovereignty of the individual. The lesson 
 has to be learned that order, combining with freedom and ultiniating in harmony, 
 is to be the work of science, and not of arbitrary legislation and criminal codes. 
 Let the day como I 
 
 Stephen Pearl A>fDREW8.
 
 50 Love^ MuiTiaye^ and Divorce. 
 
 vm. 
 
 MB. Greeley's reply to the foregoing. 
 
 Mr. S. P. Andrews: 
 
 Let me begiu by setting you right respecting my position on a point where you 
 expressly invite, if not challenge, correction. I never indicated "freedom from 
 State systems of religion" as one of the impulses of our time against which I take 
 my stand. I think you never understood me to do so. Nor do I regard the strong 
 tendency of our time to wild, ultra individualism as an element of any progress 
 but that made by Eve at the serpent's suggestion, Sodom just previous to Lot's 
 escape from it, Rome just before its liberties were destroyed by Caesar, and others 
 in like circumstances. Admit the legitimacy of egotism, or the selfish pursuit of 
 happiness by each individual, and a government of despotism seems to me a logical 
 and practical necessity. Had the Pilgrim Fathers of American liberty cherished 
 your ideas of the sovereignty of the individual, I have no shadow of doubt that 
 their children would, long ere this, have passed under the yoke of a despotism as 
 rigorous as that of Nicholas or Louis Napoleon. They founded liberty because 
 they taught and practised self-denial, — the subordination of the individual will 
 and pleasure to the will of God (or, if you please, the common weal), — and thus 
 only, in my judgment, can liberty ever be founded and perpetuated. 
 
 You totally mistake in attributing to me the assertion of the principle of non- 
 intervention between nations as the principle of peace and harmony. On the con- 
 trary, I deplore the absence of competent tribunals to adjudicate questions of 
 international difference, and believe all peaceful, just nations should promptly 
 combine to establish such tribunals. Had such existed in 1846, we must have 
 been spared the waste and the butchery, the guilt and the shame, of our bloody 
 foray on Mexico. How readily all the intrigues and agitations of our day respect- 
 ing Cuba would be settled by a just international supreme court! So far from re- 
 joicing or acquiescing in its absence, I deplore that circumstance as the great 
 scandal and calamity of Christendom. 
 
 The State is to me something other and more than a mob, because I believe that, 
 since justice is all men's true and permanent interest, the heat of passion or the 
 lust of gain, which too often blind men to the iniquity of their own personal acts, 
 are far less potent in their influence on those same men's judgment of the acts of
 
 Lcyce^ Marrlarjr^ and Divorce. 61 
 
 others. I believe, for instance, there are two men in the State of New York wlio 
 are personally licentious for every one who would gladly see libertinism shielded 
 and favored by law. Men who roll vice as a sweet morsel under their tongues are 
 yet desirous that virtue shall be generally prevalent, and that their own children 
 shall be trained to love and practise it. I do, therefore, apj^eal to "the State," or 
 the deliberate judgment of the community, to arbitrate between us, believing that 
 the State properly exists as a "terror to evil-doers and a praise to them that do 
 well," and that it not only does, but should, judge and deal with offenders against 
 sexual purity and the public well-being. I think it ought to "supi)ri'ss," not the 
 expression of your opinions, but such action as they tend to clothe with impunity; 
 and so far from deprecating their contingent suppression of me, should ever your 
 principles gain the ascendancy, I prefer to be suppressed, for I would not choose 
 longer to live. 
 
 As to the harmonizing of freedom with order, I, too, desire and anticipate it, 
 but not through the removal of all restraints on vicious appetite. On the con- 
 trary, I expect and labor for its realization through the diffusion of light and truth 
 with regard to our own natures, organizations, purposes, and that divine law which 
 overrules and irradiates them all. In other words, I look for the harmonizing of 
 desire with duty, not through the blotting out of the latter, but through the chas- 
 tening, renovating, and purifying of the former. 
 
 As to the right of self-government, there is no such radical difference between 
 us as you assert. You, as well as I, find a large class of men who are not capable 
 of self-government; for you acquiesce in the imposition of restraint upon the 
 lunatic, thief, burglar, counterfeiter, forger, maimer, and murderer. Where is 
 their "inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Ah! you 
 say, "These men are depredators on the ecjual rigiits of others." "Very well," I 
 reply, "so are the seducer, adulterer, gambler, and dispenser of alcoholic beve- 
 rages." Who would not rather have his property wrested from him by robbery 
 than his children enticed into dens of infamy and there debauched and corrupted? 
 Where is the man who does not feel and know that the seducer of his innocent 
 daughter — perhaps a mere child of fifteen — is a blacker villain, and more deserv- 
 ing of punishment (no matter fur what end you apply it), than any street 
 rowdy or thief? When you invoke "the sovereignty of the individual" to shield 
 that villain from the law's terrors, you do what no uncorrupted conscience can 
 calmly justify. 
 
 As you seem unable to discern the principles which underlie my position on this 
 subject, let me liriefly state them. 1. Man has no moral right to do wrong. 2. 
 The State ought to forbid and repress all acts which tend, in their natural conse- 
 quences, or through the principles they involve, to corrupt the morals of the com- 
 munity, and so increase the sum of human degradation and wretchedness. 8. It 
 is wiser, humaner, every way preferable, that crimes should he prei'etUed than tliat
 
 52 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 they should be punished. 4. The great mass of criminals and public pests among 
 us began their downward courses by gambling, tippling, or lewdness; and those 
 are almost uniformly the initial stejis to a career of outlawry, depravity, and fla- 
 grant crime. 5. Sexual love was iini>laiited in man by his creator expressly that 
 the race should be perpetuated, — not merely brought into existence, but properly 
 nurtured, protected, guided, an«l educated. All sexual relations that do not con- 
 template and conform to these ends are sinful and at war with the highest good of 
 humanity. 6. The commandment from Sinai, " Tlioii shalt not comniit adultery," 
 is a part of the natural or moral law, contemi)lating and forbidding every form of 
 sexual relation except the union for life of one man with one woman, in obedieinr 
 to the divine end above indicated. 7. Hence (not because of the law given by 
 Moses, but in accordance with the same perception of moral fitness or necessity) 
 the State honors and Vilesses marriage (which is such union and none other), and 
 frowns npon all other sexual relations. 
 
 It is nonsense, Mr. Andrews, to talk of your notion of individual sovereignty as 
 a new discovery, and of our antagonist views as moss-grown. From the remotest 
 heathen antiquity nearly every savage or barbarous people has acted far nearer to 
 your principles than to ours. Polygamy, divorce at pleasure, and still wider licen- 
 tiousness are all nearly as old as sin, and have very generally gone unwhipped of 
 human justice. It is our doctrine — that crime should be dealt with in the egg, 
 and not suffer the vulture to attain his full growth ; that it is better to prevent 
 than punish — that is relatively novel, with its Maine laws, anti-gambling laws, 
 penalties for seduction, etc. The tendency, so obvious in our day, to revolt against 
 all legal impediments to the amplest sensual indulgence is a reaction against this, 
 which is destined to give us trouble for a time, but 1 have no fear that it will ul- 
 timately prevail. 
 
 You deem me hopeless of the eradication of murder, and argue that, as we in 
 New York have now no such offences as Ihe rnajcste, heresj', spoken treason, negro- 
 stealing, etc., so we may (thus runs your logic) get rid of murder in like manner 
 by no longer visiting it with a penalty or regarding it as a crime. I am not sure 
 of the efficacy of this remedy. I have read with some care I)e Quincey's "Papers 
 on murder considered as one of the fine arts," and, while I have certainly l)eeii 
 enlightencil by them as to the more poetical aspects of human butchery, I do not 
 feel that my personal objections to being knocked down with a slung-shot or pav- 
 ing-stone, dragged up some blind alley, and there finished, have been materially 
 softened by his magnificent rhetoric. I still think murderers imsafe persons to go 
 at large, — and so of .seducers and adulterers. I think tiiey would do the common- 
 wealth more good and less harm engaged at Sing-Sing than abroad in New York. 
 
 You tell me, indeed, that "there will be no seduction, no bigamy, and no adul- 
 tery when there is no lerfnl and forceful institution of marriage to defend." I 
 think I understand you. You mean that, if the legal inhibitions and penalties
 
 Lovc^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 53 
 
 now levelleJ at tlio acts thus desij^natftl be abolished, they will no longer be f ••■ • 
 iu the catalogue of ofTences; but you do not mean, as your whole eiwiay « 
 shows, that no such acts as are now known V)y those names will l)e < 
 On the contrary, you glory in the belief that they will l»e far more abu: 
 they now are. In other words, you l>elieve that the acts known to our law . 
 duction, bigamy, and adultery ouijht to be committed and ought not to bo repn .. 
 — that they outrage no law of nature or morality, but only wrtain arbitrarj' and 
 i;^norant Imman interdicts. 
 
 I hold exactly the contrary, — that these are acts which God and all t'OfHl mfu 
 must reprobate, though the law of the land had never named them. I 
 systematic seducer to l)e the vilest wolf ever let lofjso to prey on inn<. 
 purity, and one who oilends far more flagrantly against the natural or divine law 
 tlian any thief or burglar. So of the bigamist, whose crime is generally per- 
 petrated through the most atrocious deceit and perfidy. So of the adult<'rer — I 
 take up a paper now before me, and read in a riiiladelphia letter as follows: 
 
 Cclestin William, a PolLsh Catholic priest, elopo<l from tbla city some days Binro with » 
 married woiuau. It is believed tliry liavo Roiie \Vest. 
 
 Ileary Schriver eloped from this city last week wltli tlie wife of a noi^hlwr, leaving behind 
 a wife and several children. 
 
 Here are four jiersons, all of whom have delilM-rately broken tl 
 vows heaven was ever invoked to witness, three of whom have li 
 trayed those to whom they had sworn fidelity in the most important and intimate 
 relation of life, one, at least, of whom lias deserted the children he was bound by 
 every tie of nature and duty to supinirt and educate in the ways of wisdom and 
 virtue, yet all throwing themselves on their individual sov<'reiv,Mity and ; 
 on every dictate of duty in subserviency to their own selfish lu>;ts ; jukI w 
 your doctrine do with them? Nothing, but save them the exjxMiso ot run;.;:. 
 away. They might have taken respectively the next house to that they desert- J, 
 and there flaunted their infidelity and lechery in the eyes of the partneni they had 
 p«»rfidiously deserted, the children they had abandoned. I cannot think th;- ;■. 
 improvement. On the contrary, so long as men and women «-i7/ be thus unj . . 
 pled and lecherous, I am glad that the law imj>oses on them, at least, the tribute 
 to public <lecency of running away. 
 
 And this reminds me of the kindred case of two persons in Nantucket who haro 
 advertised in the newspujH'rs that they liavo forme<l a matrimonial connection for 
 life, or a.i long <u the;/ can agree ; adiling thiM. they consider this {Mirtnership exclu- 
 sively thi'ir own affair, in which nol>ody else has any concern. I 
 have the grace not to make the State a party tti any such arran 
 I'ut true marriage — (he union of one man with one wonnin for lile, in holy oImv 
 dienco to the law and pur|K>se of (iod, and for the rearing upof pure, virluou»,nnd 
 modest sons nttd daughtcro to the State — is a union so radically dilfereut from
 
 54 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 this that I trust tliG Nantucket couple will not claim, or that, at all events, their 
 ueighbora will not concede to their selfish, shameful alliance, the honorable appel- 
 lation of marriage. Let us, at least, "hold fast tlie form of sound words." 
 
 I do not care to follow you over a wide area which has no necessary connection 
 with our theme. Sutlice it that I regard free trade as neither riglit nor wrong, good 
 nor bad, in itself, but only in view of its practical issues. It is always bad when it 
 tends to throw workers out of employment or diminish the scanty rewards of la- 
 bor. When the .social and industrial condition of the various peoples shall have 
 been so equalized that there will be no temptation to undersell and supplant the 
 industry of one nation with the cheaper products of another, then absolute free 
 trade may work well; but the mere equalization of wages is but one among several 
 conditions precedent to healthful freedom from iniposts. The cotton manufactures 
 of India were ruined, and the manufacturers starved, by the far letter paid labor of 
 England, aided by vastly superior machinery. A wise, paternal Indian govern- 
 ment would have prohibited the British cottons until the British machinery could 
 have been somehow secured and set suJliciently to work. Thus efficient protection 
 would have opened the .speediest way to beneficent free trade; and so in other 
 cases. But understand me to believe and hold that what you commend as "the 
 free play and full development and varied experience of the affections!!" is not 
 and never can be a good thing, but will remain to the end of the world a most re- 
 volting and diabolic perversion of powers divinely given us, for beneficent and 
 lofty ends, to the base uses of selfish and sensual appetite, — to uses whereof the 
 consistent development and logical expression are exhibited in the harlot and the 
 b'hoy. 
 
 It is very clear, then, Mr. Andrews, that your path and mine will never meet. 
 Your socialism seems to be synonymous with egotism; mine, on the contrary, con- 
 templates and requires the subjection of individual desire and gratification to the 
 highest good of the community, of the personal to the universal, the temporary to 
 the everlasting. I utterly abhor what you term "the right of woman to choose 
 the father of her own child," — meaning her right to choose a dozen fathers for so 
 many different children, — seeing that it conflicts directly and fatally with the 
 ])aramount right of each child, through minority, to protection, guardianship, and 
 intimate daily counsel and training from both parents.* Your sovereignty of the 
 
 • In ro-rcading niy reply, which follows, I perceive tlwt I have made no specific answer to this posi- 
 tion. I have only »p;ico now to say that, if, ujion principle, "the State" can rightly interfere with 
 parents to prevent them from making their own arrangements for rearing tlieir offspring — namely, to 
 carry on their education jointly, usslgii it to one of the partners, or to a third i)er8on — In order "to 
 secure to each child, through minority, the protection, gnardianship, and intimate daily counsel and 
 tr.iining of both parents" ; that, if the .State can rightly interfere, and onpht to interfere, to prevent 
 the H«>|ianition of parents on such grounds at all, — the:; ic can al^o and ought to pafs lawtt to prevent 
 fathers, during tho minority of a child, from going to sea, or to a foreign country, as his business in- 
 terests may dictate, and generally from being absent more than twenty-four hours, or being caught
 
 Love, Jfarriaye, and Divorce. 00 
 
 individual is in palpable collision with the purity of society and tlie sovereignty 
 of God.* It renders the family a smoke-wreath which the next puff of air may 
 dissipate, — a scries of "dissolving views," wherein "Honor thy father" would be 
 a command impossible to obey, — nor, indeed, can I perctivo how the father, under 
 your system, would deserve honor at the hands of his child. In such a ) 
 pandemonium as that system would inevitably create, I could not i-hoo6e to 
 So long as those who think as I do are the majority in this country, the practi- 
 tioners on your principles will be dealt with by law like other malefactors ; and, if 
 t'VL'r your disciples shall gain the ascendancy, we will go hence to some land where 
 mothers are not necessarily wantons, love is not lust, and the s<.'lfish pursuit of sen- 
 >iuil gratillcation is not dignified with the honors due to wisdom and virtue. 
 
 more than thirty miles from kouio. The principle, u a prlaciplc, li just m good in one caae u the 
 
 OtLlT. • 
 
 Tlie /ac< is tlint, lii nine caAe« oat of teu, children had much Ix-lttT Imj reared by loiDebody el«e than 
 by either one or both of the |>urenta, — in nuuiy cnM>s, by almost anybody c1m<. I iuire yet to Irani on 
 lirincipio or by otis<TVatlon tluit tlio mere caiMc-ity to be};ct children is any sufflcicnt certificate of com- 
 IH-tency to rear them proiK-riy. — S. P. A. 
 
 *T}iia point also n-quirea an answer, which 1«, simply, that I claim the right for each IndirldnaJ for 
 hiniKolf to Jndpc of the purity of suclety nnd tlio sovi-rciguty of (tod, instead of taking Mr. Greelej't 
 decision on the subject us final. Such is the soTarvlgnty of the indiridoai — S. P. A.
 
 56 Love, Marriage, and Divorce, 
 
 IX. 
 
 MR. JAMES'S REPLY. 
 
 To the Editor of the New York Tribune: 
 
 I declined controversy with your correspondent, Mr. S. P. Andrews, not because 
 of any personal disrespect for him, but chiefly for the reason stated at the time, 
 — that his objections to my views of divorce were trivial, fallacious, and dis- 
 ingenuous. I may now further say that his general opinions on the subject in 
 discussion between the "Observer" and myself did not, besides, seem to me of 
 sulFicient weight to invite a public i-efutation. I may have been mistaken, but 
 such was, and such continues to bef, my conviction. It is, accordingly, more anms- 
 ing than distressing to observe that your correspondent's vanity has converted what 
 was simply indifference on my part into dread of his vast abilities. But lest any 
 of your readers should partake this delusion, let me say a few words in vindication 
 of my conviction. 
 
 We all know that marriage is the union, legally ratified, of one man with one 
 woman for life. And we all know, moreover, that many of the subjects of this 
 union find themselves in very unhappy relations to each other, and are guilty of 
 reciprocal infidelities and barbarities in consequence, which keep society in a per- 
 petual commotion. Now, in speaking of these infidelities and barbarities, I have 
 always said that they appeared to me entirely cural>le l>y enlarging the grounds of 
 divorce. For, holding, as I do, that the human heart is the destined home of con- 
 stancy and every courteous atfection, I cannot but believe that it will abound in 
 these fruits precisely as it becomes practically honored, or left to its own cultivated 
 instincts. Thus I have insisted tliat, if you allowed two persons who were badly 
 assorted to separate upon their joint application to the State for leave, and upon 
 giving due securities for the maintenance of their ofl'spring, you would be actually 
 taking away one great, existing stimulant to conjugal inconstancy, and giving this 
 very couple the most powerful of all motives to renewed affection. For, unques- 
 tionably, every one admits that he does not cheerfully obey compulsion, but, on 
 the contrary, evades it at every opportunity; and it is matter of daily observa- 
 tion that no mere legal bondage secures conjugal fidelity where mutual love and 
 respect are wanting between the parties. You instinctively feel also that a con- 
 jugal fidelity which should obey that motive chiefly would be a reproach to the
 
 Love^ JIarria(/ey and Divorce. o7 
 
 name. You feel tlial all man's relations to his fellows, :i ! 
 
 should be bai)tized from above, or acknowledge an ideal 
 
 and that where this sanction is absent, conseijuenlly the reiuiiun ia uilher .- 
 
 infantile or else iidiuman. In res[)ect to this higher sanction and bond of co:.^ ^ .. 
 
 fidelity, you call the legal bond inferior or ba^e. As serving and promoting the 
 
 former, one deems the latter excellent anddunorable; but as ceasing any longer 
 
 to do so, you deem it low and bestial. Now, I have simply insisted that the li-vul 
 
 sanctions of marriage should, by a due cnlari^'emfnt of t! 
 
 kept strictly subservient and ministerial to the lii^her or ; 
 
 for my own part, not the shallow of a doubt tiiat, in that case, coiuitaucy would 
 
 speedily avouch itself the law of the conjugal relation, instead of, as now, the rare 
 
 exception. 
 
 In this state of things your correspondent appears on the scene, i 
 amid many other small insolences and puerile affectations, not to l>e • 
 me, and yet betraying so crude an apprehension of the discussion into which ho is 
 ambitious to thrust himself that he actually confounds my denunciation of l>a.se 
 and unworthy motives in marriage with a denunciation of the marriage institution 
 itself I I have simply and uniformly said that the man who fulfils the dut! 
 his conjugal relation from no tenderer or humaner ground than the law, n 
 jK'nalties secure him immunky in the enjoyment of that relation, proves hiH:--ii 
 the subject of a base legal or outward slavery merely, instead of a noble and r> lin- 
 ing sentiment. And hereupon your sagacious and alarming correspondent cries 
 out that I resolve "the whole and solo substance of marriage into a legal bond or 
 outward force, which is diabolical and should be wholly abolished and «lisjx?nsed 
 with." Surely your correspondent must admit tiiat, when a man 
 voke the sanction of society to their union, neither they nor any oi: 
 society's action in the premises as a constraint, as a compulsion. 'NVhy .' liecause 
 society is doing the precise thing they want it to do. With united hearts they 
 beg of society to sanction their union, and .society does so. Your correspondent 
 can not accordingly be so dull as to look uj>on society's inili;r 
 pulsory V The marriage j)artners, at this i>eriod, are united \>. 
 deride the conception of a rompnl>(>iy union. But, now, suppose timt liiis 
 tion, from wliatever cause, has cea.>«ed, while the legal sanction ol their uiii. 
 mains unchanged; can not your corres{>ondent understand that the tie which now 
 binds them might seem, in compari.>ion with tlie ])uru and elevated one which had 
 lapsed, "a base legal bondage, iv mere outward forct?"? If ho can not. let me iriro 
 him an illustration exactly to the iH)int. I find a ]" t 
 
 purst! of money, which the law, under certain iH'iial; 
 
 Out of regard to these [tenalties purely, and from no sentiment nl justice or man- 
 liness, I restore it to the owner. llereuiKin my spiritual ailviscr, while approving 
 my act, denounces the motive of it an derogatory to true inaidiuod, which would
 
 58 Love^ AfarriagCy and Divorce. 
 
 have restored the purse from the sheer delight of doing a right thing, or, what is 
 equivalent, the sheer loathing of doing a dirty one. What, now, would your cor- 
 respondent think of a verdant gentleman who, in this state of things, should charge 
 my adviser "with doslroving the institution of private property, with resolving it 
 into aba.se legal bondage, and dooming it to an inccntinent abolition"? Would 
 he not think tliat this verdant gentleman's interference had been slightly super- 
 lluous? But whatever ho thinks, one thh)g is clear, which is that the realm of logic 
 will not for a moment tolerate your correspondent's notion of "Individual Sove- 
 n-ignty." Whoso violates the canons of this despotic realm by the exhdiition of 
 any private sovereignty linds himself instantly relegated by an inflexible Nemesis, 
 and in spite of any amount of sonorous self-complacency, back to the disjected 
 sphere which he is qualified to adorn, and from wliich he has meanwhile unhand- 
 somely absconded. 
 
 I am sure that it is only this foolish notion of the "Sovereignty of the Individual" 
 which obscures your correspondent's mother-wit. I call the notion foolish, be- 
 cause, as I find it here propounded, it is uncommonly foolish. As well as I can 
 master its contents, it runs thus: That every man has a right to do as he pleases, 
 provided he will accept the consequences of so doing. The proposition is strik- 
 ingly true, although it is anything but new. Thus you are at liberty, and have 
 been so since the fomidation of the world, to eat gi-een apples, provided you will 
 accept a consequent colic without wincing. Or you are at liberty to prostitute, by 
 dishonest arts, your neighbor's daughter, provided you are willing to encounter 
 for so doing the scorn of every honest nature. Or the thief is at liberty to steal, 
 provided he will bear the consequences of doing so ; and the liar to lie, provided he 
 will accept the consequences of lying. All these are instances of "Individual 
 Sovereignty." They illustrate the doctrine more than they commend it. For, 
 while no rogue ever doubted his perfect freedom to swindle, on condition of his 
 accepting its consequences, I take it that no rogue was ever such a goose as to view 
 that condition itself as a satisfactory exhibition of his sovereignty. As a general 
 thing, rogues are a shrewd folk, and I suspect you would canvass all Sing-Sing 
 b.'fore you would light upon a genius so original as to regard his four irrefragable 
 walls as so many arguments of his individual sovereignty. 
 
 To think of a preposterous "handful uf men" in the nineteenth century of the 
 Christian era "accepting and announcing for the first time in the world" — and 
 no doubt also for the last — "the sovereignty of the individual, with all its con- 
 sequences" — however disorderly, of course — "as the principle of order as well as 
 of liberty and happiness among men " I Was ever a more signal proof given of the 
 incompetency of democracy as a constructive principle than tliat afforded by this 
 conceited handful of fanatics? They are doubtless more or less men of intelli- 
 gence, and yet they mistake the purely disorganizing ministries of democracy for 
 so many positive results, for so much scientific construction, and identify the
 
 L(yvc^ J/arrl(i(/e, ami Divorce. .'<0 
 
 reign of universal order and liberty with the very dissolution of nioruii n\:>i ijie 
 promulgation of abject license I In the discolored corpse thoy see only the blootu- 
 ing hues of life, and in the most pungent eviileiues of corruption recogniz« the 
 flavor of immortality. Your corresj>ondeiit profisses to admire "pluck," hut it 
 seems to mo that the "[iluck" which takes a man blindly over a precipice and 
 leaves him crowing at the bottom over an undamaged sconce and an uni>erturlK.>d 
 philosophy necessarily implies the usual accompaniment of sheep's-head uImj. 
 
 Your correspondent kindly applauds an observation of mine l« the efT.-rl that 
 "freedom is one with order "; and I infer from the general t4-iior of his K-tl.-r that 
 I have hitherto enjoyed a iiunsi patronage at his hands. Now, I will not aflect an 
 indifference, which I by no means feel, to th^ favorable estimation ol your cor- 
 respondent, or any other well-<lisposed person, but I am incai^ablo of purchasing 
 that advantage at the expense of truth. It would doubtless greatly suit your 
 correspondent if, when I say "freedom is one with order," I hlumlil n!s<i nd<I, 
 "and order is one with license," but I really cannot gratify him in • 
 .•somehow, as he himself naively phrases it, when I "apply my int- 
 that conclusion, it flickers out into obscurity and darkness." llather let mu say, it 
 reddens into a lurid and damnable falsehood. I can not, therefore, regret the 
 withdrawal of a patronage of which I Ijave been both unworthy and unconscious. 
 I can not reduce my brain to mud, were my reward to l>o the approbatii" •' 
 
 a much more plenary "handful" of individual sovereignties than that r. i 
 
 by your correspondent is ever likely to grow. 
 
 For my own part, Mr. Editor, I can conceive of no "individual sovereignty " 
 which precedes a man's perfect adjustment to nature and society. I have imi« 
 formly viewed man as under a threefold subjection, first to nature, then to society, 
 and finally to (led. His api>etites and his sensuous understanding relate him to 
 nature; his passions and his rational understanding relate him to .society or his 
 ft'llow-man; and his ideas relate lum to (Jod. Now, as to the lirst two of tbeso 
 spheres, man's subjection is obviously absolute. If, for example, he indulge his 
 appetites capriciously or Iwyond a certain limit, he pays a jH>nalty, whatever Ihj his 
 alleged "sovereignty." And if he indulge his passions l>eyond the limit prfscril»ed 
 by the interests of society, he pays an inevitable pt-nalty in that cax* also, however 
 sublime an<l Ixmutiful his private pretensions may bo. To talk of nuui's w.)ve- 
 n'ignty, therefop', in eitlu'r a physical or moral point of view, save as exertctl in 
 the obedience of physical and moral limitations, is transparent noniM'nse. And 
 even regardeil as so exert«d, the nons4>nso is scarcely more opaque. For what kind 
 of sovereignty is that which is known only by its limitations, which is oxorcLiod 
 only in subjection to something el.H4<? Thi-re are, ind<>«><l. iixli-initnllf .sovert-igns 
 without any t«'rrit<iii;il (;ii:i!ilirationH, but their titles : v Nvau.to they 
 
 arc men of diseased tacultii s, whom one would bo ui of a soothing 
 
 illusion.
 
 60 Xore, Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 What, thfu, i\< the sphere of human freedom, of human sovereiguty? It is the 
 sphere of ideas, the sphere of man's subjection to God. As ideas are infinite, as 
 they adniiL no contrast or oppugnaiiey, ;u> they are perftclly good, and true, and 
 beautiful, so, of course, the more unlimited a man's subjection to them becomes, 
 the more unlimited becomes his freedom or sovereignty. He who obeys his api>e- 
 tites merely finds himself speedily betrayed by the inflexible laws of nature to dis- 
 ease and death. He who obeys his passions merely finds himself betrayed by the 
 inflexible laws of society to shame and seclusion. But he who obeys ideas, he who 
 gives himself up to the guidance of infinite goodness, truth, and beauty, encoun- 
 ters no limitation at the hands either of nature or society, and, instead of disease 
 and shame, plucks only the fruits of health and immortal honor. For it constitutes 
 the express and inscrutable perfection of the divine life that he who yields himself 
 with least reserve to that most realizes life in himself; even as He who best knew 
 its deptlis mystically said. Whoso tcill lose his life temporarily shall find it eternally, 
 and whoso will save it shall lose it. 
 
 But the indispensable condition of one's realizing freedom or sovereignty in this 
 sphere is that he be previously in complete accord with nature and society, with 
 liis own body and his feUow-man. Because so long as a man's physical subsistence 
 is insecure, and the respect of his fellow-men unattained, it is evident that his 
 highest instincts, or his ideas of goodness and truth, can receive no direct, but 
 only a negative obedience. His daily bread is still uncertain, and the social posi- 
 tion of himself and family completely unachieved; these ends consequently claim 
 all his direct or spontaneous activity, and he meanwhile confesses himself the ab- 
 ject vassal of natme and society. In this state of things, of course, or while he 
 remains in this vassalage, — while his whole soul is intent upon purely finite ends, 
 — the ideal sphere, the sphere of infinitude or perfection, remains wholly shut up, 
 or else only faintly imaged to him in the symbols of a sensuous theology. I say "of 
 course," for how can the infantile imagination of man, instructed as yet only by 
 the senses, receive any idea of a good which is infinite? It necessarily views the 
 infinite as only an indefinite extension of the finite, and accordingly swamps the 
 divine life — swamps the entire realm of spiritual being — in gross materiality. 
 
 No man accordingly can realize the true freedom he has in God, until, by the 
 advance of society, or, what is the same thing, the growing spiritual culture of the 
 race, he be delivered from the bondage of appetite and passion. A's appetites and 
 passions are as strong mider repression as B's. Why does he not yield them the 
 same ready obedience? It is because society has placed A above their dominion 
 by giving him all the resources of spiritual culture and bringing him accordingly 
 under the influence of infinite ideas, under the direct inspirations of God. The 
 sentiment of unity he experiences with God involves that also of his unity with 
 natjire and society, and his obedience to ajipetite, therefore, can never run into 
 vice, nor his indulgence of passion into crime. In short, the inexpugnable condi-
 
 Lorce^ Marrlatjt., and D'trorcti, (II 
 
 tion of his every action is that it involve no degradation to hi« own bo<ly and no 
 detriment to his fellow-man. Now, what society ha.s don<! for A it has yet t<» >li> 
 for B and the entire alphal)ct of its members. When it has brought them into 
 perfect fellowship w ith each other, or made duty and interest exactly reciprocal, 
 then every man will be free to do as he ]>lea.ses, because his appetites and pa«sionH, 
 receiving their due and normal satisfaction, will no longer grow infuriate from 
 starvation, nor consequently jiennit the loathsome and morbid displays they in .v. 
 yield. I will not say any such stiipidity as that man will then "bo free to d" .i- 
 he plea.ses, provided ho will take the conseiiuences"; for in a true fellowsliii ■ 
 mankind no action of any member can i>ossibly ^^eget evil consequences, eilh<T ! ■ 
 himself or others, since the universal practical reconciliation of interest with duty 
 will always make it his plea.sure to «lo only what is noble and undcfiled. A free- 
 dom which consists in taking the consequences of one's actions, when one's actions 
 are not at the same time jwrfectly regulated by a scienti' 
 among men, is such a freedom as men may enjoy in hell, ^. 
 
 and insensibility constitutes virtue. But I incline to think that hell, with its 
 fashions, Is dying out of human respect every day, and that society is continually 
 approximating that contrary state in which a man's power will accurately reflect 
 the measure of his humanitary worth, or, what is the same thing, his elevation bo 
 strictly proportionate to his humility. 
 
 Your corre.six)ndent, very consistently, exhibits a sovereign contempt for society, 
 and calls the State a "mob"; and this judgment gives you a fair insight into his 
 extreme superficiality of observation. Irresponsible govemmfnU, or thoso which do 
 not studiously oWy the expanding needs of society, are doubtless entitled to hearty 
 contempt. Their day, indeed, is over, and nothing remains in the sight of nil rn<Mi 
 but to give them a decent interment. But society never decays. It iii' 
 vigor with the ages. It is, in fact, the advance of society among men, thf 
 ening of the sentiment of fellowship or equality in the human bosom, whioh is 
 chiefly uprooting arbitrary governments. It is bucauso man is now beginning to 
 feel, a.s he never felt lK?fore, his social omnijxjtence, or the boundless succor, l>oth 
 material and spiritual, which the fellowship of his kind insures him, that he is 
 looking away from governments and from whatsoever external patronage, and fiml- 
 ing true help at last in himself. Accordingly, if there is any hope which now more 
 than another brightens the eye of intelligent persons, it is the immense social 
 promi-se opened up to them by every discovery in the arts an<l every new gcnerali* 
 nation of science. Society is the solo direct l>oneficiary of the arts and 
 and the individual man Incomes a partaker of their bounties only by h: 
 cation with it. Thus the l>e.st aspiration of the individual mind is l>ound tip wiiii 
 the progress of society. Only as society rijH'ns, only as a fellowtihip so sacnsl ol>- 
 tains between man and man, as that each shall si>ontanoou8ly do unto the oUier lis 
 he would have the other do to himself, will the true development of individual
 
 62 
 
 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 character and destiny be possible. Because the very unity of man's creative source 
 forbids that one of its creatures shall be strong, except by the strength of all 
 the rest. Yours truly, Henry James. 
 
 New York, January 29. 
 
 «l
 
 Love^ Marriaye^ and Divorce. 63 
 
 X. 
 
 MR. Andrews's reply to mr. greelet. 
 
 [Rejected by Tlio Tribune.] 
 Horace Greeley: 
 
 I might insist that leading positions in my last article are not replied to at all 
 in yours. I will content myself, however, with noticing what wsaid and suggested 
 by you. 
 
 First, then, believe me, it was by oversight, and not intentionally, that I included 
 "freedom from State systems of religion" among the kinds of freedom which you 
 had assigned to the broader designation of "the sovereignty of the individual." It 
 so obviously belongs in the same category that you must confess the mistake waa a 
 very natural one. I observe now, however, tliat the grouping of the various appli- 
 cations of the doctrine was my own, and that I was wrong in attributing it, in its 
 full, logical, and legitimate extension, to you. It was not until you directed my 
 attention to the point that I discovered that, while your approbation is given to 
 just those developments of freedom which have, up to the present time, been 
 accredited and rendered popular in the world, you classify under the obnoxious 
 "sovereignty of the individual" those varieties, and those only, which are, as yet, 
 unpopular, or against which you happen to have a personal prejudice. This specios 
 of reasoning, though not very rare, I believe, is still so little understood by me that 
 I do not even know the scientific name by which to designate it. Excuse me, then, 
 that I did not perceive why free trade comes under the head of the sovereignty of 
 the individual (or the general right to do as one chooses), and freedom of the press 
 not so; or why there is a similar difference between freedom of the affections and 
 freedom of the conscience, or of the intellect. 
 
 I certainly thought you held the Kossuthian doctrine of national non-interven- 
 tion. You set me right, and say you "deplore the absence of competent tribunals 
 to adjudicate questions of international difference," etc. Hero you obviouisly do 
 not speak of a mere advisory council, each nation being free to accept or decline 
 the recommendation, but of an actual court. "Tribunal," "con)p<'toncy," and 
 "adjudication" are well-known technicals of the so-called "administration of jus- 
 tice." They always relate to the functions of a botly having pntrrr to enforce its 
 decrees. There is no court without a constable, no sentence without a sanction, no 
 Judiciary without an executive! The constabulary of an international tribunal
 
 04 Lovej Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 must be the united armies and navies of the majority of the combined powers. 
 Any other notion of such a court is nonsense. Now, dare you affirm, in the face 
 of the American people, that you would favor the surrender, by solemn treaty, into 
 the hands of such a tribunal, representing the national policy of Austria, Russia, 
 Spain, Portugal, Home, Naples, etc., — the majority of nations in Christendom, 
 even, — the right to adjudicate for tlie United States all the intenialional questions. 
 even, which they might themselves individually provoke with us, and to enforce 
 such decisions by their combined power? You say such a court would have pre- 
 vented the I^Iexican war. Yes, as order reigns at "Warsaw. Give up, I beseech 
 you, the search after the remedy for the evils of government in more government. 
 The road lies just the other way, — toward individuality and freedom from all gov- 
 ernment. The evil in the case of the Mexican war lay in the stupendous folly 
 which authorized James K. Polk, of Tennessee, by a stroke of his pen, to set thirty 
 millions of men to cutting each other's throats — to begin the next morning — for 
 no cause which would have induced one of them to do anything of the kind on his 
 own responsibility. It is the inherent viciousness of the very institution of govern- 
 ment itself never to be got rid of until our natural individuality of action and 
 responsibility is restored. Nature made individuals, not nations ; and, while nations 
 exist at all, the liberties of the individual must perish. 
 
 But the kind of intervention you advocate between nations, bad as it is, is no 
 parallel, as you seem to think it, to that unsolicited and impertinent interference 
 between indi\'iduals which you defend and I denounce. What would you say to 
 an international tribunal which should arrogate jurisdiction to itself over nations 
 who have never consented to, and who wholly repudiate, its interference, — basing 
 its usurpation on the assumption that somebody must look after the international 
 morality? Further still, fancy Mr. Greeley signing a treaty to give to Austria, 
 Naples, etc., the right, not only to settle differences between us and other nations, 
 but to forbid us, also, to have relations of friendship or commerce with more than 
 one other nation, for example; and generally to regulate, not merely our foreign, 
 but our purely private affairs as well, by prohibiting whatever in the judgment of 
 that tribunal was setting a bad example before the other nations of the earth 1 No, 
 thank God ! nations have not fancied it necessary to sink their individuality in a 
 mass, as individuals have done, granting to numerical stupidity and stolid medi- 
 ocrity the right to suppress genius and enterprise and free thought and superioi- 
 development. To this national freedom from an overruling legislation the world 
 owes the height to which a few nations have attained, which, being attained, will 
 react on the others, and finally develop the whole earth. No, sir, ten individuals 
 in the world, who had thoroughly comprehended their own absolute right to free- 
 dom, and vindicated it as against the impertinent interference of legislation, would 
 be worth, as an example and as a power for good, all the international tribunals 
 there might be in the universe.
 
 Love, M(irri(ni{\ and Dlvf/rce. 65 
 
 I claim iiulividually to he my own nation. I take this opportunity to declare 
 my national independence, and to notify all other potentates, that they may respect 
 my sovereignty. I may have to fi;^ht to establish my claim, ]>nt th<' claim I make, 
 and sooner or later I will come to tho recognition of it. Yon liave notified me that 
 you will resist it. I will conduct the war with you, if possible, hy the pen. If you 
 determine to resort to other weapons, I will adjust my defence to the nature of 
 the onset. 
 
 The State is to you something other than what I have called it, — a mob, — be- 
 cause you believe that the heat of passion and tho lust of gain may blind men in 
 judging their own conduct, and not so in judging the conduct of others. If this is 
 good for anything, as a principle, it must be of reciprocal and universal applica- 
 tion. Let us take a case and try its operation. John Smith an<l Sally Smith, af- 
 ter years of miserable experience, and horrid example, too, as I should say, 
 amicably conclude to separate, do separate, provide for their children by some ajv- 
 propi-iate arrangement which removes them from a daily .scene of sickening and 
 vitiating contest, and each unites with a new partner, and all th<! parties feel con- 
 scious that they have added infinitely to their happiness and well-being; but you, 
 on your principle, that somebody else, who is not blinded Wcauso lie has no 
 interest in the matter, can decide better' than they, interfere, and decide for them 
 that they were led by a shade of i>assion which you define to be lust into their new 
 relations; denounce them in your newspajxT, and invoke tho mob, and send them 
 all packing to the calaboose. Very well, so far; but now for the next application. 
 
 Upon the .same principle, I can judge better than you can of the purity of your 
 motives in this very act, and I determine that you were influenced by an undue 
 desire to increase tho popularity of your journal, by j^arading your zeal for the 
 current morality of the day, and that such an example of the venality of the press 
 is extremely vitiating to tho public mind. My impartial ]>osition for judging au- 
 thorizes me to judge and to punish yoit for deviating from my judgment. Hence I 
 resort to the mob, and burn down your printing-ollice, or throw your types into 
 the ocean. Now, then, how is your mob any better than my mob, — except that 
 yours is called "the State "? Do you find it in the distinction j'ou attempt to es- 
 tablish between freedom of utterance ami freedom of action, — one of which is to 
 be tolerated and the other not? That would only be to turn my vengeance from 
 you personally to the passive instruments of your opinion, — the juries and prison- 
 keepers. 
 
 You, too, desire "the harmonizing of freedom with order, but not through the 
 removal of restraint upon vicious api>etite; the hannonizing of desire with duty, 
 — not through the blotting out of the latter, but through the < ha>l<iiing. renovat- 
 ing, and purifying of the former." Very well; but how? Areording to you, 
 through a system of mutual espionage, suppression, and constraint ; from which I 
 dissent. You .say, also, however, through "tho diffusion of light and truth with
 
 GO Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 regard to our own natures, organizations, purposes, and that divine law which 
 overrules and irradiates all." To this I agree. Choose, I beg of you, before you 
 write again, between the two systems, which are as opposite as light and darkness. 
 But this harmonizing will never come by any system through the tempering and 
 modifying of desire alone; it demands equally the softening and liberalizing of 
 duty, since "to the pure all things are pure." We differ, pwhaps, botli as to the 
 source whence a healthful restraint must emanate, and as to the amount of restraint 
 which is healthful. 
 
 You think there is no such radical difference between us as to the right of self- 
 government, because, you say, T acquiesce in the imposition of restraint ujjon the 
 lunatic, the thief, burglar, counterfeiter, forger, maimer, and murderer. If I do, 
 it is as the temporary necessity of a false and bad social system, which rualcen such 
 characters, and must, therefore, take care of them. It is your duty, I think, to ad- 
 vocate a Maine liquor law as long as you advocate compelling a woman to bear a 
 drunkard's child, with a drunkard's vitiated appetite from the hour of quickening 
 into life. Can you perceive no difference between my making this admission of 
 your duty relative to a prior wrong, and advocating the whole system as a right 
 system, as you do? I would, like another man, enforce the barbarous discipline of 
 the camp in time of war, if war must be; but that should not hinder me from in- 
 sisting that war itself is a great folly and had much better be replaced by amicable 
 relations and the interchange of reciprocal benefits between the contending people. 
 I beg of you to endeavor to master, and to keep always ii mind, the distinction 
 which I drew in my last between principle and expediency. Is it possible that I 
 cannot make myself understood upon this point? I do not even assert that your 
 laws against seduction and the like are not necessities of your present system, just 
 as the patrol organization, the violation of the post office, and the hanging of 
 abolitionists are necessities of slave-holding, and just as an army of spies and the 
 censorship of the press are necessities of European despotism, so long as either is 
 to remain. 
 
 If two cats are tied up in a bag, the tendency of this "too close connection " will 
 be toward contest and clamor. You will probably have to choke them to keep 
 them tolerably quiet. If the bag is, then, assumed to be a necessary institution, to 
 be maintained at all hazards, and if quiet is also a desideratum, the choking will 
 also remain a perpetual necessity. Even when the discovery is made — and it is 
 to this point that I ask your special attention — that the cats are well enough dis- 
 posed to be quiet if you will let them out, it may still be necessary to keep your 
 fingers on their throats until the bag can be cautiously and safely untied, the cats 
 extracted, and a little time allowed them to become convinced of their prospective 
 good treatment. If an existing bad system cannot be changed at once without 
 some bad consequences, they are to be charged, not upon the right system which is 
 to follow, but upon the remaining influence of the old and vicious one.
 
 Lovc^ J/ii>'rl(i(/c, and Divorce. ^7 
 
 I would have the order of society »o founded on a scientific knowlidj^e ol the 
 nature, orgaiiizutioti, and purposes of man, and of that divine law whicli overrule* 
 and irradiates all, that there shall l>e no thief, no burglar, no maimer, and no mur- 
 derer; and I take the harden of proof ui>on myself to show that the principles aro 
 now known in accordance with which it is just as practicable to have Buch a nociety 
 as to have the " Pandemonium " we now have. This whole liarvest of gallowA-birda 
 is the fruit of your tree, not of mine, and, while you continue to pro<luce them, it 
 belongs to you to provide for them. I do not even deny that you may know Wtter 
 than I what is necessary to that end. 
 
 I come now to your statement of principles. 1. "Man has no moral right to 
 do wrong." I deny this proiK)sition, if by wrong is meant exp<'diency as cli.stin- 
 guished from abstract right, or principle. I hold to expediency just as religiously 
 as I do to principle it^self. Yet every exjH'dient which deviates from abstract prin- 
 ciple, or the final right, is, in the higher .sense, wrong. I hold it, then, not only 
 innocent, but a positivt; duty, often to do one wrong thing l>ecau.Hc another wrong 
 thing has been done. I refer you to the apologj' for your tariff doctrines in my 
 last. I deny your proposition agftin most emphatically, if by wrong is meant 
 what somebody else, or everybo<ly else, judges U> be wrong, and which I «lo not. 
 What wrong is it, then, that I have not a right to do? Is it yours? or Mr. James's? 
 or Ivouis Napoleon's? or the Chan of Tartary's? or Mrs. (Irundy's? or that of the 
 majority of the mob? That is th<^ vital question which I shall ntver let you off 
 from answering; and, until it in answered, every general proposition you make on 
 the subject will, when analyzed, mean just nothing at all. Who is the umpire, or 
 standard of right and truth? 
 
 2. "The State ought to forbid and repress all acts whii-h tend, in their natural 
 consequences," etc., "to corrupt the morals of the community," etc. Here, you 
 jM-rceive, comes right up again the same vital question, without the answer to 
 which all this laying down of principles is mere trorth, "Which tend," etc. — in 
 whose judgment? That is the ]X)int to which I must hold your attention. The 
 teachings and conduct of Christ t<'nded, in the judgment of the Jewish "State," to 
 corrupt the morals of the oommunity. Did that confer on them th«' moral riglit 
 to crucify him? It is nonsense, Mr. (Jrei'ley (t-xcuse me, since you taui^'ht me the 
 use of that word), to call either of these propositions of yours principles, until you 
 first settle the jurisdiction of the questions which tJiey raise. I veat it in indivi- 
 dual sovereignty. Where do you v.- • i*"' T beg of you to lay down a general 
 principle covering this point. 
 
 H. "It is wiser," etc., "that crimes .should U» prermfed than that they should bo 
 punished." Herein we agnH>; but how prevented? You say in one bn-ath, by )our 
 .suppressing me, and n>y suppressih ,' you, whenever wi« happf>n to differ. — that Is, 
 by the exercise of the right of the .strongest; and in the next, "by the difTusion of 
 light and truth with regard to our own natures," etc., a« I have alrendy quoteU 
 you. I accept the latter method, and di.scard the former.
 
 68 Love, ullarriaye, and Divorce. 
 
 4. " The great raass of criminals," etc., " begin their downward courses by gam. 
 bling, tippling, and lewdness," etc. I take this to be a mistake. I think you substi. 
 tute effects for causes. Crime has its origin much farther back, and, if you are to 
 "deal with it in the egg," you must look to the laws of procreation, by which 
 parents impress all the falsity of their own lives upon their offspring. I shall 
 notice this subject again. 
 
 5. "Sexual love was implanted," etc., "not merely that the race should be 
 brought into existence, but properly nurtured, protected," elc. This, too, is a mis- 
 take. Nature has secured the procreation of the race by the sexual passion. She 
 has not intrusted their maintenance and protection in infancy to that passion, but 
 inspired both parents with another expressly to that end, — namely, the love of chil. 
 dren or offspring. It is the ignorance and folly of men that would enforce upon one 
 of these impulses of our nature the vicarious performance of the duties of the other, 
 thereby introducing confusion between them and marring the beauty and efficiency 
 of both. 
 
 6. "The command from Sinai," etc. I do not propose (unless it is preferred 
 to shift the ground of our discussion from the philosophical to the theological arena) 
 to notice arguments drawn from the religious books of any sect. Christian, Moham- 
 medan, or Pagan. The true science of society must be based on principles as 
 broad as humanity, not confined to persons who happen to think alike upon some 
 point of faith, or upon the authority of some scripture. The physiological effects 
 of marriage and generation are coming, in our day, to be as well understood as 
 other matters of science; and if the Bible seems to quarrel with physiology, as it 
 has seemed to do with astronomy and geolog}', it belongs to its expounders to seek 
 for a reconciliation in the latter case, as they have done in the former. For one, I 
 am tired of caviling about exegesis and textrreadings while humanity lies bound 
 and bleeding. 
 
 7. "Hence the State honors and blesses marriage, and frowns upon all other 
 sexual relations," — that is to say, each State honors and blesses some sort of mar- 
 riage relations, and frowns upon some other sort, the difference in different ages 
 and nations embracing almost every conceivable variety which could come of the 
 entire freedom of individuals. Since States are left free to vary and differ as 
 they please, and do vary and differ accordingly, why not extend the same privilege 
 to the individuals of the same State. If any better philosophical reason can be 
 given against it than mere prejudice, undevelopment, and superstition, let us have 
 it at once, and put an end to the discussion. 
 
 You say it is nonsense to talk of my views of individual sovereignty as a modern 
 discovery, and of the antagonist views as moss-grown with antiquit}'. You con- 
 ceive of individual sovereignty as being synonymous with egotism and about as old 
 as sin. All this simply indicates that my views are as yet so modern and so 
 novel that even Mr. Greeley has hitherto attained to no adequate conception of
 
 Lc/ve^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 69 
 
 them. Please to endeavor to underetaud, then, that the sovereignty of the indivi- 
 vidual whicli I talk about is the sovereignty of every individual; that it teacheg 
 me and every one who accepts it the most scrupulous deference for the absolute 
 freedom of every human being, prohibiting me and them from arrogating any con- 
 trol or government over others (except when wu have to assume the co«t of their 
 actions, as in the case of children, and become thereby entitled to the deciding 
 power). It demands of mo that I permit every man and every woman to think, 
 npeak, and do whatsoever seemeth good to them in their own eyes, laying down the 
 least shadow of claim to the right on my part to suppress them, either directly or 
 through the power of the State, the Church, public odiiuu, or otherwise, — only 
 limited by the line that they do not throw the burdensome consequences of their 
 conduct on me, and that they leave me the same amount of freedom. All this I 
 hold as the essential principle of order and harmony, and growtli in jturity and 
 intelligence, and rational happiness among men. Please to inform me what you 
 discover either unlovably egotistic or at all antique in this doctrine? Are you 
 able to illustrate its workings by quotations from ancient history so profuse as you 
 intimate? 
 
 Probably you will perceive that you have mistaken the assertion of one's own 
 sovereignty over others (which is your own doctrine, and which has l>ocn common 
 enough in the world) for a doctrine which aflirms and sedulou-sly tcuards that of 
 all other men, while it is confessedly so egotistic as to claim the right of the indi- 
 vidual to himself. So long as it rests in the phase of mere protest against en- 
 croachment, it is just as egotistic, it is true, as it is to request a gentleman to 
 stand on his own toes and not on yours. 
 
 Can you suppose that you are treating my doctrine of the froe<lom of woman and 
 her right to herself with any fairness, when you confound it with the i>olygamy 
 which has existed in barbarous countries, and which is the entir.< (oufiscation, 
 not of one woman, as among us, but of many to one man? 
 
 My doctrine is simply that it is an intolerable impertinence :ur mo to tlirust 
 myself into your affairs of the heart, to determine for you what woman (or women) 
 you love well enough or purely enough to live with, or how many you are capable 
 of loving. I demand that you simply let me alone to settle the most intimate and 
 'lelicato and sacred affairs of my private life in the same maimer. You publicly 
 notify mo that you won't. Another generation will judge between us as to the 
 barbarism and the culture of these two pasitions. At present it is enough to uy 
 that my course leads to {x»aco and yours to war. Judge which is l>est. 
 
 You misconceive a little my method of getting rid of murder. I have the SAme 
 I»crsonal prejudice that you have "to l>eing knocked down with a slung shot, or a 
 paving stone, dragged up a blind alley, and there finished"; nor do I hope to get 
 rid of such acts, as you say I do, ''by simply ceasing to Tisit tliem with a penalty, 
 or to regard them as criujes." I apply that reniedy only to acts which are no 
 crimes except as they are made so by law.
 
 70 Love^ Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 Still, there is no human action without a cause. A given murder is not a solitary 
 fact, standing in the midst of the universe, •without antecedents or consequences. 
 The philosopher looks into causes. The scientilic reformer would apply his reme- 
 dies there. If a man attempts to murder me, that act has a cause : perhaps a state 
 of feeling on his part, induced by the suspicion that a certain woman whom he 
 calls, or hopes to call, his wife, has experienced a magnetism of attraction, over 
 which she had no possible control, toward me, and by the belief, inculcated by you 
 and others, that that woman belongs, not to herself, but to him. Hence he is de- 
 luded into the notion that I have inflicted a heinous wrong upon him, although, 
 probably, I have never seen him in my life, and possibly may never have seen the 
 woman either. Looking at the effect alone, as I, in common with the rest of man- 
 kind, may be compelled to do in the emergency, the remedy may be to knock the 
 man on the head, or to commit him, as you recommend, to Sing-Sing. The true 
 remedy, nevertheless, is a public sentiment, based on the recognition of the sove- 
 reignty of the individual. Let the idea be completely repudiated from the man's 
 mind that that w^oman, or any women, could, by possibility, belong to him, or was 
 to be true to him, or owed him anything, farther than as she might choose to be- 
 stow herself, as far as he could inspire her with affection and no farther; and from 
 that hour the sentiment of jealousy dies out, and the motive to one kind of murder 
 is removed. 
 
 Perhaps, in another case, the poor wretch was born with a mind poisoned from 
 conception, imbued, as the lawyers have it, with "malice toward all mankind," be- 
 cause he was begotten in hatred from a woman forced by the law into the repulsive 
 embraces of a man she loathed, and so "marked " as a monster, in every lineament 
 of body and soul, by the horrid impression to which, as is well known, the suscep- 
 tible imagination of a mother gives form in the character of her offspring. The 
 evil in this case is that your prospective nmrderer was the child of abhorrence and 
 despair. The remedy is to restore to outraged woman the right to choose freely, 
 at all times, the father of her own child. Till that be granted, all the rest of your 
 "Woman's Rights" are not worth contending for. It is pitiable to see the advo- 
 cal,es of this ism compelled to disguise their real want, fearing to utter it, and to 
 make a false issue about the franchise, or something of no comparative value to 
 them. The sovereignty of the individual is what they do demand, in common with 
 the rest of mankind. No child healthfully and lovingly engendered, and never subse- 
 quently oppressed and outraged by false social relations, will ever be a murderer. Let 
 the world learn that. 
 
 You say that you regard "free trade as neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, 
 in itself, but only in view of its practical issues." Do you say the same of free- 
 dom of the press, or freedom of conscience? Louis Napoleon does so of the 
 former, and King Bomba and the Grand Duke of Tuscany of the latter; but the 
 public have got the idea in their minds that there is somehow a difference, /unt/a-
 
 L(yve, Marriage^ and Divorce. 71 
 
 mentally and in principle, between your social views and those of Louia Napoleon, 
 Bomba, and the Grand Duke, Perhaps you will enlijj'hteu us' as to what that dif- 
 ference is. As matters now stand, I do not fMjrceive it. 
 
 I regret that my views should inspire you with hypo<:hondria, and induce you to 
 think of suicide, emigration, or anything desperate ; but I i)r(*sume you do not urge 
 these "vapors" as an argument. I, too, have my personal feelings on the subject. 
 How far will you consent that they shall be made the criteria for deciding the 
 questions mooted between us? 
 
 Of your views of sexual purity I cannot, in the circumstances under which I 
 write, utter what I feel. If it bo not too severe a thing to say, allow me, liowever, 
 merely to say that we all, prol>ably, give the measure of ourselves, more exactly 
 than in any other possible mode, by the estimate we make of the natural results 
 of freedom. Permit me, on this point, to substitute for what I might have said an 
 extract from a communication I have just received, suggested by j'our remarks, 
 from a noble and pure-minded American woman, one to whom the world owes 
 more than to any other man or woman, living or dead, for thorough investigation 
 and appreciation of the causes of disease and the laws of liealth, especially in all 
 that concerns the sexual relations and the reproduction of the race : • 
 
 It is the God-appointed mission of woman to teach the world what purity is. May Mr. 
 Greeley bo so fortunate as to learn tho lesson! 
 
 The woman who is truly (•nian(Mpate, who has health, in tho deep significance of that word, 
 — health of body and of spirit, — who believes in CJotl, and reverently obeys his laws in 
 herself, — this woman is pure and a teacher of purity. She needs no human law for the pro- 
 tection of her chastity; virtue is to her something more than a name and a rcRnlation, — 
 something far other than a legal restriction. It is high .is tho sky above Mr. Greeley's lower 
 law, and just as far removed from all license. Such a woman has a heaven-conferrod right 
 to choose tho father of her babe. 
 
 We say man has tho right to life, liberty, and the pursait of happinc^ ; yet he abuses lifo, 
 
 •Tho writer of this commmiiaition Is Mrs. Mary S. Govo Nichols, tho wife of Dr. Thomas L. 
 Nichols, and ajwoclato iirincipul witli lilin In tho Hydropathic Iimtitution iit rortohestfr. Now York. 
 Hud tliLs ri-ply l>cen pul)lLHht'il in tlio " Tril'une," I should, doubtlcM, liiivc nimliflod tho fuU>^iuu con- 
 tjiiiicd in the wntciioe to whicli tliis iioto is appended, when I come to see it in the proofs, not t>ccmaso 
 it does not expresH riglitly my own perstHml opinion, but bivauso it do*'s so, |KTl>ai»», ruther too |>olnt- 
 edly, and is liiiMi- ti> lie understtxHl as an extr.ivapinco of in'rsonul frirnd.ihip rather than u dehbcnita 
 estimate of tho eliunirler and position of an IndiviJual. As my reply was rojit-tetl, I fwl bound now 
 to publish It with all Its hup<Tfection8 on Its hi-ad. When, however, it is reniemliorrd that l>r. 
 Nichols publicly avows tliat, after exi>erienclng tho lK«nt'flt8 of n reguUiT nietllcal ctlueatlon and cxt«n- 
 •iTo profowlonal reading, his rtal Instruction lu physiolopry and theni|)catlcs wasderlTinl from hi* wife; 
 and, further, tlmt Dr. Nichols Is tho autlior of "IJM>terlc Anthropology," a work many years In «d- 
 Tjuico of all otlior trt'utl!M'8npon tho heulthconiUtions of man, and which is I ' ■ !v 
 
 surpassed by tho popular WDrk of Mrs. .St«)we, my cluin»'tert/j«tion of .Mn> v- 
 
 travagant. She Is a latly who couples tho most womlerful Intuitions— !>.' ",.,.„... -, of 
 
 woman" — with a truly n.niu-iiline strength and comprehension of general principle*, sacb as chap 
 rmcterlres tho highest order of s«ieiiiiiii- miiid.
 
 72 hove^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 fulls into bondage, and seeks and does not find bappinebs. The woman who chooses tbe 
 father of her child may go ajs far wrong. The failure of freedom to bring wisdom and right 
 action at once is no argument against freedom. Because woman has not equitable and at- 
 tractive industry and adequate remuneration, and cannot, therefore, appropriately maintain 
 tbe babe she would bear and love, does that abrogate her right to bo a mother? Did not 
 Go<l make her to bo the mother of the race, and the healthy mother of healthy children? If 
 she is fixed in indissoluble marriage with a man she must abhor, — a selfish, sensual tyrant, 
 — who makes lier bis victim, and perpetrates in her children bis lust of the flesh and of gain, 
 and all the deep damnation of bis nature, must woman lie prono under all this, suffering 
 and transmitting the disease and crime which are its ordained product, because it is accord- 
 ing to law? 
 
 Often the greatest crime a man can commit is to reproduce himself, though it be done 
 legally. 
 
 "We must have a Maine Law and capital punishment for the children born of hate in indis- 
 soluble marriage. Hundreds of women in such marriage mnider their children rather tkan 
 bear them. 
 
 Intemperance, madness, murder, and all other vices are hereditary. Shall indissoluble 
 marriage go on, year after year, producing so many thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, and 
 murderers, and in preassignable proportions, — so mathematical in its operation, — and re- 
 main unqnestioned ? Or shall it be honored with such defenders as Mr. Greeley, who white- 
 wash it with legal sanctity in our legislatures, and plead, through the public press, for 
 Maine Laws to restrain and punish the murderers, and seducers, and drunkards born in its 
 decent, and respectable, and legal limits? 
 
 There is a large and increasing class of women in our land who know what purity is. 
 They know, also, what it is not. They know that is is not an exhausted nervous system, 
 which prompts to no union, — which enables them to walk quietly in the common thorough- 
 fare of custom. They know, also, that it is not fidelity to a legal bond, where there is no 
 love, — where there is force on one side and fear on the other, — where rascals are born by 
 immutable God's law, and where diseases are engendered that make the grave an earnestly 
 coveted refuge from "lawful" whoredom. 
 
 Could any woman, worthy the name, — any other than a legal slave, — choose to bear 
 worse children than those we hang out of our way, — than those who become seducers out of 
 marriage and destroyers in it? 
 
 In the Medical College at Albany there is an exposition of indissoluble marriage, which 
 should be studied by all those who beg in to see that a legalized union may be a most impure, 
 unholy, and, consequently, unhealthy thing. In glass vases, ranged in a large cabinet in 
 this medical museum, are uterine tumors, weighing from half a pound to twenty-four 
 pounds. A viscus that in its ordinary state weighs a few ounces is brought, by the dis- 
 ease caused by amative excess, —in other words, licentiousness and impurity, — to weigh 
 more than twenty pounds. Be it remembered, these monstrosities were produced in lawful 
 and indissoluble wedlock. The wives and mothers who perished of these evils, and left this 
 terrible lesson to the world, knew only of legal purity. They lived in obedience to the law 
 of marriage, — pious, virtuous, reputable, ignorant women. God grant that their suffering 
 be not in vain ! God grant that they may be the teachers of purity, who, being dead, yet 
 speak I 
 
 In an age hardly past, " Honor God and the King " was the great commandment. In this 
 age, " Honor God and a Husband " liolds the same place. Men have learned that the first 
 contains a solecism ; women are learning the same lesson of the last.
 
 Love^ Marriufje^ and Divorce. 73 
 
 Such, sir, is the eloquent, and, in my judgment, the unanswerable, protest of one 
 woman against your doctrine. In five years more, tlie voice of tliat woman will be 
 the voice of thousands. You are quite right when you hound the alarm, and an- 
 nounce that the time for the full discussion of this whole subject ha-s arrived. 
 That discussion will be liad, whether conservatism will or no. If what Ls can 
 stand that test — let it; if not — not. 
 
 STICi'IiEN 1'kAHL A.NUKEWS.
 
 74 LovCs Marriatjc, and Divorce. 
 
 XI. 
 Mil. Andrews's reply to mr. james. 
 
 [Rejectfil by the Tribuuo.] 
 
 To the Editor of The New York Tribune. 
 
 Mr. II. Jaiues condesceuds to reply, obliquely still, to my strictures upon his 
 crude social theories. The condescension is amiable, but the imprudence is un- 
 pardonable. It was obviously one of those cases in which discretion is the better 
 l>art of valor. He does not appreciate my disposition "not to be cruel."' Such 
 injjratitude provokes a severity which he can ill afforil to draw upon himself. 1 
 am surprised — I may even say grieved — that he compels me to a still further ex- 
 posure of the unhandsome featmes of his couise of reasoning upon the subject in 
 debate. With an apology to the reader for a thorouglmess of criticism bordering 
 on liarshness, forced on me by the indiscretion of "Your Correspondent," I will 
 proceed, as cautiously as I can, and, even, notwithstanding all, with some remain- 
 ing touches of tenderness, to the dissection of " Your Correspondent's" last article. 
 
 The following is the gist of his effort to restate himself: 
 
 You feel tbat all man's relations to his fellows, and especially to woman, should he bap- 
 tized from above, or ackuowled<;o an ideal sanction before all tbinf^s, and that where this 
 sanction is absent, consequently, the relation is either strictly infantile or else inhuman. 
 In respect to this higher sanction and bond of conju^^al lidelity, you call the legal bond infe- 
 rior or base. As serving and promoting the former, one deems the latter excellent and 
 honorable ; but as ceasing any longer to do so, you deem it low and bestial. 
 
 Now, the deliberate purpo.se of your Correspondent here is to show that lie is 
 not, and could not have been, adverse to the institution of marriage, because, for- 
 sooth, as he has "all along contended," there are circumstances in which that in- 
 stitution is of value to society, — namely, in its infancy, — and to impress upon the 
 incautious reader the idea that / am laboring under a woful degree of mental con- 
 fusion in attributing to him the doctrine that marriage (the legal bond) should be 
 "incontinently abolished." 
 
 Very good, so far; but it so happens that your Correspondent has very recently 
 devoted large space, in more than one of his communications to the "Tribune," to 
 proving that society among us is no longer in that state of infancy in which the 
 outward marriage bond is "subservient and ministerial to the higher spijitual
 
 Love., Marriage, and iJivorce. 75 
 
 sanction," but tLut it has now arrived, on the contrary, at that pr«ciM stage of 
 advano-iiK-nt and full growth in which the legal bond is "inf'Tior and Ijase," or 
 "inhuman," or "low and bestial," or "purely diabolical," and ought, t'h.r. fen-, t<» 
 be dispensed with or wholly abolished. 
 
 Ijci us l)etake ourselves again to quotation. Discussing this verj- hui.j.tl, uh-i 
 having Hhown that the legal bond tc(u a nece.Hsity of the infant Htat<> of human 
 society, y«)ur Corre.spon<K'nt prcMvedi-d to .say : "But now that it [«< -rrr- 
 
 leapftl that {MMiod of infantile fratjU it y, and feels the motions of i\ ''«?«rjf 
 
 man/ioofl, the questions of order and harmony can l>e no longer pDs(|ioned. It u 
 bound by a feeling of self-respect to become decorous and orderly, and lu put away, 
 consequently, all those arbitrary methwts of action which were dictated by mere expe- 
 diency or self-prf'servation." Ilcnce, your Cor • the 
 changes in legislation requisite to adapt it to tii' -voci- 
 ety, to stand in "fully legitimating <livorce," or in discharging our conjugal reh^- 
 tions of the "purely diabolic element of outward force," — in other words, the 
 virtual abolition of legal or forceful marriage, as "ceasing any longer to serve and 
 promote the higher sanction an«l lK)nd of fidelity," — having, "for hi.>» own jjart," 
 as he says, "not the slightest doubt that, in that case, constancy would si>cfdily 
 avouch itself the law of the cunjuyal relation, instead of, as now, the rare exception." 
 
 Now, your Correspondent has rejH'ateilly brought forward and urged, as you 
 well know, and as the public well knows, this precise remedy for the exUting diA- 
 consonanco of society and its legislation, as a practical cure for a practical eriL 
 Now, then, he says, with an exclamation iK)int for surprise, that / Ix^tray so crude 
 an apprehension of the discussion that I confound his "drnu- ■ f-fu< antl 
 
 unworthy motives in marriar/e with a denunciation of marrt.i What 
 
 charming simplicity t what dflightful innocence I A practical, straightforward, 
 political, or legislative measure, of the most radical and revolutionary kind, pro- 
 posed and rep*'atedly urged as the remedy for wid«vspri'atl actual sufTering and 
 disorder in the community, suddenly retires into the dimensions of a . ' mon- 
 
 strance, from a kind-hearte<l sj>iritual adviser, against bad motives ;; .nyl 
 
 Ah! Mr. Ib'nry James, when hanl pressed by a logic that won't Ih-uJ to "ludiri- 
 dual Sovereignty," an "artful dodge" nniy l>e highly rre«litablo to one's agility, 
 but hardly to the higher attributes of a manly nature. Were it not for Uio cun- 
 ning evinced in the mana'uvre, the want of courage and the S4><<ming simplicity 
 might l>e suggentivo of "shet'p's hca«l" without "the pluck." As it i-*, we nrv rt»- 
 minded, also, of a different animal. Kor myself, I once had a goo<l prnotico in 
 Virginia fox-hunting, and training after th*-s<> doubliuKH has t<i me the intenrst of 
 reviving old reminiscences: to the n-ader who funis no such aniuwnient in the 
 chase, and who looks merely for candor, truth-seeking, and roKHi-l.-H'^ " •» .l.-^-ii*. 
 sion, I fear they may l>e simply «lisgusling. 
 
 If, in the case adduced fur illustration, the "Spiritual Advisor" h.t-! :. .i >!' -p
 
 76 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 farther, and expressly advocated the theory that "all arbitrary methods of action," 
 in the premises, should be "put away," that nobody should be compelled, by "out- 
 ward force," to restore property which he hud fouud, and that, by such freedom 
 from the "legal boud," the notion of the right of property would be "ennobled,** 
 and the man and all men led to act, from their own "humanity and inward sweet- 
 ness," honorably and honestly in such cases; and if I, upon reading such a state- 
 ment of views, should have said, perchance, that that is precisely my theory for 
 the abolition of all laws for the collection of debts and the like, — saving the ques- 
 tion, to be settled afterward, w'hat are legitimate debts bearing upon the con- 
 science; and if Mr. Spiritual Adviser, shrinking from the more open and bolder 
 presentation of his own theory, and determined to be respectable at all hazards, 
 should, thereupon, accuse me of confusion of ideas, superficiality, etc., — your Cor- 
 respondent wants to know what 1 should say ; and I reply that I should say that 
 this "Spiritual Adviser," intent upon saving his own skin, did not hesitate to 
 slander and malign his neighbor, and to obfuscate his readers by a resort to trick- 
 ery and ad captandum pleadings imworthy of a man of some reputation and literary 
 pretensions. 
 
 So much for dodge No. 1. Before proceeding with the catalogue, permit me to 
 furnish a gloss to the reader, to inform him of what I suppose the real position of 
 your Correspondent to be. 1 do this to remove the impression, to which I feel 
 myself liable, after the showing I have made, of engaging with a combatant whose 
 statements of doctrine are too contradictory and absurd to aspire to the dignity of 
 criticism. Notwithstanding appearances, I do not think so. There is, I am satis- 
 fied, a consecutive train of idea running through the whole of his reasonings upon 
 the subject, which, if it can be cleared of a certain coufusedness in the use of 
 terms by which he is constantly prone to obscure, rather than illustrate, his 
 thought, will be found quite as consistent as the notions of many other loose 
 thinkers, w^ho aspire to instruct the public upon philosophical subjects, and who 
 gain considerable estimation for the want of just criticism. 
 
 What your Correspondent means to say, then, rendered into a comprehensible 
 plainness of speech and tolerable brevity, is just this. Marriage is the union of 
 one man and one woman for life. But there are two phases or aspects of marriage, 
 or, in fine, two marriages, or kinds of marriage. 1. The outward or legal, that of 
 which the perpetuity and exclusiveuess depend upon human laws and are enforced 
 by the courts, which I will call legal marriage; and, 2. That which he calls "the 
 ideal sanction of the conjugal relation," and which 1 will call, for the sake of a 
 convenient term, spiritual marriage. This last, he believes, tends to exhibit itself, 
 in the lives of all rightly developed men and women, in just the same form of per- 
 petuity and exclusiveuess which legal marriage now attempts to enforce by vu'tue 
 of pains and penalties; that we have now arrived at that stage of development at 
 which this tendency to the spiritual tie declares itself so strongly (or exists unde- 
 
 I
 
 Love^ Marriage, and Divorce. 77 
 
 clared) that the continuance of the old legal boml, which was good enough in its 
 day, instead of securing the action toward which it and the "higher sanction" 
 both tend, operates as an irritant and a disturber, and hinders or prevents the very 
 end at which it aims; that, consequently, sound morals and good policy both de- 
 mand, as the remedy, that "divorce be freely legitimated," or, what is the same 
 thing, legal marriage abolished; not that ho is opposed to marriage, — that is, to 
 the same course of life which legal marriage enacts in the form of law, — but be- 
 cause this last is not merely imnecessary but hurtful in securing that end. 
 
 This thf'or}', so stated, comes pretty much to what is entertained in this age, 
 more or less distinctly, by a good many persons transcendentally inclined, and 
 ■whose views of prospective human improvement take no broader and no more 
 practical shape than that of spiritualizing whatsoever thing, however stupid, which 
 happens now to exist among us. Finding an existing relation so oppressive that 
 neither they nor their fathers were able to bear the actual yoke, they fancy that 
 exactly the same thing up i ritualized must be exactly the right thing. Still the the- 
 ory, such as it is, is quite intelligible when not " bedeviled " by unnecessary fog 
 and pretentious mysticism. 
 
 It is true your Correspondent has no right to claim any such sensible rendering 
 of his views. He has pertinaciously insisted upon saying that "the legal bond" 
 is the whole of marriage, that the spiritual tie is not marriage at all, and that the 
 legal bond ought now to be dispensed with. I should, therefore, have been per- 
 fectly justified, upon ordinary views of criticism, if I had taken him for what he 
 has repeatedly declared himself in effect to be, in words, and stated purely and 
 simply that he denounces the institution of marriage entirely. I have nevertheless 
 kindly, as I thought, abstained from taking advantage of this verbal confusion, 
 and inasmuch as he refers to "the higher sanction of the conjugal tie," and u.ses 
 other similar phrases, although denying that they signify marriage in any sense, 
 I have confined myself to speaking of him as opposed to legal marriage. To talk 
 of the law as sanctioning what will exist just as well without it, and what is not 
 to continue to exist by virtue of it, is nonsense. The mere ceremony, having no 
 binding effect, is nothing to which you or your Correspondent, or I, or anybody, 
 would attach the slightest importance. 
 
 As I happen to think, myself, that forcing two people who hate each other to 
 live together in the most intimate relation, and become monks or beget children 
 of their hatred, is neither very philosophical nor religious, I was quite disposed to 
 "fraternize" with your Correspondent up to that point. This, alas! was the head 
 and front of my offending. It was not that I differed from, but that I agreed 
 with him, and put in a little clearer and stronger light the points of our agreement, 
 that he was horrified and alarmed, and recoiled. 
 
 Our points of difference lie here. He, "for his part," has no doubt that "con- 
 stancy would speedily avouch itself as the laio of the conjugal relation, in the ab-
 
 78 LovCy Marriage.^ and Divorce. 
 
 sence of all legislation to enforce it." I, for my piirt, don't know that. We have 
 never vet witnesseil a state of society consisting of i-ducateil, refined, and well- 
 developed persons, in which freedom of the affections, for both men and women, 
 was tolerated and approved. I am unable to dogmatize with reference to the pre- 
 cise nature of the relations which would come to prevail under such a regime. I 
 know simply that it is the right thing, and that its results must therefore be good, 
 however much they may differ from my preconceived notions of propriety. I de- 
 cline to make myself the standard: I recognize the equal sovereignty of all other 
 men, and of all women. I do not antl cannot know the nature of any other man or 
 woman, so as to be competent to decide for them. I doubt not I shall do my duty 
 if I obey the highest thing which I find in my own being. I claim the right to do 
 that. I allow the same right to all others. It is a species of spiritual arrogance 
 for me to assume to decide for them, which I voluntarily lay down and totally 
 abjure. 
 
 Mr. James claims freedom because, for his part, he believes that freedom will 
 lead people to act just in that way which he personally thinks to be right. I, on 
 the contrary', claim freedom for all men and all women for no such personal reason, 
 but because they have an inalienable God-given right, high as heaven above all 
 human legislation, to judge for themselves what it is moral, and proper, and right 
 for them to do or abstain from doing, so long as they do not cast the burdens of 
 their conduct on me. I plant myself on that principle, and challenge the attention 
 of mankind to it as the law of order, and harmony, and elevation, and purity 
 among men. Herein we do radically differ. I take the position which, saving 
 the judgment of my critics, is exceedingly new in the world, that I have no better 
 right to determine what it is moral or proper for you to do * than I have to deter- 
 mine what it is religious for you to believe; and that, consequently, for me to aid 
 in sending you or another man to prison for fornication, or bigamy, or polygamy, 
 or a woman for wearing male attire, and the like, is just as gross an outrage in 
 kind, upon human rights, as it would be to aid in burning you at Sraithiield for 
 Protestantism or Papacy, or at Geneva for discarding the doctrine of the trinity. 
 
 But to return to your Correspondent. lie bases his defence of freedom upon his 
 personal judgment of the form it will give to the sexual relations. To test the 
 depth and sincerity of his convictions, I ask him a question. I assume that we 
 differ as regards what is the truest state of the relations of the sexes, and call his 
 attention to the fact that people do differ, upon all subjects, in virtue of their in- 
 finite individualities. I suppose the case that in the use of our new-fledged free- 
 dom I act on my convictions, not his, and change my relations every week or month, 
 or take an unusual number of conjugal partners, or in some way depart from his 
 ideal. I ask, in very good faith, and as a practical thing, since this freedom is to 
 
 * With the limitation just stated, of conrse, that yon do not tlirow burdcnsomo conseqnenccs on me.
 
 IjUVCi, ^fiirrin/jc^ and Dirorrr. 79 
 
 be a matter of practical legislation, whether he propo8f.>>i, or not, etill to retain a 
 police ofhce to compel ni« to us>' /rf^ttuin .' accor<liii^j to hi.'* i«lfa of the way in which 
 it kIiouM 1)6 used, — if not his, whether according to any body 'a standard, other 
 than that of the iixlividual iiinisclf. Hereupon he aiisunies the air of a dignified 
 aristocratic "indifference," and ri-.;ard.4 my question an trivial, dlHingenuoujt, and 
 imfwrtinent. Of course the judicious reader will |kerceivo at once that it Btrikeii 
 home to the very vitals of his whol»5 systi-in <f iei,'islativi» reform, ami drives him 
 lia<k to a sphere to which it is to !>«• Impfd ho may find liis al>ilities l>etter atlapted, 
 — that of spiritual adviser to bad husbands, and a general lecturer of fanatics on 
 the amendment of their "disorderly niflhuds of living." 
 
 The next point of your Correspondent is either Dodgo No. 2 or a gross blunder. 
 The reader shall judge which. It is a perversion of my doctrine of the soven-ignty 
 of the individual, and it seems to me a deliberate pt'rversion, by your Correwpon- 
 flent, in order to have Wfore him a man of straw, that he could knock down. Our 
 fonimla is, "The Sovereignty of every Individual, to be exercised at his own cost." 
 This simply and obviously means, "to he exercised, not at the cost of other peo- 
 ple," or, as we have constantly and repeatedly explained it, " to ho so exercise*! as 
 not to throw the burdensome consequences of one's actions upon others," precisely 
 its religious freedom is and has InKin for years under.st<><Ml among us. A man may 
 l>elieve what he pleases, and do, in the tray of worship, whatsoever wise or foolish 
 thing, provided he assails nobody else's lil>erty, or life, or proj>erty. 
 
 This simple doctrine, the mere extension to morals and other spheres of a prin- 
 ciple already adopted, and to the partial operation of which the world owes trea- 
 sures of harmony and happiness, your sagacious and veracious Corres|Hindeiit has 
 converted into the assertion of the right to commit every species of encroachment 
 and outrage that savages or ilevils could aspire to, provided one is only readv to 
 take the consequences. This atrocious doctrine he has, by the use of false quota- 
 tion mark.s, thrust into my mouth t Of course, attributing such nonsense and pro- 
 fligacy to me, he has the field to himself, to make the most glaring exhibition of 
 his own absurdity. I hope he enjoyed the pyrotechnic display of his own witti- 
 cisms, as some compensation for the wear and tear of conscience involved in such 
 a gross misrepresentation of an opinnnMit's position, if it were really intentional; 
 if it were a blunder merely, and he luus honestly stated the principle, "as well as 
 be can master its contents," 1 hardly know whether to recommend to him so much 
 exertion as to try again. There is certainly little wisdom in attempting publicly 
 to pass off a mere condens«'d expression of foolishness and diabolism as if it were 
 the substance of an axiom which ohallciiges the admiration of mankind h-h the most 
 exact and the most scientific solution ever to l»o attained of the gri'at problem of 
 the legitimate limit of human fre<-dom. 
 
 I quite regret that your Corresix)ndent should l>e oppressed by my patronage, but 
 I really can't help it. I must l>e pi*nnitted to admire what therv is good and true
 
 80 Xorc, Ma'Trlage^ and Divorce. 
 
 in every man's utterances. I find much of that sort in what ho has given to tho 
 world, and I admire it. I oven wish tliat T found nion- of it, and more especially 
 of that intellectual and moral hardihood which would perceive the extension by 
 implication of the truth he does utter, and stand by the defence of it with a little 
 generous devotion and occasional forgetfulness of purely personal considerations. 
 
 A word now as respects ray "small insolences." I assure your Correspondent 
 they are merely "put on" upon the principle similia similibus, and small doses, to 
 cure his big ones. I shall gladly lay them aside whenever good manners begin to 
 prevail. I think I shall be found competent to the interchange of gentlemanly 
 courtesies when gentlemanly courtesies are in demand. Indeed, I decididly prefer 
 the atmosphere of the parlor to that of the " ring," but I endeavor, at the same 
 time, to adapt myself to the nature of circumstances and of men. 
 
 Your Correspondent presumes that, when he says freedom is one with order, / 
 should greatly like him to add, "and order is one with license." When license is 
 used for something different from freedom, I suppose it signifies the bad use of 
 freedom. Now, it is simply freedom that I ask for. On what grounds does this 
 Correspondent of yours dare to presume that I desire a bad use to be made of that 
 freedom, or that I am, in any sense, even his own, a profligate or a bad man; that 
 I contemplate, with complacency, the making of a hell or a pandemonium, or that 
 any such result is more likely to come of my freedom, or the freedom that I advocate, 
 than of his freedom, or the freedom he advocates? Whose insolence is it now? 
 Why, sir, your Correspondent seems to me so bred to the usage of overbearing 
 superciliousness that he ought to be grateful to me for life if I cure him of his 
 habit. This charge of advocating license has always been repeated against the 
 champions of every species of freedom, political, of the press, and of every sort 
 whatsoever, and it is time that it should get its rebuke. It has not, however, sup- 
 pressed other men's truth, and it will not suppress mine. Such truth has a vitality 
 in it which survives the blunders of the stupid, the misapprehensions of the feeble- 
 minded, the denunciations of the bigoted, and the alarm and croaking of honest 
 but timorous friends. The brave and the faithful lovers of such truth have always 
 been, at the inception of its promulgation, a "handful of ridiculous fanatics" in 
 the estimation of the sophists of their day. It matters not. Truth, no more than 
 the rights of man, can be obliterated by the votes of a majority, the legislation of 
 the State, nor the scorn of the Pharisee ; and the viper that tries it always bites a 
 file. 
 
 In the next place, your Correspondent deems me superficial, because I deno- 
 minate the State "a mob." He doesn't condescend to tell us what it is other than 
 a mob, but proceeds immediately to define Society, as if that were synonymous with 
 the State. I fancy that I have simply analyzed to the bottom what he has taken 
 on trust and in the gross. He admits that, '^irresponsible governments are entitled to 
 our contempt." I stand ready to make good the proposition that all governments
 
 LovCy Marriarje, and Divorce. 81 
 
 are, in their very essence, "irresponsible," just so far as they are goTernmenta at 
 all, and that, practically, they havu proved so in every exi>erinn'nt ev*-r mad«? by 
 mankind. The whole American theory of "checks and halancfs" ujion parchnjent 
 is mere fallaciousness and folly. The only effectual check is that developed indi- 
 viduality of the people which gives significant notice to govorument that it won't 
 answer to go too far, and which, as it becomes more develoix'd, w sure to dispense 
 with government altogether. The advantat,'es which w« enjoy in this country, in 
 this respect, come entirely from the greater practical <levelopment of the jmve- 
 reignty of the individual; from the greater development of the individual, «o that 
 that exercise of sovereignty can be endurerl with less evil result; and froju the 
 small quantity of government which we tolerate, not at all, as is supposed, from 
 any suiwriority in the quality of the article, flovernmerjt will l»ecome unneccjwary 
 just so soon a.s the true principles of the science of society are understtxMl and prac- 
 tically realized. The realiwition of those principles will l>egin in their l>eing dis- 
 covered and promulgate<|. Hence, as occasion offer.-*, I preach. I exjiect, at first, 
 to be partially understood, misunderstoo<I, and misrepresented; but the time cf 
 that nebulous perception of the subject will pass. Ideas which are true and fun- 
 damental, and as destitute of fluctuation or exception lus mathematics, will make 
 their way and be accepted. Prejudice will give way to reason, arbitrary institu- 
 tions to principles, and antagonism to true order and harmony, and the freedom of 
 a rightly-constituted human brotherhood. 
 
 Your Correspondent says that I exhibit a sovereign contempt for society. lie is 
 certainly mistaken. I am very fond of society, and esjiecially of good society. 
 Society is, however, a word of considerable diversity of significations, and is used 
 by your Correspondent in at lea.st three or four different senses, apparently with- 
 out the slightest consciousness of confounding them. 
 
 I may as well use this word [society] as any other to illustrate a certain tendency 
 on the part of your Correspondent, to which I have already adverted, to a lament- 
 able confusion of ideas and terms, in the midst of the most exuljerant and pome- 
 times elegant diction. He begins one of his paragraph.-' by using siKtrty as if it 
 were synonymous with the Stale, by which I presume he means the or^ani/uition 
 and machinery of government. In the middle of the same piiragraph he delines 
 society to bo "the sentiment of fellowship and eqijality in the human l»o»om." In 
 the end of the same paragraph he a.sserts that the "advanc«> of .tociel^ — this senti- 
 ment of fellowship or equality — causes man to hxik away from govenmienta, and 
 from whatso«.>ver external patron.i'^e, and find true help at last in him.-^-lf "; that 
 is, to resort to the sovereiijutii nf thf imliri/lual. This bust is pn'oi.Mdy what I Iwlicre, 
 I'or society in which of thes* senses is it that I exhibit a "sovereign contempt**? 
 Whoso superficiality is it now? 
 
 In the very next sentence your Corn>siH)ndent adds, **$oriel^ is the sole bene- 
 iK-iar}' of the art« and sciences, and the individual man beconiee partaker of their
 
 82 Love, 3f(i)'7'i(/ge, and Divorce. 
 
 benefits only by his identification with it." In which definition is society used 
 here? Is it the government or the State which is the only direct beneficiary of the 
 arts and sciences? Is that what it means? Or is it the ^^ sentiment of fellowship 
 and equality among men" whicli is the direct beneficiary of the arts and sciences? 
 Or, finally, is it men individualized by "looking away from governments and 
 finding true help in themselves," who are the direct beneficiary, etc., and the indi- 
 vidual man only so because he is "one of 'em"? Whose superficiality and utter 
 confusion of ideas is it this time? Words have a tendency to obscurity when no 
 definite ideas are attached to tliem. 
 
 Beauties of style, a certain dashing fluency of utterance, brilliancy of fancy, 
 vague intuitions of floating grandeur, or of sublime truth even, simply or con- 
 jointly, don't make a philosopher. Some clearness of intellectual vision, some ana- 
 lysis and knowledge of causes, some exactness in definitions, a certain expansiveness 
 and comprehension of one's whole subject, and even more than all, perhaps, a rigid 
 adherence to the laws of dialectics, by which premises are fearlessly pursued to 
 their natural and inevitable conclusions, lead where they may, are requisite to that 
 end. It is always a misfortune to mistake one's vocation. It is a misfortune, 
 however, which can be partially retrieved at almost any period of life, and we all 
 acquire wisdom by painful experiences. There is some department, I feel certain, 
 in which your Correspondent might excel. As he declines to be patronized, I shall 
 abstain from impertinent suggestions. 
 
 Dodge No. 3 is another cuttle-Jish plunge into the regions of "the infinite," and, 
 of course, of the indefinite, the accustomed retreat of impracticable theorists. 
 Your Correspondent informs us that, as "ideas are infinite, they admit of no con- 
 trast or oppugnancy." I think he must have discovered by this time that there is 
 both "contrast " and "oppugnancy " between his ideas and mine, so far at least as his 
 sublimated conceptions still retain anything of the finite or definite. Into the other 
 region I am willing to follow him when occasion offers, and to examine with the 
 rigorous grasp of modern philosophical criticism your Correspondent's fanciful re- 
 production of Plato's idealism and of the rose-colored atheism of Spinoza, and to 
 separate for him the legitimate from the illegitimate, the possible from the impos- 
 sible, in the field of human speculation. At the moment, however, my business 
 lies, and bis ought to lie, with the simple questions of practical life relating to 
 marriage and divorce, — the matters under discussion. 
 
 The doctrine of the sovereignty of the individual is an absurdity, contends your 
 Correspondent, because man is under a three-fold subjection, in the nature of things; 
 first, "to nature, then to society [in which meaning of the word?], and finally to 
 God." Grant all this bo so, does the fact that man must ever remain under a ne- 
 cessary or appropriate subjection to society, — that is, under a certain limitation 
 of the sphere of his activity by the legitimate extension of the spheres of other in- 
 dividuals, — does it follow, I say, that it is an absurdity to inquire and fix scienti- 
 
 I
 
 Love, Mai^'iage, and Divorce. 83 
 
 fically what that limit is? Now, this is precisely what we profess to have done, 
 and we give "the sovereignty of every indiWdual to l>e exerci.sed at his own cost" 
 as the result of that investigation. What possible application has the vague gene- 
 ralization of your Correspondent, as a counter-statement to tliat principle, how 
 true soever his proposition may be. 
 
 It is as if I were to ask the opinion of a Swcdenborgian of the policy of abolbh- 
 ing the laws for the collection of debts, and he should reply, **Sir, my opinion is 
 that, if you act rightly in the matter, your action must be dictatccl by ui> equal 
 union of the divine love and the divine wisdom." I nmst reply, "Very well, my 
 dear sir, but that is all granted to begin with, and, although it may give you a 
 great air of profound wisdom to repeat it, my question is a practical one. I want 
 to know what, in your judgment, would be the operation of love and wLsdonj as 
 applied to .the case in everyday practical life which I have brought to your 
 attention." 
 
 I ask in all sincerity, "What is the scientific limit of man's apj)ropriate freedom 
 as respects society?" and your Correspondent replies, witli the holemnity of an 
 owl: Sir, it is frivolous and absurd to ask such a question, because there w an ap- 
 propriate limit upon man's freedom, and, therefore, man can never be wholly free. 
 
 And yet your Correspondent has tlie hardihood to talk of a scientifically consti- 
 tuted society, as if such terms corresponded to any definite idea.s in his mind. I 
 want to know whether, in a rightly or scientifically constituted human society, I 
 am to be permitted to read the Protestant Scriptures at Florence; whether I am 
 to be permitted to publish a scientific discovery at Rome; whether I can print my 
 own opinions and views upon general politics at Paris; whether I can travel on a 
 Sunday in Connecticut, etc., etc. I want to know what constitutes an infringe- 
 ment upon the rights of other men, and within what limit I am committing no in- 
 fringement, — not according to the arbitrary legislation of some petty principality, 
 but according to natural and eternal right? To all this, the answer comes back: 
 Nonsense, man is necessarily* subject to society to some extent. 
 
 Now, sir, I am fatigued with this sort of infinitude of ideas which never have 
 any "oppugnancy," because, having neither substance nor form, they can protluce 
 no shock. I hope your Correspondent will be content to withdraw into that field 
 of pure idealism which is devoiil of all "contra.sts" and distinctions. It must Ih» 
 laborious to him to inhabit a sphere where dejinitions and limilaiions are sometimes 
 necessary to enable us to know what we are talking about. Let him seek his fret»- 
 dom in the broad expanse of the infinite. I, for the present, will endeavor to vin- 
 dicate some portion of mine by ascertaining the exact limits of enrroaohnient 
 between me and my neighbor, religiously refraining from pa.Hsing tho.so limits my- 
 self, and mildly or forcibly restraining him from doing so, — as 1 mu>t. 
 
 Stemikn Pcakl Andrews.
 
 84 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce, 
 
 xn. 
 
 A PARTHIAN ARROW BY MR. GREELEY. 
 
 A Heart-beoken Maniac. — We have just been put in possession of the particulars of a 
 scene of sorrow seldom witnessed. A young lady, of this city, respectably connected and of 
 fair reputation, nearly two years ago became acquainted with a man now residing in 
 this place. The acquaintance soon ripened into a strong attachment, and, finally, love, on 
 her part. Under the promise of marriage, as she says, she was made to yield to his solicita- 
 tions, and last autumn she gave birth to a child, which lived only two days. He disregarded 
 his promises, — avoided and frowned upon her. Here she was deprived of her lover and of 
 her child. She felt that every eye was turned upon her with scorn, — that those who saw 
 her at her work, or met her in the street, knew her disgrace. Day by day, and week by 
 week, her heart sank within her, paleness came to her cheeks, and her frame wasted away 
 till she is now almost a living skeleton. Wednesday morning she went to work in the mills, 
 as usual, but soon returned, saying that she was sick. In a few hours she was a raving 
 maniac, her reason gone, perhaps forever. Since then she has had a few rational intervals, 
 in one of which she stated that she met that morning the one she calls her betrayer, and he 
 frowned upon her and treated her with contempt. She could bear all the disgrace that at- 
 taches to her condition, if he would treat her kindly. But the thought that the one she has 
 loved so dearly, and the one who made her such fair promises, should desert her at this time, 
 and heartlessly and cruelly insult her, is too much for her to bear. Her brothers and friends 
 are borne down with sorrow at her condition. What a picture! It needs no comment of 
 ours. Public opinion will hunt down the heartless villain who betrayed her. — Manchester 
 (N. H.) Mirror. 
 
 The above relation provokes some reflection on " the sovereignty of the indivi- 
 dual," "the right of every man to do pretty much as he pleases," etc., which the 
 reader will please follow out for himself. 
 
 Editor of the Tribune.
 
 Ziove^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 86 
 
 XIIL 
 
 BBPLY BY MR. ANDREWS. 
 
 The above missile a (ergo from my valorous autagonist — after his retreat into 
 the safety of a unilateral contest — is suggestive of many things, and might con- 
 stitute the text for a whole bookful of commentary. It b the usual whine of 
 blear-eyed and inveterate tyranny, gloating over the fact that some one of liis vic- 
 tims has got himself, or herself, into a worse fix by disregarding his beh««t«, and 
 attempting an escape from his infernal grip, than he or she wa.s in before. The 
 slave-hunter, amid the baling of his blood-hounds upon the warm scent of the track 
 of an unhappy fugitive, growls out in the same manner his curses upon the inhu- 
 manity of the man who has preached freedom to the captive, charging upon him 
 all the horrors of the sickening scene that is about to ensue. Should the friend 
 who has whispered longings after emancipation into the greedy ear of the victim 
 of slavery afterwanl, through cowardice or seltishnesa or from any cause overmas- 
 tering his devotion, shrink from going all lengths in uniting his fortunes with 
 those of the slave, — either by rL-mainiug with him in bondage, or taking his full 
 share in the risks of the flight; and, if this desertion should rankle in the breast of 
 the fugitive as the worst torment of his forlorn state, even when sore pressed by the 
 devouring dogs, — the case would be parallel in all ways to the one cited by Mr. 
 Greeley. 
 
 Our transcendent philosopher and moralist of the "Tribune" can imply the most 
 •withering hatred of the ".seducer" and "heartless villain," whom "public opinion " 
 is invoked to "hunt down" for his crime, and whisper no word of rebuke for — 
 nay, aggravate and hound on — that same public opinion in its still more reckless 
 vengeance ujx)n the unfortunate girl herself, by efforts to intensify "all the dis- 
 grace that attaches to her condition," which, terrible as it is now, she said, poor 
 creature I she had the fortitude "to bear," but for the other element in her misery. 
 That other element, the betrayal of her lover, in addition to the insane odium of 
 the public, Mr. Greeley charges upon the "seducer." I charge both one and the 
 other cause of the poor girl's torture and insanity, just as bolilly, upon Mr. (Iroeley 
 liimself and the like of him. If the mental phenomena which led to her l>etrAyul 
 by her lover could be investigated, they would be indubitably traced back to the 
 senseless rigors of that same public opinion; so that both causes of the wreck ;r.id
 
 86 Love^ Marriage^ and I}ivorce. 
 
 insanity of one party, and of the eudless remorse aud torment of the other, as we 
 must presume, flow from the same counuon fountain, — a vitiated public sentiment, 
 adverse to, and intolerant of, freedom, or the sovereignty of the individual I 
 
 How exceedingly probable that, at the very moment this hapless girl's lover cast 
 the repulsive glance that pierced her already wounded heart and overthrew her 
 reason, his own heart was half bursting with the tcnderest compassion. Placed in 
 the dire alternative of renouncing affection, or else of abjuring his own freedoux 
 perpetually, the instinct of self-preservation may have overborne in his case, as it 
 must and will overbear in many cases, tlie natural sentiments of manhood and gal- 
 lantry and paternal tenderness, all of whicli, unobstructed by a blundering legisla- 
 tion and an ignorant public prejudice, would have prompted him to remain by her 
 side, acknowledge her publicly, and succor and sustain lier through all the conse- 
 quences of their mutual love. Remove frum a man the arbitrary demand that he shall 
 make more sacrifice than he feels to he just, and you neutralize, or evidently diminish, the 
 temptation, on his part, to make less. Demand pledges of hinj, on the contrary, under 
 the penalty of the penitentiary, against that over which he knows, by all his past 
 experience, that he has no more control than he has over his opinions or his tastes, 
 — namely, that his affections shall remain unchanged for life, that he will never 
 love another woman, or that, if he does, he will crush that love as he would a 
 viper, no matter though his own heart and others bleed to death in the effort ; add 
 to this that he shall change his whole methods of life, assume the care and direc- 
 tion of a family establishment, for which he m ay have no taste, but only repug- 
 nance, and take upon himself the liability of being required to support many lives, 
 instead of the burdens already incumbent on him, beyond, it may be, already, his 
 consciousness of power to bear up against the diffi culties of surrounding competi- 
 tion and antagonism; and you put before him what may be, acting upon some 
 natures, — not the worst, as they are deemed, but the best as God made them, — 
 an insuperable obstacle to the performance of those acts of justice which would be 
 otherwise their natural and irrepressible impulse. 
 
 With some men and some women the instinct for freedom is a domination too 
 potent to be resisted. An association with angels under constraint would be to 
 them a hell. The language of their souls is " Give me liberty, or give me death." 
 Such natures have noble and generous propensities in other directions. Say to a 
 man of this sort, abjure freedom or abjure love, and, along with it, the dear object 
 whom you have already compromised in the world's estimation, and who can fore- 
 see the issue of that terrible conflict of the passions which must ensue? In the 
 vast majority of such cases, notwithstanding all, generosity and love conquer, and 
 the man knowingly sacrifices himself and all future thought of happiness in the 
 privation of freedom, the consciousness of which no affection, no amount of the 
 world's good opinion, no consideration of any kind, can compensate him for nor 
 reconcile him to. It would be strange, on the other hand, if the balance of motive 
 
 II
 
 Z/OvCj Marriage, and Divorce. 87 
 
 never fell upon the other side; and then comes the terrible desertion, the crushing 
 weight of public scorn upon the unprotected liead of the wretched woman, and the 
 lasting destruction of the happiness of all concerned, in another of the 8tereot}-ped 
 forms of evil. 
 
 I do not deny that, among those men, nor, indeed, that the great majority of 
 those men who seduce and betray women are bad men ; that is, that they are un- 
 developed, hardened, and perverted b«ings, hardly capable of compassion or re- 
 morse. What I do afhrm is that there are, also, among them, men of the most 
 refined and delicate and genlli; natures, fitted to endure the most intense suffering 
 themselves, while they inllict it — none but their own hearts can tell how unwil- 
 lingly — on those they most dearly prize in the world; and that society is in fault 
 to place such men in such a cruel conflict with themselves, in which some propor- 
 tion of tlie whole number so tried is .sure to fall. I also aflirm that, of the former 
 class, — the undeveloiwd, hardened, and perverted, — their undevelopment, harden- 
 ing, and perversion are again chargeable upon our false social arrangement.^, and, 
 more than all else, perhaps, upon that very exclusion from a genial and familiar 
 association with the female sex, now deemed essential, in order to maintain the 
 marriage institution in "its purity." And, finally, I affirm that, while such men 
 exist, the best protection that woman can have against their machinations is more 
 development on her own part, such as can alone come from incjre freedom, more 
 knowledge of the world, more familiarity with tnen, njore ability to judge of cha- 
 racter and to read the intentions of those by wiiom she is approached, more woman- 
 hood, in fine ; instead of a namby-pamby, lackadaisical, half-silly interestingness, 
 cultured and procured by a nun-like seclusion from business, from freedom of loco- 
 motion, from unrestrained intercommunication of thought and sentiment with the 
 male sex, and, in a word, from almost the whole circle of the rational means of 
 development. 
 
 He must be an unobservant man, indeed, who does not perceive the pregnant 
 signs all around him that approximations toward the opinions now uttered by mo 
 are everj'where existent, and becoming every day nearer and more frequent. 
 
 "When people understand," says Lord Stowell, in the case of Kvans vs. Kvan.s 
 1st Consistory Reports, p. ;iO, "that they mu.it live together, they learn, by nmtual 
 accommodation, to bear that yoke wiiich they know they cannot shale off; 
 they become good husbands and wives (!) from the necexniti/ of remaining hus- 
 bands and wives, for necessity is a powerful master in teachiny (he duties which it im- 
 poses." How antiquated does such a ilefence of any institution Wgin to s<nmtl to 
 our ears I It is equally good wlien applied to desix)tism, to shivery, to the Inquisi- 
 tion, or to any other of the forms in which force and ntri-ssiiy are brought to l>ear 
 upon human beings to the destruction of their freedom and the ruin of their high- 
 'st happiness. Indeed, it is the argument which, time out of mind, has been ro- 
 lled upon to sustain all those ancient abu.ses which are melting away before Uie
 
 88 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 spirit of this age. We are rapidly discarding force, and recognizing the truth and 
 purity and potency of love or attraction in government, in education, in social life, 
 and everywhere. 
 
 The restraints of marriage are becoming daily less. Its oppressions are felt 
 more and more. There are today in our midst ten times as many fugitives from inatri- 
 innuy as there are fugitives from slavery ; and it may well be doubted if the aggregate, or 
 the average, of their sufferings has been less. There is h ardly a country village that 
 has not from one to a dozen such persons. When these unfortunates, flying from 
 the blessings of one of our peculiar and divine institutions, hitherto almost wholly 
 unquestioned, happen to be women, — the weaker sex, — they are contemptuously 
 designated "grass widows"; as "runaway" or "free nigger" is, in like manner, 
 applied to the outlaws of another "domestic" arrangement, — freedom in either 
 case becoming, by a horrible social inversion, a badge of reproach. These severed 
 halves of the matrimonial unit are, nevertheless, achieving respectability by virtue 
 of numbers, and in America, at least, have nearly ceased to suffer any loss of caste 
 by the peculiarity of their social condition. Divorce is more and more freely ap- 
 plied for, and easily obtained. Bastard children are now hardly persecuted at all 
 by that sanctimonious Phariseeism which, a few generations ago, hunted them to 
 the death for no fault of theirs. The rights of women are every day more and 
 more loudly discussed. Marriage has virtually ceased to claim the sanction of re- 
 ligion, fallen into the hands of the civil magistrate, and come to be regarded as 
 merely a civil contract. While thus recognized as solely a legal convention, the 
 repugnance for merely conventional marriages (mariages de convenance) is yet deep- 
 ening in the public mind into horror, and taking the place of that heretofore felt 
 against a genuine passion not sanctified by the blessing of the Church. I quote from 
 one of the most conservative writers of the age when I say that "it is not the mere 
 ring and the orange blossom which constitute the difference between virtue and 
 
 VICE." 
 
 Indeed, it may be stated as the growing public sentiment of Christendom already 
 that the man and woman who do not i.ove have no right, before God, to live to- 
 gether as MAX and wife, no matter how solemn the marriage service which may 
 have been mumbled over them. This is the negative statement of a grand 
 TiruTn, already arrived at and becoming daily louder and more peremptory in its 
 utterance. How long, think you, it will be before the converse, or positive, side 
 of the same truth will be affirmed, — namely, that the man and woman wlio do 
 LOVE can live together in purity without any mummery at all, — that it is i.ove 
 that sanctifes, not the blessing of the Church? 
 
 Such is my doctrine. Such is the horrid heresy of which I am guilty. And 
 such, say what you will, is the eternal, inexpugnable truth of God and nature. 
 Batter at it till your bones ache, and you can never successfully assail it. Sooner 
 or later you must come to it, and whether it shall be sooner or later is hardly left 
 
 J
 
 Love, jMarriar/e, and Divorce. 89 
 
 to your option. The progress of opinion, the great growth of the world, in thi* 
 age, is sweeping all men, with the strength of an ocean current, to the acceptance 
 of these views of love and marriage, — to the acceptance of universal freedom, — 
 freedom to feel and act, u.s well as freedom to think, — to the acceptance, in fine, 
 
 of TIIK HOVEREIGNTV OF KVKUV INDl VIDLAI-, To HE EXEKCISED AT III« OWN COST. 
 If our remaining institutions are found to Ijc adverse to this free<lom, so that bad 
 results follow from its accfptanoe, then our remaining inntitutions are wrong, and 
 the remedy is to be .sought in still farther and more radical changes. 
 
 Had there existed a public opinion alreatly formed, based on freedom, the |»oor 
 girl in New Ilatnpshire, whose sad histt»ry wo have read in a paragraph, wouhl pro- 
 bably not have been deserted, or, if she were, she would not have fell that "everv 
 eye was turned uj)on her in scorn, knowing her disgrace," visiting ujKjn her a wonM* 
 torture than any ever invented by savages, l>ecause, forsooth, she had already been 
 cruelly wronged! A Christian people, indeed I ''Her heart" would not have 
 "sunk within her day by day and week by week." "Paleness" would not have 
 "come upon her cheeks," and "her frame" have "wai<ted away until she wx>» al- 
 most a living skeleton." She would not have l»ecome a raving maniac, "ller 
 brothers and friends" would not have been "borne down with sorrow at her con- 
 dition." Public opinion would not have l>een invoked "to hunt down" her be- 
 trayer, after first hunting down her; and, finally, her misfortune would not have 
 been paraded and gloated over by a sliameless public press, Mr. Greeley in the van, 
 holding up the poor, agonized, heart-riven, |X'rsecuted vii-tim of the infernalism of 
 our social institutions, in warning to others against yielding to the purest and holi- 
 est and most jxiwerful of the sentiments whieh (Jtxl has implanted in the human 
 heart, — the joint force of the yearning after freedom and after love. 
 
 Mr. Greeley, the wrong that infests our .social arrangements is deeper and more 
 central than you have l)elieved. It is not to be cured by suj>erficial appliances and 
 conservative nostrums. The science of social relations must be known and applif^l. 
 You do not know it. You refuse to study it. You do not believe that there is :iriy 
 such science either known or possible. You persist in .scratching over the Kurlace, 
 in.stead of putting the plough down into the subsoil of social reform. Very well, 
 then, the world can't wait! You nmst drop behind, and the army of progress must 
 even consent to proceed without your leadership. I have been already a dozen 
 times congratulated that I am helping to render you entirely "projH'r" and "or- 
 thodox." If you were (juite sincere and more logical than you an', I could drive 
 you clean back to the j>apacy upon all subjects, where you have already confeK-n-tily 
 gone u|X)n the subject of divorce, — except that you relax a little in your rigor out 
 of i>ersonal deference to Christ. 
 
 The truth will ere long l>« ap]Uirent that there is no middle groimd u|Hm which 
 a man of sense can i>ernianently stand lietwe4.*n absitlutism, Nirui j'atth, and itnplini 
 obedience to authority, on the one hand, and, on the olhrr, "(he surereit/nty of the 
 indiridual." Stki'IIK-N Pi:aui. Andhews.
 
 90 Love, Marrla(je, and Divorce. 
 
 XIV* 
 
 SXaiCTURES ON AN ARTICLE FROM IlKMiY JAME9, IN THE NEW YORK "TRIBUNE 
 
 OF FEBUUAllY 12, 1803. 
 
 My dear Andrews: 
 
 I have read James's stuff in response to your article, and have no doubt that you 
 will approciate it. I saw, as I anticipated and luentioned to you, that your article 
 required intelligeuce and caudor iu the reader equal to those of the writer to do it 
 justice. 
 
 Mr. James appears to possess neither, to the degree required for a controversy 
 80 important as this is in the present crisis. He has, however, been driven, by 
 your clear and definite statement of a great principle, to dabble with it, and so to 
 open the way for its introduction. Ilis very perversion of your fornmla demands 
 correction, and calls for a discrimination that he seems not to comprehend. 
 
 He misquotes your formula as saying that one " may do as he pleases, provided 
 he will accept the consequences of so doing." He says he finds it thus propounded. 
 This is a misrepresentation. He does not find it "thus propounded," but has per- 
 verted it, either through carelessness, or ignorance, or a less excusable design to 
 misrepresent; but this matters not, — it is his practical applications that interest 
 us. Having furnished his own formula, he then goes on to show how ridiculous it 
 is; but at the same time shows that the plane of his morality (although a teacher 
 of the public) is even below that of the humble and unpretending. He seems to 
 see no other consequences of stealing than what he finds in the penitentiary 1 no 
 other consequences of lying than the violation of one of the commands of the 
 decalogue! no other consequences of "prostituting your neigh V)or's daughter" 
 " but the scorn of every honest nature " 1 Had he read your formula intelligently 
 and candidly, I think he could not have failed to see that the "exercise of my sove- 
 reignty at my own cost," while it would give me supreme control over my own pro- 
 perty within my own sphere, equally prohibits any use of it to the injury of another. 
 The same fornmla would regulate the acquisition of property. I may acquire as 
 much as I please at my own cost, but, if I steal another's, I acquire it at his "cost," 
 
 •I cannot, perhaps, better close this controve rsy than by the insertion of the above communicntiou 
 siipr^restcd by it, and which will show how difloreutly the doctrine of " the sovereignty of the indivi- 
 dual " lii's in some people's minds from what it appears to do in the minds of Mr. Greeley and Mr. 
 James. —5. P. A.
 
 Love^ Marriayey and Divorce. 91 
 
 which is a viulatioti of lii.s sovureij^iity and uf the formula. Again, had society 
 been furtued under the influuncu uf 8uch a regulating principle, Mr. James and hiti 
 readers might have been spared his coarse allusion to seduction. No one whu^e 
 habits had been formed upon this simple but sublime principle would ever think 
 of involving "a neighbor's daughter," nor any other person, in suffering by the 
 pursuit of his happiness. ThLs would bo acting at their "coal" inb-tea<l of his own; 
 it would be a violation of their sovereignty and of the fonnula. Wh»"n a strict 
 and sacred regard to the "sovereignty of every individual" shall l>egin to regulal<' 
 the acts of mankind, innocence and confiding love will begin to be safe, and find 
 protectors in all who surround them. Thus, the readers of Mr. James (if not Mr. 
 James himself) will see that this simple formula, which he says "is as old as the 
 foundation of the world," uix-us to view a plane of morality as much higher than 
 the vision of Mr. James as it is new and necessary to the world.
 
 92 Love, Marriaye^ and Divorce, 
 
 XV* 
 
 A LETTER FKOM MU. JAMES TQ U. Y. R. 
 
 t 
 
 My dear friend '. 
 
 Mrs. WoodhuU has labored very liard to make ^Ir. Beecher out a free-lover in a 
 practical way; and certainly (from the silence of Mr. Tilton and the rest as I judge) 
 with some show of success. But as to that I feel indifferent. He at all events is 
 not a technical free-lover, and his infirmity will be condoned by society therefore 
 as a weakness of the will under great temptation, etc., etc., and as not indicating 
 any hostility to marriage or the social sentiment. This is what makes the public 
 hate technical or professional free-love, — that it is the enemy of all society or fel- 
 lowship among men, inasmuch as it makes organic instinct supreme in human ac- 
 tion, as it is in the animal nature, and gives an eternal lie to marriage as the 
 sovereign dignity of our race. Speculative free-love has actually no case against 
 our existing civic regime even, which a judicious enlargement of the law of divorce 
 would not at once refute. I should have no quarrel with it, but on the contrary 
 would bid it godspeed, if it sought only to hallow marriage in men's esteem by 
 securing such a law of divorce as might permit every one to whom marriage w^as 
 hateful or intolerable to leave its ranks as soon as possible, and so close them up 
 to its undefiled lovers alone. Of course T am not so stupid as to suppose that there 
 is anything essentially evil, or incompatible with innocence, in tlie indulgence of 
 natural appetite and passion. But I hold just as clearly that it is fatal to all man- 
 hood — much more, then, to all womanhood — to make such indulgence an end of 
 action. 
 
 No man and woman can do that deliberately without converting themselves — 
 into brutes? No! for the brute is heavenly sweet compared with such men and 
 
 • That portion of the tliscuRsioii wliich l^epins here was a revival of the original controversy after an 
 interval of about twenty years, occasioned by the famous AVoodliull-Clallin exposure of Henry Ward 
 Beecher. That exposure led Mr. James to write a letter to a friend. If. Y. R., on tht.' matters involved, 
 which wiis printed in tlie f^t. Paul " I'ress " two years later. Jl. V. II. then sent Mr. James's letter, 
 ai-companied by a letter of \\\s own, to Mr. Andrews, both of which appeared in " Woodliull I'i: Oaflin's 
 Weekly" of April IS, isTJ, followcil by Mr. Andrews's comments. This again called out .Mr. James, 
 whose letter in the " AVeekly's " issues of JIuy !) and May 10, 1874, together with Mr. Anilrrws's reply 
 thereto, closed the controversy. These documents conclude the present compilation. — /'uWis/j«r'» 
 Sote.
 
 Love, Jfirriuf/e, and Divorce. 03 
 
 women — but into devils. The distinctive glory of njan is personality or character, 
 the power of transcending his organization and realizing divinity; and he attains 
 to this personality or character, not by foolish doing, but by wise and patient suf- 
 fering; that is, by subjecting his self-will, or will of the flesh, to the welfare of his 
 neighbors whenever itself prompts injustice to them. 
 
 IIow infinitely remote all this marriage doctrine is from the thought of the free- 
 lover you can easily ascertain by recurring to Mrs. W.'s indictment of poor Bcecher. 
 The free-lover aims at no mere negative legislation. He is a doctrinaire, and what 
 ho wants is, not the reformation of men's manners, but a revolution, whereby what 
 has hitherto been subservient in liuman nature (the flesh) shall he supreme, and 
 what has hitherto boon supreme (the spirit) shall l^e sub.servient. He will allow 
 no coni{)romise with society in any form, for he <l(>esn't believe in the social destiny 
 of man, and disposes himself to reconstruct the world simply by overturning it, or 
 substituting universal discord in place of partial order. He holds that every man 
 is absolutely free, — free not only in respect to outward compulsion, but free also 
 in respect to inward constraint; thus that he is essentially devoid of obligation 
 either to his fellow-man or to himself; in a word, his own sole law, and hence is 
 never so unmanly as when he obeys the voice of conscience in preference to that of 
 appetite and pa.ssion. 
 
 This gospel would go down with me if I were only a Chimpanzee. For in that 
 case, knowing absolutely no other law than that of my organization, I should know 
 nothing of the social sentiment, nor cojisequently of the marriage sentiment in 
 which it originates. But you will plea.se observe that I am not a ohiinpanzee, 
 either in origin as Mr. Darwin would argue, nor in destiny a.s the free-lover wouhl 
 have it; and the gosj^el of free-love consequently turns my intellectual stomach. 
 I have an animal organization, to be sure, but it is never ray master from infancy 
 to old age, unless I have j>erv(>rtcd my human force by vice, but always my wrvant. 
 This is because T, unlike the animal, am born into a miniature society, oulled the 
 family, and undergo its law, whieh is that of reverence and oWdience on my part 
 toward my parents, protection, nourishment, and education on their part toward 
 me. Such is the difference in origin and destiny between man and the animals. 
 The latter are l>orn to obey their organization, the former are born to ol>ey a higher 
 law. In a word, everj' man, by virtue of his birth in a well-organ ize«l family, is 
 more or less subject, inwardly, to con.science or the social .sentiment. And this 
 sentiment early awakes in his bosom a sense of jier-sonality or .selfhood utterly dis- 
 tinct from his organization; and if it be judiciously nurtured and cultivated by 
 outside influences, it gradually leads him to abhor nothing so much as identiflc&- 
 tion with his appetites and na.<4sions. Ho claims an infinitely higher, purer, and 
 freer law of action. Of course, so long as he remains a child, or falls short, from 
 any cause, of normal manhood, he feels the insurgence of his organic wants very 
 often, and does in consequence many harmful and unhandsome tilings, whictt ia-
 
 94 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 vite stern rebuke and discipline. But, if he l>e arrested in time, he is sure to dis- 
 avow his base tendencies, and submit himself zealously to the higher law he has 
 found within. 
 
 Especially is this the case in respect to the sexual sentiment and its promptings. 
 Love has now ceased to be purely animal with him and is becoming human. He 
 now no longer loves at the impulse of his organ ization merely, and without regard 
 to the personality of the object, as the animal does, but is overpoweringly con- 
 strained by something in the object exclusively, a something divine to his imagina- 
 tion, which he recognizes as the consummation of his being, and in the possession 
 of which he would sacrifice his existence. In other words, love now proclaims its 
 transfiguration into the marriage sentiment, and if it ever falls away from that 
 sentiment, it does so no longer as love, but only as lasciviousness, in which case of 
 course the man reverts from man to monkey. 
 
 Here, perhaps, you will ask me what I mean by marriage. 
 
 Marriage has two aspects : one literal, as a civic institution ; the other spiritual, 
 as a divine education or discipline. 
 
 1. I marry my wife under the impression that she is literally perfect, and is go- 
 ing to exhaust my capacity of desire ever after. Ere long I discover my mistake. 
 The world, the flesh, or the devil (or possibly all these combined) suggest a pun- 
 gent sense of bondage in the marriage tie. My good habits, my good breeding, 
 my hearty respect for my wife, my sense of what is due to her amiable devotion, 
 prevent my ever letting her suspect the conflict going on in my bosom ; but there 
 it is, nevertheless, a ceaseless conflict between law and liberty, between conscience 
 and inclination. I know that it would be possible to make a compromise or en- 
 force a truce between the two interests by clandestinely pursuing pleasure and 
 openly following duty. But my heart revolts from this. I feel that the burden 
 of my race is upon me, and I will perish under it if need be, but I will not shirk 
 it like a sneak, and let sincere men bear it unhelped by me. 
 
 So much is clear to me. The law I have sworn to obey is beyond my strength. 
 It crushes me to the earth. It humiliates me in my self-esteem. I see in its light 
 that I am no better than the overt adulterer; but I dare not resent its terrible 
 castigation. The law is holy, just, and even good, though it slay me. Yes, death 
 at its hands were better than life at the risk of dishonor at my hands; so I abide 
 by my marriage bond. I see very well that the bond ought to be loosened in the 
 case of other people; that divorce should be allowed more freely than it now is, so 
 that multitudes of people to whom marriage as a divine education or discipline ia 
 mere derision and mockery, might become free from its bondage as a civic institu- 
 tion, and so no longer profane it and their souls by clandestinely violating it. But 
 as for me, I will abide in my chains. 
 
 2. I don't find that there is any particular manhood, if by manhood merit is 
 meant, in this decision of mine ; for I have been becoming aware all along of a
 
 Love^ 3Iurrlugc, and Divorce. 95 
 
 much (Ifejior ilivinily in my wife than I discerned in her U'fore marriage. 
 The divinity slie reveiilcd to me then addressed itself to my sensea, and fed me fat 
 with the hope of being selfishly aggrandized by it. The divinity she now reveaU 
 is the very opposite of ever}'thing I find in myself. It is gentle where I am tur- 
 bulent, modest where I am exacting, yielding where I am obstinate, full of patience 
 where I am full of self-will, activu where I am slothful, cheerful where I am moo<ly, 
 unconscious where I am morbidly conscious ; in short, it is a divinity infinitely re- 
 mote from my own petty self, and yet a divinity in my verj' nature, so that I can't 
 help becoming aroused to the meaning at last of living worship, worship con- 
 secrated by death to self. I see that there was no other way for the Divine to get 
 hold of me, at all events, but by first binding me in sensuous love to this noble 
 woman, and then letting into my interiors from the camera obsrura of her f>cr8on 
 the accommodated blaze of His eternal purity and l)eauty, that I might see myself 
 at last as I truly am, and know Ilim, therefore, evermore, past all misapprehension, 
 as my sole light and life. Thus marriage is to me my truest divine revelation. I 
 should simply have gone to hell long ago if my wife had not saved me, not by any 
 conscious or voluntary doing on her part (for if she had attempted anything of 
 that sort she would have damned me past all chance of redemption); no, far from 
 it; but by unconsciously being the pure, good, modest woman she is. She was 
 mine by legal right, and yet she was by nature totally opposite to all I call me. 
 What then? Shall I renounce marriage, call it a snare and a cheat, and abandon 
 myself to concubinage instead? Or shall I accept it as a divine boon, — the divin- 
 est boon imaginable to our race, — and so find myself no longer debasing women 
 to my level, — the level of my selfish lusts, — but elevated gradually and surely to 
 
 the height of her natural truth and purity The end of marriage as a civic 
 
 institution is the family. But the family is now blocking the way of society, which 
 is God's family, and marriage consequently, being no longer necessary to Ik? rigor- 
 ously administered as of old in the service of the family, must consent to bo 
 ailministered in the interest of society, — that is, must be relieved by greater free- 
 dom of divorce. II. J.
 
 90 Love, Jlfarriage, and Divorce. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A LETTER FROM H. Y. R. TO MR. ANDREWS. 
 
 My dear sir: 
 
 I inclose a newspaper slip of a letter published in a late issue of the St. Paul 
 "Press," in which you will readily recognize the ear-marks of your old antagonist 
 of twenty odd years ago, Henry James, of Newport. 
 
 I feel assured that Mr. James is laboring under a misconception of the motive 
 which animates the "free-lover" in assailing our present cruel marriage laws, and 
 is thus led to misstate the issue. He is equally earnest in his desire for the eman- 
 cipation of woman, and his vehement rhetoric has demonstrated on numberless 
 occasions that the legal tyranny of marriage serves only to embitter and defile its 
 otherwise sweet and wholesome waters. But he assumes that the hostility of the 
 teclinical free-lover is based on a totally different motive from his own ; that it is a 
 supremely selfish one, wholly in the interest of his organic appetites and passions. 
 As well might he assume that the effort to relieve the hard conditions of prison-life 
 was made in the interest of thievery, and insist that anyone advocating such ame- 
 lioration afforded instant evidence that he was a thief, or at least was calculating 
 the risks involved in some scheme of private plunder. To make good his position, 
 it is incumbent on Mr. James to show that the men and women known as "tech- 
 nical free-lovers " are, practically, libertines, debauchees, and harlots ; are lecherous, 
 libidinous persons, who shamelessly " obey the voice of passion in preference to the 
 voice of conscience." This is a task from which Mr. James would slirink with un- 
 feigned abhorrence, but I see no other m eans by which he can vindicate his claim 
 to candor and sober truth. 
 
 I have read the writings of Mrs. Woodhull, and heard her deliver her lectures; 
 have read the current literature of the free -love movement these twenty years or 
 more; and — while meeting with much that was repulsive and reprehensible — I am 
 satisfied that the settlement of the question of .social freedom involves issues of im- 
 measurable value to the race, and invites the effort of every courageous and sincere 
 man and woman; and I am also satisfied that, while a large proportion of the in- 
 dividuals who have espoused this unpopular cause exhibit a certain unhandsome 
 egotism, and po-;-;ess perhaps more vigor than cultivation, they are in all moral re- 
 gards neither better nor worse than their neighbors.
 
 But I fi'.ir Mr. J:iniPS lias cniifnun<le<l soiin' of tin' exuvia of this now truth with 
 tlu! fair promise itself. Tin; new truth in tran.xition is always accouipaiiied with 
 irregular and .sporadic njanifestation. To be sure, well-bred people do not want to 
 be always talking about their .sexual relation.s; nor will they, after these xu.C 
 have l)een readju.sted. Once woman is emancipated from the social and hou 
 subjection in which she is now (in a great mca-sure uncotiKciou.sly) hclil, a o- 
 healing influence of mo<lest restraint will descend from woman herself, ami ; 
 turbulent waves of public discussion concerning a domain of life no private and 
 sacred will subside into equable relations with other departments of human 
 activity. 
 
 Henry James sits a crowned king in the realm of metaphysics. His {M^netration 
 is something marvelous. His admirers become enthusia>ts and (h-clare that In* 
 alone of all men living is entitled to the nanw of pliilosoph<T. Time and hpar«! 
 confess themselves mere .shams, and the material universe fades out of mind under 
 the matchless power of his analysis; the innermost mysteries of being unfold them- 
 selves, fall into order and method, and ultimate in worlds and pa.vsionate imman 
 hearts as a matter of course; history is illuminated, and the splendid <ie»tinv of 
 the race is forecjist with overwhelming certainty. Hut in the midst of all this, or 
 perhaps because of this, one detects in him a certain inability to coihj with actual 
 affairs as they ari.se in the ever-shifting drama of life. His thought turns back 
 upon itself when it comes in contact with the raw edge of things. And I hold that 
 in this letter he has spoken unwi.sely ; he has made his point, but it is at the exjien.so 
 of his own candor and magnanimity. He perceives the stupendous frauds w<« suf* 
 fer in our social relations, — none more clearly; and he with us is moved to attack; 
 but, while the common instinct of outraged justice urges the rough on.wt with 
 whatever bludgeon lies at hand, he is dismayed at the turmoil and confusion, and 
 puts up his keen and highly-tempered blade in disgust, confessing that he has no 
 stomach for the fight. Ilinc illct lacnjmce. H. Y. II.
 
 98 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 COMMENTS BY MR. ANDREWS. 
 
 Henry James has, in a high degree, the rare qualities assigned to him by H. Y. 
 II. But what shall we say of his persistent misrepresentation of the doctrine of 
 free love? It is astounding that a man of his intelligence can write such balder- 
 dash. The fact argues either a crass and chronic stupidity on the subject, on his 
 part, or else that he is wilfully bearing false witness against his neighbor. He as- 
 serts, not as his opinion, but ex cathedra, and as the undoubted fact, that the free 
 love doctrinaires demand that the flesh shall be supreme; that free lovers are 
 fleshly-minded or lecherous people, ignoring or subordinating the spiritual element 
 of man's nature; that they are chimpanzees, brute beasts, etc., etc. The free lovers 
 have never said so. They have merely asserted the law of individual freedom, in- 
 stead of, or in predominance over, social constraint, as the safer and better medium 
 through which to conduct to the higher development of mankind. They are a set 
 of social philosophers who have arrived at this degree of spiritual insight into 
 causes, and of faith in the self-regulative powers of freedom, in the place of regu- 
 lations imposed from without. They may be right or wrong in this assurance, 
 but, if wrong, it is on the side of spiritual elevation. It is because the God within 
 them denies the necessity any longer of outward constraint and discipline to lift 
 them to the highest social and spiritual conditions. It is surprising that Mr. 
 James should not sufficiently well understand the working of spiritual laws to 
 know that in charging on others the predominance of low and animal desires and 
 manifestations simply because they demand a free field to live their own true lives, 
 he convicts them of nothing, while he implicitly confesses that he is such, and that 
 he would habitually so manifest himself, if outward constraint were not so laid 
 upon him; in other words, that he, individually, is still a chimpanzee and nothing 
 else, except in so far as outward social and legal constraint, coupled with domestic 
 discipline, compel him to the exhibition of an outward decency; with some promise, 
 withal, that, by the continuance of these ministrations, he may at some future day 
 be developed into the higher sort of humanity, upon the spiritual plane. 
 
 But, if there is this hope of a better result in the future, even in his case, it may 
 be that other individuals, with a better nature from superior inherited conditions 
 and other causes, may long since have attained to that higher state in which they
 
 Love^ Marruifje, and Divorce. 99 
 
 are justified in claiming to he a law unto themselvts, and to be exempt from dbcip- 
 lines which they or their ancestors may have had enough of, and which are now 
 only hindrances for them, however necessary they may still be for less iirojjressive 
 individualities. Mr. James and a large class which he re|)re»cnt8 may still nee<l a 
 course of domestic infelicities, and, if I could accommodate them at the sann* time, 
 I would even be willing that the dose should 1)0 increased in size and frequency: 
 but that is no good reason why those who never had or have recovered from the 
 chimpanzee disease should be required to go through, again and again, the same 
 purgation. 
 
 I wonder whether it ever really did occur to Mr. Henry James and those of that 
 ilk that possibly there may be men and women in the world who are l)uilt on a 
 higher plane, or may have attained to a higher plane, spiritually, than any that he 
 and they have yet attained to; instead of uniformly a.ssuming that, if anybody dif- 
 fers from them and their personal standards, he must necessarily be on a lower 
 plane of development. But Swedenborg, Mr. James's supreme channel of spiritual 
 wisdom, rightly no doubt says that an angel, lifted into a higher heaven than that 
 where he resides, sees nothing. Stephen Peahl Anduews.
 
 100 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 
 
 xvm. 
 
 LETTER FROM MB. JAMES TO MR. ANDREWS. 
 
 S. p. Andrews, Esq.: 
 
 Dear Sir, — My letter of December, 1872, was not designed for publication, as 
 is obvious upon the face of it, and I regret that my friend Mr. R. should have 
 been so inconsiderate as to print it without consulting me. Had it been intended 
 for publication, I should have modified its phraseology in more than one respect. 
 It was written in the confidence of friendship, and betrays a latitude of expression 
 permissible only to such confidence. My sole conscious purpose in writing it was 
 to characterize two rival doctrines, and I should have abhorred to reflect injuriously 
 upon the supporters of either doctrine, least of all the unfashionable one. For 
 while multitudes of equally sincere people may be found doubtless arrayed on 
 either side of this controversy, there can be just as little doubt that sincerity in 
 your direction costs a good deal of thoughtless opprobrium, while in mine it wins a 
 good deal of equally thoughtless popular applause ; and sincerity that forfeits one's 
 personal consideration will always argue a higher manhood than sincerity that at- 
 tracts it. It is more than a duty, it is a pleasure, to admit all this ; but I repeat 
 that my difference with you is primarily intellectual and only derivatively personal. 
 
 Your doctrine — if I understand it — is twofold, namely: First, that men are de 
 jure exempt from outward liability, which is liability to other men, for the indul- 
 gence of their appetites and passions; Second, that they are de facto exempt from 
 all inward liability for such indulgence, or liability to their own distinctive nature 
 as men. In other words, you hold that I am not only under no conventional ob- 
 ligation to control my passions, no obligation imposed by outward law, but also 
 under no natural obligation to that effect, no obligation imposed by my essential 
 human quality. To say all in a word: You hold man to be his own law in 
 respect to his passions, as well as in respect to his actions : provided of course that 
 he doesn't wound his own ideal, or violate good taste. 
 
 (1) Thus your doctrine has both a negative or implicit force, as addressed to 
 the making marriage free by progressively enlarging the grounds of divorce ; and 
 (2) a positive or explicit force, as addressed to the making love free by denying its 
 essential subordination to marriage. 
 
 Now, I wholly agree with your doctrine on its negative merits, or in so far as it 
 
 Jl
 
 Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce. 101 
 
 teaches man's rightful insubjeclion to other men (1) ; and I wholly disagree with it 
 on its positive merits, or in so far as it teaches his actual superiority to his own 
 nature (2). 
 
 (1) First as to the point in which we are agreed. I am not responsible to my 
 fellow-man for the exercise of my appetites and passions, because on my passive 
 side, the side of appetite and passion, I am not free, but in palpable bondage to 
 my constitutional necessities, to my finite organization, or my mineral, vegetable, 
 and animal subsistence. And responsibility is the attribute, not of a bondman, 
 but a freeman. I remain doubtless for a long while unconscious of my bondage, 
 because in the infancy of my career I have at most only a traditional and not an 
 experimental knowledge of my true spirituality of nature, and hence am sure to 
 identify myself with my organization, or look upon its proper life as my own. 
 But my intellectual day does eventually break, and 1 then perceive with mingled 
 awe and disgust that what I had hitherto reckoned to be freedom and life w;ls all 
 the while a cunningly disguised slavery and death. The truth is so, however, 
 whether I perceive it or not. I am outwardly free only to act, not to suffer or to be 
 acted upon; so far accordingly as I am a subject of this latter or passive freedom, 
 this freedom to suffer or to be acted upon, my life is not outwardly but altogether in- 
 wardly constituted or energized, and disdains any outward responsibility. Thus I 
 may experience love to any extent my temperament enjoins or allows ; but so long 
 as I commit no overt act of hostility to marriage, no one has a particle of right to 
 complain of me. To the entire compass of my passionate life or organization I am 
 the subject, not of any outward or moral law, but of an inward or spiritual law 
 exclusi\ely, a law which is one with my race or nature, and determines all the is- 
 sues of my destiny; and however properly therefore it may upon occasion subject 
 me to my own unfavorable judgment, it at all events renders me superior to the 
 judgments of other people. 
 
 And this brings us to our point of disagreement. 
 
 (2) I am outwardly free to act, for my physical organization and environment 
 render me so; and, being free, I am properly responsible to others for the use I 
 make of my freedom in their direction. They accordingly insist that I exercise 
 ray freedom of action within the limits of a discreet regard to their persons and 
 property, under pain of forfeiting their good will, or incurring their acute resent- 
 ment. Thus my freedom of action is essentially limitary, not absolute. It is 
 limited by my sense of justice, conunonly called conscience, or the sentiment of 
 duty I feel toward my fellow-men. Q'he liujitation is often practically inconvenient, 
 is often indeed very painful; but it can be persistently resisted only at the cost of 
 my spiritual manhood, only at the cost of my personal degradation below the level 
 not merely of human but of brute nature, and my assimilation to devils. 
 
 Evidently, then, my personal freedom — my freedom of action — is not in itself a 
 thing to bo proud of. It is at best a purely finite — thai is to sav, moral t v vol
 
 102 Love^ 31arria(j€^ and Divorce. 
 
 untary — freedom, consisting in my ability to obey or disobey an outward law, and 
 realize, if I please, a certain mid-career, a certain earthly success, in conciliating 
 the warring extremes of heaven and hell, or duty and inclination; and its ideal 
 consequently in human character is prudence or worldly wisdom. Now, how do 
 you account for this inveterate finiteness of the human personality? Why should 
 my personal freedom, my conscious selfhood, confess this essentially limitary qual- 
 ity? The fact seems to me wholly unaccountable but in one way, and that is on 
 the principle that my personal life or consciousness is essentially subservient to a 
 higher because spiritual or divine life in my nature identical with what we call 
 SOCIETY among men; and is contingent therefore for its character upon the mear 
 sure of practical obedience or disobedience I pay to the social spirit. I call this 
 higher life God's life in my nature, as opposed to the life I feel in myself and call 
 mine, because I manage to realize the one only in so far as I mortify the other. 
 That is to say, I give up my outward life or freedom, which is my freedom to act 
 from myself as a centre, or to consult only what makes for my worldly welfare, and 
 I find as I do so an inward life — a spiritual freedom — making itself over to me, 
 which is unspeakably satisfying, which is in fact so unlike everything I have hith- 
 erto called my life that I cannot help pronouncing it literally divine and in- 
 finite. I dare not call this life mine of course any more than yours, since it is a life 
 in om* nature exclusively, and not in ourselves; and yet it is so intimately near and 
 precious to me as to make my own proper life (and yours) seem utterly worthless 
 and odious in the comparison. 
 
 Now what is the warp upon which this life of God in our nature — that is, in you, 
 and me, and all men quite equally — is woven? I do not hesitate to say : the waq) 
 of suffering. Not voluntary suffering, or suffering for suffering's sake, of course, 
 which is mere hypocritical or dramatic suffering, — the base counterfeit coin of the 
 flesh which the Roman Catholic or other pietist pays to his idol in lieu of the pure 
 gold of the spirit, when he would inspire it with a favorable conceit of his own 
 merit, — but rational or helpless suffering, originating in what used to be called a 
 conscience of sin, meaning thereby a hearty contempt of one's self, and inflamed 
 by the endless labor it costs to get away from that self, or live down the monstrous 
 superstition of a possible personal worth or private righteousness in us. 
 
 Of course every one must here bear witness for himself alone. We are now deal- 
 ing with the realm of onr inward being — of our true freedom or individuality — 
 where we dwell in direct contact with the highest, and disallow all mediation. 
 But I do not hesitate to affirm for myself that I experimentally know no freedom 
 but that which is here indicated as pure human, being a freedom of illimitable in- 
 ward disgust with my own and, if need be, every man's personal pretensions. I 
 relish my moral or outward freedom, my freedom of finite action, as much as any 
 man. I relish it «o very much indeed that I doubt not it would soon run my head 
 in to a noose, if it were not perpetually belied by this more living or spiritual free-
 
 Love^ Jtfarriaf/e, and Divorce. 103 
 
 dom within. The two things cauuot co-exist in the same bosom but as substance 
 and sliadow, life and death. The one sensibly finites me, the other expands my 
 consciousness to infinitude. The more I prize my moral freedom, or freedom of 
 outward action, and identify myself with it, the more my life is finited or concen- 
 tred upon my petty person. The more I prize my spiritual freedom, or freedom 
 of inward reaction, and practically identify myself with it, the niore my life is in- 
 finited or socialized, until at last it becomes so transti};ured into universal dimen- 
 sions as to make mc feel myself almost sensibly blent with the life of my race or 
 nature, which is God. 
 
 Understand me. The distinctive badge of our nature hitherto has been passion, 
 not action, suffering, not enjoyment, in order to base a truly human consciuu^uess 
 in us, or separate us from the animal. Rather let me say it h;LS Ijeen action in- 
 spired by suffering, since our natural infinitude or divinity has bt-en almost wholly 
 swamped in our mineral, vegetable, and animal beginnings, ami has only come to 
 consciousness in the person of one man in history, who yet realized in such ampli- 
 tude its power to sanctify all men that ho could say to a petty thief who shared liis 
 cross: This day shall thou be with me in paradise. In short, passionate and not ra- 
 tional action has been the inevitable law of human life, the in<lis|H.'n.sable condition 
 of its eventual extrication from the mud and slime of its finite maternity. Thus 
 no man has been great in history, with a truly human greatness, who has not won 
 his way to it through suffering; that is, by painfully subjugating the rampant hell 
 of his merely personal ambition and aspiration to a tranquil inward lieaven of just 
 and equal relations with his fellow-man. And to be blind to this great fact is to 
 be blind in my opinion to the total divine worth and significance of human nature. 
 
 Now it is precisely here as it seems to me that your doctrine avouches its signal 
 incompetency as a law of human life. The doctrine stamps itself indeed funda- 
 mentally vicious, in that it utterly ignores this profound subserviency which what 
 is j)ersonal or particular in us has always been under to what is human or uni- 
 versal; and so practically subverts our natural dignity, or declares it undivine. 
 You conceive — such at least is the logic of your position — that our apj>etites and 
 passions are a direct divine boon to us, intended to enhance our jwrsonal enjoyment 
 and power, and to that extent relieve our existing prison-house of its gloom. I 
 deny this with all my heart. I am persuaded that they are given to us in no posi- 
 tive interest whatever, as they are given for example to the animal to constitute 
 his feeble all, but in a distinctly netjative interest, or with a view to disgust us with 
 our prison-house, or finite heritage, and stimulate us to demand a new l>irth more 
 consonant with our spiritual or race tra<litions. Thus I can't for the life of mo 
 figure to myself what/rc« lace means, unless it bo o\w of two things: cither, 1. A 
 freedom to love promiscuously, which is a mere speculative freedom equivalent to 
 lust, and therefore disowned by the universal human heart; or else '2. A freedom 
 to desecrate love, or reduce it to animal proportions, by divesting it of an exclu-
 
 104 Love^ JIarrla(/e, and Divorce. 
 
 sively marriage-hallowing. But no man, least of all a man of your great sense and 
 decency, will contend for the former alternative; so that the latter alone needs to 
 be considered. 
 
 Now, if by freedom of love you mean emancipation from marriage constraint, 
 you compel me to regard your use of the word love as symbolical merely, and to 
 view the word itself as meaning substantially hell. I hope you will not deem me 
 silly enough to suppose that I thus stigmatize your doctrine to any good man's 
 regard. On the contrary, I am only making an honest attempt intellectually to 
 characterize it; and as by the marriage-love of the sexes heaven has always been 
 appropriately symbolized to the intellect, so I take no liberty with thought in say- 
 ing that hell is no less appropriately symbolized by love as opposed to marriage. 
 I repeat, then, that/ree love, regarded as the enemy of marriage, means to the phi- 
 losophic imagination free hell, neither more nor less. Free hell, it is true, — which 
 is a greatly improved aspect of the subject, — but still hell, and not by any means 
 either earth or heaven. It is this fact alone as it seems to me which supplies the 
 philosophy of the free-love agitation, and redeems it from an otherwise utter tri- 
 viality. Free love is only the shibboleth of the movement, only the specious 
 battle-cry under which its shadowy cohorts are being marshalled for the final field 
 of Armageddon. But, viewed under the surface, it is a surging up of great hell it- 
 self into the current of our daily life, to become henceforth an acknowledged factor 
 in human affairs, or to be reckoned with no longer as a suppressed and disreput- 
 able, but as an every way free and respectable force in our nature. 
 
 You pay me the somewhat dubious compliment of calling Swedenborg ray foun- 
 tain of wisdom. I flatter myself that the fountain in question is somewhat more 
 highly placed. I am quite sure at all events that Swedenborg's stately wig would 
 rise off his head in astonishment and awe of the waters that flow from that foun- 
 tain. Swedenborg is not the least a man of ideas, but eminently a man oi facts; 
 and if any one goes to him therefore for ideas themselves, and not for the mere 
 raw material out of which ideas are constituted, he will be sadly disappointed. 
 This is what makes Swedenborg at once the most unauthoritative and the most 
 instructive of writers, — that he has no pretension to supply his readers with intel- 
 ligence, but only with facts, which nevertheless are a sure vehicle of intelligence 
 to every one who knows how to use them. Now, altogether the most impressive 
 fact I find in Swedenborg is the fact of the Last Judgment, effected, as he declares, 
 more than a century ago in the world of spirits, and resulting in the complete 
 practical effacement of the old antagonism of heaven and hell, and their joint and 
 equal subjugation henceforth to the evolution and uses of a new manhood on earth, 
 at once natural and spiritual, or finite and infinite, which he calls a Z)u-me-natural 
 manhood, and represents to have been the sole creative and the sole formative 
 force in our history. 
 
 Now, if this Last Judgment of Swedenborg's be a fact of our spiritual or race-
 
 Love^ Marriarje^ and iJlcorce. lOo 
 
 history, and the elements of good and evil in our nature have become actually re- 
 conciled in a new divine manhood, have become actually fused, blent, or married 
 in a new or divine-huraan life on earth, what can worthily expresa this grand sjii- 
 ritual achievement in our nature but society f Society then is the true form of 
 human destiny. And if society itself be a marriage of good and evil, of spirit and 
 llesh, of heaven and hell, consummated in the divine heart of our nature, why 
 should not hell declare itself free of heaven, or love declare itself free of the purelv 
 enforced bondage it has hitherto been under to marriage? How indee<l can it htlp 
 doing so? The slave, in disavowing his coerced bondage to his master, does not 
 refuse him a spontaneous loyalty on occasion. And love, in refusing a constrained 
 homage to marriage, will not deny itself the honor and advantage of a spontaneous 
 adhesion. Society, when once it is fairly established to men's recognition as the 
 sole law of their origin and destiny, as the sole divine justification of their past 
 disreputable existence, will exhibit or express a perfect reconciliation of our most 
 finite or personal necessities with our most free or spiritual and infinite a.'^pira- 
 tions. But that is only saying in other words that man's life, whether inward or 
 outward, whether celestial or infernal, will then be no longer moral or voluntary 
 as centred primarily in self, or primarily in the neighbor, but altogether cesthetic 
 or spontaneous, as centred in self and the neighbor quite equally. And when the 
 law of man's life thus expresses itself no longer in the rugged forms of duty, but 
 in every winning form of delight, the lower element in our nature will be found 
 even more prompt to its social allegiance than the superior element. Hell in that 
 event, as a recognized factor in human life, coequal with heaven, will vindicate 
 its freedom no longer by voluntarily deferring to heaven, but by <loing so instinc- 
 tively as the very condition of its subsistence; for reciprocal deference is the 
 life-blood of freemen. Thus, when the veriest prudence of a man, or his inmost 
 love of himself, binds him to society as the law of his being, he may surely be al- 
 lowed to claim what freedom in love he pleases: his love — in spite of liiinself, if 
 need were — w^ill evermore strive to indue itself in marriage lineaments, for mar- 
 riage is both the substance and the form of true society, and nothing derugatorj- 
 to the marriage spirit can subsist in it. This is why it is written: "There shall 
 ill no trise enter into it anythinij that drjileth, neither anything that xcorkelh abomination 
 or maketh a lie; hut they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." 
 
 1 am, dear sir, yours very truly, « Hkmiy Jamks. 
 
 Camubidge, Mass., Apuil 1G.
 
 lOG Love^ Marriage^ and Divorce, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 COMMENTS AND RKl'LY 15V Mil. ANDREWS. 
 
 Tho courteous, kindly, and generous remarks of Mr. James, in the opening of 
 the preceding letter, would disarm at once every disposition that might otherwise 
 have existed toward an acrimon ious criticism of his views. It is far more con- 
 genial to my feelings to enter upon the ground of mutual investigation in the 
 common field of the search after truth, than to be bandying plirases or hunting 
 for pungent weapons of verbal offence to be hurled at a supposed enemy; or even 
 to be training the heavy artillery of a crushing logic against hostile intrenchments. 
 Still I do not propose to abandon the advantage of utter frankness which the past 
 relations of Mr. James and myself have authorized between us. The fortiter in re 
 may, I hope, be retained without, hereafter, any sacrifice of the suaviter in modo. 
 
 It is a task of no little difficulty to reply ailequately to a letter of this kind. 
 Apart from the occult nature, broad scope, and intrinsic importance of the subjects 
 matter, and apart from the eminent ability and subtle originality of Mr. James in 
 the treatment of whatever subject he handles, there are great incidental difficulties. 
 His points of view are so transcendental and so original in their transcendental- 
 ism, his absence of preliminary definitions (for example, he never tells us what fie 
 means by marriage), liis assumption of a scope of knowledge on the part of his 
 readers which most readers are destitute of, and, finally, his novel and sometimes 
 confusing and almost blindingly brilliant individuality of style, including a sys- 
 tem of technicalities peculiarly his own, conspire to make a tangled mass of ob- 
 stacle. He is one of the easiest of writers to treat adversely and to put conclusively 
 Ml the wrong, by simply assuming that he means what other mortals would mean 
 by the use of the same language; but one of the very most difficult to treat can- 
 didly, and first disinvolve, and then estimate fairly. He is one, therefore, in a 
 sense, whose amity is more to be dreaded than his enmity. He needs an inter- 
 preter when he addresses himself to others than his own admiring acolytes; and I 
 could wish that he had one at hand in whom he might more confidingly rely than 
 in me; but, under the circumstances, I must occasionally take the liberty (and I 
 sincerely apologize for doing so) of restating Mr. James, in my own words, for the 
 sake of my readers, or of saying to them, in other language, what / understand 
 him to mean. I will add, however, that 1 have so long and so lovingly pored over
 
 Xoi'C, Marriaye^ and Divorce. lOT 
 
 his writiugs, and have been myself so instructed by them, that I feel some confi- 
 dence in my ability to apprelicnd him rigiitly ; and that I hold inys<-lf complet<.-ly 
 subject to his correction wherein I may have failed to du so. A writer who talks 
 of freedom to suffer, and man's actual superiority over his otcn nature, and under- 
 scores these phrases as containing the gist of his thought, needs as fri«'n<lly an in- 
 terpretation as Christ's words when ho teaches us tu hate father ami mother for the 
 truth's sake. Whosoever wishes to understand may have to labor hard to succeed; 
 and whosoever wishes to cavil may readily do so. 
 
 [I also take the liberty to insert numbers indicating paragraphs and subjects in 
 Mr. James's letter for ease of reference.] 
 
 The second branch of Mr. James's definition of what he conceives to be the doc- 
 trine of the free lovers, what he calls "our point of disagreement," and which I 
 have marked, where it is severally restated, by the figure (2), is that they — that I, 
 for example — hold myself "exenipt from all inward liability" to my "own distinc- 
 tive nature as man" for the use f make of my passional nature. Now what he 
 means here to stato I take to be tliat he supposes mo and all those who think with 
 me on thissubject to have cast oif delil)erately and as an intellectual conclusion all 
 deference whatsoever to conscience, to our sense of right, or of inherent and essen- 
 tial law regulating the proprieties of conduct, and all deference to the needs or be- 
 hests of our own superior spiritual natures. I assure our readers (his and mine), 
 with some misgivings as to their ability to credit me, that this is what Mr. James 
 does really mean to say. I couKl not myself Wlieve it ujxjn the strength of any 
 single formal statement, and would have accepted the theory, rather, that I was 
 dull of understanding anil did not comjirehend him, except that by Ids reiterations 
 here, and by recurring to his more elaborate presentation of his views in his pre- 
 viously published letter, I am con.strained to know that this otherwise sane and 
 even wise writer and thinker does, in his heart, .euppase that bald stultification is 
 the characteristic of a group of philosophers who are not, certainly, in other re- 
 spects, absolute fools. 
 
 It was this sort of thing which in my previous criliiiui- 1 denounctnl as balder- 
 dash. I take back the offensive word, and will merely say that any such supjxwi- 
 tion as this is merely a figment of the imagination of Mr. James. Nearly everj 
 word he utters so forcefully and cnaracteristically, although, sonietimes, somewhat 
 mystically, of the normal career and graduation of the human character and of 
 society, out of a lower and .sensuous life into a higher and .'-piritual life, is such 
 that I entirely accord with it, affirm it in my teachings fronj time to time, with all 
 the powers that I jHissess, and aim to ultimate it by every legitinuite means in my- 
 self, in those about me, and in smdety at large. It is for holding and promulgate 
 ing just these views that I have, in the midst of seeming dissension and inability 
 to bo niy.self comprehended by nun, ever loved and cherished the iiol'le ty|»»»of p«T- 
 Bonality which I always gladly recognize in him, and it grieves me more than lean
 
 108 Ziovcj MaiTiaffc, and Divorce. 
 
 express that such a man, and with otherwise lofty powers of comprehension, could 
 so far misapprehend me as to attribute to me what my nature would prompt me to 
 denounce with him as akin to a doctrine of devils. When people wilfully misun- 
 derstand me, I sometimes take no pains to explain; and perhaps 1 have even at 
 times couched my doctrines in such terms that ray assailants should seem to be 
 successfully gratifying their malignity, while I have known that they were biting 
 a file in attacking my positions; but whenever, as now, I am convinced tliat there 
 is an honest attribution to me of opinions that 1 and my co-doctrinaires, so far as I 
 know, utterly repudiate, I hasten to remove, so far as lieth in me, every possibility 
 of a continued misunderstanding. 
 
 "VMiat possible ground has ^Ir. James or anybody for assuming that I or any 
 set of representative free lovers have ever pronounced in favor of the emancipation 
 of mankind from their own consciences, from the sense of justice toward all others, or 
 from the claims of their own higher natures? My understanding of the subjects is 
 that they, of all people, are precisely the champions of those higher mental qualities 
 and states; and that, if they sin at all, it is in their readiness to trust too much to 
 the elevating and regulative potency of just those elements. If we understand 
 ourselves, this is the only quarrel we have with the community at large ; and we 
 are the representative people of just those things which Mr. James supposes we 
 ha"e cast overboard. His indictment of us is no other than a subtle and highly 
 spiritualized repetition of the same estimate of us and our doctrines which the 
 common vulgar herd of crude, undeveloped, and themselves merely passionally or- 
 ganized people attribute to us, in a pm-ely external and unspiritualized way. It 
 holds curiously the same relation, as a mistake, to the common vulgar blunder of 
 the people which Swedenborg's and, if I understand him aright, Mr. James's idea 
 of marriage holds to the connnon external legal understanding of it. The blunder 
 of the vulgar public, partly innocent and natural misapprehension and partly 
 malignant perversion, has long ceased to astonish or disturb me; but the rarefied 
 and attenuated antl transcendental mistake of our present learned and acute critic 
 is a psychological curiosity on the one hand and, on the other, a startling surprise. 
 
 Now, the doctrine of free love is not even anti-marriage in the external or legal 
 sense of the term, any more than the doctrine of free worship in our churches is 
 anti-worship; certainly, therefore, it is not anti-marriage in respect to the spiritual 
 conception of marriage entertained by Mr. James. It is simply opposed to the 
 legal imposition of marriage as a uniform and compulsory mode of adjusting the 
 sexual relations of society and may be said perhaps to be equally opposed to the 
 dogmatic imposition, u{)on all of us, of precisely Mr. James's idea, or anybody's 
 idea of spiritual marriage. It is simply and wholly the doctrine of "hands off," 
 or of remitting the jurisdiction of the subject to the parties concerned; of freedom 
 to marry externally and by express contract for those who desire so to marry; of 
 freedom to be married ever so closely and exclusively, in the spiritual sense, for
 
 JjQVCy Mnrrlnrje^ and Divorrf. 100 
 
 those wlio l)elievo in it and desiro it; and of equal fr«'cdom for those who believe 
 ill neither to regulate their love relations in accordance with whatever idea« they 
 do entertain. The doctrine pronoujices absolutely nothing with regard to the 
 truth or falsehood of any of those ulterior doctrines, but dimply proliibits the in- 
 terference of aiiylK:)(ly with the affairs of others, in this resf>ect, for the {iuri>ose of 
 enforcing their own individual or collective beliefs. The whole doctrine of free 
 love is, therefore, rigorously contained in what Mr. James defines aj» the negativ.* 
 side of that doctrine. It has no other side whatever; and upon this side of the 
 subject Mr. James affirms that lie is infinitely in accord with us. The other side 
 of the doctrine — what ho calls the positive side, and attributes to us — is, as I 
 have previously said, purely a figment of his own imagination, ami wouhl Ikj a-s 
 abhorrent to me, if I recognized it aa really existing anywhere, as it is or can be 
 to him. 
 
 I have said that free love has no positive side in Mr. James's sense. It is a 
 purely negative doctrine, or merely the doctrine of "hands off." This is as true 
 of it as it is of Protestantism, which is negatively a denial of the authority of 
 Home, but which may be poxilively slated as the right of private judgment in mat- 
 ters of conscience. Every negative doctrine or doctrine of mere freedom may J>o 
 thus counterstated and thrown into positive form; and, in that sen.se, free love may 
 be said to have an aflirmative side in the assertion of the right to be left free; but 
 this is in no measure what ^Ir. James embraces in his conception of the positive 
 side of the doctrine, which is, namely, the assertion of the supremacy of the lower 
 'and material or animal nature over the higher, intellectual, and spiritual nature, 
 in the individual and in society at large. The inversion which does place the 
 lower nature above I abundantly recognize and deplore as an existent fact of the 
 world's history hitherto, and it is the earnest desire to remedy that inversion which 
 makes nje a free lover, — believing that the complete emanripation of woman would 
 tend especially in that direction; but fornmlated as a doctrine, and put forth bv 
 rational thinkers as something true or desirable, I have never met with it any- 
 where, and am not aware of its existence. The mere assertion of the right of the 
 individual to decide for himself whether ho will suljordinate love to marriage or 
 marriage to love, is neither a denying nor an afiirming of the essential sul>ordina- 
 tion of either to the other. It is simply an emancipation of them both, and in 
 equal degree, from anybody's dogmatic and authoritative decision of that question, 
 and is fully covered by that which Mr. James holds in common with us. 
 
 I have said that on the whole ground really covered by free love Mr. James an- 
 nounces that ho is in full accord with us. But even here ho is lal>oring under 
 some nieasure of mistake. He nion? than accords with us. He overstates the 
 doctrine. He believes, apparently, in an unbounded license for tho<*<' who are un- 
 der bondage to their own api>etites and pa-ssions, and holds them exempte<l from 
 all responsibility, on the ground that they are themselves enslaved to those ap-
 
 110 Love^ Marr'uifje, and Divorce. 
 
 petites, ami are not, on that account, responsible and accountal>U' Imnian beings. 
 This is to say that they are free, and to be left free, because they are not free, — 
 H doctrine to which I can only assent in a transcendental, ethical sense. This 
 doctrine of freedom without limitations, taken as a basis of social regulation, sur- 
 passes everything that free lovers contend for. The doctrine which we affirm is, 
 on the contrary, a doctrine of very stringent and rigorous limitations. It is the 
 doctrine of the freedom of the individual, onlij so hug as he does not encroach upon 
 the equal freedom of all other individuals. This doctrine, which is feared as license, 
 is, when examined, found to be a tremendous two-edged sword; inasmuch as, while 
 it confers freedom on those who deserve it, it authorizes the rigid constraint of 
 just these inferior natures who are not entitled to it; for it is they, chiefly, who 
 are prone to encroach, and to endeavor to enforce their vieus and desires upon others. 
 Just those persons, therefore, who, ^Ir. James says, with a certain etliical truth- 
 fulness, are not responsible, are those whom our doctrine holds to a rigorous ac- 
 countability. The doctrine which we propound seems to the thoughtless to be a 
 iloctrine of license; but it, in fact, tenders freedom only upon terms with which 
 none but the very most progressed natures are competent to comply: upon the 
 terms, namely, of a, profound and reverential r< yard for the fretdum if all others who 
 in turn do not encroach ; and the same doctrine authorizes the most rigorous calling 
 to account and the most desperate fighting, if need be, in respect to all those who 
 fail to come up to the high demands of this chivalric code of mutual peace and 
 amity. Mr. James's doctrine, on the contrary, as loosely stated by him, I should 
 pronounce to be a doctrine of real license or authorized licentiousness, if I did not 
 bear in mind that he is hardly ever engaged in discussing the civil and practical 
 and sociological questions about which we are talking, and that he is, as it were, 
 hurried away, even when he attempts politico-social and sociological matters, by 
 the impetuosity and soaring of his genius into the empyrean heights of purely 
 transcendental ethics. Freedom with him does not here mean therefore the free- 
 dom of the citizen at all ; and what he says would not have the slightest practical 
 bearing upon the methods of treating ignorant and aggressive offenders; but he 
 means, I suppose, freedom and bondage in a strictly metaphysical sense as affect- 
 ing the will. 
 
 This whole lower stage of the evolution of mind, in which the appetites and pas- 
 sions are dominant and the intellectual and spiritual nature undeveloped, is what 
 I denominate technically the naturismus of the mind, whether of the individual or 
 of the community. The second stage of mental evolution, in which, as Mr. James 
 so aptly expresses it, "my intellectual day does eventually break," is then what I de- 
 nominate the scien-tismus ; and what Mr. James, in his blind technicality, calls "so- 
 ciety" near the close of his article (blind, I mean, in the sense that he does not 
 sufficiently distinguish it as a technicality), and there defines to be the reconciliation 
 of that hell of the passions and this heaven of the intellect and the spirit, is what I deno-
 
 f 
 
 Love^ Marrlafjc, and Divorce. 1 1 1 
 
 minate the arlismus of the mental evolution. I require thr^m technicalities — 
 naturismtu, tcientifmus, and artumus — for univerKoiogical purpi>!(Cii, because the same 
 principles and the same distribution of pritu-iples occur in all thu other sciences 
 aa well as in social science, and, conH<-<iuently, in tiituations when- terms derived 
 from social distinctions would l>e (pute inadini><^il>lt>. I think, also, that these 
 terms, understood and familiari/ed in this sjierial application of ihem, will con- 
 siderably facilitate our mutual understanding of each other in this discussion. 
 
 At the next turn of Mr. James's statement his conception and mfxle of expres- 
 sion are so peculiar that I venture to attempt to make my understanding; of them 
 understfKxl by the rea<ler. Although he has tleHcrilx-d the pri(jr ond, aM I think I 
 may say, the ohjeclive state of the afTectional or .srniinn'iital part of the mind, and 
 its stage of evolution, as a state of bondage, and denied to it any fre<'dom, he now 
 speaks of it as a .state of freedom to art, or, as I think we may say, of projective 
 freedom; and he contrasts with this a newer state of the affections which is inte- 
 rior, or I think wo may say subjective, to which he attributes another kind of what 
 he denominates freedom, — ^* freedom to suffer or to be acted upon," — a freedom to 
 receive mental impressions ond revolve them subjecti\*ely. whi<h we might j>erhaps 
 call a receptive freedom. "My life is not," he says, "any longer outwardlv, but 
 altogether inwardly constituted or energized, and disdains any outward responsi- 
 bility," etc. This distinction is certainly well taken to complete the metaphysical 
 view of the unismus of mind by presenting its objective and subjective sides; but 
 neither ha-s it anything to do with the civic relations of individuals oa covered by 
 the doctrine of free love. Mr. James then arrives at and proceeds to define what 
 he suppos<'3 to be the point of disagreement. This subject I have aln'ady con- 
 sidered, and have shown that ho is wholly mistaken, and that no such disagn-<v 
 ment exists. I will, in a few words, however, state wherein there are, or probably 
 are, some palpable differences between us. 
 
 I have already done this in part, in saying that Mr. James's statenjent of the 
 crude freedom of individuals is altogether too lax for us. Free love with me — 
 and it is generally safer to state one's own views than to assume to r»»present any 
 considerable numl>er of i>crsons — is merely an extension, or a special application 
 rather, of Josiali Warren's doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual, which, when 
 stated in full, is always accompanied by a prohibition of encroachment. It is, 
 therefore, merely a doctrine of the mutual adjustment of relations in fr»x»dom l»©- 
 tween parties nnitually «lesirous of doing right, and who recognize their mutual 
 equality as a basis. It has no application, therefore, to undevelop»'d parties in- 
 capable of the mutual application of principles; to the unjust or thone who arc not 
 disposed to live on principle; or, in fine, to any but those who know enough and 
 are goo«l enough to apply and live by the principle. In '■> all the rest of 
 
 mankind I am free to regulate my life according to th<' • of the case, in 
 
 the absence of this readiness on Uieir part to adopt and act ui<un a principle of
 
 11 "2 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 right, regulating freeiloin. If I were the Czar of Russia, I shouhl be just as free, 
 unhindered liy any theory I hold of human rights, to enact and enforce stringent 
 laws, according to my judgment of the stage of development in that country, as if 
 I held no sociological doctrines whatsoever. As a political ruler, with power and 
 responsibility for social order, I should not be trammelled or hampered by soci- 
 ology' or ethics, beyond the legitimate claims of one sphere of affairs to influence 
 every other sphere. I might then and there enact laws, and be engaged in enforc- 
 ing them, which 1 might be, here and now, engaged in breaking and encouraging 
 others to break. Even here, as a legislator, I might favor and help enforce laws 
 politically which, as a social agitator, I would treat with contempt and try to in- 
 duce the people to despise. I am no silli/ doctrinaire, propounding theories of life 
 which are wholly impracticable, but simply a social scientist, dealing in social 
 solutions. J. Stuart Mill, if he had understood ^Ir. Warren or me, would never 
 have ^Titten his work on "Liberty" so loosely worded in limiting the right of the 
 State as to have laid himself open to the raking fire of James Fitzjames Stephen ; 
 and so Mr. James, with a right study of the subject, would not state the non- 
 accountability of crude offenders so wildly. 
 
 Allow me to explain upon a branch of the subject which I am here led into, and 
 which I do not remember ever to have treated upon. There are three quite dis- 
 tinct, almost wholly different spheres of collective human affairs to be considered, 
 which we may call: 1, The ordinary politico-civic sphere, mainly practical and only 
 slightly scientific — the unismus of this series; 2, The sociologico-ethical sphere, which 
 is rigorously scientiGc, adjusting by principles and exact definitions the social re- 
 lations of individuals in society, in so far as they desire to know and are ready to 
 regulate their mutuality by exact knowledge, — the sphere of Warrenism, and by 
 derivation of f ree-loveLsm, — the duismus of this series ; 3, The transcendental ethical 
 sphere, partly practical, spontaneous, natural; partly scientific; but, in the major 
 part, sentimental or artismal ; regulating the individual conduct relating to others 
 in foro consciencice, or as regards the individual's approbation or disapprobation of 
 his own such conduct, in view of his own respect for the Most High, — which last 
 is the trinismus of this series. 
 
 It is in this last, or trinismal sphere that we find Mr. James usually speaking, 
 but not always. Sometimes he is talking in the unismus. But of the duismus, 
 the scientific and truly regulative sphere, he really knows notliing, and is sure to 
 misunderstand anybody who speaks in it. He is not always, I say, in the third 
 sphere. When he talks of " progiessively enlarging the grounds of divorce," he is 
 talking in the first sphere — politico-civic — like an ordinary mortal, and refers to 
 actual legislation, to take place in legislature, congress, or parliament; but when, 
 a few paragraphs further on, he talks of "the non-accountability to one's fellow-men 
 for the exercise of one's appetites and passions, because of one's own bondage to the 
 same," he has suddenly, and it would seem unconsciously, vaulted up into the tri-
 
 Xorc, Marriufje, anil Divorce. 113 
 
 iiismus. He i\r>ei not mean that it would «lo for any iiiumlane legUlature to con- 
 duct ^'oveniiiKMit on tliut iirincipli', l>ut only tliat in ethical htrictneiis there iit no 
 holding ground for the flukes of the anchor of coiuicieace. 
 
 When, in the nfiddle field between these extremen, Mr. Jainefl attempts to state 
 our doctrine, he wholly fails, for want of the habit of Rcientific exactitude. " Your 
 doctrine, if I rightly understand it, is," he says, "two-fold, nanudy: First, that 
 men are de jure exempt from outward liability, which is liability to other men for 
 the indulgence of their apivtitcs and pa.s.sions; hccond," etc. Now thia is not my 
 doctrine, but a perfect caricature of my doctrine, in bo far aa I have ever pro- 
 pounded any doctrine on the subject. I do not hold that men are de jure exempt, 
 etc., except conditionally, tlie condition Iwing that they know how to abstain, and 
 will abstain, from encroachment upon the rights of other people, — the sovereignty 
 of the individual [only] at his own co.ity which makes a \\ holly different thing of 
 the whole doctrine. 
 
 The free lover rejoices in any relaxation of civil-marriage stringency, any facili- 
 tation by legislation of the laws of divorce such as Mr. James desires; but we 
 choose to base our social agitation on the higher law of individual riijhln, leavi: 
 dividuals to battle with their legal restrictions as they Iwst may; as the bIk... 
 ists chose to do, rather tlian to ayitate for special ameliorations of the condition of 
 the slaves, l^iis is in fact the only difTirence between Mr. James and us qua this 
 particular question of the method of arriving at more practical freedom. 
 
 I have said that, as a mere politician or judicial functionar}-, I might myself be 
 engaged, on the lower ground of expfditiicy and practical necessity, in enacting 
 and enforcing laws which, as a sociological writer and agitator, I should be insti- 
 gating people to set aside and defy ; and I will ad«l that, in this latter capacity, I 
 might be engaged in vindicating for individuals or the jieople freedom to act 
 in ways in which, if they did act, I shoul.l wholly and energetically condemn them 
 upon the still higher ground of transcendental ethics; and I hold still further that 
 any one who cannot umlcrstand and adjust himself to all these complexities is in- 
 competent to be integrally a sociologist. 
 
 The rise of a higher social doctrine in the community is like the rise of a new 
 tissue in the development of the bo<ly. It finds the ground preoccupied by the old, 
 which it has to crowd aside to make room for itself. Hence the necessity for a 
 conflict; and the same individual may find himsi-lf related at one moment to the 
 old in a way to enforce duties ui>on him of that order, and tlie next moment to the 
 new in a similar manner. Mrs. Wo«iilhull, who agitates for fri'e love, and the judge 
 and jury who try her, and, if the evidence and the law require it, condemn her and 
 send her to BlackwelTs Island, are both right; and Mrs. Woo<lhull, if empaneled 
 on a jury to try one like herself, might have, in good con.science, to join in such a 
 verdict against another doing the same as she may have l>een charged with doing. 
 When people go to war, there is no use in whining over the fact that they are li>
 
 114 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 able to get hurt ; and a doubleness of duty in different directions is one of the com- 
 monest events of life. I simply rejoice that just in this age, and here in America, 
 and perhaps in a few other countries, the old civilization has grown so rotten and 
 enfeebled that the agitators for the new civilization have the advantage, and can 
 defy .ind conquer with less of martyrdom than most other reforms have demanded. 
 
 Now, fortunately, the sociologico-ethical doctrine, that which scientifically de- 
 lines the rights of individuals, reciprocally, in their mutual relations, sexual and 
 otherwise, is merely a doctrine reyulating reciprocity^ and is not binding on the 
 conscience of the other party the moment the reciprocity fails; and that moment 
 the advocate of the doctrine is free to fall back upon the lower law and fight it out 
 there ; although, as a magnanimous policy, he may think it best not to avail him- 
 self of his privilege, — as in political economy the free-trader is only bound by his 
 principles, on grounds of justice and equity, to inaugurate free trade with nations 
 who will reciprocate, but he may, as magnanimity or far-reaching expediency, 
 deem it best not to stop there. So the Declaration of American Independence de- 
 clares certain rights to be inalienable, but it proceeds inmiediately to provide cer- 
 tain punishments, consisting of depriving individuals of the exercise of those very 
 rights. What is meant is that the rights are conditionally inalienable, the condition 
 being that those who claim them shall come with clean hands to do so; not at the 
 same instant infringing the same rights in others. The South, in the war, de- 
 manded, on the ground of right, to be let alone, but demanded it for the purpose 
 of enslaving others, and so lost her standing in court to make that plea, while, yet, 
 the plea remained, abstractly, perfectly good. So I, as a free lover, am not bound 
 to accord the freedom to regulate their own conduct, relieved from my interference, 
 to any but those who can and will, in good faith and chivalric courtesy, leave every 
 other person, their dearest lovers included, equally free. 
 
 As regards all the rest of mankind, they have no right whatever under this doc- 
 trine " which -white men are bound to respect." I may deem it magnanimous or 
 educationally expedient to recognize as free lovers, and to agitate in behalf of, 
 those who are only half born into the doctrine ; but they have no claims on my 
 con.science to do so. Apart from this compact of equitable amity with a handful 
 of people who are morally and intellectually competent to appreciate a scientific 
 gauge of equity, I am just as free, in conscience, if I deem it expedient, as tiie 
 veriest old fogy, to help in the suppression of every deviation from the rigors of 
 the law or'of Mrs. Grundy. I am not, in other words, under any conscientious in- 
 ability to behave as a good citizen on the lower politico-civic ground. But I deem 
 the new doctrine so infinitely better, so fast as the world can be brought to regu- 
 late its conduct by a scientific principle, instead of force, that, as an agitator for 
 the higher truth, the mere legislation of the hour takes no rank in the comparison; 
 and if I find myself entangled in the meshes of the contradiction, I must take my 
 risks and fight it through according to the circumstances of the individual case.
 
 Love^ Marriage, arid Divorce. 115 
 
 We coiiio now to tlie still liigher sphere, to the transcendental ethical sphere, 
 where Mr. James coininonly tliinks and writes and fij,'ures. It i.s here tliat he usu- 
 ally talks of marriage, and by marriage in this sense I understand him to mean : 
 whatsoever r'ujht conjunction of the counlerparliny /actors of life; either as abstract prin- 
 ciples, or in the realm of concrete personality. Marriage in this sense is what I mean 
 by trinism, the reconciliative harmony of oppositcs. The idea is Swedenborgian, 
 is Jan)esian, is universological. In it I b^'lieve most religiously; for it I work 
 most assiduously; to it I woulil lead all mankind; and in the effort to that end I 
 recognizo and fellowship Mr. James most heartily. He may, and I think probably 
 would, define this sjiiritual, ethical, metaphysical marriage in a technical and some- 
 what narrow doctrinaire sense which I should reject; and here I think is another 
 point of our real differences; and here, to make a clean breast of it, I think he may, 
 perhaps, have something yet to learn from me. If ho accejtts the above definition, 
 and if he will leave the questions: What are the counlerjiartiny factors of life, and 
 Tl7(a< is a riyht adjustment of them, open to free ."scientific investigation, not im]>osing 
 on the inquirer any doctrinaire interpretation of them, we can start fair; and I shall 
 have many words, when the time conies, to utter about this matter. 
 
 But it seems to me a pity that Mr. James, with such a meaning of marriage, 
 should never notify his readers when he passes to and fro between it and the com- 
 mon vulgar idea of statute marriage; the confusion so induced sometimes seeming 
 to make of his writings a brilliant kaleidosco|)e of mysticism, instead of a Ixnly of 
 intelligible instruction. For exami)le, take this sentence: "Thus your doctrine 
 has both a negative or implicit force, as addres.sed to the making marriage free by 
 progressively enlarging the grounds of divorce; and a positive or explicit force, 
 as addressed to the making love free, by denying its essential subordination to 
 marriage." 
 
 The word marriage is here u.sed in two senses as if they were one; first, in the 
 ordinary sense, and, second, to mean the true rational adjustment of the relations 
 of love; and it is against this last, which he identifies first (at least as a factor) 
 with "society" (meaning the highest ideal well-being and true order of society), 
 and then with "God," the ideal personal author of this system of true order, that 
 Iklr. James supposes the free lovers to be in revolt (in addition to their revolt, in 
 which he concurs, against the outward restrictions of enforced marriage in Uio 
 lower sense). 
 
 The only solution I ran think of (at first I could think of none) of this seem- 
 ingly gratuitous assunqition is this: Free lovers do often sj»eak of their relative 
 contempt for marriage as compared with the claims of genuine affection, and Mr. 
 James, having the fixed idea in his mind of marriage in this higher w^nsse, as tlie 
 permanent meaning of the word, has attributed to them n meaning which he would 
 have had, had ho used similar lant;nage. But he .•^hould know that they are not 
 piping in the high transcendental key in which he habitually sings or talks. They
 
 116 Jjove, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 mean merely that love is for them the higher law over statute marriage without 
 love. They are not then talking, or thinking, in the least, of denying that duty in 
 a thousand forms may be a higher law still over love; that is to say, over the sen- 
 suous indulgences of mere love : duty to one's self if the health is to incur injury, 
 duty to one's higher spiritual nature if it is to be marred, duty to one's children if 
 their destiuy is involved, duty to previous innocent companions and parties impli- 
 cated in one's act, duty to society at large and its well-being, duty to God or divine 
 law written in the soul demanding integral and distributive justice; duty, in a 
 word, to the Most High, or that, whatsoever it is, which is the highest in each indi- 
 vidual soul. Some persons, to be sure, deny duty altogether on a ground of me- 
 taphysical subtlety, saying that, when they know what is right, that is their 
 attraction and its doing not from duty but from love ; but this is merely another 
 mode of stating the common idea. 
 
 The mere agitators for free love are for the most part those who have not risen 
 to the consideration of the ulterior questions involved in the true uses of freedom, 
 any more than slaves struggling for freedom enquire what line of conduct they 
 will pursue, or what considerations they will abide by in deciding their conduct, 
 when free ; and it is a pure gratuity to assume that they have decided against any 
 moral course whatever. 
 
 Pope puts into the mouth of Eloise the following startling words: (Pope's 
 Poetical Works, vol. i., p. 125.) 
 
 How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said, 
 Curse on all laws but those which love has made ! 
 Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, 
 Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies. 
 Let wealth, let honor, wait the wedded dame, 
 August her deed, and sacred be her name ; 
 Before true passion all those views remove ; 
 Fame, wealth, and honor I What are you to love? 
 The jealous God, when wo profane his fires, 
 Those restless passions in revenge inspires, 
 And bids them make mistaken mortals groan, 
 Who seek in love for aught but love alone. 
 Should at my feet the world's great Master fall, 
 Himself, His throne. His world, I'd scorn them all ; 
 Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove ; 
 No, make me inistrcss to the man I love ; 
 • If there be yet another name more free, 
 
 Moro fond than mistress, make me that to thee! 
 
 O liappy state! when souls each other draw, 
 
 Wlien love is liberty, and nature law; 
 
 All then is full, jiosscssing and possessed, 
 
 No craving void left aching in the breast; 
 
 E'en thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part.
 
 Lc/ve^ Mtin'iu(ji\, and Divorce. 117 
 
 And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart. 
 This sure is bliss (if bli.^s ou earih there be), 
 And once the lot of Abclurd uiid uio. 
 
 The most exalted pythoness of free love of our day baa never said more or gone 
 farther than this: and yet a few pages farther on in thb poem, thb same rebel 
 against marriage in the lower sense, as by the laws of man, is found struggling 
 ili'sperately witli her own sense of rii,'lit in the higher court of conscience, or as ru- 
 hited to ethical truth; which, with her, held the form of obedience to God. Head 
 the following in tliis vein : 
 
 Sh. wretch! believed the spouse of Gml In vain, 
 
 Confessed within the slave of love and man. 
 
 Assist me, heaven! but whence arose that prayer? 
 
 Sprung it from piety, or from despair? 
 
 E'en here, where frozen charity retires, 
 
 Love linds an altar for forbidden fires. 
 
 I ought to jjrieve, but cannot as I ouf;ht ; 
 
 I mourn the luver, not lament the fault ; 
 
 I ^iew my crime, but kindle wi^h the view. 
 
 Repent old pleasures, and solicit new ; 
 
 Now turned to heaven, I weep my past offence. 
 
 Now think of thee, and curse my innocence. 
 
 Of all afflictions taught a lover yet, 
 
 "lis sure the hardest science to forget! 
 
 How shall I love the sin, yet keep the sense, 
 
 And love the offender, yet detest the offence? 
 
 How the dear object from the crime remove, 
 
 Or how distinguish penitence from love? 
 
 Unequal task ! a passion to resign. 
 
 For hearts so touched, so pierceil, so lost ub mine. 
 
 Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state, 
 
 How often must it love, how often hate? 
 
 How often hope, despair, resent, forget. 
 
 Conceal, disdain, — do all things but regret! 
 
 But let heaven sei/.o it, all at once 'tis fireil ; 
 
 Not touched, but wrapt ; not wcakonetl, but inspired I 
 
 O come! O teach me Nature to subdue. 
 
 Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you; 
 
 Fill my fond heart with God alone, for He 
 
 Alone cau rival, can succeed to thee. 
 
 Nobody can, in fact, escape his own worship of the Most High. I pn'fcr Uii^ to 
 the t<'rin God as etiually orthoilox and as less implicated with existing dogtna. 
 The Most High of KK^ise was the Catholic conception of a personal God. The 
 Most High of Mr. ,Ianies i.<» a jwrfect law, ultimating in a i>erfect ideal social ad- 
 justment which he sometimes culls "society" and sometimes r;i'- "'hhI"; and
 
 118 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 the element of deference to this perfect law in the settlement of our love affairs is 
 •what he calls "marriage," as the couiiterparting and major element in this ques- 
 tion, as compared with mere love. No free lover has ever denied this, because 
 hitherto they have not been called, as a body, even to consider the subject. Indi- 
 vidually, these cases of conscience are arising among them every day; and if Mr. 
 James will write so that they can understand him, I will venture to say that he 
 can find no other public so ready to accept, gratefully, any ethical solutions he can 
 furnish them. 
 
 "What Mr. James supposes is that they are a body of people whose Most High, 
 or highest conception and object of devotion, is their own appetite and passional 
 indulgences. When this was put in the form of an accusation, I resented it as a 
 gross slander. Reduced to the proportions of an honest misapprehension, I hasten 
 to do my best, by a laborious effort, to remove it; and I assure ]\Ir. James that I 
 know no such class of people as he conceives of, under the name of free lovers. 
 They are, indeed, as I know them, among those farthest removed from this descrip- 
 tion. They cortsist, on the contrary, in a great measure, of idealists of a weak pas- 
 sional nature, and who, for that reason, could not bear the yoke of matrimony ; of 
 benevolent, kindly people who have witnessed the misery of others in that relation 
 until their natures revolted ; and of speculative thinkers who have solved or are 
 trying to solve the problem of the social relations ; and it is on these grounds that 
 they are gradually, and just now pretty deeply, imbuing the whole public mind. 
 
 What Mr. James calls in one way society, in another the social spirit, again GocTs 
 life in my spirit, and finally God, is just as important and just as paramount in my 
 view as in his ; tliough I may not always choose to adopt any of these modes of 
 expression, and may, at times, rather speak of my ow^n higlier and lower nature 
 instead. I do not, however, object, if he does not insist and seek to impose a spe- 
 cial form of expression of a thought otherwise essentially the same. The fact that 
 this higher life is mine does not deny the fact that it is yours also, and I only insist 
 on freedom of conception and expression ; and the distinction between our nature 
 and ourselves has a mystical seeming which I might choose to avoid. With aright 
 adjustment of the technicalities of expression, I presume, however, that there is 
 no difference here between Mr. James and myself. 
 
 What he says of suffering is wholly good or monstrously bad, according to the 
 farther exposition it might have ; and it would take me too far away from my pre- 
 sent purpose to follow him. I simply reserve, as the lawyers say, my bill of excep- 
 tions. I will, however, confess that I am not conscious of sweating so hard, 
 spiritually, over the effort to be good as Mr. James deems it requisite ; and either 
 that I never get to be so good as his ideal good man is, or else that it comes more 
 natural to me. Perhaps I was sanctified somewhat earlier, and have forgotten my 
 growing pains. 
 
 Yes, 1 do hold that our appetites and passions are a direct divine boon to us, etc.,
 
 Lofve^ ^fni'iudfje^ and Divorce. 119 
 
 which Mr. James denies with all his heart; and yet I lioKI all this in that larger 
 sense that Ikls all Mr. JanK's's distinctions within it, — as Col. Benton said of a 
 certain hill in Congress that it had "a stump sjK.'cch in the belly of it." I aflirni 
 every one of his atnrniations, in spirit if not in terms, and only negate \\\a negations. 
 
 Mr. James next proceeds, after the preparation thus made, to characterize free 
 love, philosophically, as free hell. The opening sentence of this part of Mr. James's 
 comnmnication is in itself utterly ambiguous, for the reason that it ia imi>ossible 
 to tell from it whether in "emancipation from marriag<M:onstraint" he means by 
 marriage-constraint the outer constraint of the statute law or that release, which he 
 has imagined to be the demand of the free lovers, from the divine order, whatever 
 that may be, of the love relations of mankind. But light is thrown upon the subject 
 farther on, and it api>ears that he means this last, for lie contracts the •♦emancipa- 
 tion " from it. under the name of hell, with "■that mnrriage-love of the sexes by which 
 heaven has always been approj>riately symbolized." 
 
 Now by marriage as appropriately .symbolizing heaven he undoubtedly means 
 nothing other than harmoniously adjusted love relations in accordance with the 
 divine law; by which is meant, again, nothing other than the highest law in the 
 universe applicable to the subject. He may assume in his thought that this high- 
 est law is such, or such ; but that does not affect the (piestion, as he may l»e either 
 right or wrong in the assumption; and he can hardly, I think, reject my defini- 
 tion.s, which transcend all si)ecial renderings of the law. This highest law must in 
 turn be ascertained by intuition, by inspirational impression, by experience, by 
 reason, and, in fine, in the highest degree, by the absolute science of the subject 
 superadded to and modilving the results of all the other methods, — by, in a wonl, 
 whatsoever faculties and means the human mind possesses for compassing a know- 
 ledge of the highest truth, especially in this sjihere of affairs. I>ovo — an a btb- 
 8TANCE or subject-matter, appropriately regulated by the true and highest law of its 
 relations — as a form — this Kubstauce and this form, again, happily unitetl or n)arried 
 to each other, is what Mr. James is here characterizing as tnarrltr/e-lorf and as 
 heaven; and nobody can, I think, appropriately object to this characterization. 
 
 So, on the other hand, tin; divorce or sundering of this suhstattcf and this/orwi 
 (it is a little queer to call that idea an "emancipation," but no matter so long as 
 we can guess at what is meant) may, with the same appropriateness, extending the 
 symbol, be denominated hell. I conceded at once, in my previous answer, that 
 what Mr. James understood us to propound as doctrine would U* a dix'trine of 
 devils; and I suppose that sort of thing is rightly characterized as lu-ll. But I 
 have now to show that, as I think, Mr. James do<'s not quite understand hinjsolf 
 on this subject; and I take the liberty to correct him, an, if he is going to conduct 
 us to the sulphurous abyss, I want he should go .straitjht to hell, and n«»t deviate a 
 hair's breadth to the right nor the left. 
 
 I have pointed out two senses in which Mr. James has used the word marriage.
 
 120 Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 
 
 There is involved here a third meaning so subtle that T presume he is entirely un- 
 aware of it. Marriage is liere in one breath contrasted with love, as the opposite 
 partner in a partnership of ideas, and in the next breath it is used to mean love 
 conjoined toilh marriage {marriage being now used in the former sense), — that is to 
 say, to mean the partnership itself. It is as if Smith were about, in the first place, 
 to be fairly treated in relation to Jones in settling the affairs of the firm of Smith 
 & Jones, but that, surreptitiously, the assumption were glided in that Jones is the 
 firm of Smitii & Jones, aud that poor Smith has now to reckon with the whole 
 firm against him. 
 
 Read the following extract in the light of this criticism : " I am only making an 
 honest attempt intellectually to characterize it [free love]. And as by the mar- 
 riage-love [love and true marriage conjoined] of the sexes heaven has always been 
 appropriately symbolized to the intellect, so I take no liberty with thought in say- 
 ing that hell is no less appropriately symbolized by love as opposed to marriage. 
 I repeat, then, that/ree love, regarded as the enemy of marriage, means, to the phi- 
 losophic imagination, free hell, neither more nor less," etc. It -will appear at once, 
 on a close inspection of this extract, that marriage, the last two times it is here 
 used, is used as synonymous with marriage-love, — as, in other words, a partnership- 
 idea, including love as one of the partners, — and in that case love is no more an 
 appropriate idea to contrast with it than Smith is the appropriate antithet, in the 
 case supposed above, of Smith & Jones. The true antithetical idea of a partner- 
 ship is the individuals as individuals, and both of them equally, out of the partner- 
 ship. So the true antithet, in idea, of marriage (meaning love in marriage and 
 marriage in love conjointly) is love and marriage, as a substance and a form, mu- 
 tually contrasted, divorced or separated from each other; and then, if the word 
 free is used to mean their separation (or emancipation) from each other, it is just 
 as applicable to marriage as one of the partners as it is to love as the other part- 
 ner ; and it is not alone free love vrhich is hell, but it is love divorced from true 
 relational adjustment (here called marriage) and true relational adjustment (that is, 
 the relational adjustment which would be true if love were present) this last without 
 love, which are both and equally the symbol of hell. In other words, love without 
 marriage and marriage without love are hell, — the reader remembering that we are 
 not now talking of statute marriage, but of true sexual adjustments"; and love 
 married to true sexual adjustments, or vice versa, is heaven. 
 
 No philosophical free lover, any more than any other philosopher, would object, 
 I presume, to these statements; and this is what Mr. James means, or should mean, 
 in the premises. 
 
 "We are all aware that love, as mere unsatisfied desire, is hell, or misery ; and 
 satisfied upon a low plane it is still hell to one who has conflicting superior desires 
 unsatisfied; and when the satisfaction is complete in kind, if the adjustments are 
 imperfect, conflicting, or disharmonious, in whatsoever sense, the result is still hell;
 
 Love, 3farrlar/c, and Divorce. 121 
 
 and this authorizes Mr. James to call free lore hell, he having taken the y/ord free 
 to mean divorced or sundered from true or harmonic adjustment; but how he 
 could ever have thought any set of people to be the partisans of this particular 
 kind of hell is still very surprising. On the other hand, he might just as rightly, 
 and is even required by consistency, to say free marriage, in the sense of mere for- 
 mal adjustment divorced from love as its appropriate infilling Hul»stancc, and then 
 to denounce it as hell of another kind; which we all know it to be. It is this lat- 
 ter hell which free lovers are especially engaged in combatting; and it is that hell 
 of devils and this hell of Satans (Swedenborgian) between which I insist that Mr. 
 James shall hold even balance ; in other words, that he shall go slraiyht to hell. 
 
 But Mr. James's ladder of argument, thougli there is a round loose occasionally, 
 is still a ladder conducting him up to a culmination of magnificent philosophical 
 statement. Free love, as hell, is still with hini by no means altogether disreput- 
 able. Hell itself is getting up in the world. It is an equal factor in the genesis 
 of all things, an equally honorable combatant in the grand final battle of princi- 
 ples, the end of which is not defeat for either, but a trinismal reconciliation where- 
 by the new heavens and the new earth are or are to be constituted. All this is 
 universological and grand and true, and it rejoices me to have so distinct an an- 
 nouncement of the doctrine, in this connection, from Mr. James. I gladly concede 
 also that he has derived only the materials for this doctrine from Swedenborg, and 
 that the form of it is new and equally original with Mr. James and myself, and 
 perhaps some other thinkers of this age. At all events, I am in full fellowship 
 with him upon this central point of what I must undoubtedly believe is the final 
 and integral philosophy of mankind. 
 
 I should not, it is true, base my faith in a final philosophy upon Swedenborg's 
 personal experiences in the spirit world, nor upon any mere historical averment of 
 events which may have transpired in any world, but upon what to me is far se- 
 curer, the universological laws and principles of all being. Still, I have no con- 
 tempt for Swedenborg's experiences, whether they prove to have been subjective 
 or objective phenomena; and the rendering which Mr. James gives of the event 
 alluded to is altogether sublime and alike true whether the event literally and ob- 
 jectively occurred or not. If the date of these spiritual espousals was so far back, 
 it would seem that the effective promulgation of the fact has l>een reserved for this 
 and the coming age. The new divine manhood has aa yet made but small exter- 
 nal progress in the world. The germ, nevertheless, exists, and it is taking on, 
 every day, increased proportions. The most fatal mistake that soldiors make in 
 war is to fire upon detachments of their own army, and it is all-important that 
 they discover and retrieve the blunder. The figure is commendod to Mr. James's 
 consideration. Verhum sap. sat. 
 
 StEPIIKN rEAKI. .XNDRF.WS.
 
 LIBEKTY. 
 
 A Fortniohtly Organ of Anarchistic Socialism. 
 
 THE PIONEER OF ANARCHY IN AMERICA. 
 Benj. R. Tucker, - j - Editor and Publisher. 
 
 ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
 
 Liberty insists on the sovereignty of the individual and the just reward 
 of labor ; on the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury ; on no 
 more government of man ])y man, and no more exploitation of man by 
 man ; on Anarchy and Eciuity. 
 
 Complete tiles of Volumes III., IV., and V. of Liberty, handsomely 
 bound in cloth, are for sale at S2.00 each. 
 
 Address: Liberty, P. O. Box 3366, Boston, Mass. 
 
 FOUR RADICAL NOVELS 
 
 TREATING OF 
 
 THE IML^RHrAaE QUESTION. 
 
 WHAT'S TO BE DONE. A Nihilistic Romance. By N. G. Tchernycliewsky. 
 Witii a Portrait of the Autlior. Translated by Benj. R. Tucker. Written in 
 Prison. Suppressed by the Czar. In cloth, .$1.00. In paper, 75 cents. 
 
 THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM, liy Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner). 
 A romance, not of adventure, but of the inti-llectual life and growth of young 
 English and German people living among the Boers and KalHrs; picturing the 
 mental struggles through which they passed in their evolution from orthodoxy 
 to rationalism ; and representing advanced ideas on religious and social questions. 
 A work of remarkable power, beauty and originality. 375 pages. Price, in 
 cloth, 00 cents. 
 
 THE WING OF AZRAEL. By Mona Caird, the authoress whose articles in 
 the " Westminster Review " aroused so great an interest in the question of 
 marriage among the English people. 305 pages. Price, 30 cents. 
 
 FRANCES : A Story for Men and Women. By Florence Finch-Kelly. 221 pages. 
 Price, 50 cents. 
 
 Address : BENJ. R. TUCKER, Box 3360, Boston, Mass.
 
 LIBERTY'S LIBRARY. 
 
 For any of the following Works, address, BEKJ. B. TUCKER, Box 3366, Boston, Mass. 
 
 TIIK WIND AND THK WHIRLWIND. A poem worthy of a place in 
 (•VL'i-y man's lihrary, hih! c'specially liitcn'Stlny to all victims of Brltlsli tyranny 
 ami misniK'. IJy "WlllVid Scawtii IJhint. A rf<l-line edition, printed beauti- 
 fully, in larf^e type, on tine paper, and bound in parcluncnt covers. Elegant 
 and clieap. ;}2 pa;;cs. I'rjfe, :i.'» cents. 
 
 THK RADICAL RKVIKW: Vol. I., hanasomely l)ouncl in cloth, and 
 containliii; over sixty K>says, Poems, Translations, and Uevlews, by the m<jst 
 prominent radical writers, on industrial, llnancial, soiiul, literary, scicutlllc, 
 philosopliical, ethical, auil rcli;(ious subjects. 82S pa;;jes octavo. Price, $^.00. 
 Sinirle ntimix-rs, .«tl.l.'>. 
 
 Till': FALLACIKS IN -PROGRK.SS AND POVKRTY." A I)oKl at- 
 tack on the position of Henry Geor;;e. Written for tlie pe<jplc, and lus revolu- 
 tionary in sentiment, and even more radical than " Pro;:ress and Poverty" 
 itself. Bv William Hanson. lOl pa.^'cs, cloth. Price, 81.00. 
 
 NATURAL" LAW: or, tlie .Science of Justice. A Treatise on Natural 
 Law, Natural Justice, Natural Kitrhts, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society, 
 showin?.C tliat all lej^isiation whatsoever is an absurdity, a usurpation, aud a 
 crime. Hv Lvsander Spo<»ner. Price, 10 cents. 
 
 AN ANARCIlisT ON ANARCHY. An eloquent exposition of the be- 
 liefs of Anarchists l)y a man as eminent in science a.s in reform. By Elbte 
 Kcclus. Followed by a slietch of the criminal record of the author by E. 
 Vauirhan. Price, 10 cents. 
 
 SO THK RAILWAY KINGS ITCH FOR AN KMPIRK, DO THKY? 
 By a "Keil-lldt Striker," of Scranton, Pa. A reply to an article by William 
 M. Grosvenor in the Intirnntionul lirvitw. Price, 10 cents; jier hundred, S4.(X). 
 
 INTKRNATIONAL ADDRKSS : An elnhorute, c(.niprelie:isive, and 
 very entertaiiiiu;; Exposition of the principles of Tiic Workin;;-people's luter- 
 national .Vssociation. By William B. Greene. Price, 15 cents. 
 
 TIIK WORKING WO^IKN: A letter to tlie Rev. Henry W. Foote, 
 Minister of Kinj^'s Cliapel, in Vindicati<in of the Poorer Class of Bo>ton Work- 
 ing-Women. Bv William B. Greene. Price, l."> cents. 
 
 ANARCHISM OR ANARCHY? A Discussion between William K. 
 Tillin<?hast and Benj. U. Tucker. Prefacitl by an Open Letter to Uev. William 
 .1. Potter. Sent on receipt of a postaije stamp. 
 
 A FK.MALK NIHILIST. A thrillinir sketch «)f tlie character and ad- 
 ventures of a tyiiical Nihilistic heroine. By Stepnlak, author of " I'nder- 
 ^rround IJussia." Price, 10 cents. 
 
 MUTUAL 15ANKIN(; : Showing the Radical Deficiency of the cxi.sting 
 finulatini,' .Medium, ami how Interest on Money can be Abollsheil. By Wil- 
 liam H. tJreene. Price, 2r> cents. 
 
 CAPTAIN ROLAND'S PURSK: How it is Filled and how Kmptied. 
 By John Kuskin. The llrst of a projected series of Labor Tracts. Supplied 
 at 37 cents per hundred. 
 
 SOCIALISTIC, CO.M.MUNISTIC, MUTUALISTK , AND FINANCIAL 
 Fraffments. Uv William H. (Jreene. Price. SI.'.'.'.. 
 
 PROSTITUTION AND THK INTKRNATIONAL WOMAN'S 
 L»'ai,'ue. Bv lleiirv Kduer. Price, l.'i cent.s. 
 
 WHAT IS FKKKDOM, AND WHKN AM I FRKK? By Henry 
 Applcton. Price, 15 cents ; two copies, 25 cents.
 
 PROUDHON'S WORKS. 
 
 WHAT IS PROPERTY ? Or an Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and of 
 Government. By 1'. .1. I'roudhon. Trefaced by asketeiiof Promllion's Lifeand 
 Works, and containuii^ as a Frontispiece a fine steel enj^raving of the Author. 
 Translated from the French by IJenj. 11. Tucker. A .systematic, thorough, and 
 radical discussion of the institution of property, — its basis, its history, its 
 present status, and Its destiny, — together with a detailed and startling expose 
 of the crimes which it commits, and the evils which it engenders. 500 pages 
 octavo. Price, cloth, .$3.50; full calf, blue, gilt edges, -SG.oO. 
 
 SYSTEM OF ECONOMICAL CONTRADICTIONS: Or The Philosophy 
 of Misery. Py P. J. Proudhou. Translated from the French by Benj. 11. 
 Tucker. This work discusses, in a style as novel as profound, the problems of 
 Value, Division of Labor, Machinery, Competition, Monopoly, Taxation, and 
 Providence, showing that economic progress is achieved by the appearance of 
 a succession of economic forces, each of which counteracts the evils developed 
 by Its predecessor, and then, by developing evils of its own, necessitates its 
 successor, — the process to continue until a Qnal force, corrective of the whole, 
 shall establish a stable economic equilibrium. 4G'J pages octavo. Price, cloth, 
 $3.50; full calf, blue, gilt edges, §6.50. 
 
 Address : BENJ. R. TUCKER, Box 3366, Boston, Mass. 
 
 THE SCIEISTGE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 By STEPHEN" PEARL ANDREWS. 
 
 This work, long out of print, is now republished to meet a demand which for 
 a few yeai-s past has been rapidly growing. 
 
 It consists of two parts, as follows : — 
 
 Part I. —The True Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the 
 Individual as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism, 
 
 Part II. — Cost the Limit of Price: A Scientitlc Measure of Iloncstj' in Trade, 
 as one of the Fundamental Principles in the Solution of the Social Problem. 
 Price, in cloth. One Dollar. Address the Publisher : Sauau E. Holmes, Box 
 3366, Boston, Mass. 
 
 ANARCHISM: Its Aims and Methods. 
 
 By victor YARROS. 
 
 An address delivered at the first public meeting of the Boston Anarchists' Club, 
 and adopted by that organization as its authorized exposition of its principles. 
 With an appendix giving the Constitution of the Anarchists' Club and explanatory 
 notes regarding it. 30 pages. 5 cents; 6 copies, 25 cents; 25 cojnes, $1; 100 
 copies, $3. Address : Benj. 11. Tuckek, Box 3366, Bo.stou, Mass.
 
 / 
 
 L
 
 250]
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 
 
 |i| 
 
 MGV012007 
 
 MAY 1 2008 
 
 9
 
 3 1158 00094 'U'n'- 
 
 2507 
 
 ,,i!S;,^Ol^T>;fRN REGIONAL LIBRARVc.r,, 
 
 AA 001064 399