It may seem that this view is a contradiction of what I have said of the enduring character of marriage. I do not think so. No marriage that should be maintained will ever be broken by making divorce easy. It will add nothing to the sanctity of marriage to force those who are really unmated to remain mated by law. One marvels at the folly of such a view. I want people to enter into marriage and to remain in it, because they want to be there, not because they are forced.[79]
For I do believe that the great majority of women and men do really desire to live faithfully with one mate. Divided allegiance is possible only where love is of a slight character. If it is absorbing it cannot be diffuse, and the more diffuse it is the less the partners in such a union will be able to give or take from one another. It is impossible to be lovers and partners in the fullest and most human sense in several unions.
The real controlling power in marriage is our desire, though our acts may be, and usually are, directed as well by habit and tradition—a sort of conscience and feeling for the judgment of others. And divorce can never be easy while it at all hurts us to hurt one another.
I must, however, reaffirm my opinion that sexual relationships, whether within marriage or outside of it, whether legal or free, can never safely be unregulated, and will always be a difficult experiment. And experience has forced on me the knowledge that the most passionate union is often the one most likely to end in disaster. For Buckle is not far from right when he says we accumulate knowledge, but do not progress in morals, which depend on the unaltered heart of man.
Some characters are manifestly and essentially unfaithful, self-seeking, and regardless of the happiness of others in love and in all the affairs of life. Others again act unfaithfully through weakness or haste, or through the misfortune of circumstances. The mistake with many of these people is that they ever bind themselves in permanent unions. We should not condemn or deal harshly with them, for by so doing we drive them to undertake obligations which they do not, because they cannot, fulfil. In my opinion, it is foolishness to pretend that for the whole of sexual conduct there can ever be one fixed rule. We shall have more morality, not less, if we accept this.
