There is much stupidity in the view of many reformers of marriage who fail to see that, however hard it is to live faithfully as man and wife, the monogamic ideal of marriage does so appeal to our emotional nature, that men and women are seriously unhappy in trying to destroy it. Fortunately it is easier to talk of “love’s freedom” than it is to act as if it ever could be free. In spite of what advanced people say, some feeling of duty will always exist as long as it at all hurts us to hurt others. The immorality that says, “Do what you desire irrespective of others,” is as yet beyond most of us.
Attempts to solve these problems quickly are bound to fail. Intellectual revolutionists are, I think, too hopeful with regard to what may be done to produce a harmony of sexual needs. The optimism that once prevailed in economics is being transformed to sexual matters. Once people supposed that if every one followed his own interests, a harmony would automatically establish itself in the economy of society. Now they tend to say the same about sex. They put forward many solutions, but they do not as a rule make use of these solutions, even when they could, in their own lives. They say what they do not believe, either with conscious insincerity, or because they are ignorant of life and are used to trying to get effects with words.
Intellectual views of life and of what is right and wrong always tend to break people into groups, each struggling to explain everything according to one theory, built on a single principle. And as the result of caring so much for one thing people seem quite unable to grasp any facts that do not refer to their own one particular reform, they are not even able to consider it as part of a world in which there is anything else. All the evil in marriage is due to too large families and population pressing on the food supply, we are told by one class of enthusiasts, while others point to men’s tyranny over women. Votes for women would have a magical effect: men are all bad, say some. The father is a parasite, unnecessary except for his share in begetting the child; the mother is the one parent. All would be well if legal marriage were abolished and motherhood made free, is the view common among one class of reformers. Eugenical breeding and the sterilisation of the unfit is the remedy brought forward by others. Many suggest economic changes and the endowment of motherhood.