Part 5 (2/2)

In Europe, similar conditions prevailed, and although monogamy was the rule, concubinage and prost.i.tution in all its forms existed. The wife was subject to the husband in every wish and whim, and after him to the eldest son. This is true today in Germany and among the Saxons in a degree whose modifications do not accord with other advances in our social ethics.

It is a mistake to claim that religious systems have had any direct influence in the emanc.i.p.ation of women during the nineteen hundred years of Christian civilization among the white races.

Religious systems have only reflected the race-thought; they have not molded it. This is true, despite the fact that true religion, when esoterically understood, has always aimed at union, and union means equality along all lines, s.e.x-equality; social equality; race equality.

We must here digress from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with ident.i.ty, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the idiotic observation that ”if women expect to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car,” is not, alas!

confined to the lout, but is quite often voiced by the professional man.

The same silly idea prevails with regard to race-equality. It is judged by a similarity to our own in matters of dress; or choice of foods; by inconsequential differences, rather than by an estimate of what a given race may contribute to the variety of human knowledge; and yet it is evident that nature aims at variety; at a multiplicity of ideas and customs and creations.

Differentiation is the primal attempt.

Woman's claim to equality should be based upon the fact that first of all she is different from, rather than identical with, men.

The woman who dons male attire and eschews all so-called ”feminine frivolity” in her efforts to prove herself man's equal, is confessing that in her natural environment she does not consider herself his equal, and is masquerading as man, in the vain hope that she may deceive herself and others into thinking she is.

An individual is important to Society in proportion to his originality; in proportion as he contributes some new idea; some hitherto unfamiliar view.

Returning to the point of what const.i.tutes true religion, namely, a consciousness of our unity with all life, we find that although religious ethics have included this ideal, it has not been emphasized in the ratio of its importance. The result is that where unity should have been established, segregation has been the rule, and it is without any desire to reflect discredit upon the ideal of the Church that we point to the fact that woman's emanc.i.p.ation, and her co-operation in all departments of life, as a hope, if not a consummated reality, has but now made its initial bow to the world.

That this initial bow comes side by side with, if not actually in the wake of, disruption of the old theologic dogmas; dissatisfaction with religious systems; and a determined disregard for what has been presented as religion; cannot be denied. The fact is that religious creeds never save anyone; never really elevate nations. At best they have been but a ”consolation prize” or a narcotic. Love of freedom is the great liberator.

The influence of Rationalism, as inaugurated by Ingersoll in America and Bradlaugh in England, was the opening wedge. Christian Science, mothered by a woman, incorporated the phrase ”Father-Mother-G.o.d” into its literature, and unity has been the avowed ideal of all the variety of new cults and philosophies presented under so great a variety of names that we cannot here enumerate them.

Nevertheless, we are still many leagues short of realizing this ideal, despite the preachments in its favor. Politically, the ideal of unity is presented, more or less imperfectly, of course, as Socialism, and Suffrage. Commercially, still more imperfectly in the merchants' ”let us get together on this,” and in efforts at legislation that shall control corporation dividends and labor schedules, and regulate hours of work. In fact, all along the line we see the shadow cast by the rising sun of unity.

We have thus briefly traced the history of marriage and of mating, in order that we may discuss with sane impartiality the questions: What does marriage symbolize? What is its function in the life of the social body; in the existence of the sphere itself; of the entire Cosmos?

Has it any real place and purpose beyond that of procreation, or any more spiritual function than the perpetuation of the human species?

CHAPTER V

THE SYMBOLISM OF MARRIAGE AND OF s.e.x-UNION

Notwithstanding the patent fact that the inst.i.tution of monogamous marriage has not resulted in an ideal condition, it is also plain that any other ideal of s.e.x-union is impossible to a highly developed race.

Monogamy, despite its present unsatisfactory condition, is a promise of the highest ideal to which mortals can aspire; it is the imperfect image of that ideal state which human nature has always striven for.

That we have striven for the most part blindly; that we have fallen far short of the ideal aimed at, should not deter us from realizing that the ideal is right.

Monogamy, as a type of the perfect marriage, symbolizes the meeting and the consequent union of a man and a woman who are perfect complementaries.

In order to be a perfect and lasting union, they must be spiritual counterparts. Without this counterpartal affinity as the base of union, no power on earth can force them to unite, although all the laws of men be employed to keep them tied to each other in the body.

If two persons belong to each other by the inviolable law of spiritual counterpart, no mult.i.tudinous set of man-made laws can keep their souls apart, although these codes may temporarily separate them in the flesh. The bonds of true matrimony are ”holy”--the word meaning whole; entire; complete; but these bonds are of an interior nature; they may be judged only from the interior nature of two persons; and any attempt to decide this all-important question from the standpoint of exterior judgment must fail.

The perfect union of the one man and the one woman is the highest ideal of marriage of which we can conceive; but shall we for that reason insist that marriage as a social inst.i.tution is always complete and holy? When two immature persons come together under the stimulus of no more complementary impulse than the blind force of chemical attraction and cohesion--an instinct, which we share in common with every form of life, from the lowest insect to man--shall they be compelled to abide by that act ”as long as they both shall live” in the physical body?

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