II
What would be the result were we generally to adopt Ellen Key’s conception of marriage: “Marriage is only moral when it grows from an inner necessity, and not from outward pressure?”
Very pleasant, I should say, if logic and ideal syllogism ruled in life. The trouble with this world is that no ideal, however eagerly pursued, is guaranteed a happy fruition. You may lay down your formula for happiness and say: “Thus and so being done all will be well,” but can you make human nature do anything according to any one finite individual theory? Man does not make or regulate Nature: Nature makes and regulates man, and She makes him any way She pleases—vile, lovely, strong, weak, simple, complex, and so on. There is no one theory that fits all climates or types of people. Life would be very dull if this were true.
But I presume by “inner necessity” Ellen Key means intense desire plus a marked affinity of two people for each other, and if the union is for only so long as this endures I should see no drawback to it whatever. I should say that humanity would be much better able to endure the stresses and difficulties of the world if they were all so happily mated, and indeed there might not be so many stresses and difficulties to endure. No doubt we all wish that this would come true, but not all people are motivated by either love or passion. They would not marry for love if they could but rather for social precedence, material luxuries and the like. They accept children as a somewhat unfortunate concomitant, and so you have the curious problem of whether this state and its results are good, bad or indifferent in so far as society is concerned. For my part I would paraphrase Christ’s idea and say: “Render unto Materiality the things that are Material, and to Love the things that are Love’s.” Then the world would remain just about as it is now.