III
Would a succession of unions, expressing different phases of true love, be of higher value to the individual soul and to the life of the race than one unbroken although loveless marriage?
My answer to this question, based on my own individual temperament, would be Yes, but I cannot help speculating as to the opinions of those whose temperaments are so cool or so unemotional that they can put social precedence, material comfort, or the general welfare of the state, as they see it, above affection or passion. Thousands of people are by temperament sacrificial, one might almost say masochistic. They never put themselves first, and that for the very simple reason that their emotions or desires do not compel them so to do. The religionist, the moralist and the fanatic, for reasons of order or material development, as he sees them, would and does look upon love and passion as a disturbing, unsatisfactory and almost unnecessary element in life. Passion is sin or weakness to him, and the individual who requires more than one union to express his emotional necessities is either a lunatic or a criminal. His first impulse is to drive him out of society, to lock him up and reform him by some iron system of training; failing this he will shun him and form little communities of his own into which the victims of emotion and passion must never venture save as thieves steal into a house at night. This last is well and as it should be no doubt in his special case, but on the other hand he is the type of man who is determined that there shall be no divorce for others very unlike himself, who would make wife-desertion a criminal offense of the first order and who would almost punish adultery with death if he could. He is a puritan soul. He does not see Nature in all Her subtle ramifications and climatic and chemic variations, and he helps to make that endless war between the so-called light and darkness of life—between sin and virtue—and these special phases of asceticism or temperamental coolness are the foundation of all religions apparently.
Such individuals would argue, for instance, that the child of a loveless marriage is as well off as a child of a marriage of any other kind, provided he is clothed and fed, washed and schooled and thoroughly inculcated with the belief that sex is a crime. The less love enters into the child’s life at any time the better, say they. Children will do better, make better men and women, and make more money, if they do not love too much. Thus stands the world, divided between the hot and the cold, the stern and the tender, the fools of passion and the fools of material order and well-being. Is the one better or wiser than the other? I do not know. You may pay your money and take your choice, for you cannot well serve passion and materiality at the same time. Personally I stand with the fools of love, because I think for all their follies and errors and Lear-like ends they are happier.