A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 3 of 3Howard, George Elliott
History
A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 3 of 3
Howard, George Elliott
Families; Marriage -- History
Modern democracy revolts against the patriarchal constitution of
the family, upon whose model all feudal and ancient societies were
organized. In the "very nature of things family-supremacy will
be absolutely incompatible with an interdependent, a solidaric,
commonwealth; for in such a state the first object of education
must be to establish in the minds of the children an indissoluble
association between their individual happiness and the good of
all."[792]
[792] GRONLUND, _The Co-operative Commonwealth_, 193-206.
The manifold social evils which take their rise directly or
indirectly in marriage as it is--be the actual causes what they
may--have always justly aroused the unsparing criticism of
socialistic writers. Thus to Robert Owen--whose pure life was
unreservedly and courageously devoted to the social good, as he
understood it--marriage was a member of his "trinity of causes of
crime and immorality among mankind."[793] With almost the fanatical
zeal of an apostle of a new religion, he railed at the "single"
family.[794] He proclaimed the glad tidings of the swift approach of
the new moral order. Then "the imaginative laws of the marriages of
the priesthood must be among the first to be abolished, by reason of
their extended injurious influence upon human nature, poisoning all
the sources of the most valuable qualities which Nature has given to
infant man. These marriages have dried up the fountain of truth in
human nature; they perpetually insinuate that man can love and hate
at his pleasure, and that to be virtuous he must live according to
the dictates of the laws and ceremonies devised by the priesthood,
that he must hate according to the same dictation, and that if
he does not thus love and hate, he is vicious, and he will be
eternally punished in another world," while on earth he will suffer
from the human laws and by the public opinion which priests have
inspired.[795] Under the new moral order all this will be changed.
Marriages will be more lasting than now. "Every individual will be
trained and educated, to have all his powers cultivated in the most
superior manner known; cultivated too under a new combination of
external objects, purposely formed, to bring into constant exercise
the best and most lovely qualities only of human nature." Wealth for
all will be "produced in superfluity." Therefore all will be "equal
in their education and condition," and without any distinction
except as to age. "There will be then no motive or inducement for
any parties to unite, except from pure affection arising from the
most unreserved knowledge of each other's character.... There will
be no artificial obstacles in the way of permanent happy unions of
the sexes; for ... the affections will receive every aid which can
be devised to induce them to be permanent;" and the wedded pair
"will be placed as far as possible in the condition of lovers during
their lives." In "some partial instances," however, happiness might
not even thus be secured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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