For I hold that the broad direction of our conduct follows straight from our faith. To believe in marriage is to want to do right in marriage. Then do we fail, and our own union comes to disaster, it will be a personal failure, not a collective failure; we shall blame ourselves, not the institution of marriage. And to have this faith in marriage as a people—not as a law imposed upon us, but a necessary binding that we accept of our own wills—will bring us again to be unified by a comprehending idea: an ideal of purpose and duty to one another and among us all in our sexual conduct, and in this way we shall be helped in right-doing. Carried onwards by a ruling motive, we shall find unity of desire, with its value to life of an absolute standard. It is for this reason I care so deeply that the monogamic ideal of marriage—the living faithfully to one mate in thought and deed—should be held sacred by us all: held sacred, however greatly we may fail as individuals to attain to this ideal. Our failures in faithful living may bring disaster to ourselves. But the institution of marriage can be hurt much more by the fading and loss of our belief in the duty of faithfulness. CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN: A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN Some men and women unfitted for faithful mating—The enforced continuance of an unreal marriage—This leads to immorality—The real controlling power in marriage is our desire—The need for honourable divorce—The immorality present in many marriages—We accept monogamy but tolerate hidden extra-conjugal relationships—This worse than regulated polygamy—The necessity of distinguishing between sex passion and the desire for a child—All women do not want to be mothers—The sins that follow the binding of such women in the bonds of monogamous marriage—The child born against the will of its mother—A contrast between two types of women—The siren woman and the maternal woman—An attempt to explain such difference—The pleasure factor in sex—Our ignorance in all matters relating to sex—An instance of the siren type of woman as a mother. CHAPTER X MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN: A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN “That the first decade of the child life of all mankind age after age passes continuously through the hands of woman seemed to him one of the most significant facts in the whole range of human affairs.”—_Life and Letters of Edward Thring._