Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(1) Divorce must certainly not be so easy as to encourage hasty and
unconsidered marriage, or to turn this most sacred of relationships
into a mere experimental and provisional alliance. "Trial marriage"
is a palpably reprehensible scheme, involving an unwarrantable stimulus
to the sex appetite; many men would enjoy taking one woman after another,
until their passion in each case had exhausted its force with the lapse
of novelty; women, who are not so naturally promiscuous, would suffer
most. What would become of the children is a question whose very posing
condemns the proposal. But a lax divorce law provides practically for
trial marriage; one or the other party may enter into the contract
and pronounce the solemn vows without any intention of keeping them
when it shall cease to be for his or her pleasure. Not in this way
is to be got the real worth of marriage; the conscious and earnest
effort, at least, must be to keep to it for life. An easy short cut
to freedom would tempt too many from the harder but nobler way of
compromise, conciliation, and self-subordination. If one is weak and
erring, or petulant and unkind, the other must patiently and lovingly
seek to help, to educate, to uplift; seventy times seven times is not
too often for forgiveness; and many a marriage that seemed hopelessly
wrecked has been saved by magnanimity and tactful affection. There
is a fine disciplinary value in these forbearances, and much opportunity
for spiritual growth in the persevering endeavor toward harmony and
mutual understanding. Many a man and woman who might have been lost
if divorced, has been saved for a better life by the unwillingness
of wife or husband to desert under grievous provocation. There comes
an ebb to most conjugal disputes; men and women grow wiser, and often
gentler, with age; while there is any hope for readjustment and revival
of love it is wrong to break marital vows. Many a divorce has been
as hasty and ill considered as the marriage it ended, and has left
the couple in the end less happy and useful members of the community.
Particularly when there are children should the parents sacrifice much
for the sake of giving them a real home, with both mother- and
father-love.
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