Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(2) Yet there are cases where love is hopelessly killed
and harmony is impossible; cases where much suffering, and even moral
degeneration, would result from continuance of the married life. Where
a man transfers his love to another or indulges in infidelity to his
vows; where he crazes himself with liquor or some other narcotic, and
will not give it up; where he treats his wife with cruelty or contempt,
or through selfishness or laziness deserts or refuses to support her;
where she refuses to perform her wifely duties, gives herself to other
men, makes home intolerable for him--in short, in any case where
mutual loyalty and cooperation are hopeless of attainment, it is surely
best that there should be separation. It does not make for the welfare
of the children, or for the sanctity of marriage, that such wretched
travesties of it should continue. Moreover, for eugenic reasons, we
must urge the freeing of wives from husbands who have transmissible
diseases, inheritable defects, or chronic alcoholism. Nor should the
fact of one mistake preclude the injured party from another opportunity
for happiness and usefulness. Whether the guilty man or woman, the
one wholly or chiefly to blame for the failure, should be permitted
to remarry is another matter; but probably, on the whole, it is better
than the alternative encouragement of immorality and illegitimacy.
(3) The community should exert its influence toward the remedying of
the present anomalies and uncertainties by making both marriage laws
and divorce laws more stringent, and uniform throughout the country.
Statutes that will render impulsive marriage impossible, by requiring
an interval to elapse after statement of intention to marry, and making
a clean bill of health necessary; divorce laws that shall refuse to
pander to caprice and willfulness, but shall make it easy, without
scandal or needless publicity, to deliver a woman or a man from an
intolerable and irremediable situation, and that shall not be
appreciably more lenient in one State than in another, will go far
toward curing contemporary evils. It may yet be that the Constitution
will be so amended as to permit the National Government to control
these matters and thus replace our present chaos with order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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