The second argument for monogamy is the economic one. We have dreamed a
social order where every child will be guaranteed maintenance by the
state, and where women will be free from dependence on men. What will be
the love arrangements of men and women under this new order is another
problem which we leave for them to decide, in the certainty that they
will know more about it than we do. Meantime, we are for the present
under the private property regime, and have to love and marry and raise
our children accordingly. The children must have homes, and if they are
to be normal children, they must have both the male and female influence
in their lives; which means that their parents must be friends and
partners, not quarreling in secret. This argument, I know, is one of
expediency. I have adopted it, after watching a great number of people
try other than monogamous sex arrangements, and seeing their chances of
happiness and success wrecked by the pressure of economic forces. To
rebel against social compulsion may be heroism, and again it may be
merely bad judgment. For my part, the world's greatest evil is poverty,
the cause of crime, prostitution and war. I concentrate my energies upon
the abolishing of that evil, and I let other problems wait.
The third reason is that monogamy is economical of human time and
thought. The business of finding and wooing a mate takes a lot of
energy, and adjustment after marriage takes more. To throw away the
results of this labor and do it all over again is certainly not common
sense. Of course, if you bake a cake and burn it, you have to get more
material and make another try; but that is a different matter from
baking a cake with the deliberate intention of throwing it away after a
bite or two.
The advocates of varietism in love will here declare that we are begging
the question. We are assuming that love and the love chase are not
worthy in themselves, but merely means to some other end. Can it be that
love delights are the keenest and most intense that humans can
experience, and that all other purposes of life are contributory to
them? Certainly a great deal of art lends support to this idea, and many
poets have backed up their words by their deeds. As Coleridge phrased
it:
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love
And feed his sacred flame."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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