The Republic
not even the desire of a noble offspring, since parents are not to know
their own children. The most important transaction of social life, he
who is the idealist philosopher converts into the most brutal. For the
pair are to have no relation to one another, except at the hymeneal
festival; their children are not theirs, but the state’s; nor is any
tie of affection to unite them. Yet here the analogy of the animals
might have saved Plato from a gigantic error, if he had ‘not lost sight
of his own illustration.’ For the ‘nobler sort of birds and beasts’
nourish and protect their offspring and are faithful to one another.
An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while ‘to try and place life on
a physical basis.’ But should not life rest on the moral rather than
upon the physical? The higher comes first, then the lower, first the
human and rational, afterwards the animal. Yet they are not absolutely
divided; and in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they
seem to be only different aspects of a common human nature which
includes them both. Neither is the moral the limit of the physical, but
the expansion and enlargement of it,—the highest form which the
physical is capable of receiving. As Plato would say, the body does not
take care of the body, and still less of the mind, but the mind takes
care of both. In all human action not that which is common to man and
the animals is the characteristic element, but that which distinguishes
him from them. Even if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all
virtue into health of body ‘la facon que notre sang circule,’ still on
merely physical grounds we must come back to ideas. Mind and reason and
duty and conscience, under these or other names, are always
reappearing. There cannot be health of body without health of mind; nor
health of mind without the sense of duty and the love of truth (Charm).
That the greatest of ancient philosophers should in his regulations
about marriage have fallen into the error of separating body and mind,
does indeed appear surprising. Yet the wonder is not so much that Plato
should have entertained ideas of morality which to our own age are
revolting, but that he should have contradicted himself to an extent
which is hardly credible, falling in an instant from the heaven of
idealism into the crudest animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift
of reflection, he appears to have thought out a subject about which he
had better have followed the enlightened feeling of his own age. The
general sentiment of Hellas was opposed to his monstrous fancy. The old
poets, and in later time the tragedians, showed no want of respect for
the family, on which much of their religion was based. But the example
of Sparta, and perhaps in some degree the tendency to defy public
opinion, seems to have misled him. He will make one family out of all
the families of the state. He will select the finest specimens of men
and women and breed from these only.
Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part of
human nature will from time to time assert itself in the disguise of
philosophy as well as of poetry), and also because any departure from
established morality, even where this is not intended, is apt to be
unsettling, it may be worth while to draw out a little more at length
the objections to the Platonic marriage. In the first place, history
shows that wherever polygamy has been largely allowed the race has
deteriorated. One man to one woman is the law of God and nature. Nearly
all the civilized peoples of the world at some period before the age of
written records, have become monogamists; and the step when once taken
has never been retraced. The exceptions occurring among Brahmins or
Mahometans or the ancient Persians, are of that sort which may be said
to prove the rule. The connexions formed between superior and inferior
races hardly ever produce a noble offspring, because they are
licentious; and because the children in such cases usually despise the
mother and are neglected by the father who is ashamed of them.
Barbarous nations when they are introduced by Europeans to vice die
out; polygamist peoples either import and adopt children from other
countries, or dwindle in numbers, or both. Dynasties and aristocracies
which have disregarded the laws of nature have decreased in numbers and
degenerated in stature; ‘mariages de convenance’ leave their enfeebling
stamp on the offspring of them (King Lear). The marriage of near
relations, or the marrying in and in of the same family tends
constantly to weakness or idiocy in the children, sometimes assuming
the form as they grow older of passionate licentiousness. The common
prostitute rarely has any offspring. By such unmistakable evidence is
the authority of morality asserted in the relations of the sexes: and
so many more elements enter into this ‘mystery’ than are dreamed of by
Plato and some other philosophers.
Recent enquirers have indeed arrived at the conclusion that among
primitive tribes there existed a community of wives as of property, and
that the captive taken by the spear was the only wife or slave whom any
man was permitted to call his own. The partial existence of such
customs among some of the lower races of man, and the survival of
peculiar ceremonies in the marriages of some civilized nations, are
thought to furnish a proof of similar institutions having been once
universal. There can be no question that the study of anthropology has
considerably changed our views respecting the first appearance of man
upon the earth. We know more about the aborigines of the world than
formerly, but our increasing knowledge shows above all things how
little we know. With all the helps which written monuments afford, we
do but faintly realize the condition of man two thousand or three
thousand years ago. Of what his condition was when removed to a
distance 200,000 or 300,000 years, when the majority of mankind were
lower and nearer the animals than any tribe now existing upon the
earth, we cannot even entertain conjecture. Plato (Laws) and Aristotle
(Metaph.) may have been more right than we imagine in supposing that
some forms of civilisation were discovered and lost several times over.
If we cannot argue that all barbarism is a degraded civilization,
neither can we set any limits to the depth of degradation to which the
human race may sink through war, disease, or isolation. And if we are
to draw inferences about the origin of marriage from the practice of
barbarous nations, we should also consider the remoter analogy of the
animals. Many birds and animals, especially the carnivorous, have only
one mate, and the love and care of offspring which seems to be natural
is inconsistent with the primitive theory of marriage. If we go back to
an imaginary state in which men were almost animals and the companions
of them, we have as much right to argue from what is animal to what is
human as from the barbarous to the civilized man. The record of animal
life on the globe is fragmentary,—the connecting links are wanting and
cannot be supplied; the record of social life is still more fragmentary
and precarious. Even if we admit that our first ancestors had no such
institution as marriage, still the stages by which men passed from
outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of China, Assyria, and
Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly unknown to us.
Such speculations are apt to be unsettling, because they seem to show
that an institution which was thought to be a revelation from heaven,
is only the growth of history and experience. We ask what is the origin
of marriage, and we are told that like the right of property, after
many wars and contests, it has gradually arisen out of the selfishness
of barbarians. We stand face to face with human nature in its primitive
nakedness. We are compelled to accept, not the highest, but the lowest
account of the origin of human society. But on the other hand we may
truly say that every step in human progress has been in the same
direction, and that in the course of ages the idea of marriage and of
the family has been more and more defined and consecrated. The
civilized East is immeasurably in advance of any savage tribes; the
Greeks and Romans have improved upon the East; the Christian nations
have been stricter in their views of the marriage relation than any of
the ancients. In this as in so many other things, instead of looking
back with regret to the past, we should look forward with hope to the
future. We must consecrate that which we believe to be the most holy,
and that ‘which is the most holy will be the most useful.’ There is
more reason for maintaining the sacredness of the marriage tie, when we
see the benefit of it, than when we only felt a vague religious horror
about the violation of it. But in all times of transition, when
established beliefs are being undermined, there is a danger that in the
passage from the old to the new we may insensibly let go the moral
principle, finding an excuse for listening to the voice of passion in
the uncertainty of knowledge, or the fluctuations of opinion. And there
are many persons in our own day who, enlightened by the study of
anthropology, and fascinated by what is new and strange, some using the
language of fear, others of hope, are inclined to believe that a time
will come when through the self-assertion of women, or the rebellious
spirit of children, by the analysis of human relations, or by the force
of outward circumstances, the ties of family life may be broken or
greatly relaxed. They point to societies in America and elsewhere which
tend to show that the destruction of the family need not necessarily
involve the overthrow of all morality. Wherever we may think of such
speculations, we can hardly deny that they have been more rife in this
generation than in any other; and whither they are tending, who can
predict?
To the doubts and queries raised by these ‘social reformers’ respecting
the relation of the sexes and the moral nature of man, there is a
sufficient answer, if any is needed. The difference about them and us
is really one of fact. They are speaking of man as they wish or fancy
him to be, but we are speaking of him as he is. They isolate the animal
part of his nature; we regard him as a creature having many sides, or
aspects, moving between good and evil, striving to rise above himself
and to become ‘a little lower than the angels.’ We also, to use a
Platonic formula, are not ignorant of the dissatisfactions and
incompatibilities of family life, of the meannesses of trade, of the
flatteries of one class of society by another, of the impediments which
the family throws in the way of lofty aims and aspirations. But we are
conscious that there are evils and dangers in the background greater
still, which are not appreciated, because they are either concealed or
suppressed. What a condition of man would that be, in which human
passions were controlled by no authority, divine or human, in which
there was no shame or decency, no higher affection overcoming or
sanctifying the natural instincts, but simply a rule of health! Is it
for this that we are asked to throw away the civilization which is the
growth of ages?
For strength and health are not the only qualities to be desired; there
are the more important considerations of mind and character and soul.
We know how human nature may be degraded; we do not know how by
artificial means any improvement in the breed can be effected. The
problem is a complex one, for if we go back only four steps (and these
at least enter into the composition of a child), there are commonly
thirty progenitors to be taken into account. Many curious facts, rarely
admitting of proof, are told us respecting the inheritance of disease