M

EN have always stoned the prophets and probably always will. And the explanation is not far to seek. For if you try to rouse a sleeper whose one desire is to be let alone, the first thing that you awaken is his resentment.

Yet at first this is a sleepy resentment, ready to disappear if the need of action is instant and definite; if, say, there are burglars in the house, or the doctor has to be gone for. It will equally disappear, will indeed dissolve into gratitude, if you can tell him that a way has been found out of the difficulties that he had succeeded in forgetting in his dreams.

But if you shake a shirker and greet his waking anger with the call to rouse up and help find a way out of his forgotten troubles, you can generally look for ructions.

And exactly that is the mission of the prophets.

The really exasperating thing about them is, not that they are self-elected disturbers of our slumber, but that they never rouse us in order that we may execute a prearranged program, but always in order that we may take our part in helping to devise one. They never waken us by bringing us our breakfast on a tray; but always to ask us to build the kitchen fire.

And this is the real cause of complaint against Ellen Key, the latest of the prophetic brood, the Swedish critic of social ethics and passionate pleader for a reval

uation of sexual morality, whom so many disturbed and resentful sleepers are ready to stone. It is not with her declaration that love is the only ultimately moral basis of marriage that her detractors quarrel; for the majority of them have long regarded this as at once self-evident and impracticable. What exasperates them is the fact that she insists upon taking the proposition seriously; upon regarding this abstract ideal as a concrete goal to be striven for; and upon urging them to begin actually and actively to work for its attainment by an open and honest consideration of the dilemmas involved and by a gradual putting into practice of the best solutions arrived at.

If her book were a mere parading of iridescent ideals, it could be enjoyed by the dreamers and disregarded by the doers. If it were a Utopian scheme of supposedly complete social reorganization, fanatically recommended for instant adoption as it stood, it could be read as a curiosity and dismissed with a shrug.

But in modestly claiming a recognized ideal as capable of eventual realization, frankly owning and partly outlining the complexity of the problems and the danger of the necessary experiments and possible mistakes that stand between us and its successful application, and yet calling for instant, though careful and conscientiously considered action with the far-off end in view, the book (although it voices the growing convictions of thousands of men and

women of the present day) rouses the bitter antagonism of all the timid whom it frightens and of all the lazy whom it disturbs.

Let us see what this ideal is; what grounds exist for thinking that it may be in any practical sense realized; and what the author of Love and Marriage suggests as the first steps that should be taken toward its realization.

IDEAS OF MORALITY CHANGING

All thoughtful persons perceive that the ideas of the morality of sexual relations upheld by the religions and laws of the Western nations are in our time undergoing á radical reorganization.

This is, in reality, but a new phase of an old fight. The theory of evolution as applied to the creation of the world has ceased to be regarded as a religious question, but is cropping up in the field of morals. The dogma of convention still asserts that man was made once for all. The evolutionists are beginning to see that he is still in the process of becoming.

So long as man believed that he had been created perfect and had then fallen and continued in everlasting strife between the spirit and the flesh, no doubt could arise of the absolute value of the Christian ideal of morality. Even those who strove hardest to attain this idea, confessed themselves sinners in so far as the flesh triumphed over the spirit.

It was evolutionism that first gave men courage to wonder whether one may not also be "sinning" when the spirit triumphs over the flesh.

Christian morality starts from the conception of human nature as complete in its constitution, though not in its culture, and of a human being as divided into body and soul. The new morality, on the other hand, is determined by a monistic belief in the soul and body as two forms of the same existence and the evolutionary conviction that man's psycho-physical being is neither fallen nor perfect, but capable of perfection. The one saw "culture," "progress," and "development" in man's improvement of material and immaterial resources within and without himself. The other believes that all this is but detail in a development that is improving and ennobling the very material of mankind.

The early Church looked upon marriage as a regrettable but necessary concession

to man's fallen nature; a palliative for a hereditary disease. Lutheranism was a compromise; a bridge between two logical views of the universe, the Catholic-Christian and the Individualist-Monist. And bridges are made to go over, not to stand upon.

None of our "immoral" writers has insisted more strongly than Luther upon the power of the sexual life. He regarded modesty without marriage as unthinkable and saw in marriage the means given by God to satisfy desire, just as food is the means given by God to satisfy hunger. He held that man had as little right to satisfy the former by unchastity, as to still the latter by theft. And "unchastity" was made synonymous with every form of sexual relation outside matrimony, while "chastity" became equivalent to every form of marriage. With marriage thus regarded and sanctioned, it might be contracted with any one; and indeed, to the genuinely pious, it seemed a higher thing to enter into matrimony without any earthly love to interfere with the love of God.

THE LUTHERAN DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE

Thus the Lutheran doctrine of marriage made God "indulgent" toward all the impurity that the sexual life shut up within the whited sepulcher of lawful wedlock. He was made to shut His eyes to all the wife murders that the command of fecundity involved; to all the worthless children produced by ill-matched and impure marriages. He was supposed to "bless" all unions entered into, even though from the lowest motives and under the most unnatural circumstances, between a sick person and a healthy one, a young and an old, a willing and an unwilling, or two unwilling ones, coupled together by their families.

Today, countless women are still being sacrificed to this doctrine of marriage, or to its unconscious effects; their exhausted wombs are a poor soil for the new generation; their crushed souls a poor support for the growth of new wills. For one woman who defends herself with the resolution lent by horror, there are thousands who have conceived and still conceive children in loathing. For one wife who is met with the modest prayer of love, there are thousands who, with a feeling of humiliation, yield to their proprietors the right inculcated by the Lutheran doctrine of matrimony.

The new morality is in the stage of inquiry on many questions-such as labor, crime, and education-but above all on the sexual life. Even on this question it no longer accepts commandments from the mountains of Sinai or Galilee; here, as everywhere else, evolutionism can regard only continuous experience as revelation.

NATURE SUBJECT TO TRANSFORMATIONS

Our present "nature" means only our present stage of development. Hairiness was once "nature" as nakedness is now. Marriage by capture was once "nature" as courtship is now. What new transformations the race is destined to undergo; what losses and gains, at present unsuspected, of organs of the body or of properties of the soul, await it—this is the secret of the future. But more and more, mankind is becoming convinced of its power to intervene in its own development. More and more, it realizes that nature is no more fallible than perfect, no more reasonable than unreasonable, no more consistent than contrary in her purposes since she is all these. She may be transformed-ennobled or debased-by culture; and man claims the right consciously to cultivate Her.

He realizes that life is subject to transformation; that each transformation involves the death of once active realities and principles, and the formation of new ones. He knows that this dying-off and replacing never takes place uniformly; that laws and customs that have become a drag upon the lives of those in a better position are still of advantage to the majority, and therefore ought to continue in existence as long as they remain so. But he knows at the same time that it is through the few in the better position-those whose needs and powers are most ennobled that a higher standard of existence will finally become the portion, also, of the majority.

It is thus the dissatisfaction of the most cultured members of society with the existing contradictions between their sexual needs and the form of their legitimate gratification that is now giving rise to attacks on that institution of marriage which was still sufficient for their own grandparents, just as it is now for a countless number of their contemporaries. These people know that their dissatisfaction will not destroy marriage so long as the psychological and social condi

tions that now maintain it continue to exist. But they know at the same time that their will is destined slowly to transform these psychological and social conditions.

They do not believe that the inconsistencies and contradictions that are indissolubly connected with the natural conditions of the maintenance of the race can be got rid of by any legislation. And they recognize that complete freedom is an idea that corresponds only with perfected development. They acknowledge the necessity of fixed laws and customs, since these alone intensify the feelings into sources of impulse strong enough to be translated into action. They perceive that the conservative, tenacious emotions have the same importance for the soul as the skeleton for the body.

What they do desire is such forms as, whether they limit or extend liberty of action, will promote a life-enhancing use of the sexual powers both for the individual and for the race. They have no hope that the new form will arrive in a state of perfection. But they hope to foster the higher needs that are destined finally to render the new form necessary also to the majority. And this hope kindles their calculated efforts, which are directed by the certainty. that personal love is life's highest value, as well for the individual himself as indirectly for the new lives his love creates. And this certainty is spreading from day to day all over the world.

LOVE INDEPENDENT OF MONOGAMY

It is a very common but erroneous opinion that monogamy has given rise to love. Love appears even among the animals; and with them, as in the world of men, has shown itself independent of monogamy. The origin of the latter in human society was the sense of proprietorship, religious ideas, and considerations of collective utility; but not the perception of the importance of love's selection. On the contrary, love has been in constant strife with monogamy, and it is therefore a profound mistake to assume that the higher view of love has been formed solely through monogamy.

Love is the result of that mysterious longing for perfection which, in the course of evolution, has raised instinct into passion, passion into love, and which is now striving to raise love itself to an even greater love.

Love, whose origin is in the very instinct of the race, must be more deeply bound up with the race than any other emotion and cannot preserve or promote its vital force unless it stands in some relation, either of giving or taking, to the

race.

But the band that attaches it to humanity may be woven of several materials. The gift to the race may express itself in various ways. In one case a great emotion may bring about a tragic fate, which opens the eyes of humanity to the red abysses it contains within itself. Another time it may create a great happiness, which sheds a radiance round the happy ones, illuminating all who come near them. In many cases, love translates itself into intellectual achievements, or useful social work. In most, it results in two more perfect human beings, and in new creatures still more perfect than themselves.

The new love is still the natural attraction of man and woman to each other for the continuance of the race. It is still the desire of the active human being to relieve, through comradeship, the hardships of another and of himself at the same time. But above this eternal nature of love, beyond this primeval cause of marriage, another longing has grown with increasing strength. This is not directed toward the continuance of the race. It has sprung from man's sense of loneliness within his race; a loneliness which is ever greater in proportion as his soul is exceptional. It is the pining for that human soul that is to release our own from this torment of solitude; a torment that was formerly allayed by repose in God, but that now seeks its rest with an equal, with a soul that has itself lain wakeful from the same longing; with a soul that is empowered by love to the miracle of redeeming our soul-as it by ours is redeemed from the sense of being a stranger upon earth.

The same feeling has possessed many a man before our time. But what is new about

it is that this sentiment has become diffused and has taken shape in the consciousness of the many; that it is beginning to set its stamp upon the whole spirit of the age.

Mankind continues to be guided by erotic impulses. The culture of the idea of love is far in advance of the instinct of love. But an ever greater and greater