Lecky had the faculty, not so rare as it should be, of expressing his thought in such a way that the reader, unless he critically examines the assertion, gets the impression of having been told something that is indisputable. Dr. Jacobi remarks that the utilitarian arguments in favor of monogamy are summed up by Lecky in three sentences: "Nature, by making the number of males and females nearly equal, indicates it as natural. In no other form of marriage can the government of the family be so happily sustained. In no other does woman assume the position of the equal of man". The approximately equal numbers of the two sexes proves nothing for monogamy that it does not prove for a group marriage, with the advantage for the latter that the despair of bereavement is mitigated and orphanage prevented. It proves nothing for monogamy that it does not prove for a system of variety wherein the sexes are equal in freedom and responsibility. Taking the other two statements together, by what process of self bewildering could Lecky have induced himself to hazard such assertions? When he wrote, the now swiftly hastening movement for the recognition of the equality of woman with man, within marriage and out, hardly had more than fairly begun.
The wife did not "assume the position of the
equal of" her husband. He was the single absolute head of the family, as he is often today;
the wife was not his equal in any respect, whether in the special domain of sex, the ownership
and control of property, or the possession and training of the children. The property she made
or inherited was not hers; the letters she received were not hers; the children she bore were
not hers if, under no matter what grievous provocation, she separated from her husband.
She was not an entity in the eyes of the law. Her body was not hers how short a time it is since
in England an action would lie for the legal "restitution of the marital rights" of her husband!
The "government of the family" was "happily sustained" by the legal and, if he felt so
disposed, the actual, tsar, the husband. If, as of course often happened, the wife was the
stronger of the two and so ruled de facto in the household, she could not rule de jure, and she
was not his equal in the broader social view of the situation. If today there is legal and
practical equality of rights in many monogamic homes, the change has been wrought by vast
outside political, economic, and ethical agitations and revolutions, identical with or related
to those that Dr. Jacobi has shown us are operating to abolish the double standard. There is
little if any evidence that the monogamic home, as such, has been a positive factor in bringing
about its own improvement or transformation. Negatively, it has had this effect, for it has
been one of the most conspicuous of the terrible examples of the inequality of rights of the
sexes which have stirred thinking, conscientious men and women into action for society wide
reform.
Even if he had been as right as he was wrong in asserting that in monogamy woman
assumed "the position of the equal of man", he was not in a position to know what we know,
now, that such equality has come to women and men in love relations other than
monogamic, and is now so coming to ever-increasing numbers of them.
We have been warned repeatedly against the hazards of prophesying, and I agree that it
is a temerous proceeding, but as Spencer has been permitted to say that "The monogamic
form of the sexual relation is manifestly the ultimate form; and any change to be anticipated
must be in the direction of completion and extension of it", perhaps I may be pardoned for
declaring that this assumption is not warranted by the results of the study, up to this time,
of human psychology and sociology; that, in fact, just the opposite conclusion is indicated.
By Spencer's own doctrine, development is from the simple to the complex, from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and I see no reason why the relations of human sexes
should be the one exception to the rule, why ultimately all men and women should
voluntarily enter into one form of sexual relationship and all find therein for the whole of
their lives the greatest possible physical, moral, and emotional health. But there is not space
here for me to go into this phase of the general subject in detail; and that has been done
elsewhere, by others and by myself. If it be true that human passion is diminishing as civilization advances, instead of merely
modifying the forms of its manifestation, and limiting its "natural" results, then it needs no
power of divination to foretell the dying out of the race if this diminution continues without
check. But if the outbreaks of passion are less frequent and less violent because the emotions
are being brought more and more under the control of the intellectual and ethical faculties,
then the outlook is most hopeful for an improving humanity so long as the earth continues
to be fairly habitable. Quite likely the truth lies somewhere between the two hypotheses.
The order of development in point of time puts the emotions before the intellect and
ethics latest in the series. But this order of appearance does not justify us in classing them as
low, and higher, and highest, morally. Per se, they are equally immoral, non-moral, or moral,
as you choose your term. Body, emotions, mind, ethics all are absolutely essential; there is
no full man or woman otherwise. When you rate the body as "low" or list the sexual desires
as "lower instincts" you in effect say that the trunk of the human tree is rotten ab initio, and
yet you expect healthy branches of "higher faculties" to spring therefrom! It is the use that
is "low" or "higher" or "highest". Muscle is not in itself "low", tho muscle may be used in the
commission of an anti social act. The sexual organs are not in themselves "low", tho their
injudicious or reckless use may bring to pass anti-social results. The intellect is reckoned
among the "higher faculties", tho misused intellects have planned and executed the most
colossal crimes against society and its component units. Ethics is "high", yet untimely or
misapplied morals have precipitated immense social disasters. The good and the evil alike are
in the use. The foundation is not low or impure because it is first in order of time and is
nearer to the ground than is the superstructure, the tower, or the dome.