Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

Si sine uxore pati possemus, Quirites, omnes ea molestia careremus; set quoniam ita natura tradidit ut nec cum illis satis commode nec sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuae potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum est.

—SPEECH OF THE CENSOR METELLUS NUMIDICUS, 102, B.C.

I thought love had been a joyous thing, quoth my uncle Toby. ‘Tis the most serious thing, an please your honour, that is in the world, said the corporal.

—LAURENCE STERNE.

DURING the post-war period I was interested in seeing how frankly the whole output of English and American creative literature,—novels, verse, drama,—dealt with sex-relations, conventional as well as unconventional. This in itself did not seem to me at all objectionable; on the contrary, the social fashion of obscurantism with regard to sex-relations, and the literary fashion which reflected it, always impressed me as silly and irritating. The factitious and obtrusive decencies of earlier writers ran to indecency, like the ridiculous performances of Anthony Comstock and the various organisations for the “suppression of vice.” For example, when one looked over the literature designed especially for women, one could hardly resist the harsh suspicion, probably in a measure unjust, that Mrs. Slipslop was right in telling Lady Booby that the gentle ladyfolk’s ears were the most modest things they had about them. But the matter seemed a small one, either way you took it. I did not regard either of these literary fashions as symptomatic or as having any influence on conduct. In the nature of things one would expect the average of sexual irregularity to run about as high in a society which followed the fashion of obscurantism as in one which follows the fashion of frankness; and I believe that it did run as high in pre-war American society as it does now. So, like most fashions, neither of these seemed anything to be taken seriously, or to get up a great pother about. To me, the one seemed somewhat more infantile than the other,—if there be degrees in infantilism,—and therefore somewhat more annoying; and that was all.

On the score of art, however, my distaste for the fantastically exaggerated literary exploitation of sex, sex-attraction, sex-relations, soon ripened into utter disgust. My complaint was primarily that writers acting under this obsession were attempting an impossibility; they were trying to make too grotesquely much out of too pathetically little. The standard English novel of the period, according to a disgruntled English critic, consisted of two hundred pages of smooth and easy prose leading up to an act of adultery, and then eighty pages more of smooth and easy prose leading down again. This statement strikes one as perhaps a little fanciful, but taken by-and-large it is really not excessive. I think that Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was a pretty generous fellow compared with a public taste and fashion which could even dream of getting a work of art from a writer after giving him only such exiguous and sleazy stuff as this to work with. The point is that the males and females of the period’s fiction were creatures of purely physiological reactions, responsive only to raw sensation; and literary art can do nothing with such as these, or with the situations which they arrange for themselves.

For this reason: What Panurge whimsically calls “the act of androgynation and the culbatising exercise” is something so extremely undifferentiated, so undiversified, that in an objective view it is bound to appear extremely prosaic. With respect to all its demands and fulfilments, one man is seen to be exactly like another, one woman exactly like another, one pair exactly like another. Evidence of its commonplace character is found in the fact that a disinterested view of it always excites a sense of incongruity with its sentimental associations, and therefore excites derision. Hence with the stark act of androgynation as his pièce de resistance the literary artist can do simply nothing. Proof of this, if one cares for it, may be had by reading half-a-dozen of de Maupassant’s short stories at a sitting. An hour devoted to this exercise will be found to leave one with nothing but the sense of a viscid and sticky monotony. The utmost that the artist can do with this piece of literary property is something occasional and special, by way of pointing up some incident or topic, usually of a humorous turn, as Rabelais uses it in his story of the deaf-and-dumb Roman lady, or in his account of the nun’s misdoings at Brignoles; or indeed wherever he chooses to employ this property.

In a word, the fiction of the period specialised in presenting sex-attraction, sex-emotion, consistently at their lowest level. This was understandable, and I for one saw no reason to complain of it on any score but that of art. The neolithic masses of mankind are psychically incapable of experiencing the emotions of sex at any but the lowest level, and having become dimly literate, they would naturally require the level of depicted experience to be not above that of the actuality with which they are acquainted. This being so, the objections raised on moral and social grounds seemed exorbitant, and did not interest me. In the austere old Chief Justice’s phrase, those who raised them apparently did not “regard mankind as being what they are,” and were unaware that there is nothing in the vast overwhelming majority of mankind which could be made to feel the force of those objections, or even to understand them.

The fashion of frankness did perhaps tend to overmagnify the importance of crude sensuousness in our society’s scheme of life, and to give the impression that it has a larger place there than it actually has. I am not sure that this is so, but it may be. Purely libidinous sex-adventures are, as the Greek philosopher said, “the occupation of those who have no other occupation,” and certainly the intimations of magazine-covers, advertisements of apparel, the cinema-screen, the illustrations in our newspapers and periodicals, all would reinforce those of our fictional literature in suggesting that our society has little else to do in its hours of leisure and less to think about. When one considers our collective life by its serious side, one probably finds some degree of misrepresentation here; and as for its lighter side, one would hardly venture an opinion either way. One gets, however, a distinct impression that when sex-attraction does operate, it is presumed to function only on the plane of stark sensuousness, and that sex-relations rest ultimately on no other basis.

As a matter of observed fact, this is not the case. It is no doubt uniformly so with the neolithic man and woman of today, as it has always been, and therefore the sales-policies of economism are unquestionably right in shaping themselves by the rule and taking no account of the exception. While it may sometimes also be the case with the psychically-human being, it is almost invariably not. Sex-attraction often operates powerfully and fruitfully in instances where its sensuous side is in complete abeyance, and again sometimes where its sensuous side makes a belated appearance at the end of a long period of intimate association. Here I think one might find some ground for believing that the physical lure of sex-attraction, especially in view of its evanescence when alone and unsupported, is in its nature essentially casual and incidental, as one finds it generally throughout the animal world; and that the importance which society has put upon the act of yielding to it is monstrously exaggerated. As I have already remarked somewhere in these memoranda, one may well believe that the only court of competent jurisdiction in the premises is that of taste and manners. The idea of sex-relations on which the mediaeval Courts of Love were instituted,—the idea which Rabelais worked out in detail for the moral architecture of Friar John’s abbey of Thélème,—appears most reasonable and most in accord with truth of experience. Far from disregarding or disparaging the physical lure of sex-attraction, this idea merely ranges it at its proper degree in the scale of importance; the response to it is in no sense an end-in-itself. As between persons experiencing the immense power and beauty of reciprocal sex-influence, if this element presents itself as an ancillary part-and-parcel of this experience, well and good; if not, well and good. In either case the rational rule of conduct is the one which the psychically-human being will naturally and instinctively follow for the cogent reasons which Rabelais assigns: Fay ce que vouldras.

Everyone knows that the spiritual energies of psychically-human men and women are vastly enhanced by the aid of appropriate sex-relations. It is observable also that among psychically-human beings there are some who are so little automotive that they can hardly turn a wheel without this aid. Back in the ‘twenties, when “realistic” fiction was set in a stereotyped pattern inimical to art, I often wondered why some one did not try his hand at a work of true art made up around the sex-experience of a couple whose mutual reactions were not physiological. It would be an interesting thing to do, and a good artist could make something very fine of it, as good artists have done in the past. Such a novel moreover, as far as I can see, might be kept quite strictly answerable to all the tenets and prescriptions of realism. If realism means the representation of life as it is actually lived, I do not see why lives which are actually lived on a higher emotional plane are not so eligible for representation as those lived on a lower plane. It must be said, however, that while a love-story consistently carried out on the higher emotional plane might be a work of art, even great art, a publisher’s reader would almost automatically report it as “not of general interest”; and considering the circumstances to which I have alluded, he would be quite right in so doing.

Nevertheless there can be no doubt that sex-relations of a most intimate, profound and satisfying character do persist on the higher emotional plane and are susceptible of artistic literary treatment, not only in the fictional form but in other forms as well. Not long ago one of my friends asked me what I thought of an idea he had for a book which should analyse and discuss the sex-motive in the careers of some eminent Aspasias, ancient and modern. I told him that this ground had been gone over pretty thoroughly already, but if he wanted a clear field he could make a very fine enlightening analysis of the sex-motive in the instance of certain hand-picked Egerias where physiological reaction did not come in play. Again for reasons sufficiently obvious such a work would have no great sale, but from any competent hand it would be interesting, and from the hand of a Sainte-Beuve it would be superb. My friend agreed with me fully, but did not feel that his powers of analysis were equal to the task. I also mentioned the idea to a lady who already at my suggestion had published a very acceptable book on some of the less well-known women of the French Renaissance, but she too thought her analytical equipment was hardly up to the mark, and I dare say she was right.

One might be content to touch lightly on the loci classici among one’s examples. A word or two would be enough to make clear what everyone knows already, that the world of letters owes an incalculable debt to the sex-attraction of Beatrice Portinari and to that of the none too well identified Laura of the Canzoniere. Modern opinion, especially that large section of it which is shaped by neolithic culture, may have it that these sex-associations were not in any sense love-affairs; or indeed, putting it generally, that any sex-association which does not culminate in Panurge’s act of androgynation and the culbatising exercise is not to be classed as a love-affair, but as an affair of simple friendship. Yet since the sex-element is so clearly there, and since it sets up such far-reaching differentiations in both the character and the spiritual product of the relationship, this classification seems to me purely arbitrary. If the association of Voltaire with Mme. du Châtelet; of Joubert with Pauline de Montmorin; of Montaigne with Marie de Gournay; of Goethe with Bettina Brentano; of Wilhelm von Humboldt with Henriette Herz;—if these were not love-affairs I do not know what to call them. Such associations are a matter of abundant record, and I believe they would prove rewarding under analytic literary treatment.1

I found that the fashion of extreme frankness prevailing in post-war literature prevailed also in social conversation; so, moved by curiosity, I took advantage of it. Whenever an appropriate occasion came about, which naturally was not often, I would bring up one or two instances of the working of sex-attraction, such as I have just cited, to hear what people had to say about them. By keeping up this practice for several years and in several countries, I amassed a considerable number of accounts of experiences confirmatory of my own conclusions. Case-histories are rather boring, so I shall here mention the salient points of only three. One man had maintained for twenty years what he described as the one and only true love-affair of his life by correspondence with a woman whom he had never seen, and from whom he had always been separated by great distances. Another similar love-affair had gone on for seven years, and was still going on, between two persons who had seen each other but once; their mutual sentiment took root at first sight. An interesting fact in this case was that neither knew the other’s language; their communications were carried on in a third language, common to both but native to neither.

The account I got of a third experience is especially noteworthy as proving my point beyond peradventure. The man was deeply in love with the young wife of one of his friends, and she with him. Both were extremely able, brilliant, highly cultivated; their relation was perfect in all its exquisite sympathies and confidences. He was most personable; his presence and maimers were unusually engaging; and she was pretty, graceful, charming. I can bear witness to all this, for I knew them well. Yet the physical indifference obtaining between them amounted almost to repugnance; they seldom shook hands when they met, and then only in a perfunctory way, utterly inexpressive of sentiment. One might imagine just such terms of association subsisting between Turgôt and Jeanne-Julie de l’Espinasse or between Benjamin Constant and Mme. de Staël,2 or in other historical instances.

Thus I was upheld in my belief that the physiological element in sex-attraction is by no means invariably present, and that one’s understanding of the term should be broadened accordingly. When sex-attraction is spoken of, one should ask just what is meant by that. The great Cousin, for example, who all his life had hardly ever even noticed a pretty woman, suddenly discovered that his historical studies had forced him into a state of most lover-like devotion to the charms of Mme. de Longueville, who had been dead nearly two hundred years. The experience was highly animating and energising, as the portions of his work which are referable to it show at once. Was this a valid sex-experience, was the attraction at the root of it a valid sex-attraction? If not, then just what was it? What is one to say?

The sum of my observations led me to believe that society’s attempts to canalise the course of sex-association by systems of ethical precept and statutory law do not work well because they rest on a basis of purely factitious generalisation. In ways both positive and negative, these attempts have done, and still do, much more harm than good. The psychically-human man and woman soon become aware that the only sure principles on which their sex-relations can be satisfactorily maintained are those which were laid down for them four hundred years ago by Friar John of the Funnels; and that once these principles are established, Friar John’s one simple rule becomes their only rule of conduct in the premises: Fay ce que vouldras.

II

Towards the end of my term as an editor in New York I stumbled on a statement that considerably more than half the national wealth of the United States was in the hands of women. This interested me to the point of taking measures to find out if it were true; and it was true, to my surprise. I knew that the dean of St. Paul’s had described American society as an ice-water-drinking gynecocracy, but I did not imagine that his view could be borne out by anything so cogent. I immediately formed the reasonable notion that so large an amount of economic control combined with full political equality, full equality of educational and cultural opportunity, and an unprecedented liberation from traditional disabilities,—all this should be showing some distinct and salutary social effects. I not only saw no signs of any such effects being produced, however, but I also saw no signs of any disposition to produce them, still less of any sense of responsibility in the premises; and this excited my curiosity. Considering the great enlargement of opportunity for American women to do what they liked with themselves, I was curious to see what, if anything, they were actually doing; and I made this a matter of observation and inquiry for several years, whenever occasion offered.

Putting the results in a word, I found that they were contenting themselves with doing exactly what men do. Their conception of their new-found liberties and the use to be made of them did not reach beyond this. All the evidence I could turn up tended with unfailing regularity to this conclusion. Women entered the same trades and professions as competitors with men, played politics with the same unscrupulous predacity and mountebankery, shared the same unintelligent habits of mind, accepted the same cultural standards, the same codes of social life and manners. They wore men’s dress on occasion, smoked, swore and used loose language as men do drank and sat around bar-rooms as men do. I was amused at observing that their ideal of general conduct, both good and bad, was not that of doing the same things men do and doing them better or even differently. Apparently they were quite satisfied, rather slavishly as it seemed to me, to do just the same things in just the same ways, and do them just as well.

These observations diverted me immensely, and in the end my amusement was the means of my making a great fool of myself in the public prints. Some six or seven years after I had first noticed the statement concerning the distribution of our national wealth I wrote two essays mildly critical of our women’s lack of initiative and enterprise, and sent them over from Brussels to my old friend Mr. Sedgwick, who was kind enough to publish them at once for me in the Atlantic. The story of these essays is worth telling because it shows so well the discouraging way Fate has of dropping the warmth of one’s self-esteem down to the zero-point, and keeping it there. I thought uncommonly well of those two essays, and so did Mr. Sedgwick. They covered all the ground, they were written in a good spirit, they were playful enough to be ingratiating, and their logic was burglar-proof if one accepted the implied major premise,—but just there, alas, was where the cat lay down in the pepper.

I had based my essays in all good faith on the premise which I had accepted without question from Condorcet, Rousseau, Mr. Jefferson, Henry George, Herbert Spencer and the rest of the goodly fellowship of the prophets; this premise being that the individual Homo sapiens, female and male alike, is psychically human and indefinitely improvable, and by consequence the collective Homo sapiens is a human society likewise indefinitely improvable. If this premise were valid, my essays would be sound as a nut. But just as I was congratulating myself on a pleasing success, Mr. Cram produced his hypothesis concerning man’s place in nature; it blew my premise sky-high, and made my essays not worth the paper they were written on.

The point of my essays was that while admittedly women can do pretty much anything that men can do, and do it pretty much as well, they can also do something which men do not show, and have never shown, any appreciable aptitude for doing; they can civilise a society. In view of this I ventured to suggest that in their peculiarly privileged position American women might do well to get a really competent understanding of what civilisation is and what its terms are, and then apply themselves to quickening the extremely stodgy dough of American society with the leaven of civilisation. If one were addressing an aggregation of psychically-human beings, this would be all very well. But when Mr. Cram showed that neolithic society is not one whit more truly civilised now than it was six thousand years ago, and in the nature of things will be no more truly civilised six thousand years hence, he reduced all I had been saying to sheer nonsense. What it amounted to was that I had been putting the most fantastically extravagant expectations upon psychical capacities which do not exist, never did exist, and in all probability never will. I had placed myself in the absurd position of one recommending the study of analytic geometry to a flock of more or less attentive ewes.

III

The change in women’s economic status helped to bring about a great increase in the number of divorces; and this in turn went far in relieving divorce almost entirely from the weight of social obloquy which had long rested on it. This seemed to me an unqualified good thing. In itself, the growing number of divorces was unimportant; what really counted was the disappearance of a prejudice largely superstitious and wholly unintelligent. With the views I entertained of sex-relations in general, I was glad to see the subject of marriage and the family brought up for some measure of reconsideration, and my only regret was that the reconsideration was not more thorough-going.

I regard marriage in the way that the French have of regarding it, as a partnership effected for certain definite purposes, essentially practical. If sentimental considerations favour it at the outset, or if they make a favourable ėntry after the partnership is established, that is all very well; but the institution itself, das Ding an sich, is of a purely business-like and non-affectional character. This view keeps the issues distinct, separate, clear-cut, thereby avoiding the endless trouble caused by confusion and misapprehension. If Potash and Perlmutter were antecedently fond of each other, no doubt that helped; if subsequently they become fond of each other, no doubt that helps; but the purpose of their partnership is the production and sale of cloaks and suits, and the personal qualities and aptitudes called into play for successful promotion of a sentimental attachment are by no means the same as those called into play for successful promotion of the cloak-and-suit business. Thus it was that notwithstanding the notable tepidity of friendship between the partners Klinger and Klein, they were held together by a perfect community of interest in the conduct of a thriving trade. So in the matter of marriage, whether sentimental considerations make their appearance first or last or not at all, they have only an incidental bearing on the purpose for which the partnership is formed. If I remember correctly, it was Mr. Zudrowsky, of the firm of Zudrowsky and Cohen, who said that “for a business man, understand me, love comes after marriage”; and apparently as many successful marriages have been arranged on that basis as on any other.

What had always seemed to me thoroughly unfair and objectionable was society’s merciless insistence on making the marriage-bed a bed of Procrustes, if I may put it so; and on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread, I was pleased to see this insistence even slightly moderated. Society insisted that persons who wished to realise for themselves the immense benefits of a sex-relationship—and I humbly hope I have made clear just what I mean by a sex-relationship—must subject themselves to the duties, sanctions, responsibilities, changes and chances of a quasi-industrial enterprise before they could be permitted to do so. Any other arrangement, however much more appropriate and satisfactory, was inadmissible. Thus marriage was, most arbitrarily as it seemed to me, interposed as a bar or condition between the individual and one of the main sources of his or her well-being. So arbitrarily were these requirements laid down that they took no account whatever of the individual’s ability to meet them; and here is where the sheerly Procrustean unfairness of the matter is apparent.

Regarding marriage as essentially a quasi-industrial partnership, a business enterprise, and then looking over the persons of one’s acquaintance who are engaged in it, one must see, I think, that the distribution of natural aptitude for it is about what it is for other occupations. There are many misfits, many who through no great fault of theirs have obviously mistaken their calling. Society’s tacit assumption is that all normal persons are qualified for matrimony, and this is not so. Many women are as ill-adapted to a career in matrimony as they are to a career in blacksmithing or steam-riveting; many men are equally ill-adapted. I refer to disability imposed by nature, not by circumstance. When such as these experience a valid sex-attraction of whatever type, and seek to make the most of it by accepting the only terms that society has hitherto presented as admissible, the consequences clearly are bound to be unfortunate. The best they can do is to maintain a position on the bare edge of spiritual solvency through a continuous series of stultifying compromises and makeshifts; and at that, the spiritual deputy-sheriff is always lurking about their dooryard, armed with a warrant of levy-and-distress. Mr. Marquand’s recent novel, H. M. Pulham, Esquire, bears upon these difficulties, and illustrates them admirably.

Again, one may observe if one be candid about it, that polygamy and polyandry are phenomena as common among mankind as they are elsewhere in the animal world, and are therefore to be regarded as natural; though here once more I express the hope that this statement will not be interpreted with exclusive reference to Panurge’s acte mouvent de belutaige. On the stage in the Beggar’s Opera we have Captain Macheath declaring roundly that “a man who loves money might as well be content with one guinea as I with one woman”; and I believe that if intelligent men and women examined their hearts without prejudice they would find there the question: Well, just why should he be content with one woman? Why should Polly Peachum or Lucy Lockit be content with one man? Why should any man or woman be so content? Goethe found that question not easy to answer. He gives the institution of marriage a rather shaky leg-up by saying it deserves respect as one of the triumphs of culture over nature, but he leaves one doubting whether this may not be a Pyrrhic triumph after all, for he adds that “marriage, properly speaking, is unnatural.”

It is unnatural for the reason, among others, that it tends to interfere with a free association of men and women, such as Friar John of the Funnels contemplated in the design for his abbey. One remarks the interesting fact that Rabelais, who never made a mistake in his interpretations of the spirit of man, has no married couples in Thélème, though he makes no rule against such being there. He says that if for any reason a man wished to leave the abbey and go out into the world, taking his declared sweetheart with him,3 they would then marry and live happily ever after. Not to put too fine a point on it, there seems here a distinct intimation that however appropriate marriage might be to conditions prevailing in society-at-large, it was inappropriate to those prevailing in the abbey; and by testing one’s own reactions to the story one can see how this would be so. The abbey’s tenants were such as on Mr. Cram’s hypothesis would be classed as human beings, and when one considers their character and qualities one is conscious of considerable violence in any attempt to associate the idea of marriage with them.

After Mme. de Staël had eased her rather plantigrade husband out of the reckoning, she lived on the freest terms of intimacy with such men as Talleyrand, A. W. Schlegel, de Sismondi, Benjamin Constant, travelled with them on occasion, and on occasion occupied the same premises with them. Each of these had something peculiarly his own to contribute towards the enrichment of her cultural life, and she to theirs; and among them all, in virtue of this free association, they contrived to add a fairish bit to the resources of European civilisation. She had great gifts and a great power of sex-attraction, though by all accounts not much on the physiological side; but she had no more natural faculty for partnership in the quasi-industrial enterprise of marriage than she had for handling a steam-shovel. Manifestly, then, any social pressure tending to hold her to an occupation for which she had no aptitude, and interfering with her advancement in activities for which she had great aptitude, would result in loss and damage, and therefore must, at least by me, be regarded as pernicious.

One often sees great loss traceable to this cause, if one keeps an eye out for it. I saw notable loss incurred in the instance of sex-relation cited in my third case-history a page or two back. The lovers in question seldom met, though there was no definite agreement not to meet, but merely a tacit understanding. The lady had no fears or scruples, and her husband was not one to make any difficulties about the intimacy; on the contrary, he understood it perfecdy and was glad to encourage it. But her social and domestic responsibilities frittered her time and energies, and her lover had the spirit of the preux chevalier, unwilling that the lady should run the least chance of being exposed to suspicion or her husband to embarrassment. So their romance went undeclared, and they got but little out of each other; which was a profound misfortune for them and a loss to all who moved in their social orbit.

My survey of these matters left me with the belief that in the view of a sound practical philosophy, marriage should be reduced to a footing with other respectable industrial enterprises, and that all discussion of it should leave sentimental considerations aside. For those whose natural aptitudes run that way,—and there are many, both of men and women,— there could be no better upshot to a sex-relation than marriage; and for those whose aptitudes do not run that way, hardly anything could be worse. I think the great majority will always take to marriage, however free they may be to choose their estate. Pending a régime of complete economic freedom, most women will certainly take to it,—Epstean’s law will attend to that,—and I should say the majority of men will also. But of both there will always be a minority who see in marriage something which for them is unnatural, disabling and retarding.

In behalf of these I think the unintelligent opprobrium of impropriety and “irregularity” attaching to relations such as those which Mme. de Staël established for herself should be dissipated. One observes with satisfaction that the large measure of economic independence which American women have gained has already done much towards clearing it away. This is one of many indications pointing to the great truth which apparently must forever remain unlearned, that if a régime of complete economic freedom be established, social and political freedom will follow automatically; and until it is established neither social nor political freedom can exist. Here one comes in sight of the reason why the State will never tolerate the establishment of economic freedom. In a spirit of sheer conscious fraud, the State will at any time offer its people “four freedoms,” or six, or any number; but it will never let them have economic freedom. If it did, it would be signing its own death-warrant, for as Lenin pointed out, “it is nonsense to make any pretence of reconciling the State and liberty.” Our economic system being what it is, and the State being what it is, all the mass of verbiage about “the free peoples” and “the free democracies” is merely so much obscene buffoonery.

IV

At the time when I was turning over in my mind this matter of sex-relations, a German friend said to me in bitterness one day, “I tell you, the man who invented the family was an enemy of the human race.” My poor friend was not altogether without reason. With all the advantages of wealth, social position and high culture, he had led for many years what Mrs. Quickly called “a very frampold life” with a domineering spouse and some unsatisfactory daughters, of whom he had the misfortune to be very fond. I believe that under the régime of economism nearly all men have at one time or another had to face the grievous truth of Bacon’s aphorism concerning hostages to fortune. No doubt also many women, especially those who have gone into matrimony under the spur of Epstean’s law, sometimes feel that they have let themselves in for a hard bargain. Nevertheless in general the family, regarded as an institution, still seems to work about as well as the rest of our rickety institutions do, since the majority of people like children, more or less, and therefore may perhaps be said to have some sort of rough-and-ready aptitude for it. On the other hand, a very respectable minority have not even the most attenuated aptitude for it. In my opinion, the most prolific source of misfortune lies in taking a strong biological urge towards procreation as evidence of this aptitude. Women are peculiarly liable to this error, but even the standard jokes in our comic papers show that men also fall victims to it. Herbert Spencer liked children, but felt that he had no faculty whatever for family life, and God wot he was right. So, like the resourceful man of science which he was, he used to borrow batches of children from the neighbours and hob-nob with them in order to keep the springs of his affectional nature from drying up. Mark Twain, whom certainly nature never cut out for a family man,—poor soul!—also did something with this practice; and how bitterly one regrets that the colossal Tolstoy did not confine his affectional excursions to it! I think it is a sound practice, and one to be encouraged in all such circumstances. I would follow it myself if I liked children, but I have a great horror of them.

Where the family chiefly shows itself as inimical to the human race, to borrow my German friend’s term, is in its character as the strongest bulwark of whatever economic system may be in force, even the most iniquitous. No wonder the State and the Church unite in coddling the family and hedging it about with all the protective devices that law and factitious ethics can devise! A person with a family does what he must and as he must. Often, like the tripe-editor I spoke of a moment ago, he has to reconcile himself to stultifying and despicable courses of conduct which, if he were free to do so, he would refuse even to consider. He must stay within the economic system and uphold it; and thus the demands of family are responsible for the atrophy of many fine talents, and for the progressive moral dim-out which darkens many lives.

Throughout the post-war period I listened to a vast deal of vague lugubrious talk about the evil of divorce and the ruinous loosening of family ties. I saw nothing in all this but what was to be expected, nor could I make it seem so calamitous as these prophetic voices made it out to be. In the time of an individualist agricultural economy the family was an economic asset; the larger it was, the better. The shift to an industrial economy with mass-production in agriculture converted it into an economic liability. The inflow of women into the trades and professions took up some of the slack, thereby somewhat redressing the balance of loss and gain, with the important difference that the women so employed earned money-wages, which under the old economy they did not do, and they kept control of their earnings. This tended to break up the family as an economic unit, and to leave it held together only by such affectional bonds as might exist on their own merits. This seemed to me quite as it should be, and quite to be expected. As for the increase in divorce, I took it as an outcome of women’s altered economic status, quite inevitable, quite to be expected, and suggesting nothing especially immoral or reprehensible. Like the facilities for dissolving other forms of partnership, the facilities for divorce are susceptible of abuse and no doubt are sometimes seriously abused; but once again if one “regards mankind as being what they are,” one sees that this also is to be expected; it is inevitable.

I was much impressed by my learned friend Hendrik Willem van Loon’s remark that “a sense of the inevitable” is the most valuable thing one can get out of one’s classical studies. I have already shown in these pages how steadily from the very beginning my own studies were directed towards an intensive cultivation of this sense; and I can never be thankful enough for the good fortune which brought me that advantage. In speaking of William the Taciturn, who had “absorbed some slight admixture of the old Roman and Greek philosophies with his more formal Christian training,” Mr. van Loon shows how almost automatically this saving sense, when it is well developed, gets itself applied to every appraisal of mankind’s ways and doings. One may wish they were better and wiser than they are, but the sense of the inevitable gives warning that no force of wishing or striving can make them so; and therefore the less they are meddled with, the better.

It is interesting to see how often the poet’s conclusions, arrived at by the light of this sense, are identical with the philosopher’s. Goethe’s sense of the inevitable made his forecast of mankind’s progress identical with Mr. Cram’s. “Man will become more clever and sagacious,” said Goethe, “but not better, happier or showing more resolute wisdom; or at least, only at periods.” Inevitably so. Cleverness and sagacity are traits which the neolithic man shares with his humbler relatives in the animal world; he owes his survival to his immense superiority in combining and managing the two. In respect of the other traits he is devoid of capacity; they characterise the human being. Perhaps the most striking evidence of this is found in the apparent anomaly which so baffled Mr. Jefferson and Henry Adams: that with all man’s marvellous ability to invent things which are potentially good, he can always be counted on to make the worst possible use of what he invents; as witness the radio, printing-press, aeroplane and the internal-combustion engine. On the assumption that the neolithic men and women massed in society are human and therefore indefinitely improvable, the problem of conduct here presented is past all resolving. Mr. Jefferson gave it up in despair, saying “What a Bedlamite is man!” On the contrary assumption there is no anomaly, and hence no problem; we perceive at once that all which seemed to be unaccountable is quite in the order of nature and quite to be expected.

V

My meditations on the family and family life hardened me in the sin of cleaving to a most unorthodox idea which I had formed long before. I believe that a mother should have nothing to do with her daughters’ bringing-up and should be with them as little by way of companionship as possible; and likewise a father with his sons. I came by this idea originally through noticing the excellent results of this practice in the few instances where I knew of its having been followed. The girl brought up by her mother until she reaches the age of twelve or thirteen gets only the feminine view of life-in-general, into which view she is bound to gravitate in any case. She does not know the male mind well at first-hand, does not know how it works or what its dispositions are, nor can she get a competent knowledge of this as long as she is subjected to a confusing association with the feminine mind. She is equally unable to get a sympathetic understanding of the male character as long as she knows it only through a maternal interpretation. The boy brought up in habitual association with his father is under a like disability at every point.

I might mention also my belief that after children are past the stage of bringing-up, all formal teaching of them in school, college and university should be done by men. I have not examined my grounds for this belief very closely, and I am quite willing to listen to reason in the matter of making room for an occasional Hypatia in post-graduate instruction, but my present strong conviction is that under any circumstances the employment of women as teachers is disadvantageous.

I have sometimes wondered, perhaps rather perversely, whether the fashion of easy divorce might not tend to make the “irregular” type of sex-relation more durable than the conventional type. I must repeat the assurance that I am not speaking of the relation as exhibited by the heroes and heroines of our popular literature, notably by those of Mr. H. G. Wells’s latest novel, You Can’t Be Too Careful. Far from that, I speak of it only as exhibited by psychically-human beings in the instances I have cited. My thoughts were set going in this direction by some words from an experienced married woman in her late twenties. An observant friend had just then been telling me that in his opinion the most moral men in America are actors, “because,” he said, “they always marry their wenches.” I was amused by this,—it did seem really to have some point,—and I mentioned it to the lady by way of a joke. “I don’t quite see that,” she said. “The way things are, it’s a lot easier to get rid of a wife than a wench.”

One can see how this might be so for the general run of mankind, and one can see a special reason why it should be so for the psychically-human being. In the city of Tours one day I looked in on one of the great regional markets where buyers from all parts of France were dealing with peasants for grain. I was astonished to see that every bit of business on the premises was done on parole; no formal contracts, no memoranda, not a pen-scratch or a pencil-mark in evidence anywhere. I was told that this is an invariable custom, because reading and writing were suspect arts with the French peasant from time immemorial. Make an agreement with him by word of mouth, and he would never fail, never was known to fail. Force him to sign a formal contract, if you could, and there was no telling what he would do, but you could pretty well count on its being something you might not like.

It may be that in the psychically-human being there is a streak of this resentment, however larval, against the obligations of formal contract in general. I think there is. It is conceivable also that in the case of a formal marriage-contract this resentment might be heightened by the consciousness that society’s assumption of a clear right to barge in and regulate a relation so distinctly personal is open to question. Hence if the relation became unsatisfactory, one would feel no great compunctions about taking any available way out of it. On the other hand, if the relation were established on parole or by tacit understanding, one would have to stick it as best one could, and no doubt all the better for knowing that whatever discipline of spirit may be called for is self-imposed. At the instant when a sentiment of affection becomes authoritative a dry rot sets in on it. When Polly let it out that she meant to marry her dashing captain, Mr. Peachum asked her in great indignation, “Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together if ever we had been married?”

But the reader must remember that this chapter, like all my chapters, amounts to nothing but the more or less aimless reminiscences of a superfluous man. It would be vain to pretend that I am wiser about mankind’s affectional relations than any one else would be who had watched their tacks and turns as long as I have watched them from my seat in the grandstand. Perhaps at that distance one misses many of the game’s most interesting fine points of play, so que scai-je? Certainly I do not know so much that I should write out my reflections on these or any other subjects with a view to any one’s interest but my own.

• 1A striking contemporary instance appears in the association of Mr. G. B. Shaw with Miss Ellen Terry. This is described at length in the recent biography of Mr. Shaw, by Hesketh Pearson. Since the account of the relationship was authorised by Mr. Shaw I see no indelicacy in citing it.
• 2It is impossible to say how far the current notion that the relations of Constant with Mme. de Staël came to more than this, can be justified. Some circumstances make it seem erroneous, while others admit the possibility, but establish nothing. I incline to the former view. The relations of Turgôt with Mile, de l’Espinasse have never been under suspicion, as far as I know.
• 3Celle laquelle l’auroit prins pour son devot.