We have quoted the old maxim, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," and we suggested that parents and guardians should have the right to ask the young to wait before marriage, and make certain of the state of their hearts. We have now the same advice to give concerning divorce; the same claim to enter on behalf of society—that it has and should assert the right to ask people to delay and think carefully before breaking up a marriage.
What interest has society in the restriction of divorce? What affair is it of any other person if I choose to get a divorce and marry a new wife once a month? There are many reasons, not in any way based upon religious superstition or conventional prejudice. In the first place, there are or may be children, and society should try to preserve for every child a home with a father and a mother in it. Second, there are property rights, of which every marriage is a tangle, and the settlement of which the law should always oversee. Third, there is the question of venereal disease, which society has an unquestionable right to keep down, by every reasonable restriction upon sexual promiscuity. And finally, there is the respect which all men and women owe to love. It seems to me that society has the same right to protect love against extreme outrage, as it has to forbid indecent exposure of the person on the street.
There is in successful operation in Switzerland a wise and sane divorce law, based upon common sense and not upon superstition. A couple wish to break their marriage, and they go before a judge, and in private session, as to a friendly adviser, they tell their troubles. He gives them advice about their disagreement, and sends them away for three months to think it over. At the end of three months, if they still desire a divorce, they meet with him again. If he still thinks there is a chance of reconciliation, he has the right to require them to wait another three months. But if at the end of this second period they are still convinced that the case is hopeless, and that they should part, the judge is required to grant the divorce. You may note that this is exactly what I have suggested concerning young couples who become engaged. In both cases, the parties directly interested have the right to decide their own fate, but the rest of the world requires them to think carefully about it, and to listen to counsel. Except for grave offenses, such as adultery, insanity, crime or venereal disease, I do not think that anyone should receive a divorce in less than six months, nor do I think that any personal right is contravened by the imposing of such a delay.
Next, what are we going to say to the right, or the claim to the right, on the part of a man or woman, to be married once a year throughout a lifetime? In order to illustrate this problem, I will tell you about a certain man known to me. In his early life he spent a couple of years in a lunatic asylum. He lays claim to extraordinary spiritual gifts, and uses the language of the highest idealism known. He is a man of culture and good family, and thus exerts a peculiar charm upon young women of refinement and sensitiveness. To my knowledge he was three times married in six years, and each time he deserted the woman, and forced her to divorce him, and to take care of herself, and in one case of a child. In addition, he had begotten one child out of marriage, and left the mother and child to starve. For ten years or so I used to see him about once in six months, and invariably he had a new woman, a young girl of fine character, who had been ensnared by him, and was in the agonizing process of discovering his moral and mental derangement. Yet there was absolutely nothing in the law to place restraint upon this man; he could wander from state to state, or to the other side of the world, preying upon lovely young girls wherever he went.
This particular man happens to call himself a "radical"; but I could tell you of similar men in the highest social circles, or in the political world, the theatrical world, the "sporting" world; they are in every rank of life, and are just as definitely and certainly menaces to human welfare and progress as pirates on the high seas or highwaymen on the road. Nor are they confined to the males; the world is full of women who use their sex charms for predatory purposes, and some of them are far too clever for any law that you or I can contrive at present. But I think we might begin by refusing to let any man or woman have more than two divorces in one lifetime, in any state or part of the world. If any man or woman tries three times to find happiness in love, and fails each time, we have a right to assume that the fault must lie with that person, and not with the three partners.
I think we may go further yet; having made wise laws of love and marriage, taking into consideration all human needs, we have a right to require that men and women shall obey the laws. At present the great mass of the public has sympathy for the law-breaker; just as, in old days, the peasants could not help admiring the outlaw who resisted unjust land laws and robbed the rich, or as today, under the capitalist régime, we can not withhold our sympathy from political prisoners, even though they have committed acts of violence which we deplore. But when we have made sex laws that we know are just and sensible—then we shall consider that we have the right to restrain sex criminals, and in extreme cases we shall avail ourselves of the skill of science to perform a surgical operation which will render him unable in future to prey upon the love needs of people who are placed at his mercy by their best qualities, their unselfishness and lack of suspicion.
We clear out foul-smelling weeds from our garden, because we wish to raise beautiful flowers and useful herbs therein. There lives in California a student of plant life, who has shown us what we can do, not by magic or by superhuman efforts, but simply by loving plants, by watching them ceaselessly, understanding their ways, and guiding their sex-life to our own purposes. We can perform what to our ignorant ancestors would have seemed to be miracles; we can actually make all sorts of new plants, which will continue to breed their own kind, and survive forever if we give them proper care. In other words, Luther Burbank has shown us that we can "change plant nature."
There flash back upon my memory all those dull, weary, sick human creatures, who have repeated to me that dull, weary, sick old formula, "You cannot change human nature." I do not think I am indulging either in religious superstition or in blind optimism, but am speaking precisely, in saying that whenever human beings get ready to apply experimental science to themselves, they can change human nature just as they now change plant nature. By putting human bodies together in love, we make new bodies of children more beautiful than any who have yet romped on the earth; and in the same way, by putting minds and souls together, we can make new kinds of minds and souls, different from those we have previously known, and greater than either the man-soul or the woman-soul alone.
Also, by that magic which is the law of mind and soul life, each new creation can be multiplied to infinity, and shared by all other minds and souls that live in the present or may live in the future. We have shown elsewhere how genius multiplies to infinity the joy and power of life by means of the arts; and one of the greatest of the arts is the art of love. Consider the great lovers, the true lovers, of history—how they have enriched the lives of us all. It does not make any difference whether these men and women lived in the flesh, or in the brain of a poet—we learn alike from Dante and Beatrice, from Abélard and Hélo?se, from Robert and Elizabeth Browning, from Tristan and Isolde, from Romeo and Juliet, what is the depth and the splendor of this passion which lies hidden within us, and how it may enrich and vivify and glorify all life.