The Ladies Book of Useful Information Part 14

with each other, the child combines the best qualities of both parents. When parents are not in the unity of a mutual love, the child may be inferior to either parent. The intensity of mutual love tends to the reproduction of the best faculties of both parents in the child. When men or women are exhausted or diseased the race deteriorates. Health is therefore one of the conditions of progress.

"It is all very fine," I shall be told, "to talk of purity and chast.i.ty; but we must take men as they are. How are you going to make men pure and chaste, and respectful of the purity of women? How can you get men with strong amative propensities to live like anchorites?"

How can you get men to do anything right, or refrain from any wrong thing? There are three motives-fear of punishment, hope of reward, and sense of right or the principle of duty. The first of these is the lowest, but often the most effectual; the second is higher, and appeals to hope and the love of happiness; the third, the highest of all motives, pure and unselfish as the love of truth, as in mathematics, acts on n.o.ble minds with great power. Men of real conscientiousness love the right for its own sake. They are just from love of justice; pure from a sense and love of purity. They love good, and G.o.d as the source of all good; and do right, not from fear or hope, but from pure love.

We must appeal to all motives. Men refrain from theft and other dishonest conduct from the dread of disgrace and punishment, because they see that "honesty is the best policy," and from a sense of justice and regard to the rights of property, or a sense of honor which makes a mean action impossible. By similar motives great numbers are restrained from drunkenness and other vices. Children are to be restrained from impurity by the fear of the terrible consequences of unnatural indulgence in causing disease and pain, by the hope of a pure, healthy and happy life of love in manhood and womanhood, and by a sense of the beauty and holiness of chast.i.ty and the sacredness of the functions by which the race is recreated and preserved. The religious feelings that our bodies are to be kept pure, healthy, and holy in every way as the temples of the Holy Ghost cannot be too early instilled into the infant mind, which is open to the highest sentiments of veneration, devotion, and heroic religion. In youth there are the same motives. Indulgence in solitary vice is self-destructive of all that youth most values-a profanation of his own body.

SEDUCTION

is a desecration of what he should hold in the most tender reverence.

To the young man, womanhood should be sacred, and every woman, mother, sister, beloved of the present or the future, should never be wronged by one thought of impurity. In this matter instinct goes with right.

The inward voice supports the outer law of morality. Before men can become bad, their instinctive modesty must be broken down. Unless very badly born, with disordered amativeness, hereditary from a diseased and l.u.s.tful parentage, they must be perverted and corrupted before they can act immodestly and impurely.

WOMEN ARE PROTECTED

by a strong public sentiment around them. They have the dread of disgrace. For them to yield to their own affectionate desires, or the solicitations of a lover, is a fall, is ruin. They have the hope of a loving husband, a happy home, and the respect of society. And in woman pa.s.sion has commonly less force, and the sentiment of modesty and purity more power. Women are weak in yielding to solicitation, giving

EVERYTHING FOR LOVE;

but we see how protective of female virtue are these motives to vast numbers.

Men can perfectly restrain the sensual part of their natures whenever they have a strong motive to do so. A child would be simply mad who was not controlled by the presence of father, mother, and persons he respected or feared. Young men have no difficulty when they are in the company of pure women. They are in no trouble when their lives are full of mental and muscular activity, and particularly if their habits of eating simply and temperately, of refraining from heating and exciting stimulants, and sleeping in cold beds and fresh air, are such as health requires. There needs but the strong will to live purely in any one, and at any age, the will that comes from the high motives of conscience and religion, or all motives combined. A strong sense of what is just and right controls even the motions of our bodies and actions which seem to be involuntary. A man who has a vivid sense of the right and duty of refraining from sensuality, and preserving his own purity of mind and body and the chast.i.ty of all women, will do so even in his dreams. When the will is right, all things are soon brought into its subjection. The mind controls the organization, and the life forces are directed into other channels. A strong man, full of

LIFE AND LOVE,

can safely hold a virgin in his arms, and respect her virginity, if he have but the motives and the will to do so. If he be pure in his will, how can he commit impurity? If a woman be sacred in his eyes, how can he profane her? It is not that men have not the power of restraint, the power to do right; it is that they lack the motive.

They have lost the sense of right; they are even impelled to do wrong by the pressure of opinion around them. Boys and young men are driven into libertinage by the ridicule of their companions. Vice is considered manly. They seek sensuality in an evil emulation, as they learn to smoke, or gamble, or drink; and, later on, vanity has often more to do with excess than the force of l.u.s.t. Young men seduce girls that they may boast of it. They keep mistresses because it is the fas.h.i.+on. They exhaust themselves because they wish to give a high idea of their manly powers. Even in marriage, women are injured and have their health destroyed by yielding weakly, or from

A FALSE SENSE OF DUTY,

to a husband whose own motive is the desire to acquit himself manfully in what he considers his marital duties. Men and women are, in thousands of cases, wretched victims to what they imagine to be the wants or expectations of each other. A man, ignorant of the nature of women and the laws of the generative function, goes on in a process of miserable exhaustion, to please his wife. She submits, sometimes in pain, often in disgust, weariness, and weakness, to what she dare not, from

LOVE OR FEAR,

refuse. Men have to know what is right and to will to be right. This will is omnipotent. G.o.d helps those who have the will, who have even the desire, to do right.

If the presence of those we fear or reverence, respect or love, restrain us from sin and stimulate us to right action, faith in the existence and presence of G.o.d and angels, and the spirits of the departed, must have a more powerful and pervading influence. No one who really believes in the existence of a Supreme Being, no one who is strongly impressed with the reality of a spiritual life, can go on doing what he knows to be wrong. A religious faith is therefore the most powerful of all restraints from evil and incitement to good.

CHAPTER VII.

MARRIAGE.

WHAT IS MARRIAGE?

Marriage is in law the conjugal union of man with woman, and is the only state in which cohabitation is considered proper and irreprehensible. The marriage relation exists in all Christian communities, and is considered the most solemn of contracts, and, excepting in Protestant countries, it is regarded as a sacrament. In some countries its celebration falls under the cognizance of ecclesiastical courts only, but in the United States it is regarded as merely a civil contract, magistrates having, equally with clergymen, the right to solemnize it, though it is usually the practice to have it performed by a clergyman and attended with religious ceremonies.

Marriage, as a legalized custom, is of very ancient origin. It is doubtful whether even the primitive man was not governed in the intercourse of the s.e.xes by some recognition of the union being confined to one chosen one. No greater promiscuity can certainly be supposed than occurs in the lower animals, where pairing is the law.

The n.o.bler animals, as the lion, elephant, etc., never have but one mate, and even in case of death do not remate. As men advanced, civil codes were inaugurated and certain protection given to the choice of the parties. The earliest civil code regulating marriage, of which we have any account, was that of Menes, who, Herodotus tells us, was the first of the Pharaohs, or native Egyptian kings, and who lived about 3,500 years before Christ. The nature of his code is not known.

The Biblical account extends further back, but it does not appear that any laws existed regulating marriage, but each one was allowed to choose his wife and concubines, and it is supposed that common consent respected the selection. Next, Moses gave laws for the government of marriage among the Israelites. The early Greeks followed the code of Cecrops, and the Romans were also governed in their marital relations by stringent laws. In fact, the necessity of some law regulating the intercourse between the s.e.xes must have become very apparent to all nations or communities at a very early period. It certainly antedates any legal regulations with regard to the possession of property. It is very probable that every community did by common consent afford to each male one or more females, and the presumption is that such choice or a.s.signment, as the case may have been, was respected by common agreement as inviolable. It is doubtful if ever promiscuity was the law or privilege with any community of men, even in their primitive state. The possession of reason is antagonistic to such a belief; and man was most probably elevated above the beast by the faculty of reason in this respect as in others. Promiscuous indulgence is always evidence of debauchery, and a departure from that natural course which is prompted by an innate sense of propriety characterizing mankind.

The law is very indefinite with regard to what const.i.tutes a legal marriage. It is an unsettled question, both in England and this country, whether a marriage solemnized by customary formalities alone is legal, or if one characterized by the mere consent of the parties is illegal. The latter has been held as legal in some instances in both countries. Kent, in his "Commentaries," lays down the law that a contract made so that either party recognizes it from the moment of contract, and even not followed by cohabitation, amounts to a valid marriage, and also that a contract to be recognized at some future period, and followed by consummation, is equally valid. It is unfortunate that the law is so undecided in this respect. The decisions arrived at, for or against, were not dependent upon any recognized law, but seem to be influenced by the character of the cases, either for favor or discountenance. As long as the law recognizes cohabitation legal only in marriage, it seems to me that if consummated under consent of the parties to bear marital relations with each other, or promise of marriage, the act should be unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounced as the equivalent of a valid marriage in all instances. If cohabitation is only a marital prerogative, the law should not stultify itself by recognizing it as possible to occur in any other relation. If either of the parties is married, the law defines it as adultery, and very properly defines the punishment. It is necessary to the progress of the age that some such principle should be recognized in common law so as not to subject the decision of the question to the individual opinion of any judge. It would at once obviate the confusion of sentiment now held in regard to it and besides arrest the decision in test cases from mere caprice of the tribunal. It is certainly as correct a principle as any in common law, and would, in its operations as a statute law, be free from injustice, and capable of doing much good.

POLYGAMY-WHAT IT IS.

Polygamy is a state in which a man has at the same time more than one wife. It has existed from time immemorial, especially among the nations of the East. The custom was tolerated by the laws of Moses, and, in fact, no positive injunction against it is found in the whole of the Old Testament. It is questionable whether more than one was recognized as the _bona fide_ wife, the others simply being wives by right of concubinage. But if polygamy was in its strictest sense the legal custom, it soon grew unpopular, for no trace of it is met in the records of the New Testament, where all the pa.s.sages referring to marriage imply monogamy as alone lawful. The custom has been almost universal in the East, being sanctioned by all the religions existing there. The religion of Mohammed allows four wives, but the permission is rarely exercised except by the rich.

In Christian countries polygamy was never tolerated, the tenets of the Church forbidding it, though Charlemagne had two wives, and Sigbert and Chilperich also had a plurality. John of Leyden, an Anabaptist leader, was the husband of seventeen wives, and he held that it was his moral right to marry as many as he chose.

In England the punishment of polygamy was originally in the hands of the ecclesiastics. It was considered a capital crime by Edward I., but it did not come entirely under the control of the temporal power until a statute of James I. made it a felony, punishable by death. George III. made it punishable by imprisonment or transportation for seven years.

It is the offspring of licentiousness, and its advocates merely wish to give legal color to licentious habits. Every student of history will find that as soon as a nation became morally depraved, polygamy was practiced, and that monogamy was the rule in all countries truly civilized.

Polygamy has, of late years, been most shamefully revived and outrageously practiced in face of law by the Mormons. They claim it as a religious duty, and defend the system by claiming that unmarried women can in the future life reach only the position of angels who occupy in the Mormon theocratic system a very subordinate rank, being simply ministering servants to those more worthy, thus proclaiming that it is a virtual necessity of the male to practice the vilest immorality in order to advance the female to the highest place in heaven.

Mormonism is a religion founded by Joseph Smith, who was born in Sharon, E. V., Dec. 23rd, 1805, and killed at Carthage, Ill., June 27th, 1844.

It is a most singular fact that a sect like the Mormons could have been established in a country peopled with such law-abiding people as of the United States, and maintain a system of marriage, antagonistic to the law and religion of the land. Neither could they have done so if they had not possessed two great virtues, temperance and industry.

It is to be hoped that the legal process now inst.i.tuted for its abolition will effectually remove the blot from the national escutcheon.

The "Oneida Communists" are essentially polygamic, although they have no marriage system. They do not marry, and ignore all marriage codes.

Cohabitation is under no restrictions between the s.e.xes. Marriage is also not observed among the "Shakers."

MONOGAMY-WHAT IT IS.

This is the conjugal union of a male with one female only. We have seen that monogamy was coequal with civilization, and that most probably the majority of the males had but one wife, even among polygamic nations. Universal polygamy is practically impossible, the scarcity of females and the poverty of the males forbidding it. The excess of females is not so great in any country as to allow to each male more than one wife, except the male portion is depleted by long and disastrous wars. Monogamy has done more for the elevation of the female than any other custom of civilization. The rich could only afford to practice polygamy, and should the poor imitate the example it would necessarily subject the wives to a state of serfdom. In the economy of nature it is designed that the male should be the protector of the female, and that by his exertions the provision of food and raiment should be secured. In polygamous nations the female has not attained that social state that she has reached in countries where the male is ent.i.tled to but one female as his wife. Woman's highest sphere is not in the harem or zenana, but in that dignified state in which she is the sole connubial companion of but one man. It is debasing to her nature, and subversive of her dignity in the rank of humanity, to make her the equal only with others in the marital union with one male. She becomes only the true, n.o.ble and affectionate being when she is conscious of a superiority to others in the connubial companions.h.i.+p with her accepted one. The female bird chirps but for her single mate, and she is pugnaciously monogamic, as well as virtuous, allowing neither male or female at or near her home. The spirit of independence she gains by being the mate of but one male gains for her the victory over the intruders.

The physical and mental welfare of the female is also dependent upon monogamic marriage. We have demonstrated that temperate indulgence is conducive to the sanitary condition of the s.e.xes, and that absolute abstinence is opposed to the designs of nature. It is also evident that the male is not endowed with greater power, vigor or capacity than the female; therefore, confinement or limitation of the congress to the companions.h.i.+p of one male with one female, as in monogamic marriage, gives the healthy balance to the marital union. The polygamic husband must either suffer from the consequences of excessive indulgence or his wives from poverty of s.e.xual gratification; probably both would be the case.

POLYANDRY

is equally as proper as polygamy, yet it never in the history of man obtained a foothold. The system is more logical than polygamy, because the wife's dependence would be distributed between two or more husbands, in which case she would be better insured against poverty and her support would be guaranteed by greater probability.

We have now described the history and aspect of the two customs, and will conclude the subject by remarking that a man is morally and physically ent.i.tled to but one wife, and that a plurality is a great wrong to the female and in total opposition to the ordinance of nature. Wherever polygamy is the custom the female is held in slavish subjection. It only prospers in proportion to the ignorance of the s.e.x. Intelligent and civilized woman will always rebel against such debas.e.m.e.nt and servitude.

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS.