Youth and Egolatry Part 7

Myself: I often think I should have been happier if I had been impotent.

My Hearers: How can you say such a terrible thing?

Myself: Why not? To a man like me, s.e.x is nothing but a source of misery, shame and cheap hypocrisy, as it is to most of us who are obliged to get on without sufficient means under this civilization of ours. Now you know why I think that I should have been better off if I had been impotent.

UPON THE SUPPOSED MORALITY OF MARRIAGE

Single life is said to be selfish and detestable. Certainly it is immoral. But what of marriage? Is it as moral as it is painted?

I am one who doubts it.

Marriage, like all other social inst.i.tutions of consequence, is surrounded by a whole series of common a.s.sumptions that cry out to be cleared up.

There is a pompous and solemn side to marriage, and there is a private museum side.

Marriage poses as an harmonious general concord in which religion, society, and nature join.

But is it anything of the kind? It would appear to be doubtful. If the sole purpose of marriage is to rear children, a man ought to live with a woman only until she becomes pregnant, and, after that moment, he ought not to touch her. But here begins the second part. The woman bears a baby; the baby is nourished by the mother's milk. The man has no right to co-habit with his wife during this period either, because it will be at the risk of depriving the child of its natural source of nutriment.

In consequence, a man must either co-habit with his wife once in two years, or else there will be some default in the marriage.

What is he to do? What is the moral course? Remember that three factors have combined to impose the marriage. One, the most far-reaching today, is economic; another, which is also extremely important, is social, and the third, now rapidly losing its hold, but still not without influence, is religious. The three forces together attempt to mould nature to their will.

Economic pressure and the high cost of living make against the having of children. They encourage default.

"How are we to have all these children?" the married couple asks. "How can we feed and educate them?"

Social pressure also tends in the same direction. Religious morality, however, still persists in its idea of sin, although the potency of this sanction is daily becoming less, even to the clerical eye.

If nature had a vote, it would surely be cast in favour of polygamy. Man is forever s.e.xual, and in equal degree, until the verge of decrepitude.

Woman pa.s.ses through the stages of fecundation, pregnancy, and lactation.

There can be no doubt but that the most convenient, the most logical and the most moral system of s.e.xual intercourse, naturally, is polygamy.

But the economic subdues the natural. Who proposes to have five wives when he cannot feed one?

Society has made man an exclusively social product, and set him apart from nature.

What can the husband and wife do, especially when they are poor? Must they overload themselves with children, and then deliver them up to poverty and neglect because G.o.d has given them, or shall they limit their number?

If my opinion is asked, I advise a limit--although it may be artificial and immoral.

Marriage presents us with this simple choice: we may either elect the slow, filthy death of the indigent workingman, of the carabineer who lives in a shack which teems with children, or else the clean life of the French, who limit their offspring.

The middle cla.s.s everywhere today is accepting the latter alternative.

Marriage is stripping off its morality in the bushes, and it is well that it should do so.

THE SOVEREIGN CROWD

A strong man may either dominate and subdue the sovereign crowd when he confronts it, as he would a wild beast, or he may breathe his thoughts and ideas into it, which is only another form of domination.

As I am not strong enough to do either, I shun the sovereign ma.s.ses, so as not to become too keenly conscious of their collective b.e.s.t.i.a.lity and ill temper.

THE REMEDY

Every man fancies that he has something of the doctor in him, and considers himself competent to advise some sort of a cure, so I come now with a remedy for the evils of life. My remedy is constant action. It is a cure as old as the world, and it may be as useful as any other, and doubtless it is as futile as all the rest. As a matter of fact, it is no remedy at all.

The springs of action lie all within ourselves, and they derive from the vigour and health which we have inherited from our fathers. The man who possesses them may draw on them whenever he will, but the man who is without them can never acquire them, no matter how widely he may seek.

III

THE EXTRARADIUS

The extraradius of a writer may be said to be made up of his literary opinions and inclinations. I wish to expose the literary cell from the nucleus out and to unfold it, instead of proceeding in from the covering.

The term may seem pedantic and histological, but it has the attraction to my mind of a reminiscence of student days.

RHETORIC AND ANTI-RHETORIC

If I were to formulate my opinions upon style, I should say: "Imitations of other men's styles are bad, but a man's own style is good."

There is a store of common literary finery, almost all of which is in constant use and has become familiar.

When a writer lays hands on any of this finery spontaneously, he makes it his own, and the familiar flower blossoms as it does in Nature.

When an author's inspiration does not proceed from within out, but rather from without in, then he becomes at once a bad rhetorician.

I am one of those writers who employ the least possible amount of this common store of rhetoric. There are various reasons for my being anti-rhetorical. In the first place I do not believe that the pages of a bad writer can be improved by following general rules; if they do gain in one respect, they lose inevitably in another.

So much for one reason; but I have others.