Page:Annie Besant, Marriage A Plea for Reform, second edition 1882.djvu/64

 injury to a gentle spirit), he I say who therefore seeks to part, is one who highly honours the married life, and would not stain it; and the reasons which now move him to divorce, are equall to the best of those that could first warrant him to marry" (p. 10). In the advocacy of such views marriage is elevated, not degraded; no countenance is given to those who would fain destroy the idea of the durable union between one man and one woman. Monogamy appears to me to be the result of civilization, of personal dignity, of cultured feeling; loyalty of one man to one woman is, to me, the highest sexual ideal. The more civilized the nature the more durable and exclusive does the marriage union become; in the lower ranges of animal life difference of sex is enough to excite passion: there is no individuality of of [sic] choice. Among savages it is much the same: it is the female, not the woman, who is loved, although the savage rises higher than the lower brutes, and is attracted by individual beauty. The civilised man and woman need more than sex-difference and beauty of form; they seek satisfaction for mind, heart, and tastes as well as for body; each portion the complex nature requires its answer in its mate. Hence it arises that true marriage is exclusive, and that prostitution is revolting to the noble of both sexes, since in prostitution love is shorn of his fairest attributes, and passion, which is only his wings, is made the sole representative of the divinity. The fleeting connections supposed by some Free Love theorists are steps backward and not forward; they offer no possibility of home, no education of the character, no guarantee for the training of the children. The culture both of father and of mother, of the two natures of which its own is the resultant, is necessary to the healthy development of the child; it cannot be deprived of either without injury to its full and perfect growth.

But just as true marriage is invaluable, so is unreal marriage deteriorating in its effects on all concerned: therefore, where mistake has been made, it is important to the gravest interests of society that such mistake should be readily remediable, without injury to the character of either of those concerned in it. Freed from the union which injures both, the man and woman may seek for their fit helpmeets, and in happy marriages may become joyful servants of humanity, worthy parents of the citizens of tomorrow. Men and women must know conjugal, before they can know true parental, love; each must see in the child the features of the