Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/300

286 an order to commit suicide, it adds in a whisper and with a sly wink: "or at least do not give any cause for scandal." Thus love gets its rights at last, but only from those who are willing to accept the hypocrisy of society, so that, instead of elevating and ennobling the character, it becomes under such conditions a cause of its deterioration, as it requires constant lying, perjury and dissimulation. A curious classification of individualities is produced by its operation in wedded life; the best and finest characters, exactly those which have the most value for the race as breeding material, are the very ones who scorn to accept any immoral and vulgar compromises, and as they will not break the solemn vows they pledged at the altar and have perhaps neither the decision nor means to openly and legally dissolve the marriage contract, the love that has entered into their lives too late is the cause of their ruin, and thus is of no benefit to the race; the every-day natures, on the other hand, whose perpetuation is of slight importance to the race, avoid the pains of martyrdom and satisfy their hearts at the expense of their ethical conscience.

The conventional marriage, nine times out of ten, as contracted among the civilized peoples of Europe, is hence, a deeply immoral relation, fraught with the most fatal results for the future of society. It compels those who enter into it, to find themselves involved sooner or later, in a conflict between forsworn vows and indestructible love, and gives them only two alternatives, vulgarity or ruin. Instead of its being a source for our kind to renew its youth, it is the means of its slow suicide.

The fact that matrimony, originally intended to be the single permanent form of love between man and