Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/303

Rh they allow love to influence them in the selection of a husband or wife? Because humanity would be better off by it? What do they care for humanity? What has humanity done for them? Does it satisfy their appetite when they are hungry? Does it give them work when they can find no work to do? Does it feed their children when they are clamoring for bread? And if they die will it support their widows, their orphans? No. And as it does not fulfill any of these duties towards them, they have only their individual selves to consider, and look upon love as an agreeable pastime and upon marriage as a means of increasing their share of the goods of this world.

The result of these ideas is a speedy degeneration of the civilized part of humanity, but their direct, immediate victim is woman. Man does not suffer so very much by such a condition of affairs. If he does not have the ability or the courage to assume the responsibility of founding a family in the midst of a society which is hostile and piratical, instead of being kind and encouraging as would be more natural, he remains unmarried but without renouncing the full gratification of all his instincts. Bachelorhood is far from being synonymous with celibacy. The bachelor has the tacit permission of society to procure the pleasures of woman's companionship when and where he can, it calls his selfish enjoyments successes, and surrounds them with a kind of romantic halo, so that the amiable vice of a Don Juan arouses a sentiment that is composed of envy, sympathy and secret admiration. If he marries without love, to procure certain substantial advantages, he is allowed by custom to seek right and left the pleasures which he does not find in the society of his wife, or if this is not exactly allowed, it is yet not considered a crime which should exclude him from intercourse with respectable people. Quite the reverse is the case where