We may expect, then,
that marriages which are maintained by economic pressure alone
will dissolve when that pressure is removed; and as all the
parties to them will certainly not accept a celibate life, the law
must sanction the dissolution in order to prevent a recurrence of
the scandal which has moved the Government to appoint the
Commission now sitting to investigate the marriage question: the
scandal, that is, of a great number matter of the evils of our
marriage law, to take care of the pence and let the pounds take
care of themselves. The crimes and diseases of marriage will force
themselves on public attention by their own virulence. I mention
them here only because they reveal certain habits of thought and
feeling with regard to marriage of which we must rid ourselves if
we are to act sensibly when we take the necessary reforms in hand.
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
First among these is the habit of allowing ourselves to be bound
not only by the truths of the Christian religion but by the
excesses and extravagances which the Christian movement acquired
in its earlier days as a violent reaction against what it still
calls paganism. By far the most dangerous of these, because it is
a blasphemy against life, and, to put it in Christian terms, an
accusation of indecency against God, is the notion that sex, with
all its operations, is in itself absolutely an obscene thing, and
that an immaculate conception is a miracle.
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