We should have more people of what I may
call the "broken-in" type than an easier release would create, but to
many thinkers the spectacle of a human being thoroughly "broken-in" is
in itself extremely satisfactory. A few more crimes of desperation
perhaps might occur, to balance against an almost universal effort to
achieve contentment and reconciliation. We should hear more of the
"natural law" permitting murder by the jealous husband or by the jealous
wife, and the traffic in poisons would need a sedulous attention--but
even there the impossibility of re-marriage would operate to restrain
the impatient. On the whole, I can imagine the world rubbing along very
well with marriage as unaccommodating as a perfected steel trap.
Exceptional people might suffer or sin wildly--to the general amusement
or indignation.
But when once we part from the idea of such a rigid and eternal
marriage bond--and the law of every civilised country and the general
thought and sentiment everywhere have long since done so--then the whole
question changes. If marriage is not so absolutely sacred a bond, if it
is not an eternal bond, but a bond we may break on this account or that,
then at once we put the question on a different footing. If we may
terminate it for adultery or cruelty, or any cause whatever, if we may
suspend the intimacy of husband and wife by separation orders and the
like, if we recognise their separate property and interfere between them
and their children to ensure the health and education of the latter,
then we open at once the whole question of a terminating agreement.
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