CHAPTER II
STARTING OUT ON OUR QUEST
Here is one thing that we know: People want to be happy in marriage, and from what we know of certain so called happy marriages we feel they have the right to expect to be happy.
The only plausible reason for the creation of human beings is that they were created to be happy.
Since marriage has proved in many cases to be one of the greatest agencies in all the world to bring about happiness, the question, of universal interest, is, What is the surest way to secure happiness through marriage?
Perhaps the most direct way to get at our subject is to ask what is the purpose back of marriage.
Biologically it is unmistakably the procreation of offspring.
In order that so important an end as the continuance of the human race on earth may be secured the relationship between man and woman is made so pleasurable that it cannot easily be cast aside.
To do so is to develop all kinds of so-called psychoses, or nervous and mental upsets, which prevent the living of a perfectly normal life.
Biologically the end of the perpetuation of the race is secured by what we know as the sex instinct, which has three developments: First, love of the opposite sex in general; second, love of one of the opposite sex, or what is called the mating instinct; and, third, love of offspring.
From the point of view of the human being love of the opposite sex is the reason for marriage. But that covers a great deal of territory.
Love of the opposite sex is with many, in the crudest and most animal-like stage, merely sense satisfaction, a satisfaction of the kind that men know as brute lust.
Now, here comes in an interpretation of marriage. With many marriage is only sensual and brute-like sex gratification. And biologically it will secure the end of the procreation of offspring, the continuance of the race. If we were animals only, and brutal animals at that, unworthy of our human inheritance, lacking in the finer feelings of the cultivated human being, let us say, uncouth, such a marriage would suffice, after a fashion, but leave us vaguely and miserably unsatisfied.
Something within us causes us to turn away from the suggestion of such a marriage, but let us not call it a marriage, instead, a gratification of pure animal lust.
And yet it is perfectly possible that the purely lustful spirit—the beastlike spirit—enters into many so-called marriages between human beings. Sometimes it exists in both parties to the union, sometimes only in the man, sometimes only in the woman.
If it exists in one only, it is unspeakably offensive to the one in whom it does not exist.
But there are myriads of others who would go further in what seems like pure animal gratification, and because of the pre-eminently human aesthetic instincts enhance the enjoyment by reason of association with enchanting surroundings.
They would find an added delight in the appeal of beauty in the woman or the man. They would intoxicate themselves further with the glow of wine and the stimulation of music. Perhaps there would be the preliminary of delicate feasting. Even there might be the beauty of sensuous poetry.
All of these delights are made use of sometimes in order to lift up what would otherwise be merely brutal lust, but which is at best largely animalism, for it has little of the high flavor of sincere and unselfish friendship, little of the better part of men and women that we vaguely call the spiritual. It has as its end chiefly the gratification of the physical man.
And with this kind of pure animal-like gratification there goes the love of variety. There may be indeed the promise of permanence in the relationship, but it is too often found to be merely promiscuous mating.
Some men, and some women, never rise to what is characteristic of some of the higher animals, namely, love of one of the sex, fidelity to what we know among humans as the marriage vow.
It is a characteristic of the lust of variety that a new face is needed constantly to keep up the stimulation of sense enjoyment, and, while such a union may produce offspring and thus serve the biological end, it does not do so in the way best calculated to provide for the offspring or the discarded mate. And these factors must be kept in mind.
Thus we see that merely the biological purpose in marriage—the procreation of offspring and the continuance of the race—is not sufficient in itself to justify mere animal-like lust or promiscuous mating. For human beings the truly human elements must enter in order that there may be a relationship worthy of being called human marriage.
Actually it is quite conceivable that there may be true marriage when the biological end of offspring is not possible.
Now we are perceiving that the biological reason for marriage—as important as it may be for those who have the love of offspring, and also for nature's purpose of the continuance of the race—may not enter in at all in what can, from the human viewpoint, be called a genuine marriage of the human variety.
But at the bottom of marriage there is always that instinct which is implanted by the Creator for the sake of the perpetuation of the race.