<p><SPAN name="VOLUME_II" id="VOLUME_II"></SPAN></p>
<h1>THE BOOK OF LIFE</h1>
<h2>VOLUME TWO: LOVE AND SOCIETY</h2>
<h2><SPAN name="PART_THREE" id="PART_THREE"></SPAN>PART THREE<br/><br/> THE BOOK OF LOVE</h2>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXVIII<br/><br/> THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p>(Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their
relation to the ideal of monogamous love.)</p>
</div>
<p>Just as human beings through wrong religious beliefs torture one
another, and wreck their lives and happiness; just as through wrong
eating and other physical habits they make disease and misery for
themselves; just so they suffer and perish for lack of the most
elementary knowledge concerning the sex relationship. The difference is
that in the field of religious ideas it is now permissible to impart the
truth one possesses. If I tell you there is no devil, and that believing
this will not cause you to suffer in an eternity of sulphur and
brimstone, no one will be able to burn me at the stake, even though he
might like to do so. If I advise you that it is not harmful to eat
beefsteak on Friday, or to eat thoroughly cooked pork any day of the
week, neither the archbishops nor the rabbis nor the vegetarians will be
able to lock me in a dungeon. But if I should impart to you the simplest
and most necessary bit of knowledge concerning the facts of your sex
life—things which every man and woman must know if we are to stop
breeding imbecility and degeneracy in the world—then I should be
liable, under federal statutes, to pay a fine of $5,000, and to serve a
term of five years in a federal penitentiary. Scarcely a week passes
that I do not receive a letter from someone asking for information about
such matters; but I dare not answer the letters, because I know there
are agencies, maintained and paid by religious superstition, employing
spies to trap people into the breaking of this law.</p>
<p>I shall tell you here as much as I am permitted to tell, in the simplest
language and the most honest spirit. I believe that human beings are
meant to be happy on this earth, and to avoid misery and disease. I
believe that they are given the powers of intelligence in order to seek
the ways of happiness, and I believe that it is a worthy work to give
them the knowledge they need in order to find happiness.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_004" id="vol_ii_page_004"></SPAN></p>
<p>At the outset of this Book of Love we are going to examine the existing
facts of the sex relationships of men and women in present-day society.
We shall discover that amid all the false and dishonest thinking of
mankind, there is nowhere more falsity and dishonesty than here. The
whole world is a gigantic conspiracy of "hush," and the orthodox and
respectable of the world are like worshippers of some god, who spend
their day-time burning incense before the altar, and in the night-time
steal the sacred jewels and devour the consecrated offerings. These
worshippers confront you with the question, do you believe in marriage;
and they make the assumption that the institution of marriage exists, or
at some time has existed in the world. But if you wish to do any sound
thinking about this subject, you must get one thing clear at the outset;
the institution of marriage is an ideal which has been preached and
taught, but which has never anywhere, in any society, at any stage of
human progress, actually existed as the general practice of mankind.
What has existed and still exists is a very different institution, which
I shall here describe as marriage-plus-prostitution.</p>
<p>By this statement I do not mean to deny that there are many women, and a
few men, who have been monogamous all their lives; nor that there are
many couples living together happily in monogamous marriage. What I mean
is that, considering society as a whole, wherever you find the
institution of marriage, you also find, co-existent therewith and
complementary thereto, the institution of prostitution. Of this double
arrangement one part is recognized, and written into the law; the other
part is hidden, and prohibited by law; but those who have to do with
enforcing the law all know that it exists, and practically all of them
consider it inevitable, and a great many derive income from it. So I
say: if you believe in marriage-plus-prostitution, that is your right;
but if marriage is what you believe in, then your task is to consider
such questions as these: Is marriage a possible thing? Can it ever
become the sex arrangement of any society? What are the forces which
have so far prevented it from prevailing, and how can these forces be
counteracted?</p>
<p>It is my belief that monogamous love is the most desirable of human sex
relationships, the most fruitful in happiness and spiritual development.
The laws and institutions of civilized society pretend to defend this
relationship, but the briefest<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_005" id="vol_ii_page_005"></SPAN> study of the facts will convince anyone
that these laws and institutions are not really meant to protect
monogamous love. What they are is a device of the property-holding male
to secure his property rights to women, and more especially to secure
himself as to the paternity of his heirs. In primitive society, where
land and other sources of wealth were held in common, and sex monogamy
was unknown, there was no way to determine paternity, and no reason for
doing so. But under the system of private property and class privilege,
it is necessary for some one man to support a child, if it is to be
supported; and when a man has fought hard, and robbed hard, and traded
hard, and acquired wealth, he does not want to spend it in maintaining
another man's child. That he should let himself be fooled into doing so
is one of the greatest humiliations his fellowmen can imagine. If you
read Shakespeare's plays, and look up the meaning of old words, so as to
understand old witticisms and allusions, you will discover that this was
the stock jest of Shakespeare's time.</p>
<p>In order to protect himself from such ridicule, the man maintained in
ancient times his right to kill the faithless woman with cruel tortures.
He maintains today the right to deprive her of her children, and of all
share in his property, even though she may have helped to earn it. But
until quite recent times, the beginning of the revolt of women, there
was never any corresponding penalty for faithlessness in husbands. Under
the English law today, the husband may divorce his wife for infidelity,
but the wife must prove infidelity plus cruelty, and the courts have
held that the cruelty must consist in knocking her down. While I was in
England, the highest court rendered a decision that a man who brought
his mistress to his home and compelled his wife to wait upon her was not
committing "cruelty" in the meaning of the English law.</p>
<p>This is what is known as the "double standard," and the double standard
prevails everywhere under the system of marriage-plus-prostitution, and
proves that capitalist "monogamy" is not a spiritual ideal, but a matter
of class privilege. It is a breach of honor for the ruling class male to
tamper with the wife of his friend; it is frequently dangerous for him
to tamper with the young females of his own class; but it is in general
practice taken for granted that the young females of lower classes are
his legitimate prey. In England a man may have a marriage annulled, if
he can prove that<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_006" id="vol_ii_page_006"></SPAN> the woman he married had what is called a "past"; but
everybody takes it for granted that the man has had a "past"; it is
covered by the polite phrase, "sowing his wild oats." Wherever among the
ruling class you find men bold enough to discuss the facts of the sex
order they have set up, you find the idea, expressed or implied, that
this "wild oats" is a necessary and inevitable part of this order, and
that without it the order would break down. The English philosopher,
Lecky, making an elaborate study of morals through the ages, speaks of
the prostitute in the following frank language:</p>
<p>"Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient
guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless
happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their
untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have
known the agony of remorse and despair. On that one degraded and ignoble
form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with
shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the
eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."</p>
<p>I invite you to study these sentences and understand them fully.
Remember that they are the opinion of the most learned historian of sex
customs who has ever written in English; a man whose authority is
recognized in our schools, whose books are in every college library.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky is not in any sense a revolutionist; he is
a conventional English scholar, an upholder of English law and order and
patriotism. He is not of my school of thought, but of those who now own
the world and run it. I quote him, because he tells in plain language
what kind of world they have made; I invite you to study his words, and
then judge my statement that the sex arrangement under which we live in
modern society is not monogamous love, but marriage-plus-prostitution.</p>
<p>It is my hope to point the way to a higher system. I should like to call
it marriage; but perhaps it would be more precise to call it
marriage-minus-prostitution. In working it out, we shall have to think
for ourselves, and discard all formulas. It is obvious that our
present-day religious creeds, ethical ideals, legal codes, and social
rewards and punishments have been powerless to protect marriage, or to
make it the rule in sex relationships. So we shall have to begin at the<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_007" id="vol_ii_page_007"></SPAN>
beginning and find new reasons for monogamous love, a new basis of
marriage other than the protection of private property. We shall have to
inform ourselves as to the fundamental purposes of sex; we shall have to
ask ourselves: What are the factors which determine rightness and
wrongness in the sex relationship? What is love, and what ought it to
be? These questions we shall try to approach without any fixed ideas
whatever. We shall decide them by the same tests that we have used in
our thinking about God and immortality, health and disease. We shall
ask, not what our ancestors believed, not what God teaches us, not what
the law ordains, not what is "respectable," nor yet what is "advanced,"
according to the claim of modern sex revolutionists and "free lovers."
We shall ask ourselves, what are the facts. We shall ask, what can be
made to work in practice, what can justify itself by the tests of reason
and common sense.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_008" id="vol_ii_page_008"></SPAN></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXIX<br/><br/> THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p>(Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the
stages of its development in human society.)</p>
</div>
<p>What, in the most elemental form, is sex? It is a difference of function
which makes it necessary for two organisms to take part in the
reproduction of the species. The purpose, or at any rate the effect, of
this sex difference is the mixing of characteristics and qualities. If
the sex relationship were unnecessary to reproduction, variations might
begin, and be propagated and carried to extremes in one line of
inheritance, without ever affecting the rest of the species. Very soon
there would be no species, or rather an infinity of them; each line of
descent would fly apart, and become a group all by itself. You have
perhaps heard people comment on the fact that blondes so frequently
prefer brunettes, and that tall men are apt to marry short women, and
vice versa. This is perhaps nature's way of keeping the type uniform, of
spreading qualities widely and testing them thoroughly. Nature is
continually trying out the powers of every individual in every species,
and by the process of sexual selection she chooses, for the reproduction
of the species, the individuals which are best fitted for survival.
This, of course, refers to nature, considered apart from man. In human
society, as I shall presently show, sexual selection has been distorted,
and partly suppressed.</p>
<p>Sex differentiation and sexual selection exist almost universally
throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, everywhere save in the
lowest forms of being. They take strange and startling forms, and like
everything else in nature manifest amazing ingenuity. People who wish to
prove this or that about human sex relations will advance arguments from
nature; but as a matter of fact we can learn nothing whatever from
nature, except her determination to preserve the products of her
activity and to keep them up to standard. Sometimes nature will give the
precedence in power, speed and beauty to the male, and sometimes to the
female. She<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_009" id="vol_ii_page_009"></SPAN> is perfectly ruthless, and willing in the accomplishment of
her purpose to destroy the individuals of either sex. She will content
the most rabid feminist by causing the female spider to devour her mate
when his purpose has been accomplished; or by causing the male bee to
fall from his mating in the air, a disemboweled shell.</p>
<p>As for man, he has won his supremacy over nature by his greater power to
combine in groups; by his more intense gregarious, or herd instincts,
which enabled him to fight and destroy creatures which would have
exterminated him if he had fought them alone. So in primitive society
everywhere, we find that the individual is subordinated to the group,
and the "folkways" give but little heed to personal rights. Very
thorough investigations have been made into the life of primitive man in
many parts of the world, and the anthropologists are now arguing over
the exact meaning of the data. We shall not here attempt to decide among
them, but rest content with the statement that communism and tribal
ownership is a widespread social form among primitive man, so much so as
to suggest that it is an early stage in social evolution.</p>
<p>And this communism includes, not merely property, but sex. In the very
earliest days there was often no barrier whatever to the sex
relationship; not even between brothers and sisters, nor between parents
and children. In fact, we find savages who do not know that the sex
relationship has anything to do with procreation. But as knowledge
increases, sex "tabus" develop, some wise, and some foolish. From causes
not entirely clear, but which we discuss in Chapter XLVIII, there
gradually evolves a widespread form of sex relationship of primitive
man, the system of the "gens," as it is called. This is the Latin word
for family, but it does not mean family in the narrow sense of mother
and father and children, but in the broad sense of all those who have
blood relationship, however far removed—uncles and aunts and cousins,
as far as memory can trace. In primitive communism a man is not
permitted to enter into the sex relationship with a woman of the same
gens, but with all the women of some other gens. It is difficult for us
to imagine a society in which all the men named Jones would be married
to all the women named Smith; but that was the way whole races of
mankind lived for many thousands of years.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_010" id="vol_ii_page_010"></SPAN></p>
<p>In that primitive communist society, the woman was generally the equal
of the man. It is true that she did the drudgery of the camp, but the
man, on the other hand, faced the hardships of battle and the chase on
land and sea. The woman was as big as the man, and except when
handicapped by pregnancy, as strong as the man; she was as much
respected, if not more so. Her children bore her name, and were under
her control, and she was accustomed to assert herself in all affairs of
the tribe. In Frederick O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas," you
may read a comical story of a journey this traveler made into the
interior of one of the cannibal islands. Everywhere he was treated with
courtesy and hospitality, but was embarrassed by continual offers from
would-be wives. In one case a powerful cannibal lady, whose advances he
rejected, picked him up and proceeded to carry him off, and he was quite
helpless in her grasp; he might have been a cannibal husband today, if
it had not been for the intervention of his fellow travelers.</p>
<p>The basis of this sex equality under primitive communism is easy to
understand. All goods belonged to the tribe, and were shared alike
according to need. Children were the tribe's most precious possession;
therefore the woman suffered little handicap from having a child to bear
and feed. Primitive woman would bear her child by the roadside, and pick
it up in her arms, and continue her journey; and when she needed food,
she did not have to beg for it—if there was food for anyone, there was
food for her and her child. She did her share of the gathering and
preparing of food, because that was the habit and law of her being; she
had energies, and had never heard of the idea of not using them.</p>
<p>This primitive communism generally disappears as the tribe progresses.
We cannot be sure of all the stages of its disappearance, or of the
causes, but in a general way we can say that it gives way before the
spread of slavery. In the beginning primitive man does not have any
slaves, he does not have sufficient foresight or self-restraint for
that. When he kills his enemies in battle, he builds a fire and roasts
their flesh and eats them; and those whom he captures alive, he binds
fast and takes with him, to be sacrificed to his voodoo gods. But as he
comes to more settled ways of living, and as the tribe grows larger, it
occurs to the chiefs in battle that the captives would be glad to give
their labor in return<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_011" id="vol_ii_page_011"></SPAN> for their lives, and that it would be convenient
to have some people to do the hard and dirty work. So gradually there
comes to be a class at the bottom of society, and another class at the
top. Those who capture the slaves and keep them at work lay claim to the
products of their labor—at first better weapons and personal
adornments, then separate homes for the chiefs and priests, separate
gardens, separate flocks and herds, and—what more natural?—separate
women.</p>
<p>This process becomes complete when the tribe settles down to
agriculture, and the ruling classes take possession of the land. When
once the land is privately owned, classes are fixed, and class
distinctions become the most prominent fact in society. And step by step
as this happens, we see women beaten down, from the position of the
cannibal lady, who could ask for the man she wanted and carry him off by
force if necessary, to the position of the modern woman, who is
physically weak, emotionally unstable, economically dependent, and
socially repressed. You may resent such phrases, but all you have to do
is to read the laws of civilized countries, written into the statute
books by men to define the rights and duties of women; you will see that
everywhere, before the recent feminist revolt, women were classified
under the law with children and imbeciles.</p>
<p>Maternity imposes on woman a heavy burden, and before the discovery of
birth control, a burden that is continuous. For nine months she carries
the child in her body, and then for a year or two she carries it in her
arms, or on her back; and by that time there is another child, and this
continues until she is broken down. Having this burden, she cannot
possibly compete with the unburdened male for the possession of
property. So wherever there is economic competition; wherever certain
individuals or classes in the tribe or group are allowed to seize and
hold the land; wherever the products of labor cease to be the community
property, and become private property, the objects of economic strife;
then inevitably and by natural process, woman comes to be placed among
those who cannot protect themselves—that is, among the children and the
imbeciles and the slaves. Of course, some children are well cared for,
and so are some imbeciles, and some slaves, and some women. But they are
cared for as a matter of favor, not as a matter of their own power. They
proceed no longer as the cannibal lady, but<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_012" id="vol_ii_page_012"></SPAN> by adopting and cultivating
the slave virtues, by making themselves agreeable to their masters, by
flattering their masters' vanity and sensuality—in other words by
exercising what we are accustomed to call "feminine charm."</p>
<p>From early barbaric society up to the present day, we observe that there
are classes of women, just as there are classes of men. The position of
these classes changes within certain limits, but in broad outline the
conditions are fixed, and may be easily defined. There is, first of all,
the ruling class woman. She must have birth; she may or may not have
wealth, according as to whether the laws of that society or tribe permit
her to have possessions of her own, or to inherit anything from her
parents. If she has no wealth, then she will need beauty. She is the
woman who is selected by the ruling class man to bear his name and his
children, and to have charge of the household where these children are
reared, and trained for the inheriting of their father's wealth and the
carrying on of his position. This confers upon the ruling class woman
great dignity, and makes her a person of responsibility. She rules, not
merely over the slaves of the household, but over men of inferior social
classes, and in a few cases an exceptionally able woman has become a
queen, and ruled over men of her own class. This ruling class woman has
been known through all the ages by a special name, and the ways and
customs regarding her have been studied in an entertaining book, "The
Lady," by Emily James Putnam.</p>
<p>Next in privilege and position to the "lady" is the mistress, the woman
who is selected by the ruling class man, not primarily to bear his
children, but to entertain and divert him. She may, of course, bear
children also. In barbaric societies, and up to quite recent times, the
importance of the ruling class man was indicated by the number of
concubines he had, and the position of these women was hardly inferior
to that of the wife or queen. In the days of the French monarchy, the
king's mistress was frequently more important than the queen; she was a
woman of ability, maintaining her supremacy in the intrigues of the
court. In ancient Greek society, the "hetairae" were a recognized class,
and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was the most brilliant and most
conspicuous woman in Athens. In modern France, the position of the
mistress is recognized by the phrase <SPAN name="vol_ii_page_013" id="vol_ii_page_013"></SPAN>"demi-monde," or half-world. The
American plutocracy has developed upon a superstructure of Puritanism,
and therefore, in America, hypocrisy is necessary. But in the great
cities of America, the vast majority of the ruling class men keep
mistresses before marriage, and a great many keep them afterwards; and
these mistresses are coming to be more and more openly flaunted, and to
acquire more and more of what is called "social position." It is
possible now in the "smart set" for a lady to accept the status of
mistress, delicately veiled, without losing caste thereby, and actresses
and other free lance women who got their start in life by taking the
position of mistress, are coming more and more to be recognized as
"ladies," and to be received into what are called the "best circles."</p>
<p>There remains to be considered the position of the lower class women. In
barbarous society these women were very little different from slaves.
They had no rights of their own, except such rights as their master man
chose to allow them for his own convenience. They were sold in marriage
by their parents, and they went where they were sold, and obeyed their
new master. They became his household drudges, and reserved their
affections for him; if they failed to do this, he stoned them to death,
or strangled them with a cord and tied them in a sack and threw them
into the river.</p>
<p>And, of course, the rights of the master man yielded to the rights of
men of higher classes. The king or nobleman could take any woman he
wished at any time, and he made laws to this effect and enforced them.
In feudal society the lord of the manor claimed the right of the first
night with the wives of his serfs; this was one of the ruling class
privileges which was abolished in the French revolution. Wherever the
French revolution did not succeed in affecting land tenure, the right of
the land owner to prey upon his tenant girls continues as a custom, even
though it is not written in the law, and would be denied by the
hypocritical. It prevails in Poland, as you may discover by reading
Sienkiewicz's "Whirlpools"; it prevails in England, as you may discover
from Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." You will find that it prevails
in every part of the world where women have poverty and men have wealth
and prestige, dress suits and automobiles. You will find it wherever
there are leisure class hotels, or colleges, or other gatherings of
ruling class young males. You<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_014" id="vol_ii_page_014"></SPAN> will find it in the theatrical and moving
picture worlds. It is well understood in the theatrical world of
Broadway that the woman "star" in the profession gets her start in life
by becoming the mistress of a manager or "angel." In the moving picture
world of Southern California it is a recognized convention, known to
everyone familiar with the business, that a young girl parts with her
virtue in exchange for an important job.<SPAN name="vol_ii_page_015" id="vol_ii_page_015"></SPAN></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />