that it will recognize the sacred and sacramental character of the sexual relationship, and it will resemble the civil conception in that it will insist that marriage, so far as it involves procreation, shall be publicly registered by the State. But in opposition to the Church it will recognize that marriage, in so far as it is purely a sexual relationship, is a private matter the conditions of which must be left to the persons who alone are concerned in it; and in opposition to the civil theory it will recognize that marriage is in its essence a fact and not a contract, though it may give rise to contracts, so long as such contracts do not touch that essential fact. And in one respect it will go beyond either the ecclesiastical conception or the civil conception. Man has in recent times gained control of his own procreative powers, and that control involves a shifting of the centre of gravity of marriage, in so far as marriage is an affair of the State, from the vagina to the child which is the fruit of the womb. Marriage as a state institution will centre, not around the sexual relationship, but around the child which is the outcome of that relationship. In so far as marriage is an inviolable public contract it will be of such a nature that it will be capable of automatically covering with its protection every child that is born into the world, so that every child may possess a legal mother and a legal father. On the one side, therefore, marriage is tending to become less stringent; on the other side it is tending to become more stringent. On the personal side it is a sacred and intimate relationship with which the State has no concern; on the social side it is the assumption of the responsible public sponsorship of a new member of the State. Some among us are working to further one of these aspects of marriage, some to further the other aspect. Both are indispensable to establish a perfect harmony. It is necessary to hold the two aspects of marriage apart, in order to do equal justice to the individual and to society, but in so far as marriage approaches its ideal state those two aspects become one.
We have now completed the discussion of marriage as it presents itself to the modern man born in what in mediæval days was called Christendom. It is not an easy subject to discuss. It is indeed a very difficult subject, and only after many years is it possible to detect the main drift of its apparently opposing and confused currents when one is oneself in the midst of them. To an Englishman it is, perhaps, peculiarly difficult, for the Englishman is nothing if not insular; in that fact lie whatever virtues he possesses, as well as their reverse sides.[374] Yet it is worth while to attempt to climb to a height from which we can view the stream of social tendency in its true proportions and estimate its direction. It is necessary to do so if we value our mental peace in an age when men's minds are agitated by many petty movements which have nothing to do with their great temporal interests, to say nothing of their eternal interests. When we have attained a wide vision of the solid biological facts of life, when we have grasped the great historical streams of tradition,--which together make up the map of human affairs,--we can face serenely the little social transitions which take place in our own age, as they have taken place in every age.
FOOTNOTES: [312] Rosenthal, of Breslau, from the legal side, goes so far as to argue ("Grundfragen des Eheproblems," _Die Neue Generation_, Dec., 1908), that the intention of procreation is essential to the conception of legal marriage.
[314] E.D. Cope, "The Marriage Problem," _Open Court_, Nov., 1888.
[316] Wächter, _Eheschiedungen_, pp. 95 et seq.; Esmein, _Marriage en Droit Canonique_, vol. i, p. 6; Howard, _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. ii, p. 15. Howard (in agreement with Lecky) considers that the freedom of divorce was only abused by a small section of the Roman population, and that such abuse, so far as it existed, was not the cause of any decline of Roman morals.
[317] The opinions of the Christian Fathers were very varied, and they were sometimes doubtful about them; see, e.g., the opinions collected by Cranmer and enumerated by Burnet, _History of Reformation_ (ed. Nares), vol. ii, p. 91.
[318] Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, enacted a strict and peculiar divorce law (allowing a wife to divorce her husband only when he was a homicide, a poisoner, or a violator of sepulchres), which could not be maintained. In 497, therefore, Anastasius decreed divorce by mutual consent. This was abolished by Justinian, who only allowed divorce for various specified causes, among them, however, including the husband's adultery. These restrictions proved unworkable, and Justinian's successor and nephew, Justin, restored divorce by mutual consent. Finally, in 870, Leo the Philosopher returned to Justinian's enactment (see, e.g., Smith and Cheetham, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, arts. "Adultery" and "Marriage").
[319] The element of reverence in the early German attitude towards women and the privileges which even the married woman enjoyed, so far as Tacitus can be considered a reliable guide, seem to have been the surviving vestiges of an earlier social state on a more matriarchal basis. They are most distinct at the dawn of German history. From the first, however, though divorce by mutual consent seems to have been possible, German custom was pitiless to the married woman who was unfaithful, sterile, or otherwise offended, though for some time after the introduction of Christianity it was no offence for the German husband to commit adultery (Westermarck, _Origin of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, p. 453).
[320] "This form of marriage," says Hobhouse (op. cit., vol. i, p. 156), "is intimately associated with the extension of marital power." Cf. Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 231. The very subordinate position of the mediæval German woman is set forth by Hagelstange, _Süddeutsches Bauernleben in Mittelalter_, 1898, pp. 70 et seq.
[321] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 259; Smith and Cheetham, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, art. _Arrhæ_. It would appear, however, that the "bride-sale," of which Tacitus speaks, was not strictly the sale of a chattel nor of a slave-girl, but the sale of the _mund_ or protectorship over the girl. It is true the distinction may not always have been clear to those who took part in the transaction. Similarly the Anglo-Saxon betrothal was not so much a payment of the bride's price to her kinsmen, although as a matter of fact, they might make a profit out of the transaction, as a covenant stipulating for the bride's honorable treatment as wife and widow. Reminiscences of this, remark Pollock and Maitland (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 364), may be found in "that curious cabinet of antiquities, the marriage ritual of the English Church."
[322] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 278-281, 386. The _Arrha_ crept into Roman and Byzantine law during the sixth century.
[323] J. Wickham Legg, _Ecclesiological Essays_, p. 189. It may be added that the idea of the subordination of the wife to the husband appeared in the Christian Church at a somewhat early period, and no doubt independently of Germanic influences; St. Augustine said (Sermo XXXVII, cap. vi) that a good _materfamilias_ must not be ashamed to call herself her husband's servant (_ancilla_).
[325] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 293 et seq.; Esmein, _op. cit._, vol. i, pp. 25 et seq.; Smith and Cheetham, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_ art. "Contract of Marriage."
[326] Any later changes in Catholic Canon law have merely been in the direction of making matrimony still narrower and still more remote from the practice of the world. By a papal decree of 1907, civil marriages and marriages in non-Catholic places of worship are declared to be not only sinful and unlawful (which they were before), but actually null and void.
[328] It was the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, which made ecclesiastical rites essential to binding marriage; but even then fifty-six prelates voted against that decision.
[329] Esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. 91.
[330] It is sometimes said that the Catholic Church is able to diminish the evils of its doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage by the number of impediments to marriage it admits, thus affording free scope for dispensations from marriage. This scarcely seems to be the case. Dr. P.J. Hayes, who speaks with authority as Chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, states ("Impediments to Marriage in the Catholic Church," _North American Review_, May, 1905) that even in so modern and so mixed a community as this there are few applications for dispensations on account of impediments; there are 15,000 Catholic marriages per annum in New York City, but scarcely five per annum are questioned as to validity, and these chiefly on the ground of bigamy.
[331] The Canonists, say Pollock and Maitland (loc. cit.), "made a capricious mess of the marriage law." "Seldom," says Howard (_op. cit._, vol i, p. 340), "have mere theory and subtle quibbling had more disastrous consequences in practical life than in the case of the distinction between _sponsalia de præsenti_ and _de futuro_."
[332] Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 386 et seq. On the whole, however, Luther's opinion was that marriage, though a sacred and mysterious thing, is not a sacrament; his various statements on the matter are brought together by Strampff, _Luther über die Ehe_, pp. 204-214.
[333] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 61 et seq.
[334] Probably as a result of the somewhat confused and incoherent attitude of the Reformers, the Canon law of marriage, in a modified form, really persisted in Protestant countries to a greater extent than in Catholic countries; in France, especially, it has been much more profoundly modified (Esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. 33).
[335] The Quaker conception of marriage is still vitally influential. "Why," says Mrs. Besant (_Marriage_, p. 19), "should not we take a leaf out of the Quaker's book, and substitute for the present legal forms of marriage a simple declaration publicly made?"
[336] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 456. The actual practice in Pennsylvania appears, however, to differ little from that usual in the other States.
[337] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 109. "It is, indeed, wonderful," Howard remarks, "that a great nation, priding herself on a love of equity and social liberty, should thus for five generations tolerate an invidious indulgence, rather than frankly and courageously to free herself from the shackles of an ecclesiastical tradition."
[338] "The enforced continuance of an unsuccessful union is perhaps the most immoral thing which a civilized society ever countenanced, far less encouraged," says Godfrey (_Science of Sex_, p. 123). "The morality of a union is dependent upon mutual desire, and a union dictated by any other cause is outside the moral pale, however custom may sanction it, or religion and law condone it."
[339] Adultery in most savage and barbarous societies is regarded, in the words of Westermarck, as "an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an offence against property;" the seducer is, therefore, punished as a thief, by fine, mutilation, even death (_Origin of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, pp. 447 et seq.; id., _History of Human Marriage_, p. 121). Among some peoples it is the seducer who alone suffers, and not the wife.
[340] It is sometimes said in defence of the claim for damages for seducing a wife that women are often weak and unable to resist masculine advances, so that the law ought to press heavily on the man who takes advantage of that weakness. This argument seems a little antiquated. The law is beginning to accept the responsibility even of married women in other respects, and can scarcely refuse to accept it for the control of her own person. Moreover, if it is so natural for the woman to yield, it is scarcely legitimate to punish the man with whom she has performed that natural act. It must further be said that if a wife's adultery is only an irresponsible feminine weakness, a most undue brutality is inflicted on her by publicly demanding her pecuniary price from her lover. If, indeed, we accept this argument, we ought to reintroduce the mediæval girdle of chastity.
[341] Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 114.
[342] This rule is, in England, by no means a dead letter. Thus, in 1907, a wife who had left her home, leaving a letter stating that her husband was not the father of her child, subsequently brought an action for divorce, which, as the husband made no defence, she obtained. But, the King's Proctor having learnt the facts, the decree was rescinded. Then the husband brought an action for divorce, but could not obtain it, having already admitted his own adultery by leaving the previous case undefended. He took the matter up to the Court of Appeal, but his petition was dismissed, the Court being of opinion that "to grant relief in such a case was not in the interest of public morality." The safest way in England to render what is legally termed marriage absolutely indissoluble is for both parties to commit adultery.
[343] Magnus Hirschfeld, _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct., 1908.
[344] H. Adner, "Die Richterliche Beurteilung der 'Zerrütteten' Ehe," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. ii, Teil 8.
[345] Gross-Hoffinger, _Die Schichsale der Frauen und die Prostitution_, 1847; Bloch presents a full summary of the results of this inquiry in an _Appendix_ to Ch. X of his _Sexual Life of Our Times_.
[346] Divorce in the United States is fully discussed by Howard, op. cit., vol. iii.
[347] H. Münsterberg, _The Americans_, p. 575. Similarly, Dr. Felix Adler, in a study of "The Ethics of Divorce" (_The Ethical Record_, 1890, p. 200), although not himself an admirer of divorce, believes that the first cause of the frequency of divorce in the United States is the high position of women.
[348] In an important article, with illustrative cases, on "The Neuro-psychical Element in Conjugal Aversion" (_Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_, Sept., 1892) Smith Baker refers to the cases in which "a man may find himself progressively becoming antipathetic, through recognition of the comparatively less developed personality of the one to whom he happens to be married. Marrying, perhaps, before he has learned to accurately judge of character and its tendencies, he awakens to the fact that he is honorably bound to live all his physiological life with, not a real companion, but a mere counterfeit." The cases are still more numerous, the same writer observes, in which the sexual appetite of the wife fails to reveal itself except as the result of education and practice. "This sort of natural-unnatural condition is the source of much disappointment, and of intense suffering on the part of the woman as well as of family dissatisfaction." Yet such causes for divorce are far too complex to be stated in statute-books, and far too intimate to be pleaded in courts of justice.
[349] Ten years ago, if not still, the United States came fourth in order of frequency of divorce, after Japan, Denmark, and Switzerland.
[350] Lecky, the historian of European morals, has pointed out (_Democracy and Liberty_, vol. ii, p. 172) the close connection generally between facility of divorce and a high standard of sexual morality.
[352] In England this step was taken in the reign of Henry VII, when the forcible marriage of women against their will was forbidden by statute (3 Henry VII, c. 2). Even in the middle of the seventeenth century, however, the question of forcible marriage had again to be dealt with (_Inderwick_, Interregnum, pp. 40 et seq.).
[353] Woods Hutchinson (_Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1905) argues that when there is epilepsy, insanity, moral perversion, habitual drunkenness, or criminal conduct of any kind, divorce, for the sake of the next generation, should be not permissive but compulsory. Mere divorce, however, would not suffice to attain the ends desired.
[354] Similarly in Germany, Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, who had suffered much from marriage, whatever her own defects of character may have been, writes at the end of _Meine Lebensbeichte_ that "as long as women have not the courage to regulate, without State-interference or Church-interference, relationships which concern themselves alone, they will not be free." In place of this old decayed system of marriage so opposed to our modern thoughts and feelings, she would have private contracts made by a lawyer. In England, at a much earlier period, Charles Kingsley, who was an ardent friend to women's movements, and whose feeling for womanhood amounted almost to worship, wrote to J.S. Mill: "There will never be a good world for women until the last remnant of the Canon law is civilized off the earth."
[355] "No fouler institution was ever invented," declared Auberon Herbert many years ago, expressing, before its time, a feeling which has since become more common; "and its existence drags on, to our deep shame, because we have not the courage frankly to say that the sexual relations of husband and wife, or those who live together, concern their own selves, and do not concern the prying, gloating, self-righteous, and intensely untruthful world outside."
[356] Hobhouse, op. cit. vol. i, p. 237.
[357] The same conception of marriage as a contract still persists to some extent also in the United States, whither it was carried by the early Protestants and Puritans. No definition of marriage is indeed usually laid down by the States, but, Howard says (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 395), "in effect matrimony is treated as a relation partaking of the nature of both status and contract."
[358] This point of view has been vigorously set forth by Paul and Victor Margueritte, _Quelques Idées_.
[359] I may remark that this was pointed out, and its consequences vigorously argued, many years ago by C.G. Garrison, "Limits of Divorce," _Contemporary Review_, Feb., 1894. "It may safely be asserted," he concludes, "that marriage presents not one attribute or incident of anything remotely resembling a contract, either in form, remedy, procedure, or result; but that in all these aspects, on the contrary, it is fatally hostile to the principles and practices of that division of the rights of persons." Marriage is not contract, but conduct.
[360] See, e.g., P. and V. Margueritte, op. cit.
[361] As quoted by Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 29.
[362] Ellen Key similarly (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 343) remarks that to talk of "the duty of life-long fidelity" is much the same as to talk of "the duty of life-long health." A man may promise, she adds, to do his best to preserve his life, or his love; he cannot unconditionally undertake to preserve them.
[363] Hobhouse, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 159, 237-9; cf. P. and V. Margueritte, _Quelques Idées_.
[364] "Divorce," as Garrison puts it ("Limits of Divorce," _Contemporary Review_, Feb., 1894), "is the judicial announcement that conduct once connubial in character and purpose, has lost these qualities...Divorce is a question of fact, and not a license to break a promise."
[366] It has been necessary to discuss reproduction in the first chapter of the present volume, and it will again be necessary in the concluding chapter. Here we are only concerned with procreation as an element of marriage.
[367] Nietzold, _Die Ehe in Ægypten zur Ptolemäisch-römischen Zeit_, 1903, p. 3. This bond also accorded rights to any children that might be born during its existence.
[368] See, e.g., Ellen Key, _Mutter und Kind_, p. 21. The necessity for the combination of greater freedom of sexual relationships with greater stringency of parental relationships was clearly realized at an earlier period by another able woman writer, Miss J.H. Clapperton, in her notable book, _Scientific Meliorism_, published in 1885. "Legal changes," she wrote (p. 320), "are required in two directions, viz., towards greater freedom as to marriage and greater strictness as to parentage. The marriage union is essentially a private matter with which society has no call and no right to interfere. Childbirth, on the contrary, is a public event. It touches the interests of the whole nation."
[369] Ellen Key, _Liebe und Ehe_, p. 168; cf. the same author's _Century of the Child_.
[370] In Germany alone 180,000 "illegitimate" children are born every year, and the number is rapidly increasing; in England it is only 40,000 per annum, the strong feeling which often exists against such births in England (as also in France) leading to the wide adoption of methods for preventing conception.
[371] "Where are real monogamists to be found?" asked Schopenhauer in his essay, "Ueber die Weibe." And James Hinton was wont to ask: "What is the meaning of maintaining monogamy? Is there any chance of getting it, I should like to know? Do you call English life monogamous?"
[372] "Almost everywhere," says Westermarck of polygyny (which he discusses fully in Chs. XX-XXII of his _History of Human Marriage_) "it is confined to the smaller part of the people, the vast majority being monogamous." Maurice Gregory (_Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1906) gives statistics showing that nearly everywhere the tendency is towards equality in number of the sexes.
[373] In a polygamous land a man is of course as much bound by his obligations to his second wife as to his first. Among ourselves the man's "second wife" is degraded with the name of "mistress," and the worse he treats her and her children the more his "morality" is approved, just as the Catholic Church, when struggling to establish sacerdotal celibacy, approved more highly the priest who had illegitimate relations with women than the priest who decently and openly married. If his neglect induces a married man's mistress to make known her relationship to him the man is justified in prosecuting her, and his counsel, assured of general sympathy, will state in court that "this woman has even been so wicked as to write to the prosecutor's wife!"
[374] Howard, in his judicial _History of Matrimonial Institutions_ (vol. ii. pp. 96 et seq.), cannot refrain from drawing attention to the almost insanely wild character of the language used in England not so many years ago by those who opposed marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and he contrasts it with the much more reasonable attitude of the Catholic Church. "Pictures have been drawn," he remarks, "of the moral anarchy such marriages must produce, which are read by American, Colonial, and Continental observers with a bewilderment that is not unmixed with disgust, and are, indeed, a curious illustration of the extreme insularity of the English mind." So recently as A.D. 1908 a bill was brought into the British House of Lords proposing that desertion without cause for two years shall be a ground for divorce, a reasonable and humane measure which is law in most parts of the civilized world. The Lord Chancellor (Lord Loreburn), a Liberal, and in the sphere of politics an enlightened and sagacious leader, declared that such a proposal was "absolutely impossible." The House rejected the proposal by 61 votes to 2. Even the marriage decrees of the Council of Trent were not affirmed by such an overwhelming majority. In matters of marriage legislation England has scarcely yet emerged from the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ART OF LOVE.
Marriage Not Only for Procreation--Theologians on the _Sacramentum Solationis_--Importance of the _Art of Love_--The Basis of Stability in Marriage and the Condition for Right Procreation--The Art of Love the Bulwark Against Divorce--The Unity of Love and Marriage a Principle of Modern Morality--Christianity and the Art of Love--Ovid--The Art of Love Among Primitive Peoples--Sexual Initiation in Africa and Elsewhere--The Tendency to Spontaneous Development of the Art of Love in Early Life--Flirtation--Sexual Ignorance in Women--The Husband's Place in Sexual Initiation--Sexual Ignorance in Men--The Husband's Education for Marriage--The Injury Done by the Ignorance of Husbands--The Physical and Mental Results of Unskilful Coitus--Women Understand the Art of Love Better Than Men--Ancient and Modern Opinions Concerning Frequency of Coitus--Variation in Sexual Capacity--The Sexual Appetite--The Art of Love Based on the Biological Facts of Courtship--The Art of Pleasing Women--The Lover Compared to the Musician--The Proposal as a Part of Courtship--Divination in the Art of Love--The Importance of the Preliminaries in Courtship--The Unskilful Husband Frequently the Cause of the Frigid Wife--The Difficulty of Courtship--Simultaneous Orgasm--The Evils of Incomplete Gratification in Women--Coitus Interruptus--Coitus Reservatus--The Human Method of Coitus--Variations in Coitus--Posture in Coitus--The Best Time for Coitus--The Influence of Coitus in Marriage--The Advantages of Absence in Marriage--The Risks of Absence--Jealousy--The Primitive Function of Jealousy--Its Predominance Among Animals, Savages, etc., and in Pathological States--An Anti-Social Emotion--Jealousy Incompatible with the Progress of Civilization--The Possibility of Loving More Than One Person at a Time--Platonic Friendship--The Conditions Which Make It Possible--The Maternal Element in Woman's Love--The Final Development of Conjugal Love--The Problem of Love One of the Greatest of Social Questions.
It will be clear from the preceding discussion that there are two elements in every marriage so far as that marriage is complete. On the one hand marriage is a union prompted by mutual love and only sustainable as a reality, apart from its mere formal side, by the cultivation of such love. On the other hand marriage is a method for propagating the race and having its end in offspring. In the first aspect its aim is erotic, in the second parental. Both these ends have long been generally recognized. We find them set forth, for instance, in the marriage service of the Church of England, where it is stated that marriage exists both for "the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other," and also for "the procreation of children." Without the factor of mutual love the proper conditions for procreation cannot exist; without the factor of procreation the sexual union, however beautiful and sacred a relationship it may in itself be, remains, in essence, a private relationship, incomplete as a marriage and without public significance. It becomes necessary, therefore, to supplement the preceding discussion of marriage in its general outlines by a final and more intimate consideration of marriage in its essence, as embracing the art of love and the science of procreation.
There has already been occasion from time to time to refer to those who, starting from various points of view, have sought to limit the scope of marriage and to suppress one or other of its elements. (See e.g., _ante_, p. 135.)
In modern times the tendency has been to exclude the factor of procreation, and to regard the relationship of marriage as exclusively lying in the relationship of the two parties to each other. Apart from the fact, which it is unnecessary again to call attention to, that, from the public and social point of view, a marriage without children, however important to the two persons concerned, is a relationship without any public significance, it must further be said that, in the absence of children, even the personal erotic life itself is apt to suffer, for in the normal erotic life, especially in women, sexual love tends to grow into parental love. Moreover, the full development of mutual love and dependence is with difficulty attained, and there is absence of that closest of bonds, the mutual coöperation of two persons in producing a new person. The perfect and complete marriage in its full development is a trinity.
Those who seek to eliminate the erotic factor from marriage as unessential, or at all events as only permissible when strictly subordinated to the end of procreation, have made themselves heard from time to time at various periods. Even the ancients, Greeks and Romans alike, in their more severe moments advocated the elimination of the erotic element from marriage, and its confinement to extra-marital relationships, that is so far as men were concerned; for the erotic needs of married women they had no provision to make. Montaigne, soaked in classic traditions, has admirably set forth the reasons for eliminating the erotic interest from marriage: "One does not marry for oneself, whatever may be said; a man marries as much, or more, for his posterity, for his family; the usage and interest of marriage touch our race beyond ourselves...Thus it is a kind of incest to employ, in this venerable and sacred parentage, the efforts and the extravagances of amorous license" (_Essais_, Bk. i, Ch. XXIX; Bk. iii, Ch. V). This point of view easily commended itself to the early Christians, who, however, deliberately overlooked its reverse side, the establishment of erotic interests outside marriage. "To have intercourse except for procreation," said Clement of Alexandria (_Pædagogus_, Bk. ii, Ch. X), "is to do injury to Nature." While, however, that statement is quite true of the lower animals, it is not true of man, and especially not true of civilized man, whose erotic needs are far more developed, and far more intimately associated with the finest and highest part of the organism, than is the case among animals generally. For the animal, sexual desire, except when called forth by the conditions involved by procreative necessities, has no existence. It is far otherwise in man, for whom, even when the question of procreation is altogether excluded, sexual love is still an insistent need, and even a condition of the finest spiritual development. The Catholic Church, therefore, while regarding with admiration a continence in marriage which excluded sexual relations except for the end of procreation, has followed St. Augustine in treating intercourse apart from procreation with considerable indulgence, as only a venial sin. Here, however, the Church was inclined to draw the line, and it appears that in 1679 Innocent XI condemned the proposition that "the conjugal act, practiced for pleasure alone, is exempt even from venial sin."
Protestant theologians have been inclined to go further, and therein they found some authority even in Catholic writers. John à Lasco, the Catholic Bishop who became a Protestant and settled in England during Edward VI's reign, was following many mediæval theologians when he recognized the _sacramentum solationis_, in addition to _proles_, as an element of marriage. Cranmer, in his marriage service of 1549, stated that "mutual help and comfort," as well as procreation, enter into the object of marriage (Wickham Legg, _Ecclesiological Essays_, p. 204; Howard, _Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. i, p. 398). Modern theologians speak still more distinctly. "The sexual act," says Northcote (_Christianity and Sex Problems_, p. 55), "is a love act. Duly regulated, it conduces to the ethical welfare of the individual and promotes his efficiency as a social unit. The act itself and its surrounding emotions stimulate within the organism the powerful movements of a vast psychic life." At an earlier period also, Schleiermacher, in his _Letters on Lucinde_, had pointed out the great significance of love for the spiritual development of the individual.
Edward Carpenter truly remarks, in _Love's Coming of Age_, that sexual love is not only needed for physical creation, but also for spiritual creation. Bloch, again, in discussing this question (_The Sexual Life of Our Time_, Ch. VI) concludes that "love and the sexual embrace have not only an end in procreation, they constitute an end in themselves, and are necessary for the life, development, and inner growth of the individual himself."