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They Who Marry Do Ill
- University of Michigan Press
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They Who Marry Do Ill131 1907 (A lecture presenting the negative side of the question, whose positive was argued under the heading “They who marry do well,” by Dr. Henrietta P. Westbrook; both lectures delivered before the Radical Liberal League, Philadelphia, April 28, 1907.) Let me make myself understood on two points, now, so that when discussion arises later, words may not be wasted in considering things not in question: First—How shall we measure doing well or doing ill; Second—What I mean by marriage. So much as I have been able to put together the pieces of the universe in my small head, there is no absolute right or wrong; there is only a relativity , depending upon the continuously though very slowly altering condition of a social race in respect to the rest of the world. Right and wrong are social conceptions: mind, I do not say human conceptions. The names “right” and “wrong,” truly, are of human invention only; but the conception “right” and “wrong,” dimly or clearly, has been wrought out with more or less effectiveness by all intelligent social beings. And the de‹nition of Right, as sealed and approved by the successful conduct of social beings, is: That mode of behavior which best serves the growing need of that society. As to what that need is, certainly it has been in the past, and for the most part is now indicated by the unconscious response of the structure (social or individual) to the pressure of its environment. Up till a few years since I believed with Huxley, Von Hartman, and my teacher Lum,132 that it was wholly so determined; that consciousness might dis302 131. See pp. 105–7. Source: Mother Earth 2 (Jan. 1908): 500–511. 132. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), eminent popularizer of Darwin’s evolutionary theories. Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), author of The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1870, English trans. 1884 ). Dyer D. Lum (d. 1893) anarchist comradementor -lover of de Cleyre. cern, and obey or oppose, but had no voice in deciding the course of social development: if it decided to oppose, it did so to its own ruin, not to the modi‹cation of the unconsciously determined ideal. Of late years I have been approaching the conclusion that consciousness has a continuously increasing part in the decision of social problems ; that while it is still a minor voice, and must be for a long time to come, it is, nevertheless, the dawning power which threatens to overhurl old processes and old laws, and supplant them by other powers and other ideals. I know no more fascinating speculation than this, of the rôle of consciousness in present and future evolution. However, it is not our present speculation. I speak of it only because in determining what constitutes well-being at present, I shall maintain that the old ideal has been considerably modi‹ed by conscious reaction against the super›uities produced by unconscious striving towards a certain end. The question now becomes: What is the growing ideal of human society , unconsciously indicated and consciously discerned and illuminated? By all the readings of progress, this indication appears to be the free individual; a society whose economic, political, social, and sexual organization shall secure and constantly increase the scope of being to its several units; whose solidarity and continuity depend upon the free attraction of its component parts, and in no wise upon compulsory forms. Unless we are agreed that this is the discernable goal of our present social striving, there is no hope that we shall agree in the rest of the argument . For it would be vastly easy to prove that if the maintenance of the old divisions of society into classes, each with specialized services to perform —the priesthood, the military, the wage earner, the capitalist, the domestic servant, the breeder, etc.—is in accord with the growing force of society, then marriage is the thing, and they who marry do well. But this is the point at which I stand, and from which I shall measure well and ill-doing; viz.: that the aim of social striving now is the free individual , implying all the conditions necessary to that freedom. Now the second thing: What shall we understand as marriage? Some ‹fteen or eighteen years ago, when I had not been out of the convent long enough to forget its teachings, nor lived and experienced enough to work out my own de‹nitions...