The Principles of Ethics: In Two Volumes

8. Marriage

Ethics_V1_551-600.indd 13 1/16/12 9:24 AM CHAPTER 8 Marriage 229. up to the present point there has been maintained, if not absolutely yet with tolerable clearness, the division between the ethics of individual life and the ethics of social life; but we come, in this chapter and the chapter which follows it, to a part of ethics which is in a sense intermediate. For in the relations of marriage and parenthood, others are concerned, not contingently and indirectly, but in ways that are necessary and direct. The implied divisions of conduct, while their primary ethical sanctions refer to the proper fulfillment of individual life, are yet inseparable from those divisions which treat of conduct that is to be ethically approved or disapproved because of its effects on those around. Let us glance first at the general obligation under which the individual lies to aid in maintaining the species, while fulfilling the needs of his own nature. 230. In The Principles of Biology (sees. 334-51) was explained the necessary antagonism between individuation and reproduction-between the appropriation of nutriment and energy for the purposes of individual life, and the appropriation of them for the initiation, development, and nurture of other lives. Extreme cases in which, after an existence of a few 563 Ethics_V1_551-600.indd 14 1/16/12 9:24 AM 564 The Ethics of Individual Life hours or a day, the body of a parent divides, or else breaks up into numerous germs of new individuals, and less extreme cases in which a brief parental existence ends by the transformation of the skin into a protective case, while the interior is wholly transformed into young ones, illustrate in an unmistakable way the sacrifice of individual life for the maintenance of species life. It was shown that as we ascend to creatures of more complex structure and greater activity, and especially as we ascend to creatures of which the young have to be fostered, the expenditure of parentallife in producing and rearing other lives becomes gradually less. And then, in The Principles of Sociology (sees. 275-77), when considering the "diverse interests of the species, of the parents, and of the offspring," we saw that in mankind there is reached such conciliation of these interests that along with preservation of the race there go moderated individual sacrifices; and further, that with the ascent from lower to higher types of men, we tend toward an ideal family in which "the mortality between birth and the reproductive age falls to a minimum, while the lives of adults have their subordination to the rearing of children reduced to the smallest possible." To the last, however, the antagonism between individuation and reproduction holds-holds in a direct way, because of the physical tax which reproduction necessitates, and holds in an indirect way because of the tax, physical and mental, necessitated by rearing children: a tax which, though it is pleasurably paid in fulfillment of the appropriate instincts and emotions, and is in so far a fulfillment of individual life, is nevertheless a tax which restricts individual development in various directions. But here the truth which it chiefly concerns us to note is that, assuming the preservation of the race to be a desideratum , there results a certain kind of obligation to pay this tax and to submit to this sacrifice. Moreover, something like natural equity requires that as each individual is indebted to past individuals for the cost of producing and rearing him, he Ethics_V1_551-600.indd 15 1/16/12 9:24 AM Marriage 565 shall be at some equivalent cost for the benefit of future individuals. In tribes and small societies, where maintenance of numbers is important, this obligation becomes appreciable; and, as we see in the reproach of barrenness, failure to fulfill it brings disapproval. But of course in large nations where multiplication is rather an evil than a benefit, this obligation lapses; and the individual may, in many cases, fitly discharge his or her indebtedness in some other way than by adding to the population . 231. Leaving here these considerations which pertain, perhaps, more to the ethics of social life than to the ethics of individual life, and returning to the consideration of marriage as a part of individual life, we have first to note its ethical sanctions as so considered. All activities fall into two great groups-those which constitute and sustain...