Marriage
should be a free, spontaneous meeting of mutual
instinct, filled with happiness not unmixed with a
feeling akin to awe: it should involve that degree of
respect of each for the other that makes even the
most trifling interference with liberty an utter
impossibility, and a common life enforced by one against
the will of the other an unthinkable thing of deep
horror. It is not so that marriage is conceived by
lawyers who make settlements, or by priests who give
the name of ``sacrament'' to an institution which pretends
to find something sanctifiable in the brutal lusts
or drunken cruelties of a legal husband. It is not in
a spirit of freedom that marriage is conceived by
most men and women at present: the law makes it an
opportunity for indulgence of the desire to interfere,
where each submits to some loss of his or her own liberty,
for the pleasure of curtailing the liberty of the
other. And the atmosphere of private property
makes it more difficult than it otherwise would be for
any better ideal to take root.
It is not so that human relations will be conceived
when the evil heritage of economic slavery has ceased
to mold our instincts. Husbands and wives, parents
and children, will be only held together by affection:
where that has died, it will be recognized that nothing
worth preserving is left.
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