Love, the Law of Life

If a marriage results in the birth of children, a home is formed. In ancient times there were families, but no real homes. Jesus said, ‘‘A man shall leave his parents and the two shall be one flesh’; but leaving one’s parents is not a practice applicable to our country. As parents usually adopt the young man who marries their daughter, or secure a wife for their son, the young couple become one without leaving the parents. This is the family system, which quite differs from the institution of home.

What we need to notice especially is the fact that love gives way before economic and other external conditions. Sexual desire inclines toward the place of lowest resistance, and there are occasions when kindness and sexual desire are confused. But sexual desire is not food, or kindness, or sympathy. The declaration of socialists that the married life of today suffers under the pressure of the food problem, and their demand that society be emancipated from this economic pressure, are truly reasonable. The condition of many women is no better than that of geisha or prostitutes: these women are, in effect, long-term prostitutes, kept by men, like the dolls that are set up on a red carpet at the Doll Festival. To fly out, in spirit, from such a doll’s house is home indeed.

Tolstoy declared that a husband could commit adultery even against his wife, if he failed to love her soul and loved only her’sex. Therefore, in order to escape such a fearful poisoning of the life of conscience, everyone must place his life under the sway of conscience, and thus refine sexual love and marriage. At the. same time, as I have already remarked, it is important to avoid confusing sympathy and kindness with sexual

Let us observe that while on the one hand there are those who freely indulge their sexual desires, there are many who practice the ascetic life. Origen, the great philosopher of the early Christian Church, considering the sexual life sinful, emasculated himself. Members of the Zuboa sect, whom Tolstoy respected, also resorted to this means of control. The priests of the Greek Orthodox Church and of the Roman Catholic Church live celibate lives. Thomas More was vexed by a growing sexual urge and restrained it by wearing a garment woven of horsehair. But such forms of stoicism control only the flesh: they are of no avail for controlling the spirit, and are therefore wrong.

It is said that English and American young people who have received higher education exhibit qualitative changes in their sex life. Women university students in America are said to be subject to various grave dangers as the result of their ascetic life. Women, by virtue of lactation, differ from men, and according to statistics in America, women receiving higher education and leading perfectly ascetic lives till the age of twentyfour or twenty-five, thereafter frequently engage in some profession, while only forty per cent of the graduates marry. The number of children born to the latter averages only two each. Hence, we hear the cry that in America the superior stocks are disappearing. According to an investigation made at Harvard University, male students also as a rule lead continent lives. In general, when men are progressing in the development of character, the control of sexual ~~~ passion is not particularly difficult. By active participation in sports and by hard study a man can conquer sexual desire. When I was working in the Kobe slums, devoting myself as a friend to the poor, I was able absolutely to repress sexual desire. Mencius tells of the strong self-control of Ryti-ka-kei, who slept under the same mosquito net with a beautiful girl but did not feel the slightest sexual desire.

Jesus had many women friends. There were Mary of Magdala, Mary and Martha of Bethany, Johanna,

Suzanna, and Salome. But never has a sex scandal involving Jesus been suggested.

By emasculation alone a sin of the heart cannot be cleansed; nor can atonement be made by cutting off one’s finger. True emasculation is that of the soul.

When the Olympic games flourished in Greece, youths and maidens raced together in almost complete nudity. When man leads a natural life, he does not degenerate easily. When engaged in active, beautiful movements, sensual feelings do not arise.

Davy, the inventor of the miner’s safety lamp, set _ the date for his wedding, but he was so engrossed in his work that he forgot the matter of the wedding entirely. His fiancée’s wrath was aroused, the engagement was broken, and Davy remained a bachelor all his life. When a person works diligently at invention or research, he can overcome all degenerate impulses.

Jesus lived a single man not because he felt compelled to remain single, but because he freely chose that plan. Paul, disciple of Christ, advocated celibacy because of his idea of the approaching end of the world. He thought that in a time of distress it might be better to be single; but in my view this matter must be left entirely to the discretion of each individual. Those who marry do not do wrong. The only question is, are they refining the relation by love and by conscience?

A vigorous movement known as the New Feminism, which is opposed to the principle of monogamy, has _ sprung up in many quarters. In what is known as “Free Love’ there may be economic as well as psychic and social elements, but the majority of its exponents speak from the standpoint of the abolition of strict monogamy. But the monogamy of Christianity is a principle born of long experience in sex morality, and is not the product of a fleeting phantasy. Ellen Key and other feminists appear to have adopted the daring position of approving a kind of polygamy with a new import, derived from the realm of female sex-instinct, but I cannot approve of it. Ellen Key’s theory, from the standpoint of race-betterment, may be admirable; but viewed in the light of the psychic requirements of human beings, it has within it extremely dangerous elements.

According to the contention of Ellen Key, in situations where the number of males is exceeded by the number of females, there develops—as the consequence of woman’s desire to fulfil the demands of sex, which she as well as man possesses—an intense urge to give birth to children. In such a situation, provided the woman’s character is kept unsullied, it is not necessarily wrong for her to receive the impregnation of a superior man. According to the history of biology, when the number of males of a species is smaller than the number of females, the species shows a tendency to increase; yet the opposite tendency, too, is not infrequently to be observed. That is, when the number of females is less than the number of males, it may happen that polyandry, rather than polygamy, will appear. When a species suffers an insufficiency of food, these tendencies may be exhibited. Since the desire to help maintain the species develops instinctively within the individual, artificial restraints become impotent; conscious impulse breaks down artificial morality, and leads even to what seems to be immorality. For example, there appear in the Old Testament such cases as those of Lot who had children by his daughters, and of Abraham who planned to maintain his family line by concubinage. Judged by presentday standards these instances appear immoral, but regarded from the standpoint of biologic evolution and with due consideration of the environment of the period and the circumstances of the cases, we cannot denounce such acts as sinful. Hence, reasoning in the same way in the situations proposed by Ellen Key, when the number of females is absolutely greater than that of the males, and when the sexual demand, too, is absolute, I cannot deny that her theory has, in view of these two conditions alone, some basis of reason. However, such situations cannot be viewed in the absolute, and will be sanctioned only in a morality allowed in special circumstances in biologic evolution. In situations where the numbers of males and females are practically equal, where there is no economic restraint, but full freedom for them to fall in love with each other, then I am unable to say whether or not that will be a period when the possibility of monogamy can be admitted.

I consider rather, in that situation, that monogamy supplies the foundation for a true social system. If we regard only the matter of sexual passion, both polygamy and polyandry have ample logical foundations; but just proportional to the advance of civilization is the urgency, not alone for the so-called preservation of the race, but for the perfecting of the individual. The development of monogamy in Christianity is entirely the result of the consciousness of.

individuality. Hence, where men think only of the preservation of the race and lack this consciousness of complete individuality, there is in their view, nothing more stupid than the institution of monogamy. May it not be that Ellen Key’s adventurous theory of love places somewhat too great an emphasis upon the matter of race?

The romantic love of the Middle Ages developed, of course, from extreme individualism, from the idea that love could exist apart from body and that bodily contact was degrading. It was even thought that love and celibacy could exist side by side. Love such as that between Francis of Assisi and Clara was, in its mystical nature, the model of the Middle Ages. But it must be said that their relation was quite out of the ordinary. Hence, when to our concern for preserving the species we add the ideal of the perfecting of the individual, we are inevitably led to adopt the plan of monogamy.

This becomes very clear when we study the evolution of marriage in Japan during and since the Meiji Era. The people, being partial to the family system and placing emphasis upon blood lineage, used to approve the system of concubinage. But along with the selfawakening of the individual, there came the development of woman’s education, and the self-awakening of woman eventually accomplished the complete overthrow of polygamy. Toward this result ethical influences from Europe and America doubtless contributed, but the fundamental fact was not the influence of an imported morality. Rather, I wish to affirm that it was the compelling power of woman’s self-awakening. In the twentieth year of Meiji (1888) there were forty divorces to every hundred marriages, but at present the rate is only one-fourth as large, namely, ten per cent. For this phenomenon we can assign absolutely no other reason than the self-awakening of woman. Of course, Japan is still notorious for its high divorce rate; yet, in my view, when Japanese women develop to the point of choosing their husbands, the divorce rate will be still further reduced.

In contrast to the decrease of divorces in Japan there is the phenomenon of the rising rate of divorce in the United States. In recent years the rate has. increased enormously, a fact which shows that monogamy is really difficult of practice throughout a whole lifetime. Then why has the divorce rate in the United States increased so greatly? In attempting to analyze the causes, one may surmise first that since the women of the United States have such great freedom, they enter into wedlock too lightly, often driven by vanity or the ardor of some passing emotion and failing to anticipate any of the difficulties of homemaking or the birth of children. That is to say, the rise of the divorce rate in America may be ascribed to sentimental love—a love that is too scanty, too selfish, failing — to admit the responsibility that love bears toward all humankind, and caring absolutely nothing for the continuation of thefamily line. These people marry because it is interesting, and when the interest wanes, they separate. |

In short, love which proceeds with no aim of per-. fecting the individual characters has no prospect what- | ever of becoming perfected as a monogamous union. In such situations, even though the law forbids irregular intimacies, it will not be obeyed.