Men, Women, and God Part 2

4. Still further, love awakens the soul. Our spiritual capacities share in the general stimulus which it brings. It is not by chance that courting couples go to church. They do _not_ go simply to whisper in the gallery, and if they do hold hands during the sermon I do not think that G.o.d is ill pleased. They go because the inspiration of love inclines them to long after G.o.d. Of course it does. All love is of G.o.d, and this special kind bears openly upon it the marks of its divine origin. And while on the one hand it is true that love leads towards religion, it is equally true that without a sense of things spiritual love cannot be its perfect self. Perhaps the commonest cause of the failure of love lies in some arrest of spiritual development. For when the soul is asleep, what is left of love is a poor thing.

5. And then, fifthly, at some point in its growth love summons pa.s.sion into life. What has been hitherto an emotion of the heart becomes also a tumultuous activity of the whole being, and love having mastered the whole incarnate nature of each in turn drives the two together in that oneness of the flesh which is the decree of G.o.d. No doubt it is just here that the compulsions of civilized society set a serious problem for ardent lovers. Primitive men probably knew nothing of a period of engagement, and lovers would proceed to become wholly wedded just as soon as nature laid her compelling hand upon them. But it is our glory that we are not simply the tools of natural forces. We belong to the directorate in this life, and even on the force of love we can impose times and seasons. But when the right time does come, then lovers who have already been attaining to union of heart and mind express their pa.s.sion also in the union of their bodies, and this wonderful experience, when it does so enter life, is realized as something sacramental. It is literally and exactly an expression in the terms of the body of something which is already a spiritual fact. Nothing satisfies real love except this complete mingling of two personalities.

It is not satisfied without physical intimacy, and yet physical intimacy alone is not enough. That which is satisfied by mere physical intimacy is not love. The full human pa.s.sion which alone deserves that name calls also for intimacies of mind and spirit--for the interplay of two personalities through the whole stretch of their powers. But it cannot be too strongly said that on the terms I have indicated the ultimate bodily union of two lovers is a beautiful and happy thing. It is felt to be something with large spiritual consequences. In some mysterious way it really does bind souls together. Each knows that henceforth he or she is bound to the other for life, and a man is usually moved by a glowing sense of reverent grat.i.tude to the woman who has thus trod with him the strange paths of that new country.

Considered apart from love, such an experience may seem to be gross, because apart from love it is gross. But as an incident in the communion of two loyal hearts it is realized as a pure and natural thing. Through it the flesh is caught up into harmony with the spirit and is thereby redeemed. A certain new balance and repose of being is attained whereby a whole personality will experience a wonderful sense of liberation. [Footnote: I do not think the creative instinct often enters into consciousness at this point. It does so with some women, but with very few men. As a rule the real content of the experience is just an ardent desire in each for utter nearness to the other. It is the expression of their love that they desire. It is each other that they love--not as yet any third person.]

6. And then, sixthly, from love that has thus run its natural and ordained course a new life results. Even human love has creative value, and by it the doors are opened into that most sacred world in which a man and a woman succ.u.mb together to the power and beauty of an infant, thrill together over its untold charms, and find that little hands are clutching at their hearts with amazing and mystic power. And not until that point is reached is love made perfect. Mere lover's love is a selfish thing. I do not say it in criticism, for I believe lovers have an inalienable right to live for a while simply for each other. But from the point when they bend together over a baby's cradle they take a step up in life, and their love becomes a call to service, whereby its selfishness is purged away. Parentage is usually thought of as supremely the crown of a woman's life. So it is, though it is not its only possible crown. But I believe that it is equally the crown of a man's life. It is perhaps true that the production of true fathers belongs to a later stage of human evolution than the production of mothers, for fathers are not so obviously essential to young children.

But I hazard the suggestion that one of the prime needs of the stage at which we have now arrived is just that men should learn the arts and powers of fatherhood, and take a larger part in the rearing of children. And I believe men will find, as I have said, that parentage is for them also the crown of life. With many men the emotions that come with fatherhood are the deepest of which they are capable, and they are also the finest. Even men who seem to me pretty low in the scale of humanity often recover some of their lost manhood when under the power of their own little children. And with normal men their fatherhood comes to dominate life.

Its most obvious result is that it compels a man to work, and to work hard. We are mostly born slackers. We should like to take many holidays, and if we were left alone we would do it. But parentage binds us to the wheel. We discover that we have got to face the grind, because the plain alternative is that the bairns would starve. And so we do it. Of course at times we rebel. You may hear men every now and then complaining half cynically and half humorously that, having once been indiscreet enough to fall in love, they were thenceforth swept along by rapids till at last they found themselves involved in all the paraphernalia of family life from perambulators to doctor's bills. But there are few men who do not know in their hearts that the toils have been the making of them. If love led only to delights, it would ruin us. It is because it leads also to heavy labor that it makes us. It is because I see this so clearly that I am not so much distressed as some people are over the fact that motherhood also means very hard work.

[Footnote: No doubt in our disordered social life it often means far too much work. No doubt thousands of mothers are simply crushed by it.

But it is not a good thing when mothers can evade even reasonably hard work.] The great discoveries of the moral and spiritual worlds are only made in and through work--yes, and sometimes through work that is sheer grind. There is no other road to moral or spiritual maturity either for man or woman. I have this deeply rooted objection to inherited wealth-- that it makes possible an escape from this redeeming discipline, and by removing one of the normal consequences of love often leads to the spoiling of love.

Let us, however, be clear about this further fact--love does not merely lead to enforced labor, it also redeems that labor. Not merely does a man face up to his job because it is in a sense done for love's sake, but love itself supplies the necessary respite and counterbalance to the burden of toil. We all need recreations. The tightly drawn string must be relaxed. Moods come when normal and quite Christian men say, "Oh, I can't stick it any longer; I want to enjoy myself." We naturally demand that there should be an element of delight somewhere in life.

Notoriously it is rather hard to come by. City crowds at night present the spectacle of people making huge and fevered efforts to run delight to earth and often achieving only pitiful failure. I believe the normal way in which delight ought to enter the lives of married people is just through their satisfaction in each other's society, enriched by the society of their children. When a man and a woman have made the right sort of home they escape finally from all fevered cravings after picture-houses and ball-rooms. There lies to hand for them that which will day after day refresh and delight them, and make them ready for to-morrow's toil.

I am not forgetting that at this point modern voices will want to break in on me with appropriate quotations from Bernard Shaw and others, and try to silence me by pointing out what a mean, petty, dull, sickly, and stodgy thing mere domesticity can be. Yes! it can be all that for people who let it be all that. Even love that once was pa.s.sionate cannot redeem the life of two people unless there is something there to redeem. Two lifeless and stupid people living together _can_ make of life something duller than either could make alone. If it be part of general wisdom to try to live widely and fully, and to use as much of our natures as is possible, that is surely as true for two people together as it could be for them apart. And to make a marriage into a great thing both parties to it must work to make it wide in its horizons and worthy because of the mult.i.tude of its interests. No sane persons imagine that mere marriage excuses people from the necessity for handling this big, mysterious, and difficult thing which we call human life with vigilance and determination. But life on any terms for the great majority of people must have monotonous and trying periods in it. It almost always has heavy sorrows and not a few bitter disappointments. And it is in view of these things that married love is found to have redeeming power. It is one of the lies of the cynic that love must needs burn itself out somewhere about the forties. Thousands of people have found at forty that the best was yet to be. For the fact is that all through the afternoon of life and even when the shadows lengthen towards the end love will still send beams of beauty and romance into daily life, and remaining still pa.s.sionate will put golden content into the pa.s.sing hours.

It is life stories of this sort which alone reveal the meaning and purpose of G.o.d in making the s.e.x interest so almighty and central in life. We do not understand love till we have thus looked on towards the end. When it is allowed to run its true course it does in this way redeem life.

If I am told that I have drawn a hopelessly idealized picture of married love, I can only reply by a blunt denial. Twenty-five years of intimate contact with ordinary people have taught me these things. The kind of life I have pictured is going on in uncounted small and unknown homes all over the country. It is going on with commonplace people who are neither very interesting nor very clever, but who are wise enough to be simple and human. The real wonder of love is just that it can lift two commonplace people into a life that is not commonplace. And that is just how most of us get our chance in life. The people who are going through these experiences are for the most part quiet people. We do not hear about them. They do not have novels written about them, and they supply no copy for the society newspapers. It is the other people who advertise their woes. It is the unhappily married who make a noise.

Only the very greatest novelists can make a good novel out of the story of a successful marriage. But apparently almost anyone can produce stories that people will read if only he or she puts in enough highly colored material about the aberrations of lovers and the possible ways in which marriage can be wrecked. It is sheer untruth to say that most marriages are failures. In most indeed there are ups and downs. The most affectionate couples make mistakes and quarrel over trifles. Love does not make all tempers smooth in a hurry. But love does teach people how to get past such troubles. It does bring balance and repose into life for both husband and wife. It does tend to produce efficiency and health in those who handle it truly. It does make for normal and happy development.

It is only with this background of positive truth about normal love that I can approach the other questions which must be dealt with in this book. If we are going to inquire as to the sanctions of the received moral standards, and the reasons which make the moral struggle worth while--if we are going to find the truth about the way in which to conduct married life, and find any light on the question of birth control, it can only be in relation to the positive truth about love and its manifold reactions on human beings. We shall never learn to manage the emotions and desires which arise from our s.e.xual natures until we have first understood what it is that nature is trying to achieve through these means. To a number of these further questions I shall pa.s.s on in the succeeding chapters.

I hope I may do so now on the a.s.sumption that anything is worth while if only we can conserve for ourselves the possibility of such a career of experience as I have outlined, and that whatever spoils such experience beforehand, or renders it impossible, is really an enemy both to our well-being and our happiness. If

"Life, with all it yields of joy and woe And hope and fear...

Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love How love might be, hath been indeed and is,"

then the key to all morality and all sound practical wisdom is just to conserve at all costs our chance of knowing love--love pure, pa.s.sionate, fruitful, and holy.

_Unreturned Love_

I ask myself whether I can say anything of use to those who love deeply and truly, but find their love unreturned. Many who read these pages may say to themselves that they can fully believe that mutual love is the way into a wonderful country of new and full life, but that for them love has meant only a great longing and a great pain. They could give generously and n.o.bly. They have in them a great wealth of love which they long to spend lavishly; but because he or she remains indifferent they find themselves tormented by that which is best in them. There is something here harder to face than even the sorrow of widows or widowers. To have loved and lost might be said to be a tolerable situation compared with the feeling that one's love has not been wanted.

Those who have never known such a situation may speak lightly of it.

Those who have will always want to deal gently and reverently with it.

Plainly it has great dangers attached to it. It is easy for those who are facing it to allow themselves to become bitter and cynical. It must be hard for them not to feel that many who do enjoy the privilege of mutual love are shamefully ungrateful. And it must be harder still to escape pangs of jealousy at times when they see the light of joy in the eyes of lovers, or the pangs of something finer than jealousy when they feel the charm of little children.

I know of only one perfect resource for men or women in this situation.

It lies in G.o.d. Other people always seem dull and uninteresting to those who want supremely one special person. But G.o.d is not uninteresting. He has to be sought. He is not found by the careless or the cowardly. But those who seek Him earnestly do find Him, and as a sense of His love and His reality steals into the heart healing begins at once. He restores the soul. He fills the hungry. He is sufficient. And when that has happened other people begin to seem lovable too, and the human love that seemed at one point not to be needed finds numbers of objects. No one who can love is an unimportant person in a world that is starving for more love of divine quality.

And this at least I can report for those whom it may interest--that I have known some very strong and gentle men, and some very brave, gracious and understanding women whose lives are very rich in blessing to other people, who know how to help the weak and comfort the sad, and in whose faces there shines the light of a great and patient faith.

Having wondered for a time whence came these great endowments, I have learnt at last that they were prizes won in a great contest wherein having had to face the trial of love unreturned they learnt at last to accept their own sorrow without anger, and then to use their power of love in self-forgetfulness for other troubled souls.

Yes, there is that to be said--to be said with great respect and tenderness because love unreturned involves a very fiery trial--but to be said with conviction because it is most blessedly true.

CHAPTER IV

FALLING IN LOVE AND GETTING ENGAGED

This will be a very short chapter, for there is only one thing which I feel moved to say on this subject, and yet it is so important that I put it in a chapter by itself. Put in a sentence it is this: Only real love offers a basis for a happy marriage, and real love is something more than physical attraction. If all young men and women knew that and would be strong enough to act upon it, there would be very few calamitous marriages in the future.

But let us face the facts. Mere physical attraction can be tremendously strong. It springs into existence sometimes between two people who hardly know each other. The explanation of it must lie in mysterious facts about our incarnate life which I certainly cannot a.n.a.lyze. Once it is there it is felt as an imperious summons to marriage. To each the other seems for the time being a wonderful person, to be desired beyond all others. Often the critical faculty in us is entirely suspended by this attraction; and "her" words seem wise, though in fact they are silly, and "he" seems n.o.ble, though in fact he is only an averagely decent man. Two such persons long ardently to be together, though they do not nearly always want to talk to each other. They are held by something they do not understand, but which moves them profoundly.

Now by some mysterious and kindly providence I believe it usually happens that this mutual attraction declares itself between two people who as they do get to know each other find that they are also attracted mentally and spiritually. Usually from this beginning a real fellowship between the two persons will grow up which involves nearly their whole personalities. Many people who fell in love at first sight have made splendid marriages. But it does not always happen so. Sometimes this physical attraction remains the only bond between two people. Sometimes in the other departments of life they actually fret and annoy one another. Sometimes a friendship refuses to grow up. Sometimes even while the attraction still exists contempt lurks behind it. And that means that it is entirely unsafe to get engaged on the basis of a mere physical attraction. There is really something impersonal about mere physical attraction. The individual as such is hardly an active agent in it. He or she is the victim of some great life force that seems to want to throw men and women together regardless of their mental and spiritual qualities. Behind a mutual physical attraction there must be some strange harmony between the two physical natures concerned. But that may be the whole truth of the situation. And to become engaged or married on that basis alone is just another instance of acting as if we were merely bodies, when we are not. It const.i.tutes another attempt to forget mind, heart, and soul, and is therefore disastrous.

And that, of course, means that a man and a woman, if they want to find their true life, must take care to get to know each other _before_ they commit themselves, even though they are attracted. "Maggie" in _What Every Woman Knows_ showed herself extraordinarily astute when she packed off her husband, who was the victim of an intense physical attraction for another woman, into a lonely place in the country where he would have to spend all day and every day with the lady whom he held to be his heart's delight. The result was that in four or five days he was bored almost beyond endurance. He had an acute mind and a very definite type of character, and no happy life was possible for him merely on the basis of a physical pa.s.sion.

Therefore it is not enough that merely to look at "her" makes your blood run fast and your nerves tingle. It is not enough that the very sight of "him" should give you acute pleasure. Before a man and a woman get engaged they would do well to have some long talks together, and so to find out what their real interests are, and whether their general views and purposes in life are such as can possibly be harmonized.

Marriage lasts for a long time, and is a poor affair when a husband is bored by his wife's conversation, or when a wife is repelled by her husband's views. Even to such there may come recurrent hours of ardent love, but both will want more than that. We must take our whole selves into marriage, and to have experienced a mere physical attraction is no proof that we shall be able to do it. I remember one very distressed young wife who once asked me for help. She had been carried away by the attraction of a masterful man, and had lived through her engagement and the early days of marriage in a whirl of excitement in which she never stopped to consider what sort of a man he truly was. A month or two after marriage she inevitably began to find out, and was both shocked and repelled. She was longing to have a friend in her husband; but they both felt that a friendship between them was impossible.

I am sure it must mean one of the hardest tasks which life ever sets any of us to keep one's head when under the influence of such an attraction, and perhaps to have to decide not to act at all in consequence of it. To stifle an incipient pa.s.sion in that way may be a terrific business for some people. But we are queer complex creatures, and we needs must take account of the whole of ourselves if we are to find life.

I repeat, physical attraction _is_ often the beginning of everything else. But it is not always so, and for that reason we must needs beware.

Of course the converse of all this is also true. A man and a woman may attain to a fine fellowship of mind and find co-operation in many ways congenial, and yet may experience no mutual physical attraction. And if they begin to think of marriage they have indeed a delicate problem before them. Generally, I believe, the further intimacies which come with marriage will awaken physical instinct in both, and when nature has had her way with them a really complete marriage will be attained.

But it is not always so. Neither may have the power fully to awaken the other. In some marriages that are fine friendships either the man or the woman is half-conscious of deep-seated longings that have never been satisfied. And if by chance a third person appears with the power fully to awaken the physical nature of either the husband or the wife, a very difficult situation arises. I do not say it is a situation which cannot be handled successfully. I do not believe we need be the victims of pa.s.sion. But only a fool would deliberately court the possibility of having to face the situation I have described. Wherefore I say again we need to take account of the whole of ourselves if we are to find life.

CHAPTER V

OUR MORAL STANDARDS

There are at least three moral standards in existence in the English world. There is first the Christian standard, for which men and women are equal, which recognizes the sacredness of personality in every case, and which calls for absolute continence and chast.i.ty before marriage and absolute fidelity after it. This is the standard I am concerned to understand and defend.

There is, secondly, the legal standard, for which men and women have not equal rights, but which, in the marriage and divorce laws, accords to woman an inferior position--which takes no cognizance of immorality between unmarried persons unless children result and which, in England as distinguished from Scotland, attaches no penalties to infidelity on the part of a husband.

And then, thirdly, there is the working moral standard of society. I cannot describe it because it differs so greatly in different sections of society. In general it has to be said that it treats lack of chast.i.ty among unmarried men as a very venial offence and punishes the same offence in women with very severe social penalties; and it may certainly be said that it has not yet demanded a full recognition by the law of the equality of the s.e.xes in the matter of moral and married rights.

Now the question of the relation of our legal standards to the Christian standard is an exceedingly difficult and yet vitally important one. The hope of enforcing the Christian standard by law has tempted many minds. In our own day many try to make the law of the land enforce the Christian position about divorce. But there are grave difficulties in connection with this course. The Christian att.i.tude and spirit cannot be produced by law. The scope of mere law must always be much more restricted than the scope of the mind of Christ. The Christian mind is not primarily concerned with penalties and does not desire to see penalties attached to the failure to reach the Christian standard in all things. To attach a criminal stigma to all lapses from the Christian way in morals would be disastrous.

What might be expected from the law of the land is, I think, that it should recognize the fundamental equality of men and women, and that, while demanding less, it should at least point towards the Christian standard (see note at end of chapter).

For the rest, the adjustment of legal enactments to the Christian ideal must always be a matter for delicate and vigilant handling.