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Chapter 02 - Basic Cost Management Concepts
2-1
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CHAPTER 2
BASIC COST MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS
Learning Objectives
1. Explain what is meant by the word cost.
2. Distinguish among product costs, period costs, and expenses.
3. Describe the role of costs in published financial statements.
4. List five types of manufacturing operations and describe mass customization.
5. Give examples of three types of manufacturing costs.
6. Prepare a schedule of cost of goods manufactured, a schedule of cost of goods
sold, and an income statement for a manufacturer.
7. Understand the importance of identifying an organization's cost drivers.
8. Describe the behavior of variable and fixed costs, in total and on a per-unit basis.
9. Distinguish among direct, indirect, controllable, and uncontrollable costs.
10. Define and give examples of an opportunity cost, an out-of-pocket cost, a sunk
cost, a differential cost, a marginal cost, and an average cost.

2-2
Education.
Chapter Overview
I. What Do We Mean by a Cost?
A. Product costs, period costs, and expenses
II. Costs on Financial Statements
A. Income statement
1. Selling and administrative costs
2. Costs of manufactured inventory
B. Balance sheet
1. Raw-materials inventory
2. Work-in-process inventory
3. Finished-goods inventory
III. Manufacturing Operations and Manufacturing Costs
A. Job shop, batch, assembly line, continuous flow
B. Assembly manufacturing
C. Manufacturing costs
1. Direct material
2. Direct labor
3. Manufacturing overhead
4. Indirect material
5. Indirect labor
6. Other manufacturing costs
7. Conversion cost, prime cost
IV. Manufacturing Cost Flows
A. Cost of goods manufactured
B. Production costs in service industry firms and nonprofit organizations
V. Basic Cost Management Concepts: Different Costs for Different Purposes
A. The cost driver team
1. Variable and fixed costs
B. The cost management and control team
1. Direct and indirect costs
2. Controllable and uncontrollable costs
C. The outsourcing action team
1. Opportunity costs
2. Out-of-pocket costs
3. Sunk costs
4. Differential and incremental costs

2-3
Education.
5. Marginal and average costs
D. Costs and benefits of information
VI. Costs in the Service Industry
A. Product and period costs
B. Variable and fixed costs
C. Controllable and uncontrollable costs
D. Opportunity, out-of-pocket, and sunk costs
E. Differential, marginal, and average costs
Key Lecture Concepts
I. What Do We Mean by a Cost?
A cost is the sacrifice made to achieve a particular purpose.
There are different costs for different purposes, with costs that are
appropriate for one use being totally inappropriate for others (e.g., a cost
that is used to determine inventory valuation may be irrelevant in
deciding whether or not to manufacture that same product).
An expense is defined as the cost incurred when an asset is used up or
sold for the purpose of generating revenue. The terms "product cost" and
"period cost" are used to describe the timing with which expenses are
recognized.
 Product costs are the costs of goods manufactured or the cost of
goods purchased for resale. These costs are inventoried until the
goods are sold.
 Period costs are all other non-product costs in an organization (e.g.,
selling and administrative). Such costs are not inventoried but are
expensed as time passes.

2-4
Education.
II. Costs on Financial Statements
Product costs are shown as cost of goods sold on the income statement
when goods are sold. Income statements of service enterprises lack a cost-
of-goods-sold section and instead reveal a firm's operating expenses.
Product costs, housed on the balance sheet until sale, are found in three
inventory accounts:
 Raw materials—materials that await production
 Work in process—partially completed production
 Finished goods—completed production that awaits sale
III. Manufacturing Operations and Manufacturing Costs
There are various types of production processes; for example:
 Job shop—low production volume, little standardization; one-of-a-
kind products
 Batch—multiple products; low volume
 Assembly line—a few major products; higher volume
 Continuous flow—high volume; highly standardized commodity
products
Direct materials—materials easily traced to a finished product (e.g., the
seat on a bicycle)
Direct labor—the wages of anyone who works directly on the product
(e.g., the assembly-line wages of the bicycle manufacturer)
Manufacturing overhead—all other manufacturing costs such as:
 Indirect materials—materials and supplies other than those
classified as direct materials,

2-5
Education.
 Indirect labor—personnel who do not work directly on the product
(e.g., manufacturing supervisors), and
 Other manufacturing costs not easily traceable to a finished good
(insurance, property taxes, depreciation, utilities, and
service/support department costs). Overtime premiums and the
cost of idle time are also accounted for as overhead.
 Idle time – time that is not spent productively by an employee due
to such events as equipment breakdowns or new setups of
production runs.
Conversion cost (the cost to convert direct materials into finished
product): direct labor + manufacturing overhead
Prime cost: direct material + direct labor
IV. Manufacturing Cost Flows
Manufacturing costs (direct materials, direct labor, and manufacturing
overhead) are "put in process" and attached to work-in-process inventory.
The goods are completed (finished goods), and the costs are then passed
along to cost of goods sold upon sale.
Cost of goods manufactured: Direct materials used + direct labor +
manufacturing overhead + beginning work-in-process inventory - ending
work-in-process inventory
 This amount is transferred from work-in-process inventory to
finished-goods inventory when goods are completed.
Product costs and cost of goods sold for a manufacturer:

2-6
Education.
Beginning Cost of Goods Ending
Inventory, + Manufactured - Inventory, = Cost of
Finished Goods to Completion Finished Goods Goods Sold
Beginning Cost of Ending Cost of
Finished
Goods
Goods
Manu.
Finished
Goods
Goods
Sold
Supported by A schedule of Current Income
the prior year's production costs balance sheet statement
balance sheet
Production-cost concepts are applicable to service businesses and
nonprofit organizations. For example, the direct-materials concept can be
applied to the food consumed in a restaurant or the jet fuel used by an
airline. Similarly, direct labor would be equivalent to the cooks in a
restaurant and the flight crews of an airline.
V. Basic Cost Management Concepts: Different Costs for Different Purposes
A cost driver is any event or activity that causes costs to be incurred. Cost
driver examples include labor hours in manual assembly work and
machine hours in automated production settings.
 The higher the degree of correlation between a cost-pool increase
and the increase in its cost driver, the better the cost management
information.
Variable and fixed costs
 Variable costs move in direct proportion to a change in activity.
For example, in the manufacture of bicycles, the total cost of bicycle
seats goes up in proportion to the number of bicycles produced.
However, the cost per unit (i.e., per seat) remains constant.

2-7
Education.
 Fixed costs remain constant in total as the level of activity changes.
For instance, straight-line depreciation of a bicycle plant remains
the same whether 100 bicycles or 1,000 bicycles are produced.
However, the depreciation cost per unit fluctuates because this
constant total is spread over a smaller or greater volume.
Direct and indirect costs
 An entity (e.g., a specific product, service, or department) to which
a cost is assigned is commonly known as a cost object.
 A direct cost is one that can be easily traced to a cost object.
 If a college department has been defined as the cost object,
professors' salaries and administrative assistants' salaries are
direct costs of the department (just as assembly workers'
wages are direct costs of a manufacturing department).
 An indirect cost is a cost that cannot be easily traced to a cost
object.
 For example, the costs of a university's controller, president,
campus security, and groundskeeper cannot be directly
traceable to a specific department, as these individuals
service the entire university. (Similarly, a factory guard's
salary is not traceable to only one department and is, thus,
considered indirect to all departments.)
 A cost management system strives to trace costs to the objects that
caused them so that managers can isolate responsibility for
spending and objectively evaluate operations.
Teaching Tip: When discussing indirect costs, you may want to cite a
hospital's medical and surgical supplies as an example. Such items do not
appear to be a primary target for trimming; however, these indirect costs
often account for a sizable portion of a hospital's operating costs.
Understanding indirect costs has become more valuable in a managed-
care environment because it helps hospitals negotiate fixed-fee contracts.

2-8
Education.
Controllable and uncontrollable costs
 Controllable costs—costs over which a manager has influence (e.g.,
direct materials)
 Uncontrollable costs—costs over which a manager has no
influence (e.g., the salary of a firm's CEO from the production
manager's viewpoint)
Opportunity cost—the benefit forgone by choosing an alternative course
of action (e.g., the wages forgone when a student decides to attend college
full-time rather than be employed)
Out-of-pocket cost—a cost that requires a cash outlay
Sunk cost—a cost incurred in the past that cannot be changed by future
action (e.g., the cost of existing inventory or equipment)
 Such costs are not relevant for decision making.
Differential cost—the net difference in cost between two alternative
courses of action
 Incremental cost—the increase in cost from one alternative to
another
Marginal cost—the extra cost incurred when one additional unit is
produced
Average cost per unit—total cost divided by the units of activity
Accountants must weigh the benefits of providing information against the
costs of generating, communicating, and using that information. The goal
is to use information effectively and avoid information overload.

2-9
Education.
VI. Costs in the Service Industry
The preceding costs are relevant in service providers as well as for
manufacturing entities.
Teaching Overview
The main purpose of Chapter 2 is to expand the way in which costs are defined and
viewed. After completing a course in financial accounting, students are very much
geared into thinking about functional costs (depreciation, utilities, and commissions) for
an entire organization. While this is useful information to an outside creditor or
investor, it is insufficient with respect to helping internal managers do their jobs
effectively. Managers must also consider cost behavior, controllability, costs incurred
by smaller segments, and so on. An initial reminder of these facts generally opens a
discussion of additional ways of viewing financial information. It is worthwhile to
spend a few extra minutes in the area of cost behavior since it is so fundamental to later
topics.
Before discussing manufacturing costs, I ask for a show of hands from students who
have actually visited a manufacturing plant. The typical, small number of hands serves
as a reminder that many students have little idea of what a factory "looks like" and
does. Pictures and videos are helpful in providing a context for the concepts being
discussed—even a field trip to a local manufacturer is a good idea. This is also an
excellent time to point out that even if a student does not plan to work in production
management, he or she may well work in accounting, finance, or marketing for a
company that makes a product. Therefore, being conversant in the language and
concepts of cost accounting will be useful. Accounting techniques in manufacturing are
frequently transferable to the service sector, and this fact should be emphasized in class.
In summary, Chapter 2 discusses the many ways that costs can be categorized. Chapter
3 then follows with a discussion of a system to track product costs and answers the age-
old question, “How much does this cost?” I recommend using Problem 2-50 (cost
terminology and cost behavior) and Exercise 2-28 (financial schedules and statements)
as lecture demonstration problems.

2-10
Education.
Links to the Text
Homework Grid
Item No.
Learning
Objectives
Completion
Time (min.)
Special
Features*
Exercises:
2-24 2, 5, 8 20
2-25 1, 3, 6 10
2-26 5 10
2-27 5 10
2-28 1, 3, 6 25
2-29 4 30 C
2-30 1, 8 15
2-31 1, 10 5 I
2-32 1, 8, 10 15
2-33 1, 9, 10 5
2-34 1, 10 10
2-35 1, 10 10
2-36 1, 10 15
Problems:
2-37 2, 5, 10 25
2-38 1, 3, 5, 9 15
2-39 3, 4 20 C
2-40 1, 2, 3 10
2-41 1, 9 10
2-42 1, 5, 9 20
2-43 1, 3, 5, 6 35 S
2-44 5, 6 30
2-45 2, 5 40 S
2-46 5, 6, 8 25
2-47 5, 6 25
2-48 7, 8 25
2-49 7, 8 15
2-50 5, 8, 9 20
2-51 1, 3 40 W
2-52 8, 9, 10 25
2-53 7, 8 15
2-54 1, 3, 9, 10 20
2-55 7, 10 10

2-11
Education.
2-56 4, 10 25
2-57 8, 10 15
2-58 7, 8 25
Cases:
2-59 7, 8, 10 30 W, G
2-60 10 50 W, E
* W = Written response E = Ethical issue G = Group work
I = International C = Internet use S = Spreadsheet

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content

to act so; let him never by word or deed tempt her to grant as a
bargain what can only be precious as a gift; let him see her with
pleasure stand a little aloof; let him help her to gain her feet; so at
last, by what slight sacrifices on his part such a course may involve,
will it dawn upon him that he has gained a real companion and
helpmate on life’s journey.
The whole evil of commercial prostitution arises out of the
domination of Man in matters of sex. Better indeed were a Saturnalia
of free men and women than the spectacle which as it is our great
cities present at night. Here in Sex, the women’s instincts are, as a
rule, so clean, so direct, so well-rooted in the needs of the race, that
except for man’s domination they would scarcely have suffered this
perversion. Sex in man is an unorganized passion, an individual need
or impetus; but in woman it may more properly be termed a
constructive instinct, with the larger signification that that involves.
Even more than man should woman be “free” to work out the
problem of her sex-relations as may commend itself best to her—
hampered as little as possible by legal, conventional, or economic
considerations, and relying chiefly on her own native sense and tact
in the matter. Once thus free—free from the mere cash-nexus to a
husband, from the money-slavery of the streets, from the nameless
terrors of social opinion, and from the threats of the choice of
perpetual virginity or perpetual bondage—would she not indeed
choose her career (whether that of wife and mother, or that of free
companion, or one of single blessedness) far better for herself than
it is chosen for her to-day—regarding really in some degree the
needs of society, and the welfare of children, and the sincerity and
durability of her relations to her lovers, and less the petty motives of
profit and fear?
The point is that the whole conception of a nobler Womanhood for
the future has to proceed candidly from this basis of her complete
freedom as to the disposal of her sex, and from the healthy
conviction that, with whatever individual aberrations, she will on the
whole use that freedom rationally and well. And surely this—in view
too of some decent education of the young on sexual matters—is

not too great a demand to make on our faith in women. If it is, then
indeed we are undone—for short of this we can only retain them in
servitude, and society in its form of the hell on earth which it largely
is to-day.
Refreshing therefore in its way is the spirit of revolt which is
spreading on all sides. Let us hope such revolt will continue. If it
lead here and there to strained or false situations, or to temporary
misunderstandings—still, declared enmity is better than unreal
acquiescence. Too long have women acted the part of mere
appendages to the male, suppressing their own individuality and
fostering his self-conceit. In order to have souls of their own they
must free themselves, and greatly by their own efforts. They must
learn to fight. Whitman in his poem “A Woman Waits for Me,” draws
a picture of a woman who stands in the sharpest possible contrast
with the feeble bourgeois ideal—a woman who can “swim, row, ride,
wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, defend herself,” etc.; and Bebel,
in his book on Woman, while pointing out that in Sparta, “where the
greatest attention was paid to the physical development of both
sexes, boys and girls went about naked till they had reached the age
of puberty, and were trained together in bodily exercises, games and
wrestling,” complains that now-a-days “the notion that women
require strength, courage and resolution is regarded as very
heterodox.” But the truth is that qualities of courage and
independence are not agreeable in a slave, and that is why man
during all these centuries has consistently discountenanced them—
till at last the female herself has come to consider them
“unwomanly.” Yet this last epithet is absurd; for if tenderness is the
crown and glory of woman, nothing can be more certain than that
true tenderness is only found in strong and courageous natures; the
tenderness of a servile person is no tenderness at all.
It has not escaped the attention of thinkers on these subjects that
the rise of Women into freedom and larger social life here alluded to
—and already indeed indicated by the march of events—is likely to
have a profound influence on the future of our race, It is pointed out
that among most of the higher animals, and indeed among many of

the early races of mankind, the males have been selected by the
females on account of their prowess or superior strength or beauty,
and this has led to the evolution in the males and in the race at
large of a type which (in a dim and unconscious manner) was the
ideal of the female.[11]
But as soon as in the history of mankind the
property-love set in, and woman became the chattel of man, this
action ceased. She, being no longer free, could not possibly choose
man, but rather the opposite took place, and man began to select
woman for the characteristics pleasing to him. The latter now
adorned herself to gratify his taste, and the female type and
consequently the type of the whole race have been correspondingly
affected. With the return of woman to freedom the ideal of the
female may again resume its sway. It is possible indeed that the
more dignified and serious attitude of women towards sex may give
to sexual selection when exercised by them a nobler influence than
when exercised by the males. Anyhow it is not difficult to see that
women really free would never countenance for their mates the
many mean and unclean types of men who to-day seem to have
things all their own way, nor consent to have children by such men;
nor is it difficult to imagine that the feminine influence might thus
sway to the evolution of a more manly and dignified race than has
been disclosed in these last days of commercial civilization!
The Modern Woman with her clubs, her debates, her politics, her
freedom of action and costume, is forming a public opinion of her
own at an amazing rate; and seems to be preparing to “spank” and
even thump the Middle-class Man in real earnest! What exactly
evolution may be preparing for us, we do not know, but apparently
some lively sparring matches between the sexes. Of course all will
not be smooth sailing. The women of the new movement are
naturally largely drawn from those in whom the maternal instinct is
not especially strong; also from those in whom the sexual instinct is
not preponderant. Such women do not altogether represent their
sex; some are rather mannish in temperament; some are
“homogenic,” that is, inclined to attachments to their own, rather
than to the opposite, sex; some are ultra-rationalizing and brain-

cultured; to many, children are more or less a bore; to others, man’s
sex-passion is a mere impertinence, which they do not understand,
and whose place they consequently misjudge. It would not do to say
that the majority of the new movement are thus out of line, but
there is no doubt that a large number are; and the course of their
progress will be correspondingly curvilinear.
Perhaps the deficiency in maternal instinct would seem the most
serious imputation. But then, who knows (as we have said) what
evolution is preparing? Sometimes it seems possible that a new sex
is on the make—like the feminine neuters of Ants and Bees—not
adapted for child-bearing, but with a marvelous and perfect instinct
of social service, indispensable for the maintenance of the common
life. Certainly most of those who are freeing themselves—often with
serious struggles—from the “lady” chrysalis are fired with an ardent
social enthusiasm; and if they may personally differ in some respects
from the average of their sex, it is certain that their efforts will result
in a tremendous improvement in the general position of their more
commonplace sisters.
If it should turn out that a certain fraction of the feminine sex
should for one reason or another not devote itself to the work of
maternity, still the influence of this section would react on the others
to render their notion of motherhood far more dignified than before.
There is not much doubt that in the future this most important of
human labors will be carried on with a degree of conscious
intelligence hitherto unknown, and which will raise it from the
fulfilment of a mere instinct to the completion of a splendid social
purpose. To save the souls of children as well as their bodies, to
raise heroic as well as prosperous citizens, will surely be the desire
and the work of the mothers of our race.[12]
It will perhaps be said that after going about to show (as in the
previous chapter) the deficiency of women hitherto in the matter of
the generalizing faculty, it is somewhat inconsistent to express any
great hope that they will ever take much active interest in the
general social life to which they belong; but indeed the answer to
this is that they are already beginning to do so. The social

enthusiasm and activity shown by women in Britain, Russia, and the
United States is so great and well-rooted that it is impossible to
believe it a mere ephemeral event; and though in the older of these
countries it is at present confined to the more wealthy classes, we
can augur from that—according to a well-known principle—that it
will in time spread downwards to the women of the nation.
Important as is the tendency of women in the countries
mentioned to higher education and brain development, I think it is
evident that the widening and socialization of their interests is not
taking place so much through mere study of books and the passing
of examinations in political economy and other sciences, as through
the extended actual experience which the life of the day is bringing
to them. Certainly the book-studies are important and must not be
neglected; but above all is it imperative (and men, if they are to
have any direct sway in the future destinies of the other sex, must
look to it) that women, so long confined to the narrowest mere
routine and limited circle of domestic life, should see and get
experience, all they can, of the actual world. The theory, happily
now exploding, of keeping them “innocent” through sheer ignorance
partakes too much of the “angel and idiot” view. To see the life of
slum and palace and workshop, to enter into the trades and
professions, to become doctors, nurses, and so forth, to have to look
after themselves and to hold their own as against men, to travel, to
meet with sexual experience, to work together in trade-unions, to
join in social and political uprisings and rebellions, etc., is what
women want just now. And it is evident enough that at any rate
among the more prosperous sections in this country such a
movement is going on apace. If the existence of the enormous
hordes of unattached females that we find living on interest and
dividends to-day is a blemish from a Socialistic point of view; if we
find them on the prowl all over the country, filling the theaters and
concert-rooms and public entertainments in the proportion of three
to one male, besetting the trains, swarming onto the tops of the
’buses, dodging on bicycles under the horses’ heads, making
speeches at street corners, blocking the very pavements in the front

of fashionable shops, we must not forget that for the objects we
have just sketched, even this class is going the most direct way to
work, and laying in stores of experience, which will make it
impossible for it ever to return to the petty life of times gone by.
At the last, and after centuries of misunderstanding and
association of triviality and superficiality with the female sex, it will
perhaps dawn upon the world that the truth really lies in an opposite
direction—that, in a sense, there is something more deep-lying
fundamental and primitive in the woman nature than in that of the
man; that instead of being the over-sensitive hysterical creature that
civilization has too often made her, she is essentially of calm large
and acceptive even though emotional temperament. “Her shape
arises,” says Walt Whitman,
“She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d,
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is concealed from her,
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,
She is the best belov’d, it is without exception; she has no reason to fear, and she
does not fear.”
The Greek goddesses look down and across the ages to the very
outposts beyond civilization; and already from far America,
Australasia, Africa, Norway, Russia, as even in our midst from those
who have crossed the border-line of all class and caste, glance forth
the features of a grander type—fearless and untamed—the primal
merging into the future Woman; who, combining broad sense with
sensibility, the passion for Nature with the love of Man, and
commanding indeed the details of life, yet risen out of localism and
convention, will help us to undo the bands of death which encircle
the present society, and open the doors to a new and a wider life.

O
MARRIAGE
A RETROSPECT
f the great mystery of human Love, and that most intimate
personal relation of two souls to each other—perhaps the
firmest, most basic and indissoluble fact (after our own existence)
that we know; of that strange sense—often, perhaps generally,
instantaneous—of long precedent familiarity and kinship, that deep
reliance on and acceptation of another in his or her entirety; of the
tremendous strength of the chain which thus at times will bind two
hearts in life-long dedication and devotion, persuading and indeed
not seldom compelling the persons concerned to the sacrifice of
some of the other elements of their lives and characters; and,
withal, of a certain inscrutable veiledness from each other which so
frequently accompanies the relation of the opposite sexes, and
which forms at once the abiding charm, and the pain, sometimes the
tragedy, of their union; of this palpitating winged living thing, which
one may perhaps call the real Marriage—I would say but little; for
indeed it is only fitting or possible to speak of it by indirect language
and suggestion, nor may one venture to rudely drag it from its
sanctuary into the light of the common gaze.
Compared with this, the actual marriage, in its squalid perversity
as we too often have occasion of knowing it, is as the wretched idol
of the savage to the reality which it is supposed to represent; and
one seems to hear the Aristophanic laughter of the gods as they
contemplate man’s little clay image of the Heavenly Love—which,
cracked in the fire of daily life, he is fain to bind together with rusty
hoops of law, and parchment bonds, lest it should crumble and fall
to pieces altogether.

The whole subject, wide as life itself—as Heaven and Hell—eludes
anything like adequate treatment, and we need make no apology for
narrowing down our considerations here to just a few practical
points; and if we cannot navigate upward into the very heart of the
matter—namely, into the causes which make some people love each
other with a true and perfect love, and others unite in obedience to
but a counterfeit passion—yet we may fairly, I imagine, study some
of the conditions which give to actual marriage its present form, or
which in the future are likely to provide real affection with a more
satisfactory expression than it has as a rule to-day.
As long as man is only half-grown, and woman is a serf or a
parasite, it can hardly be expected that Marriage should be
particularly successful. Two people come together, who know but
little of each other, who have been brought up along different lines,
who certainly do not understand each other’s nature; whose mental
interests and occupations are different, whose worldly interests and
advantage are also different; to one of whom the subject of sex is
probably a sealed book, to the other perhaps a book whose most
dismal page has been opened first. The man needs an outlet for his
passion; the girl is looking for a “home” and a proprietor. A glamor of
illusion descends upon the two, and drives them into each other’s
arms. It envelopes in a gracious and misty halo all their differences
and misapprehensions. They marry without misgiving; and their
hearts overflow with gratitude to the white-surpliced old gentleman
who reads the service over them.
But at a later hour, and with calmer thought, they begin to realize
that it is a life-sentence which he has so suavely passed upon them
—not reducible (as in the case of ordinary convicts) even to a term
of 20 years. The brief burst of their first satisfaction has been
followed by satiety on the physical plane, then by mere vacuity of
affection, then by boredom, and even nausea. The girl, full perhaps
of a tender emotion, and missing the sympathy and consolation she
expected in the man’s love, only to find its more materialistic side
—“This, this then is what I am wanted for;” the man, who looked for
a companion, finding he can rouse no mortal interest in his wife’s

mind save in the most exasperating trivialities;—whatever the cause
may be, a veil has fallen from before their faces, and there they sit,
held together now by the least honorable interests, the interests
which they themselves can least respect, but to which Law and
Religion lend all their weight. The monetary dependence of the
woman, the mere sex-needs of the man, the fear of public opinion,
all form motives, and motives of the meanest kind, for maintaining
the seeming tie; and the relation of the two hardens down into a dull
neutrality, in which lives and characters are narrowed and blunted,
and deceit becomes the common weapon which guards divided
interests.
A sad picture! and of course in this case a portrayal deliberately of
the seamy side of the matter. But who shall say what agonies are
often gone through in those first few years of married life? Anyhow,
this is the sort of problem which we have to face to-day, and which
shows its actuality by the amazing rate at which it is breaking out in
literature on all sides.
It may be said—and often of course is said—that such cases as
these only prove that marriage was entered into under the influence
of a passing glamor and delusion, and that there was not much real
devotion to begin with. And no doubt there is truth enough in such
remarks. But—we may say in reply—because two people make a
mistake in youth, to condemn them, for that reason, to life-long
suffering and mutual degradation, or to see them so condemned,
without proposing any hope or way of deliverance, but with the one
word “serves you right” on the lips, is a course which can commend
itself only to the grimmest and dullest Calvinist. Whatever
safeguards against a too frivolous view of the relationship may be
proposed by the good sense of society in the future, it is certain that
the time has gone past when Marriage can continue to be regarded
as a supernatural institution to whose maintenance human bodies
and souls must be indiscriminately sacrificed; a humaner, wiser, and
less panic-stricken treatment of the subject must set in; and if there
are difficulties in the way they must be met by patient and calm

consideration of human welfare—superior to any law, however
ancient and respectable.
I take it then that, without disguising the fact that the question is
a complex one, and that our conclusions may be only very tentative,
we have to consider as rationally as we conveniently can, first, some
of the drawbacks or defects of the present marriage customs, and
secondly such improvements in these as may seem feasible.
And with regard to the former, one of the most important points—
which we have already touched on—is the extraordinary absence of
any allusion to these subjects in the teaching of young folk. In a day
when every possible study seems to be crammed into the school
curriculum, it is curious that the one matter which is of supreme
importance to the individual and the community is most carefully
ignored. That one ought to be able to distinguish a passing sex-spell
from a true comradeship and devotion is no doubt a very sapient
remark; but since it is a thing which mature folk often fail to do, how
young things with no experience of their own or hint from others
should be expected to do it is not easy to understand. The search
for a fitting mate, especially among the more sensitive and highly-
organized types of mankind, is a very complex affair; and it is really
monstrous that the girl or youth should have to set out—as they
mostly have to do to-day—on this difficult quest without a word of
help as to the choice of the way or the very real doubts and
perplexities that beset it.
If the pair whom we have supposed as about to be married had
been brought up in almost any tribe of savages, they would a few
years previously have gone through regular offices of initiation into
manhood and womanhood, during which time ceremonies (possibly
indecent in our eyes) would at any rate have made many
misapprehensions impossible. As it is, the civilized girl is led to the
“altar” often in uttermost ignorance and misunderstanding as to the
nature of the sacrificial rites about to be consummated. The youth
too is ignorant in his way. Perhaps he is unaware that love in the
female is, in a sense, more diffused than in the male, less specially
sexual: that it dwells longer in caresses and embraces, and

determines itself more slowly towards the reproductive system.
Impatient, he injures and horrifies his partner, and unconsciously
perhaps aggravates the very hysterical tendency which marriage
might and should have allayed.[13]
Among the middle and well-to-do classes especially, the conditions
of high civilization, by inducing an overfed masculinity in the males
and a nervous and hysterical tendency in the females,[14]
increase
the difficulties mentioned; and it is among the “classes” too that the
special evils exist of sex-starvation and sex-ignorance on the one
hand, and of mere licentiousness on the other.
Among the comparatively uncivilized mass of the people, where a
good deal of familiarity between the sexes takes place before
marriage, and where probably there is less ignorance on the one
side and less licentiousness on the other, these ills are not so
prominent. But here too the need for some sensible teaching is
clear; and sheer neglect of the law of Transmutation, or sheer want
of self-control, are liable to make the proletarian union brutish
enough.
So far with regard to difficulties arising from personal ignorance
and inexperience. But stretching beyond and around all these are
those others that arise from the special property relation between
the two sexes, and from deep-lying historic and economic causes
generally. The long historic serfdom of woman, creeping down into
the moral and intellectual natures of the two sexes, has exaggerated
the naturally complementary relation of the male and the female into
an absurd caricature of strength on the one hand and dependence
on the other. This is well seen in the ordinary marriage-relation of
the common-prayer book type. The frail and delicate female is
supposed to cling round the sturdy husband’s form, or to depend
from his arm in graceful incapacity; and the spectator is called upon
to admire the charming effect of the union—as of the ivy with the
oak—forgetful of the terrible moral, namely, that (in the case of the
trees at any rate) it is really a death-struggle which is going on, in
which either the oak must perish suffocated in the embraces of its

partner, or in order to free the former into anything like healthy
development the ivy must be sacrificed.
Too often of course of such marriages the egoism, lordship and
physical satisfaction of the man are the chief motive causes. The
woman is practically sacrificed to the part of the maintenance of
these male virtues. It is for her to spend her days in little forgotten
details of labor and anxiety for the sake of the man’s superior
comfort and importance, to give up her needs to his whims, to
“humor” him in all ways she can; it is for her to wipe her mind clear
of all opinions in order that she may hold it up as a kind of mirror in
which he may behold reflected his lordly self; and it is for her to
sacrifice even her physical health and natural instincts in deference
to what is called her “duty” to her husband.
How bitterly alone many such a woman feels! She has dreamed of
being folded in the arms of a strong man, and surrendering herself,
her life, her mind, her all, to his service. Of course it is an unhealthy
dream, an illusion, a mere luxury of love; and it is destined to be
dashed. She has to learn that self-surrender may be just as great a
crime as self-assertion. She finds that her very willingness to be
sacrificed only fosters in the man, perhaps for his own self-defense,
the egotism and coldness that so cruelly wound her.
For how often does he with keen prevision see that if he gives way
from his coldness the clinging dependent creature will infallibly
overgrow and smother him!—that she will cut her woman-friends,
will throw aside all her own interests and pursuits in order to
“devote” herself to him, and, affording no sturdy character of her
own in which he can take any interest, will hang the festoons of her
affection on every ramification of his wretched life—nor leave him a
corner free—till he perishes from all manhood and social or heroic
uses into a mere matrimonial clothes-peg, a warning and a
wonderment to passers by!
However, as an alternative, it sometimes happens that the
Woman, too wise to sacrifice her own life indiscriminately to the
egoism of her husband, and not caring for the “festoon” method,
adopts the middle course of appearing to minister to him while really

pursuing her own purposes. She cultivates the gentle science of
indirectness. While holding up a mirror for the Man to admire himself
in, behind that mirror she goes her own way and carries out her own
designs, separate from him; and while sacrificing her body to his
wants, she does so quite deliberately and for a definite reason,
namely, because she has found out that she can so get a shelter for
herself and her children, and can solve the problem of that
maintenance which society has hitherto denied to her in her own
right. For indeed by a cruel fate women have been placed in exactly
that position where the sacrifice of their self-respect for base
motives has easily passed beyond a temptation into being a
necessity. They have had to live, and have too often only been able
to do so by selling themselves into bondage to the man. Willing or
unwilling, overworked or dying, they have had to bear children to
the caprice of their lords; and in this serf-life their very natures have
been blunted; they have lost—what indeed should be the very glory
and crown of woman’s being—the perfect freedom and the purity of
their love.[15]
At this whole spectacle of woman’s degradation the human male
has looked on with stupid and open-mouthed indifference—as an ox
might look on at a drowning ox-herd—not even dimly divining that
his own fate was somehow involved. He has calmly and obliviously
watched the woman drift farther and farther away from him, till at
last, with the loss of an intelligent and mutual understanding
between the sexes, Love with unequal wings has fallen lamed to the
ground. Yet it would be idle to deny that even in such a state of
affairs as that depicted, men and women have in the past and do
often even now find some degree of satisfaction—simply indeed
because their types of character are such as belong to, and have
been evolved in accordance with, this relation.
To-day, however, there are thousands of women—and everyday
more thousands—to whom such a lopsided alliance is detestable;
who are determined that they will no longer endure the arrogant
lordship and egoism of men, nor countenance in themselves or other
women the craft and servility which are the necessary complements

of the relation; who see too clearly in the oak-and-ivy marriage its
parasitism on the one hand and strangulation on the other to be
sensible of any picturesqueness; who feel too that they have
capacities and powers of their own which need space and liberty,
and some degree of sympathy and help, for their unfolding; and who
believe that they have work to do in the world, as important in its
own way as any that men do in theirs. Such women have broken
into open warfare—not against marriage, but against a marriage
which makes true and equal love an impossibility. They feel that as
long as women are economically dependent they cannot stand up
for themselves and insist on those rights which men from stupidity
and selfishness will not voluntarily grant them.
On the other hand there are thousands—and one would hope
every day more thousands—of men who (whatever their forerunners
may have thought) do not desire or think it delightful to have a glass
continually held up for them to admire themselves in; who look for a
partner in whose life and pursuits they can find some interest, rather
than for one who has no interest but in them; who think perhaps
that they would rather minister than be (like a monkey fed with nuts
in a cage) the melancholy object of another person’s ministrations;
and who at any rate feel that love, in order to be love at all, must be
absolutely open and sincere, and free from any sentiment of
dependence or inequality. They see that the present cramped
condition of women is not only the cause of the false relation
between the sexes, but that it is the fruitful source—through, its
debarment of any common interests—of that fatal boredom of which
we have spoken, and which is the bugbear of marriage; and they
would gladly surrender all of that masterhood and authority which is
supposed to be their due, if they could only get in return something
like a frank and level comradeship.
Thus while we see in the present inequality of the sexes an
undoubted source of marriage troubles and unsatisfactory alliances,
we see also forces at work which are tending to reaction, and to
bringing the two nearer again to each other—so that while
differentiated they will not perhaps in the future be quite so much

differentiated as now, but only to a degree which will enhance and
adorn, instead of destroy, their sense of mutual sympathy.
There is another point which ought to be considered as
contributing to the ill-success of many marriages, and which no
doubt is closely connected with that just discussed—but which
deserves separate treatment. I mean the harshness of the line, the
kind of “ring-fence,” which social opinion (at any rate in this country)
draws round the married pair with respect to their relations to
outsiders. On the one hand, and within the fence, society allows
practically the utmost passional excess or indulgence, and condones
it; on the other hand (I am speaking of the middling bulk of the
people, not of the extreme aristocratic and slum classes) beyond
that limit, the slightest familiarity, or any expression of affection
which might by any possibility be interpreted as deriving from sexual
feeling, is sternly anathematized. Marriage, by a kind of absurd
fiction, is represented as an oasis situated in the midst of an arid
desert—in which latter, is pretended, neither of the two parties is so
fortunate as to find any objects of real affectional interest. If they do
they have carefully to conceal the same from the other party.
The result of this convention is obvious enough. The married pair,
thus driven as well as drawn into closest continual contact with each
other, are put through an ordeal which might well cause the stoutest
affection to quail. To have to spend all your life with another person
is severe; but to have all outside personal interests, except of the
most abstract kind, debarred, and if there happens to be any natural
jealousy in the case, to have it tenfold increased by public
interference, is terrible; and yet unless the contracting parties are
fortunate enough to be, both of them, of such a temperament that
they are capable of strong attachments to persons of their own sex
—and this does not always exclude jealousy—such must be their
fate.
It is hardly necessary to say, not only how dull a place this makes
the home, but also how narrowing it acts on the lives of the married
pair. However appropriate the union may be in itself it cannot be
good that it should degenerate—as it tends to degenerate so often,

and where man and wife are most faithful to each other—into a
mere egoisme a deux. And right enough no doubt as a great number
of such unions actually are, it must be confessed that the bourgeois
marriage as a rule, and just in its most successful and pious and
respectable form, carries with it an odious sense of Stuffiness and
narrowness, moral and intellectual; and that the type of Family
which it provides is too often like that which is disclosed when on
turning over a large stone we disturb an insect Home that seldom
sees the light.
But in cases where the marriage does not happen to be
particularly successful or unsuccessful, when perhaps a true but not
overpoweringly intense affection is satiated at a needlessly early
stage by the continual and unrelieved impingement of the two
personalities on each other, then the boredom resulting is something
frightful to contemplate—and all the more so because of the genuine
affection behind it, which contemplates with horror its own suicide.
The weary couples that may be seen at seaside places and pleasure
resorts—the respectable working-man with his wife trailing along by
his side, or the highly respectable stock-jobber arm-in-arm with his
better and larger half—their blank faces, utter want of any common
topic of conversation which has not been exhausted a thousand
times already, and their obvious relief when the hour comes which
will take them back to their several and divided occupations—these
illustrate sufficiently what I mean. The curious thing is that jealousy
(accentuated as it is by social opinion) sometimes increases in exact
proportion to mutual boredom; and there are thousands of cases of
married couples leading a cat-and-dog life, and knowing that they
weary each other to distraction, who for that very reason dread all
the more to lose sight of each other, and thus never get a chance of
that holiday from their own society, and renewal of outside interests,
which would make a real good time for them possible.
Thus the sharpness of the line which society draws around the
pair, and the kind of fatal snap-of-the-lock with which marriage
suddenly cuts them off from the world, not only precluding the two,
as might fairly be thought advisable, from sexual, but also barring

any openly affectional relations with outsiders, and corroborating the
selfish sense of monopoly which each has in the other,—these things
lead inevitably to the narrowing down of lives and the blunting of
general human interests, to intense mutual ennui, and when (as an
escape from these evils) outside relations are covertly indulged in, to
prolonged and systematic deceit.
From all which the only conclusion seems to be that marriage
must be either alive or dead. As a dead thing it can of course be
petrified into a hard and fast formula, but if it is to be a living bond,
that living bond must be trusted to, to hold the lovers together; nor
be too forcibly stiffened and contracted by private jealousy and
public censorship, lest the thing that it would preserve for us perish
so, and cease altogether to be beautiful. It is the same with this as
with everything else. If we would have a living thing we must give
that thing some degree of liberty—even though liberty bring with it
risk. If we would debar all liberty and all risk, then we can have only
the mummy and dead husk of the thing.
Thus far I have had the somewhat invidious task, but perhaps
necessary as a preliminary one, of dwelling on the defects and
drawbacks of the present marriage system. I am sensible that, with
due discretion, some things might have been said, which have not
been said in its praise; its successful, instead of its unsuccessful,
instances might have been cited; and taking for granted the
dependence of women, and other points which have already been
sufficiently discussed, it might have been possible to show that the
bourgeois arrangement was on the whole as satisfactory as could be
expected. But such a course would neither have been sincere nor
have served any practical purpose. In view of the actually changing
relations between the sexes, it is obvious that changes in the form of
the marriage institution are impending, and the questions which are
really pressing on folks’ mind are: What are those changes going to
be? and, Of what kind do we wish them to be?

I
MARRIAGE
A FORECAST
n answer to the last question it is not improbable that the casual
reader might suppose the writer of these pages to be in favor of a
general and indiscriminate loosening of all ties—for indeed it is
always easy to draw a large inference even from the simplest
expression.
But such a conclusion would be rash. There is little doubt, I think,
that the compulsion of the marriage-tie (whether moral, social, or
merely legal) acts beneficially in a considerable number of cases—
though it is obvious that the more the compelling force takes a
moral or social form and the less purely legal it is, the better; and
that any changes which led to a cheap and continual transfer of
affections from one object to another would be disastrous both to
the character and happiness of a population. While we cannot help
seeing that the marriage-relation—in order to become the
indwelling-place of Love—must be made far more free than it is at
present, we may also recognize that a certain amount of external
pressure is not (as things are at least) without its uses: that, for
instance, it tends on the whole to concentrate affectional experience
and romance on one object, and that though this may mean a loss
at times in breadth it means a gain in depth and intensity; that, in
many cases, if it were not for some kind of bond, the two parties,
after their first passion for each other was past, and when the
unavoidable period of friction had set in, might in a moment of
irritation easily fly apart, whereas being forced for a while to tolerate
each other’s defects they learn thereby one of the best lessons of life
—a tender forbearance and gentleness, which as time goes on does

not unfrequently deepen again into a more pure and perfect love
even than at first—a love founded indeed on the first physical
intimacy, but concentrated and intensified by years of linked
experience, of twined associations, of shared labors, and of mutual
forgiveness; and in the third place that the existence of a distinct tie
or pledge discredits the easily-current idea that mere pleasure-
seeking is to be the object of the association of the sexes—a
phantasmal and delusive notion, which if it once got its head, and
the bit between its teeth, might soon dash the car of human
advance in ruin to the ground.
But having said thus much, it is obvious that external public
opinion and pressure are looked upon only as having an educational
value; and the question arises whether there is beneath this any
reality of marriage which will ultimately emerge and make itself felt,
enabling men and women to order their relations to each other, and
to walk freely, unhampered by props or pressures from without.
And it would hardly be worth while writing on this subject, if one
did not believe in some such reality. Practically I do not doubt that
the more people think about these matters, and the more
experience they have, the more they must ever come to feel that
there is such a thing as a permanent and life-long union—perhaps a
many-life-long union—founded on some deep elements of
attachment and congruity in character; and the more they must
come to prize the constancy and loyalty which rivets such unions, in
comparison with the fickle passion which tends to dissipate them.
In all men who have reached a certain grade of evolution, and
certainly in almost all women, the deep rousing of the sexual nature
carries with it a romance and tender emotional yearning towards the
object of affection, which lasts on and is not forgotten, even when
the sexual attraction has ceased to be strongly felt. This, in favorable
cases, forms the basis of what may almost be called an
amalgamated personality. That there should exist one other person
in the world towards whom all openness of interchange should
establish itself, from whom there should be no concealment; whose
body should be as dear to one, in every part, as one’s own; with

whom there should be no sense of Mine or Thine, in property or
possession; into whose mind one’s thoughts should naturally flow, as
it were to know themselves and to receive a new illumination; and
between whom and oneself there should be a spontaneous rebound
of sympathy in all the joys and sorrows and experiences of life; such
is perhaps one of the dearest wishes of the soul. It is obvious
however that this state of affairs cannot be reached at a single leap,
but must be the gradual result of years of intertwined memory and
affection. For such a union Love must lay the foundation, but
patience and gentle consideration and self-control must work
unremittingly to perfect the structure. At length each lover comes to
know the complexion of the other’s mind, the wants, bodily and
mental, the needs, the regrets, the satisfactions of the other, almost
as his or her own—and without prejudice in favor of self rather than
in favor of the other; above all, both parties come to know in course
of time, and after perhaps some doubts and trials, that the great
want, the great need, which holds them together, is not going to
fade away into thin air; but is going to become stronger and more
indefeasible as the years go on. There falls a sweet, an irresistible,
trust over their relation to each other, which consecrates as it were
the double life, making both feel that nothing can now divide; and
robbing each of all desire to remain, when death has indeed (or at
least in outer semblance) removed the other.[16]
So perfect and gracious a union—even if not always realized—is
still, I say, the bona fide desire of most of those who have ever
thought about such matters. It obviously yields far more and more
enduring joy and satisfaction in life than any number of frivolous
relationships. It commends itself to the common sense, so to speak,
of the modern mind—and does not require, for its proof, the artificial
authority of Church and State. At the same time it is equally evident
—and a child could understand this—that it requires some rational
forbearance and self-control for its realization, and it is quite
intelligible too, as already said, that there may be cases in which a
little outside pressure, of social opinion, or even actual law, may be

helpful for the supplementing or reinforcement of the weak personal
self-control of those concerned.
The modern Monogamic Marriage, however, certified and
sanctioned by Church and State, though apparently directed to this
ideal, has for the most part fallen short of it. For in constituting—as
in a vast number of cases—a union resting on nothing but the
outside pressure of Church and State, it constituted a thing
obviously and by its nature bad and degrading; while in its more
successful instances by a too great exclusiveness it has condemned
itself to a fatal narrowness and stuffiness.
Looking back to the historical and physiological aspects of the
question it might of course be contended—and probably with some
truth—that the human male is, by his nature and needs,
polygamous. Nor is it necessary to suppose that polygamy in certain
countries and races is by any means so degrading or unsuccessful an
institution as some folk would have it to be.[17]
But, as Letourneau in
his “Evolution of Marriage” points out, the progress of society in the
past has on the whole been from confusion to distinction; and we
may fairly suppose that with the progress of our own race (for each
race no doubt has its special genius in such matters), and as the
spiritual and emotional sides of man develop in relation to the
physical, there is probably a tendency for our deeper alliances to
become more unitary. Though it might be said that the growing
complexity of man’s nature would be likely to lead him into more
rather than fewer relationships, yet on the other hand it is obvious
that as the depth and subtlety of any attachment that will really hold
him increases, so does such attachment become more permanent
and durable, and less likely to be realized in a number of persons.
Woman, on the other hand, cannot be said to be by her physical
nature polyandrous as man is polygynous. Though of course there
are plenty of examples of women living in a state of polyandry both
among savage and civilized peoples, yet her more limited sexual
needs, and her long periods of gestation, render one mate physically
sufficient for her; while her more clinging affectional nature perhaps
accentuates her capacity of absorption in the one.

In both man and woman then we may say that we find a distinct
tendency towards the formation of this double unit of wedded life (I
hardly like to use the word Monogamy on account of its sad
associations)—and while we do not want to stamp such natural
unions with any false irrevocability or dogmatic exclusiveness, what
we do want is a recognition to-day of the tendency to their
formation as a natural fact, independent of any artificial laws, just as
one might believe in the natural bias of two atoms of certain
different chemical substances to form a permanent compound atom
or molecule.
It might not be so very difficult to get quite young people to
understand this—to understand that even though they may have to
contend with some superfluity of passion in early years, yet that the
most deeply-rooted desire within them will probably in the end point
to a permanent union with one mate; and that towards this end they
must be prepared to use self-control against the aimless straying of
their passions, and patience and tenderness towards the realization
of the union when its time comes. Probably most youths and girls, at
the age of romance, would easily appreciate this position; and it
would bring to them a much more effective and natural idea of the
sacredness of Marriage than they ever get from the artificial thunder
of the Church and the State on the subject.
No doubt the suggestion of the mere possibility of any added
freedom of choice and experience in the relations of the sexes will
be very alarming to some people—but it is so, I think, not because
they are at all ignorant that men already take to themselves
considerable latitude, and that a distinct part of the undoubted evils
that accompany that latitude springs from the fact that it is not
recognized; not because they are ignorant that a vast number of
respectable women and girls suffer frightful calamities and anguish
by reason of the utter inexperience of sex in which they are brought
up and have to live; but because such good people assume that any
the least loosening of the formal barriers between the sexes must
mean (and must be meant to mean) an utter dissolution of all ties,
and the reign of mere licentiousness. They are convinced that

nothing but the most unyielding and indeed exasperating straight-
jacket can save society from madness and ruin.
To those, however, who can look facts in the face, and who see
that as a matter of fact the reality of Marriage is coming more and
more to be considered in the public mind in comparison with its
formalities, the first thought will probably be one of congratulation
that after such ages of treatment as a mere formality there should
be any sense of the reality of the tie left; and the second will be the
question how to give this reality its natural form and expression.
Having satisfied ourselves that the formation of a more or less
permanent double unit is—for our race and time—on the whole the
natural and ascendant law of sex-union, slowly and with whatever
exceptions establishing and enforcing itself independently of any
artificial enactments that exist, then we shall not feel called upon to
tear our hair or rend our garments at the prospect of added freedom
for the operation of this force, but shall rather be anxious to consider
how it may best be freed and given room for its reasonable
development and growth.
I shall therefore devote the rest of the chapter to this question.
And it will probably seem (looking back to what has already been
said) that the points which most need consideration, as means to
this end, are (1) the furtherance of the freedom and self-
dependence of women; (2) the provision of some rational teaching,
of heart and of head, for both sexes during the period of youth; (3)
the recognition in marriage itself of a freer, more companionable,
and less pettily exclusive relationship; and (4) the abrogation or
modification of the present odious law which binds people together
for life, without scruple, and in the most artificial and ill-assorted
unions.
It must be admitted that the first point (1) is of basic importance.
As true Freedom cannot be without Love so true Love cannot be
without Freedom. You cannot truly give yourself to another, unless
you are master or mistress of yourself to begin with. Not only has
the general custom of the self-dependence and self-ownership of
women, in moral, social, and economic respects, to be gradually

introduced, but the Law has to be altered in a variety of cases where
it lags behind the public conscience in these matters—as in actual
marriage, where it still leaves woman uncertain as to her rights over
her own body, or in politics, where it still denies to her a voice in the
framing of the statutes which are to bind her.
With regard to (2) hardly any one at this time of day would
seriously doubt the desirability of giving adequate teaching to boys
and girls. That is a point on which we have sufficiently touched, and
which need not be farther discussed here. But beyond this it is
important, and especially perhaps, as things stand now, for girls—
that each youth or girl should personally see enough of the other
sex at an early period to be able to form some kind of judgment of
his or her relation to that sex and to sex-matters generally. It is
monstrous that the first case of sex-glamor—the true nature of
which would be exposed by a little experience—should, perhaps for
two people, decide the destinies of a life-time. Yet the more the
sexes are kept apart, the more overwhelming does this glamor
become, and the more ignorance is there, on either side, as to its
nature. No doubt it is one of the great advantages of co-education of
the sexes, that it tends to diminish these evils. Co-education, games
and sports to some extent in common, and the doing away with the
absurd superstition that because Corydon and Phyllis happen to kiss
each other sitting on a gate, therefore they must live together all
their lives, would soon mend matters considerably. Nor would a
reasonable familiarity of this kind between the sexes in youth
necessarily mean an increase of casual or clandestine sex-relations.
But even if casualties did occur they would not be the fatal and
unpardonable sins that they now—at least for girls—are considered
to be. Though the recognition of anything like common pre-
matrimonial sex-intercourse would probably be foreign to the temper
of a northern nation; yet it is open to question whether Society here,
in its mortal and fetichistic dread of the thing, has not, by keeping
the young of both sexes in ignorance and darkness and seclusion
from each other, created worse ills and suffering than it has
prevented, and whether, by giving sexual acts so feverish an

importance, it has not intensified the particular evil that it dreaded,
rather than abated it.
In the next place (3) we come to the establishment in marriage
itself of a freer and broader and more healthy relationship than
generally exists at the present time. Attractive in some ways as the
ideal of the exclusive attachment is, it runs the fatal risk, as we have
already pointed out, of lapsing into a mere stagnant double
selfishness. But, after all, Love is fed not by what it takes, but by
what it gives; and the love of man and wife too must be fed by the
love they give to others. If they cannot come out of their secluded
haven to reach a hand to others, or even to give some boon of
affection to those who need it more than themselves, or if they
mistrust each other in doing so, then assuredly they are not very
well fitted to live together.
A marriage, so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide
excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in
separate objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all
the time in the bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very
freedom be all the more poignantly attractive, and by its very scope
and breadth all the richer and more vital—would be in a sense
indestructible; like the relation of two suns which, revolving in fluent
and rebounding curves, only recede from each other in order to
return again with renewed swiftness into close proximity—and which
together blend their rays into the glory of one double star.
It has been the inability to see or understand this very simple
truth that has largely contributed to the failure of the Monogamic
union. The narrow physical passion of jealousy, the petty sense of
private property in another person, social opinion, and legal
enactments, have all converged to choke and suffocate wedded love
in egoism, lust, and meanness. But surely it is not very difficult (for
those who believe in the real thing) to imagine so sincere and
natural a trust between man and wife that neither would be greatly
alarmed at the other’s friendship with a third person, nor conclude at
once that it meant mere infidelity—or difficult even to imagine that
such a friendship might be hailed as a gain by both parties. And if it

is quite impossible (to some people) to see in such intimacies
anything but a confusion of all sex-relations and a chaos of mere
animal desire, we can only reply that this view exposes with fatal
precision the kind of thoughts which our present marriage system
engenders. In order to suppose a rational marriage at all one must
credit the parties concerned with some modicum of real affection,
candor, common sense and self-control.
Withal seeing the remarkable and immense variety of love in
human nature, when the feeling is really touched—how the love-
offering of one person’s soul and body is entirely different from that
of another person’s, so much so as almost to require another name
—how one passion is predominantly physical, and another
predominantly emotional, and another contemplative, or spiritual, or
practical, or sentimental; how in one case it is jealous and exclusive,
and in another hospitable and free, and so forth—it seems rash to
lay down any very hard and fast general laws for the marriage-
relation, or to insist that a real and honorable affection can only exist
under this or that special form. It is probably through this fact of the
variety of love that it does remain possible, in some cases, for
married people to have intimacies with outsiders, and yet to
continue perfectly true to each other and in rare instances, for triune
and other such relations to be permanently maintained.
We now come to the last consideration, namely (4) the
modification of the present law of marriage. It is pretty clear that
people will not much longer consent to pledge themselves
irrevocably for life as at present. And indeed there are always
plentiful indications of a growing change of practice. The more
people come to recognize the sacredness and naturalness of the real
union, the less will they be willing to bar themselves from this by a
life-long and artificial contract made in their salad days. Hitherto the
great bulwark of the existing institution has been the dependence of
Women, which has given each woman a direct and most material
interest in keeping up the supposed sanctity of the bond—and which
has prevented a man of any generosity from proposing an alteration
which would have the appearance of freeing himself at the cost of

the woman; but as this fact of the dependence of women gradually
dissolves out, and as the great fact of the spiritual nature of the true
Marriage crystallizes into more clearness—so will the formal bonds
which bar the formation of the latter gradually break away and
become of small import.
Love when felt at all deeply has an element of transcendentalism
in it, which makes it the most natural thing in the world for the two
lovers—even though drawn together by a passing sex-attraction—to
swear eternal troth to each other; but there is something quite
diabolic and mephistophelean in the practice of the Law, which
creeping up behind, as it were, at this critical moment, and
overhearing the two pledging themselves, claps its book together
with a triumphant bang, and exclaims: “There now you are married
and done for, for the rest of your natural lives.”
What actual changes in Law and Custom the collective sense of
society will bring about is a matter which in its detail we cannot of
course foresee or determine. But that the drift will be, and must be,
towards greater freedom, is pretty clear. Ideally speaking it is plain
that anything like a perfect union must have perfect freedom for its
condition; and while it is quite supposable that a lover might out of
the fullness of his heart make promises and give pledges, it is really
almost inconceivable that anyone having that delicate and proud
sense which marks deep feeling, could possibly demand a promise
from his loved one. As there is undoubtedly a certain natural
reticence in sex, so perhaps the most decent thing in true Marriage
would be to say nothing, make no promises—either for a year or a
life-time. Promises are bad at any time, and when the heart is full
silence befits it best. Practically, however, since a love of this kind is
slow to be realized, since social custom is slow to change, and since
the partial dependence and slavery of Woman must yet for a while
continue, it is likely for such period that formal contracts of some
kind will still be made; only these (it may be hoped) will lose their
irrevocable and rigid character, and become in some degree adapted
to the needs of the contracting parties.

Such contracts might, of course, if adopted, be very various in
respect to conjugal rights, conditions of termination, division of
property, responsibility for and rights over children, etc. In some
cases[18]
possibly they might be looked upon as preliminary to a later
and more permanent alliance; in others they would provide, for
disastrous marriages, a remedy free from the inordinate scandals of
the present Divorce Courts. It may however be said that rather than
adopt any new system of contracts, public opinion in this country
would tend to a simple facilitation of Divorce, and that if the latter
were made (with due provision for the children) to depend on
mutual consent, it would become little more than an affair of
registration, and the scandals of the proceeding would be avoided.
In any case we think that marriage-contracts, if existing at all, must
tend more and more to become matters of private arrangement as
far as the relations of husband and wife are concerned, and that this
is likely to happen in proportion as woman becomes more free, and
therefore more competent to act in her own right. It would be felt
intolerable, in any decently constituted society, that the old
blunderbuss of the Law should interfere in the delicate relations of
wedded life. As it is to-day the situation is most absurd. On the one
hand, having been constituted from times back in favor of the male,
the Law still gives to the husband barbarous rights over the person
of his spouse; on the other hand, to compensate for this, it rushes in
with the farcicalities of Breach of Promise; and in any case, having
once pronounced its benediction over a pair—how hateful the
alliance may turn out to be to both parties, and however obvious its
failure to the whole world—the stupid old thing blinks owlishly on at
its own work, and professes itself totally unable to undo the knot
which once it tied!
The only point where there is a permanent ground for State-
interference—and where indeed there is no doubt that the public
authority should in some way make itself felt—is in the matter of the
children resulting from any alliance. Here the relation of the pair
ceases to be private and becomes social; and the interests of the
child itself, and of the nation whose future citizen the child is, have

to be safe-guarded. Any contracts, or any proposals of divorce,
before they could be sanctioned by the public authority, would have
to contain satisfactory provisions for the care and maintenance of
the children in such casualties as might ensue; nor ought there to be
maintained any legal distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘legitimate’
children, since it is clear that whatever individuals or society at large
may, in the former case, think of the conduct of the parents, no
disability should on that account accrue to the child, nor should the
parents (if identifiable) be able to escape their full responsibility for
bringing it into the world. If those good people who make such a
terrible outcry against folk entering into married life without going
through all the abracadabra of the Law, on account of the children,
would try and get the law altered so as to give illegitimate children
the same status and claim on their parents as legitimate children, it
would show more genuinely for their anxiety about the children, and
would really be doing something in the interests of positive morality.
If it be objected that private contracts, or such facilitations of
Divorce as here spoken of, would simply lead to frivolous
experimental relationships entered into and broken-off ad infinitum,
it must be remembered that the responsibility for due rearing and
maintenance of children must give serious pause to such a career;
and that to suppose that any great mass of the people would find
their good in a kind of matrimonial game of General Post is to
suppose that the mass of the people have really never acquired or
been taught the rudiments of common sense in such matters—is to
suppose a case for which there would hardly be a parallel in the
customs of any nation or tribe that we know of.
In conclusion, it is evident that no very great change for the better
in marriage-relations can take place except as the accompaniment of
deep-lying changes in Society at large; and that alterations in the
Law alone will effect but a limited improvement. Indeed it is not very
likely, as long as the present commercial order of society lasts, that
the existing Marriage-laws—founded as they are on the idea of
property—will be very radically altered, though they may be to some
extent. More likely is it that, underneath the law, the common

practice will slide forward into newer customs. With the rise of the
new society, which is already outlining itself within the structure of
the old, many of the difficulties and bugbears, that at present seem
to stand in the way of a more healthy relation between the sexes,
will of themselves disappear.
It must be acknowledged, however, that though a gradual
broadening out and humanizing of Law and Custom are quite
necessary, it cannot fairly be charged against these ancient tyrants
that they are responsible for all the troubles connected with sex.
There are millions of people to-day who never could marry happily—
however favorable the conditions might be—simply because their
natures do not contain in sufficient strength the elements of loving
surrender to another; and, as long as the human heart is what it is,
there will be natural tragedies arising from the willingness or
unwillingness of one person to release another when the former
finds that his or her love is not returned.[19]
While it is quite
necessary that these natural tragedies should not be complicated
and multiplied by needless legal interference—complicated into the
numberless artificial tragedies which are so exasperating when
represented on the stage or in romance, and so saddening when
witnessed in real life—still we may acknowledge that, short of the
millennium, they will always be with us, and that no institution of
marriage alone, or absence of institution, will rid us of them. That
entire and unswerving refusal to ‘cage’ another person, or to accept
an affection not perfectly free and spontaneous, which will, we are
fain to think, be always more and more the mark of human love,
must inevitably bring its own price of mortal suffering with it; yet the
Love so gained, whether in the individual or in society, will be found
in the end to be worth the pang—and as far beyond the other love,
as is the wild bird of Paradise that comes to feed out of our hands
unbidden more lovely than the prisoner we shut with draggled wings
behind the bars. Love is doubtless the last and most difficult lesson
that humanity has to learn; in a sense it underlies all the others.
Perhaps the time has come for the modern nations when, ceasing to
be children, they may even try to learn it.

T
THE FREE SOCIETY
aking, finally, a somewhat wider outlook over the whole subject
of the most intimate human relations than was feasible in the
foregoing chapters, we may make a few general remarks.
One of the great difficulties in the way of arriving at any general
understanding on questions of sex—and one which we have already
had occasion to note—is the extraordinary diversity of feeling and
temperament which exists in these matters. Needless to say, this is
increased by the reserve, natural or artificial, which so seldom allows
people to express their sentiments quite freely. In the great ocean
there are so many currents, cold and warm, fresh, and salt, and
brackish; and each one thinks that the current in which he lives is
the whole ocean. The man of the world hardly understands, certainly
does not sympathize with, the recluse or ascetic—and the want of
appreciation is generally returned; the maternal, the sexual, and the
philanthropic woman, are all somewhat unintelligible to each other;
the average male and the average female approach the great
passion from totally different sides, and are continually at odds over
it; and again both of these great sections of humanity fail entirely to
understand that other and well-marked class of persons whose love-
attraction is (inborn) towards their own sex, and indeed hardly
recognize the existence of such a class, although as a matter of fact
it is a large and important one in every community. In fact, all these
differences have hitherto been so little the subject of impartial study
that we are still amazingly in the dark about them.
When we look back to History, and the various customs of the
world in different races and tribes and at different periods of time,
we seem to see these natural divergencies of human temperament

reflected in the extraordinary diversity of practices that have
obtained and been recognized. We see that, in some cases, the
worship of sex took its place beside the worship of the gods; and—
what appears equally strange—that the orgiastic rites and saturnalia
of the early world were intimately connected with religious feeling;
we find that, in other cases, asceticism and chastity and every denial
of the flesh were glorified and looked upon as providing the only
way to the heavenly kingdom; we discover that marriage has been
instituted and defined and sanctioned in endless forms, each looked
upon as the only moral and possible form in its own time and
country; and that the position of women under these different
conditions has varied in the most remarkable way—that in some of
the primitive societies where group-marriages[20]
of one kind or
another prevailed their dignity and influence were of the highest,
that under some forms of Monogamy, as among the Nagas of
Bengal,[21]
women have been abjectly degraded, while under other
forms, as in Ancient Egypt and the later Roman Empire, they have
been treated with respect; and so forth. We cannot fail, I say, to
recognize the enormous diversity of practice which has existed over
the world in this matter of the relations of the sexes; nor, I may add,
can we venture—if we possess any sense of humanity—to put our
finger down finally on any one custom or institution, and say, Here
alone is the right way.
On the contrary, it seems to me probable that, broadly speaking, a
really free Society will accept and make use of all that has gone
before. If, as we have suggested, historical forms and customs are
the indication of tendencies and instincts which still exist among us,
then the question is, not the extinction of these tendencies, but the
finding of the right place and really rational expression for them.
That the various customs of past social life do subsist on beneath
the surface of modern society, we know well enough; and it seems
likely that society in the future will have to recognize and to a certain
extent transform these. In fact, in recognizing it will inevitably
transform, for it will bring them out from darkness into light, and
from the old conditions and surroundings of the past societies into

the new conditions of the modern. Polygamy, for instance, or some
related form of union, supposing it really did spontaneously and
naturally arise in a society which gave perfect freedom and
independence to women in their relation to men, would be
completely different in character from the old-world polygamy, and
would cease to act as a degrading influence on women, since it
would be the spontaneous expression of their attachment to each
other and to a common husband; Monogamy, under similar
circumstances, would lose its narrowness and stuffiness; and the life
of the Hetaira, that is of the woman who chooses to be the
companion of more than one man, might not be without dignity,
honor, and sincere attachment.
Again it is easy to see, if the sense of cleanness in sex ever does
come in, if the physical body ever becomes clean (which it certainly
is not now-a-days), clean and beautiful and accepted, within and
without—and this of course it can only be through a totally changed
method of life, through pure and clean food, nakedness to a large
extent, and a kind of saturation with the free air and light of heaven;
and if the mental and moral relation ever becomes clean, which can
only be with the freedom of woman and the sincerity of man, and so
forth; it is easy to see how entirely all this would alter our criticism
of the various sex-relations, and our estimate of their place and
fitness.
In the wild and even bacchanalian festivals of all the earlier
nations, there was an element of Nature-sex-mysticism which has
become lost in modern times, or quite unclean and depraved; yet we
cannot but see that this element is a vital and deep-lying one in
humanity, and in some form or other will probably reassert itself. On
the other hand, in the Monkish and other ascetic movements of
Christian or pre-Christian times, with their efforts towards a proud
ascendancy over the body, there was (commonly sneered at though
it may be in the modern West) an equally vital and important truth,
[22]
which will have to be rehabilitated. The practices of former races
and times, however anomalous they may sometimes appear to us,
were after all in the main the expression of needs and desires which

had their place in human nature, and which still for the most part
have their place there, even though overlaid and suppressed
beneath existing convention; and who knows, in all the stifled
longings of thousands and thousands of hearts, how the great broad
soul of Humanity—which reaches to and accepts all times and races
—is still ever asserting herself and swelling against the petty bonds
of this or that age? The nearer Society comes to its freedom and
majority the more lovingly will it embrace this great soul within it,
and recognizing in all the customs of the past the partial efforts of
that soul to its own fulfillment will refuse to deny them, but rather
seek, by acceptance and reunion, to transform and illumine them all.
Possibly, to some, these remarks will only suggest a return to
general confusion and promiscuity; and of course to such people
they will seem inconsistent with what has been said before on the
subject of the real Marriage and the tendency of human beings, as
society evolves, to seek more and more sincerely a life-long union
with their chosen mate; but no one who thinks twice about the
matter could well make this mistake. For the latter tendency, that
namely “from confusion to distinction,” is in reality the tendency of
all evolution, and cannot be set aside. It is in the very nature of Love
that as it realizes its own aim it should rivet always more and more
towards a durable and distinct relationship, nor rest till the
permanent mate and equal is found. As human beings progress their
relations to each other must become much more definite and distinct
instead of less so—and there is no likelihood of society in its onward
march lapsing backward, so to speak, to formlessness again.
But it is just the advantage of this onward movement towards
definiteness that it allows—as in the evolution of all organic life—of
more and more differentiation as the life rises higher in the scale of
existence. If society should at any future time recognize—as we
think likely it will do—the variety of needs of the human heart and of
human beings, it will not therefore confuse them, but will see that
these different needs indicate different functions, all of which may
have their place and purpose. If it has the good sense to tolerate a
Nature-festival now and then, and a certain amount of animalism let

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