22. Compulsory Marriage
I myself once proposed an alternative scheme, to wit, the prohibition
of sentimental marriages by law, and the substitution of
match-making by the common hangman. This plan, as
revolutionary as it may seem, would have several plain advantages.
For one thing, it would purge the serious business of marriage of the
romantic fol-de-rol that now corrupts it, and so
make for the
peace and happiness of the race. For another thing, it would work
against the process which now selects out, as I have said, those men
who are most fit, and so throws the chief burden of paternity upon
the inferior, to the damage of posterity. The hangman, if he made
his selections arbitrarily, would try to give his office permanence
and dignity by choosing men whose marriage would meet with
public approbation, i.e., men obviously of sound stock and talents,
i.e., the sort of men who now habitually escape. And if he made his
selection by the hazard of the die, or by drawing numbers out of a
hat, or by any other such method of pure chance, that pure chance
would fall indiscriminately upon all orders of men, and the upper
orders would thus lose their present comparative immunity. True
enough, a good many men would endeavour to influence him
privately to their own advantage, and it is probable that he would
occasionally succumb, but it must be plain that the men most likely
to prevail in that enterprise would not be philosophers, but
politicians, and so there would be some benefit to the race even
here. Posterity surely suffers no very heavy loss when a
Congressman, a member of the House of Lords or even an
ambassador or Prime Minister dies childless, but when a Herbert
Spencer goes to the grave without leaving sons behind him there is a
detriment to all the generations of the future.
I did not offer the plan, of course, as a contribution to practical
politics, but merely as a sort of hypothesis, to help clarify the
problem. Many other theoretical advantages appear in it, but its
execution is made impossible, not only by inherent defects, but also
by a general disinclination to abandon the present system, which at
least offers certain attractions to concrete men and women, despite
its unfavourable effects upon the unborn. Women would oppose
the substitution of chance or arbitrary fiat for the existing struggle
for the plain reason that every woman is convinced, and no doubt
rightly, that her own judgment is superior to that of either the
common hangman or the gods, and that her own enterprise is more
favourable to her opportunities. And men would oppose it because
it would restrict their liberty. This liberty, of course, is largely
imaginary. In its common manifestation, it is no more, at bottom,
than the
privilege of being bamboozled and made a mock of by
the, first woman who ventures to essay the business. But none the
less it is quite as precious to menas any other of the ghosts that their
vanity conjures up for their enchantment. They cherish the notion
that unconditioned volition enters into the matter, and that under
volition there is not only a high degree of sagacity but also a touch
of the daring and the devilish. A man is often almost as much
pleased and flattered by his own marriage as he would be by the
achievement of what is currently called a seduction. In the one
case, as in the other, his emotion is one of triumph. The
substitution of pure chance would take away that soothing unction.
The present system, to be sure, also involves chance. Every man
realizes it, and even the most bombastic bachelor has moments in
which he humbly whispers:"There, but for the grace of God, go I."
But that chance has a sugarcoating; it is swathed in egoistic illusion;
it shows less stark and intolerable chanciness, so to speak, than the
bald hazard of the die. Thus men prefer it, and shrink from the
other. In the same way, I have no doubt, the majority of foxes
would object to choosing lots to determine the victim of a
projected fox-hunt. They prefer to take their chances with the dogs.
