Marriage Bonds Loosen Because Man Is Losing Sense of Sin, June 23, 1926

Marriage Bonds Loosen Because Man Is Losing His Sense of Sin, Says Wells

The so-called “breakdown of marriage,” as typified by the increasing number of divorces and the less rigid acceptance of the “bond” of matrimony as a permanent tie, is not a social revolution but a social evolution, in the opinion of H.G. Wells, famous English student and writer.

In a discussion of changing relationships, Wells presents, in the July issue of Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan magazine some views on the future status of marriage that are likely to startle or even alarm all who believe our racial supremacy depends on a return to the orthodox recognition of marriage as holy and indissoluble bond.

“The marriage of today,” says Wells, “is not the marriage of yesterday and still less is it likely to be the marriage of tomorrow.

“The force of reason is in alliance with he forces of social convenience in narrowing down marriage to a child-protecting bond. Until that is done, it is clear that the state will be depriving adults, needlessly, of their legitimate social freedom.”

Wells argues that public concern in the relationships of men and women only begins when a child is begotten. Then, he says, public responsibilities are incurred, obligations must be acknowledged and home live and upbringing insured for the new citizen.

That the present legal marriage is much more than a bond for the upbringing of a family is due largely, he states, to the old need for a rule of inheritance, approved and sustained by “the impudent intolerance of our intellectually discredited religious obligations.” A new order, in which the illegitimate will be equalized with the legitimate, and the proprietorship of husband and wife attenuated to the privileges of lover and mistress, will result in the marriage of the future signifying little more than habitual association, he predicts.

Back of this change Wells sees the influence of wider education, which has brought a new measure of intellectual and economic freedom. With this has come a loss of the sense of sin in human relationships. The result has been a greater variation of associations, meeting the changes in temperament and taste as men and women pass through diverse phases of development. And this, Wells holds, marks a stage of evolution for this race more significant than any mere “breakdown of marriage.” “In the ampler, easier, less ceremonious social life of tomorrow,’ he writes, “consorts will not always be upon a convention of equality. As we take off the stays, blinkers, hoods and masks we have put the imaginations of human beings we may realize that we have, through marriage, been trying to adapt an immensely various collection of types to one standard bilateral arrangement.”

From page 6 of the Concord Daily Tribune, Tuesday, June 22, 1926

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