But if marriage exists only for the sake of society, what, we eagerly ask, is the aim of society? True to his theological dogma, that society by preserving its tradition, _i.e._ itself, preserves nothing less than God, Bonald answers (as indeed he must) with the empty formula: _The aim of society is its own preservation_.[2]
Not a word does he waste upon the vain supposition that institutions exist for man's sake; not a thought does he bestow on human happiness, on the development of the race, or the evolution of human greatness.
The one and only vital consideration being the production and welfare of children, polygamy, the putting away of a wife, and divorce seem to Bonald all equally reprehensible. He remarks that the introduction of divorce and the introduction of polygamy seem to follow naturally one on the other, seeing that Luther (this story appears in every single book of our period), who permitted divorce, also, though in all secrecy, countenanced the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse. Bonald declares that he sees no difference between the polygamy which consists in having several wives at the same time and that which consists in having them one after the other; he forgets that he hereby pronounces a second marriage, after the death of husband or wife, to be as culpable as marriage after divorce. Everywhere, he declares, where divorce is legal, and where, consequently, a woman is entitled to see in every man a possible husband, the women are devoid of chastity, or at any rate of modesty. He instances England as an example--England. He compares the state of matters in that country, where in given cases divorce is permitted, with the conditions prevailing among certain savage races, where the husband obliges his wife's lover, when he catches him _in flagranti delicto_, to pay for a pig, which the three roast and eat in company. England, with its comparatively liberal institutions, is Bonald's and Lamennais' scapegoat. Lamennais says of England that nowhere else is there to be found a population as blunted, as destitute of the sense of morality, of higher ideas, of everything that elevates the mind and ennobles human life.[3]
All this is exaggeration, and of a most untruthful and illogical kind. But there is both logic and truth in what gives these details their significance, namely, Bonald's conception of the close connection between the question of divorce and the whole political question. He sees that a republic or _democracy_ (the Republic is so obnoxious to him that he will not even use the word) inevitably leads to the loosening of the marriage tie.