To expect to bring about the desired change by religious means, which are the first to suggest themselves either to the Christian or the philosopher, is impossible. However desirable it may be our political system has made it impossible for us as a body of people to go back to the customs of a period which was superior to ours in regard to the sanctity of marriage relations. However much these relations may be regarded as sacraments by some, and as specially sanctified by others, the making of the marriage relation a matter of mere civil contract has become so generally a fact in law that it is impossible any longer to expect the majority of people to abide by the precedents and customs of different churches. The fact is, the churches don’t do it themselves. Divorced people who have no moral right to remarry are continually taking new partners and ministers are performing the ceremony.
The danger, aside from easy divorce, of which more anon, is in the probable change of social condition of the contracting parties. Men and women, mating in their very early years, as is the custom in all small villages and agricultural districts, frequently find themselves, by some happy accident, raised to a higher degree of financial standing than they had expected, and in the newer portions of the country, which contain a large majority of our population, such change of material condition carries social importance and influence with it. As would be the case anywhere else in the world, the change of condition shows itself differently in man and woman. The man of means quickly finds himself a man of mark among his fellows, and rapidly receives a vast amount of that valuable education which comes from what some philosopher has called “the attrition of minds.” His wife, relieved of the drudgery which is almost inseparable from poverty, does not follow her husband intellectually, unless such is her natural bent. She consequently devotes her leisure and improved material condition to luxury and to show. From this difference of conditions in a family which was once united can be found the basis of many thousands of divorce suits.
You take exception to the expression “intellectual?” You are wrong. I know it is the fashion to regard literature, law, theology and other so-called learned professions as sole possessors of the world’s intellect, but this is all nonsense. It requires just as much intellect--intellect of just as high order--to put a railroad through a new country, or to invent a new threshing machine, or to manage a turbulent town-meeting, or to work a bill through the Legislature, as to write a poem, sermon, or novel, or to plead a case in court. Edison and Ericsson are as much men of intellect as Longfellow or Lowell; the difference in their lives is one of taste and detail--not of brain and intellectual endeavor. The position in which money places a man anywhere, except in the large cities--and it isn’t safe to except these much--compels him to use his intellect a great deal, and to sharpen it frequently. Unless his wife is his partner in every sense of the word, she is going to be left behind. That is not the worst of it; there are plenty of bright women lying in wait for the man who has plenty of money and a stupid wife.