action and an overwhelming repugnance and disgust. We have two
tyrannous physical passions: concupiscence and chastity. We become mad
in pursuit of sex: we become equally mad in the persecution of that
pursuit. Unless we gratify our desire the race is lost: unless we
restrain it we destroy ourselves. We are thus led to devise marriage
institutions which will at the same time secure opportunities for the
gratification of sex and raise up innumerable obstacles to it; which
will sanctify it and brand it as infamous; which will identify it with
virtue and with sin simultaneously. Obviously it is useless to look for
any consistency in such institutions; and it is only by continual reform
and readjustment, and by a considerable elasticity in their enforcement,
that a tolerable result can be arrived at. I need not repeat here
the long and elaborate examination of them that I prefixed to my play
entitled Getting Married. Here I am concerned only with the views of
Jesus on the question; and it is necessary, in order to understand the
attitude of the world towards them, that we should not attribute the
general approval of the decision of Jesus to remain unmarried as an
endorsement of his views. We are simply in a state of confusion on the
subject; but it is part of the confusion that we should conclude that
Jesus was a celibate, and shrink even from the idea that his birth was
a natural one, yet cling with ferocity to the sacredness of the
institution which provides a refuge from celibacy.

FOR BETTER OR WORSE.

Jesus, however, did not express a complicated view of marriage. His
objection to it was quite simple, as we have seen. He perceived that
nobody could live the higher life unless money and sexual love were
obtainable without sacrificing it; and he saw that the effect of
marriage as it existed among the Jews (and as it still exists among
ourselves) was to make the couples sacrifice every higher consideration
until they had fed and pleased one another. The worst of it is that
this dangerous preposterousness in marriage, instead of improving as
the general conduct of married couples improves, becomes much worse. The
selfish man to whom his wife is nothing but a slave, the selfish woman
to whom her husband is nothing but a scapegoat and a breadwinner, are
not held back from spiritual or any other adventures by fear of their
effect on the welfare of their mates. Their wives do not make recreants
and cowards of them: thei