eaching. But do not seek
to hold together those between whom there is no real marriage at all. When
seriously and persistently a man and a woman believe that their marriage
never was or has now ceased to be real, surely their persistent and
considered opinion ought to be enough for the State to act upon. Let no
one be allowed to give up in haste. Let no one fling responsibility aside
easily. Let it always be a question of long consideration, of advice from
friends, perhaps even from judges. But I cannot help feeling that when
through years this conviction that there is no reality in a marriage
persists, this is the one really decent and sufficient reason for declaring
that that marriage is dissolved. Let us have done with the infamous system
now in force, by which a man and woman must commit adultery or perjury
before they can get us to admit the patent fact that their marriage no
longer exists as a reality. Let us have done with a system which makes a
mockery of our divorce courts. I have the utmost sympathy with those who
denounce the light way in which men and women perjure themselves to obtain
release, but I affirm that the whole system is, in the main, so based on
legalisms, so divorced from morality, that the resultant adulteries and
perjuries are what every student of human nature must inevitably expect,
however much he may regret and hate them. It will be in vain that laws are
devised to prevent divorce by collusion, in vain that King's proctors
or judges detect and penalize here and there the less wary and ingenious
offenders. The law will continue to be evaded or defied. And the reason is
fundamental: it is that the law is not based on reality. It affirms that a
marriage still exists when it does _not_ exist. It demands that two human
beings should give to each other what they cannot give. And--the essence
of marriage being consent--it makes the fact that both parties desire its
dissolution the final reason for denying them! To force a woman to demand
the "restitution of conjugal rights" when such "rights" have become a
horrible wrong; to compel a man to commit, or perjure himself by pretending
he has committed, adultery, before he can get the State to face the fact
that his marriage is no longer a reality--is this to uphold morality? Is
this the ideal of the Sermon on the Mount? Let us once for all abandon
the pretence that _all_ the marriages made in churches or in registrars'
offices are, therefore, necessaril