1828. A real mental transformation of the terrestrial human being is thus taking place.Its talent for marriage is degenerating.The cause of this transformation can be traced back to the being's sympathetic faculties.Whereas originally these faculties could flourish only in marital union and culminate there through sexual satisfaction, they will still of course find satisfaction in a mating union with a being of the opposite sex, but this union of the parties would not manifest as a permanent, lasting, harmonious, mutual desire to possess one another.The sexual connection works more in the direction of being only a relatively brief epoch of re-experiencing or repeating a sexual desire to possess that was previously more stable, long-lasting or permanent in relation to its object or the sexually desired party than this desire to possess is in our days, the desire to possess being, as will be remembered, the same as "amorous love".Previously two parties could be in love with one another for an entire lifetime, as in the case of animals, and marriage based on this was permanent and happy.In our time, or at the terrestrial human being's present intellectual stage, amorous love is but fleeting in nature and very quickly outgrown.And when the being has grown out of it, its interest in the object of its amorous love dies.It is this out-grown amorous love and this dying interest in one's sexual partner that are the reasons why a life-long marriage does not consist only of a "honeymoon", and that these days of happiness constitute only a short, brief period at the beginning of the marriage.And it is because of this that marriages – unless dissolved in divorce – have to be based on other phenomena, such as companionship and common spheres of interest, or are forced to be kept going "for the sake of the children", and in reality are described as "marriage" only on account of a marriage certificate.But a marriage that is built on other foundations than the happiness of mating life can be only a pseudo-marriage.Compared to the marriages or lives together based on mating we find among monogamous animals, the terrestrial human beings' marriages or lives together based on mating, once the honeymoon is over, can be regarded almost as artificial.Among terrestrial human beings true marriage, that is to say, their life together during their honeymoon, thus lasts only a relatively short time.During what remains of the marriages they have entered into, that is, the period after their honeymoon, marriage can in fact be regarded more or less as camouflage.Here marriage is based on arrangements that lie outside the parties' mutual amorous love for one another, since this love no longer exists.If the opposite were the case the honeymoon would have continued.These arrangements can be love pure and simple, which results in the party for whom divorce was particularly important or desirable simply not having the heart to hurt the other party through divorce and the unpleasantnesses it would entail.Here we must add that the parties as a rule do not stop being in love with one another at the same time.If this were the case, divorce would not of course involve any particular mental suffering.But now divorce causes the party that is still in love great mental anguish or sufferings.The other party can thus, as previously mentioned, be so universally loving that he or she does not have the heart to inflict on the former party the sufferings and unpleasantnesses that a divorce would give rise to in the given situation, and as a result the marriage continues.But such a marriage is, after all, not quite perfect, since the mutual amorous love and the resulting full sexual force are not present.To this may be added the marriages that are kept together only for the sake of the children or for fear of scandal or for other purely physical causes.It is these marriages, which are more or less a sham, that are the reason why we have had to term the terrestrial human sphere of marriage "the zone of unhappy marriages".Does not this entire terrestrial human marital degeneration show that the terrestrial human being's sympathetic faculties have changed, and that this change is not to the advantage of marriage?
Return to start page
Previous