Advantages of Absence in Marriage—­The Risks of Absence—­Jealousy—­The
Primitive Function of Jealousy—­Its Predominance Among Animals, Savages,
etc., and in Pathological States—­An Anti-Social Emotion—­Jealousy
Incompatible with the Progress of Civilization—­The Possibility of Loving
More Than One Person at a Time—­Platonic Friendship—­The Conditions Which
Make It Possible—­The Maternal Element in Woman’s Love—­The Final
Development of Conjugal Love—­The Problem of Love One of the Greatest of
Social Questions.

It will be clear from the preceding discussion that there are two elements in every marriage so far as that marriage is complete.  On the one hand marriage is a union prompted by mutual love and only sustainable as a reality, apart from its mere formal side, by the cultivation of such love.  On the other hand marriage is a method for propagating the race and having its end in offspring.  In the first aspect its aim is erotic, in the second parental.  Both these ends have long been generally recognized.  We find them set forth, for instance, in the marriage service of the Church of England, where it is stated that marriage exists both for “the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other,” and also for “the procreation of children.”  Without the factor of mutual love the proper conditions for procreation cannot exist; without the factor of procreation the sexual union, however beautiful and sacred a relationship it may in itself be, remains, in essence, a private relationship, incomplete as a marriage and without public significance.  It becomes necessary, therefore, to supplement the preceding discussion of marriage in its general outlines by a final and more intimate consideration of marriage in its essence, as embracing the art of love and the science of procreation.

There has already been occasion from time to time to refer to those who, starting from various points of view, have sought to limit the scope of marriage and to suppress one or other of its elements. (See e.g., ante, p. 135.)

In modern times the tendency has been to exclude the factor of procreation, and to regard the relationship of marriage as exclusively lying in the relationship of the two parties to each other.  Apart from the fact, which it is unnecessary again to call attention to, that, from the public and social point of view, a marriage without children, however important to the two persons concerned, is a relationship without any public significance, it must further be said that, in the absence of children, even the personal erotic life itself is apt to suffer, for in the normal erotic life, especially in women, sexual love tends to grow into parental love.  Moreover, the full development of mutual love and dependence is with difficulty attained, and there is absence of that closest of bonds, the mutual cooeperation of two persons in