The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

As then I founded the greater societies of men upon the mutual convenience which attends their living regularly together, so may I found this less, but stricter, alliance between the man and the woman in their joint-happiness.437 Nature has a further aim: the preservation of the kind.

II. That marriages are made by some solemn contract, vow, or oath (and these perhaps attended with some pledge, or nuptial rites),438 by which the parties mutually engage to live together in love, and to be faithful, assisting, and the like, each to other, in all circumstances of health and fortune, till death parts them,439 I take for granted. For all nations have some form or other upon these occasions, and even private contracts cannot be made without some words in which they are contained, nor perhaps without some kind of significant, though private, ceremony between the lovers, which lose nothing of force with respect to them by their being both parties and witnesses themselves. Something must pass between them, that is declarative of their intentions, expresses their vows, and binds them each to the other. There is no coming together after the manner of man and wife upon any other foot.

III. That intimate union, by which the conjuges become possessed each of the other’s person,440 the mixture of their fortunes,441 and the joint relation they have to their children,442 all strengthen the bonds and obligations of matrimony. By every act done in pursuance of a covenant, such as the matrimonial is, that covenant is owned, ratified, and, as it were, made de integro and repeated.

Possession is certainly more than nothing. When this therefore is added to a former title, the title must needs be corroborated.

When two persons throw their all into one stock as joint-traders for life, neither of them can consistently with truth and honesty take his share out and be gone (i.e. dissolve the partnership) without the concurrence of the other; and sometimes it may not be easy, perhaps possible, to do it at all. Each therefore is even by this bound, and becomes obnoxious to the other.

And as to the present case, if the marriage be not altogether unfruitful, since both the parents are immediately related to the same child, that child is the medium of a fixed, unalterable relation between them. For, being both of the same blood with the child,443 they themselves come to be of the same blood; and so that relation, which at first was only moral and legal, becomes natural: a relation in nature which can never cease or be disannulled. It follows now that,

IV. Marrying, when there is little or no prospect of true happiness from the match,444 and especially if there are plain presages of unhappiness; after marriage, adultery; all kinds of infidelity; transferring that affection, which even under the decays of nature ought to preserve its vigor, and never to degenerate (at worst) but into a friendship of a superior kind;445 and the like, are all wrong.446 Because the first of these is belying one’s own sense of things, and has an air of distraction⁠—or however it is to act as if that was the least and most trifling of all transactions in life, which is certainly one of the greatest and most delicate. And to offend in any of the other ways is to behave as if the end of marriage was not what it is; as if no such league had been made between the persons married, as has been made, actually, and solemnly, and is still subsisting between them; as if they were not possessed each of the other; their fortunes not interwoven; nor their children so equally related to them, as they are; and therefore the misbehavior, being repugnant to truth, is a sin against it, and the mighty Patron of it.

If the most express and solemn contracts, upon which persons, when they marry, do so far depend as, in confidence of their being religiously observed, to alter quite their condition, begin a new thread of life, and risk all their fortune and happiness: I say, if such sacred compacts as these are allowed to be broken, there is an end of all faith; the obligation of oaths (not more binding than marriage vows) ceases; no justice can be administered; and then what a direful influence must this have upon the affairs of mankind, upon that and other accounts?447

Allowance, by section IV ought to be made for inabilities, and involuntary failings. A person’s age, health, estate, or other circumstances may be such, and without any fault, that he or she cannot do what they would; or perhaps instead of that, one of them may come to want the pity and assistance of the other. In this case (which requires the philosophy and submission proper in afflictions) it is the duty of the one not only to bear with, but also to comfort, and do what may be done for the other. This is part of the happiness proposed, which consists not only in positive pleasures, but also in lessening pains and wants, while the pair have each in the other a refuge at hand.

Note: I have designedly forborn to mention that authority of a husband over his wife which is usually given to him⁠—not only by private writers, but even by laws⁠—because I think it has been carried much too high. I would have them live so far upon the level, as (according to my constant lesson) to be governed both by reason.448 If the man’s reason be stronger, or his knowledge and experience greater (as it is commonly supposed to be), the woman will be obliged upon that score to pay a deference, and submit to