Divorce began in modern times in flagrant
injustice to one of the two partners, the wife, and it has ended--if we
may hope that the end is approaching--in imbecilities that to future
ages will be incredible. For no legal jargon has ever been invented
that will express the sympathies and the antipathies of human
relationship; they even escape the subtlest expression. Law-makers have
tortured their brains to devise formulas which will cover the
legitimate grounds for divorce. How vain their efforts are is
sufficiently shown by the fact that by no chance can they ever agree on
their formulas, and that they are changing them constantly with
feverish haste, dimly realising that they are but the antiquated
representatives of mediaevalism, and that soon their occupation will be
gone for ever.
The reasons for the making or the breaking of human relationships can
never be formulated. The only result of such legal formulas is that
they bring law into contempt because they have to be ingeniously and
methodically cheated in order to adapt them in any degree to civilised
human needs. Thus such laws not only degrade the name of Law, but they
degrade the whole community which tolerates them. There is only one
ultimate reason for either marriage or divorce, and that is that the
two persons concerned consent to the marriage or consent to the
divorce. Why they consent is no concern of any third party, and, maybe,
they cannot even put it into words.
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