The Truth about Marriage/Chapter37
CHAPTER XXXVII
IS THERE ANY TRUE MARRIAGE LOVE
I have another question to answer: "You speak of true marriage love. Is such love anything else than the instinct for mating which characterizes all animal life? In other words, is it not merely an instinct to keep the race alive and hence purely animal? I fail to see that human beings are superior to animals when it comes to mating, or that your 'true marriage love' is anything else than the instinct to propagate, an appetite as animal as eating and drinking."
In answer to this attack let me say that I do not believe that men and animals are on the same plane of life. I admit that a man is primarily an animal, as to his body, and has instincts which beasts share with him, but a man is inexpressibly more than an animal. Of course, I perceive that many people seem to be little above the animal in their knowledge, in their passions and in their grossness of living.
But I am not satisfied to class myself with the animals. I am sure that most people are more than animal, with the capacity to become the sons of God. Animal mating seems to be inspired merely by the instinct to propagate. It is blind, unreasoning, animal.
But human mating is the highest friendship and companionship. The propagation of the human race ought to be, because of the superior nature of man, as superior to animal mating as heaven is superior to earth. True marriage love is human. Mere animal love in human beings is bestial. In animals it is merely the order of their nature.
I will go further and say that many unhappy marriages arize from the fact that one or both parties to the marriage enter into it merely as an animal might. If they are only animal in their feelings and outlook on life nothing better can be expected for them than a caricature of marriage. Such people can never know what true marriage is, or, for that matter, can never know what truly human living is and enjoy the life of a human being. They are still, despite the veneer of good clothes and apparent friendliness, animals dressed up as men.