The Portland daily press., 1880-12-30
IN. Y. Times.l
Can Celibacy Be Excused?

So many and so uniform are the homilies ut
tered by tongue and pen on the beauty and
benson of marriage that the inference is en-
phasized that celibacy is without compensa-
tion. Young men are continually advised and
urged, privately and publicly, to take wife,
the supposition being, whether erroneous or
not, that young women are very willing to be
taken under almost any circumstances The
postulate that marriage is always desirable is
obviously false. 1t is only desirable when
such conditions exist for and between the
couples as are far from common, and frequent
ly unattainable. The prospect of connubial
misery would seem to be quite as good as the
prospect Of connubial happiness, and no
amount of foresight or discretion will insure
any pair against sharp disappointment and
bitter discomfort. Everybody is aware of this
it is little less than a truism-and yet on all
sides preachments resound in favor of univer-
sal matrimony.
Are the preachers malgnants in disguise?
By no means. They are benevolent enough,
but they talk without knowledge and advise
without experience. They think, because
| marriage is natural, that it must be beneficial,
when its possible benefit depends solely on the
"a
on the character of their surroundings They
advocate the coniugal lottery without remem-
bering its numberless blanks, as they are
called, though a coniugal blank is something
much worse, When prize is not drawn, woe
is very likely to come in its stead. Celibacy s
a thousand times better than an inharmonious
marriage, and certainly safer than the most
promising union. Celibacy is at worst only an
absence of potential comforts and joys; mar
rage at worst is the sum Of human wretched-
ness, and as it usually is is very different from
the romantic notions formed Of it. From its
supreme reality, its inevitable matter of fact,
its endless prosaic details, it is as far as il we'll
can be from the ideal. 1t has its advantages,
of course, and many of them, when it is pro-
pitious; but it has, under the most favorable
circumstances, its disadvantages also. Much
may be said in its behoof, though the fairest
life ever turned to the sun has its shadowed
side.
So with celibacy. A deal of censure may be
pronounced upon it, and rightly; but it has its
recompense. Many persons do not wish to be
married, and more generally those anxious to
be--are not fitted for the state. Good wife
hood or true husbandship is not inherited with
birth; nor does it appertain to the multitude.
Those who cannot live alone cannot as a rule
live together. Connubial adaptation is evil
dence Of self-discipline of forbearance, OF in
dividuality. The best wives and the best hus-
bands are doubtless they who, with variation
of their destiny, would have been model maid
ems and model bachelors. Nor is it improbable
that many who would have been the noblest
patterns of welded domesticity are to-day en-
joying themselves in single blessedness.
While it may be truthfully said that women
in general would prefer to be married if they
could be happily married. very momentous,
though seldom considered, hypothesis-there
are many men who have no desire to be hus-
bands, much less fathers of a family, under the
cirCumStanea2 tri-
mony presses far more weightily on women
and involves twice the responsibility, care and
anxiety that it has for men, they are much
reader to accept it, from constitutional pro-
clivity, from ardent hopefulness, from capacity
to believe what they are eager to believe, from
an overfowing sense of its propriety, from a
sort of consciousness that it is duty they owe
to themselves and society q large. Matrimo-
ny, moreover, furnishes, presumably, support
and material independence, and while it dim
inishes their liberty on one side it increases
their liberty on the other. They are apt to be
always in state of tutelage; they are accus-
toned to prompting and guidance; they wish
and need somebody to lean on, to be their
counselor, companion, director, friend, and a
husband is the best person, on the whole, If he
be worthy, to discharge these functions. In
deed, a husband is as life and society are at
present ordered, essential to the roundness and
fullness of woman's existence.
Men have not the same motives or the same
feelings for wedlock that women have. Their
connection with conjugality. Some, in fact
great many, men are positively and by tenn
perament anti-domestic-have no liking for,
and no grateful associations with home.
Wife and children afford no pleasant images
| the very opposite, in truth-and all the argu-
ments employed in behalf of marriage are, to
| their mind, arguments against it. For
| such men to become husbands, as they often
do from stress of circumstances, from dictates of
| chivalry, from inexplicable causes, is always
| unfortunate for, though they may be loyal and
| dutiful, they never are, as they know, all that
| they should be. Even men domestic by ma
| ture and training must feel that they lose
| something by marriage. If they carry out
/ their covenant with any strictness they will be
| deprived of large share Of their freedom,
and freedom is dearer to men, certainly to
| Americans, than any other one thing. Wo-
| men are supposed to value love first; to be
| willing, even happy, to be enslaved by it and
i for it; but no amount of love can atone to
| men for lack of freedom.
The material question of living must enter,
| too, into mans calculation. He can generally
| earn sufficient for himself, but he may not be
| able to support two, with contingencies. A
| bachelor being comfortable and contented as
| he is surely runs serious risk to marry, for
marriage is an extraordinary change. A great
| city encourages bachelorhood more than hus-
| bandship. 1t is not strange that so many in
habitants Of capitals refrain from wedlock.
| The wonder rather is that it is so frequently
| and holdly coufrontad