Bachelor on Sex

THE FUTURE of MARRIAGE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION--Edward Westermarck-- Macmillan ($3).

Among all the words of unpractical wisdom devoted to the subject of marriage, the observation that this estate will always endure is perhaps the least heartening to a quarrelsome couple. Last week a distinguished English sociologist advanced this thesis to U. S. readers in a scholarly volume packed with quotations from moral and scientific authorities ranging from Stendhal to Havelock Ellis, from Montaigne and the Hebrew prophets to Bertrand Russell and Judge Ben Lindsey. Unmarried himself, Dr. Edward Alexander Westermarck is eminently equipped to support his point of view, has written on the subject of marriage for the past 47 years.

Born in Helsingfors in 1862, Dr. Westermarck began his career with The Origin of Human Marriage, published in 1889, has continued it with The History of Human Marriage, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco, Ethical Relativity. Professor at the University of London for 23 years, he has gained his reputation on the strength of his careful scholarship and his broad liberal views, and despite his tendency to speak in platitudes.

The Future of Marriage in Western Civilization develops his theory that marriage, which he defined in an earlier volume as "a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of offspring," is fundamental in human society, growing out of the necessities of life in primitive and modern communities. This theory brings him into opposition with such writers as Briffault and Iwan Bloch, who have maintained that primitive societies were promiscuous and that the family, as a relatively recent development in human society, will eventually disappear. Dr. Westermarck says that he has examined the evidence in detail and has come to the conclusion that complete freedom in sexual relations has never existed even "among a single people," makes a strong case for his side.

Analyzing sexual maladjustments, adultery and jealousy, homosexuality and bisexuality and other causes of married unhappiness, Dr. Westermarck methodically weighs the alternatives to marriage in free love, companionate marriage, trial marriage, quickly disposes of the "predicted disappearance of marriage" in a brief chapter. He looks forward to more enlightened opinions on sexual conduct, believes that the frequency of divorce is a sign of the strength of marriage rather than of its weakness, anticipates a time when it will be recognized that "sexual acts are morally indifferent and no proper objects for penal legislation if nobody is injured by them."

For most readers, the interest in Dr. Westermarck's study lies less in his argument than in the mosaic of quotations he builds up, in his few figures, gleaned from questionnaires and private inquiry, that throw light on the proportion of divorce to all marriages, the prevalence of homosexuality, the frequency of adultery in normal, successful marriages. The U. S., with one divorce to every six marriages, leads the world, with the probable exception of Russia. In an ordinary group of a hundred marriages, whose partners viewed their relationship as successful, it was found that 28 men and 24 women acknowledged that they had committed adultery. Dr. Westermarck's most astonishing figures refer to homosexuality. Of 1,200 U. S. women college graduates, 50% acknowledged intense emotional attachments to other women while 26% admitted overt physical practices. Of a hundred married men and women, 17 men and 26 women admitted indulging in homosexual episodes after the age of 18. But Dr. Westermarck believes that inversion is most commonly acquired as a result of abnormal experiences in childhood, looks forward to a period when moral condemnation of sexual abnormality will be founded on an opinion of their "individual or public" hurtfulness, rather than on religious training or prejudice.

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