I confess here, our enlightened age should be named an adulterous generation. I certainly said once at the marketplace in Marseilles, that I held the miserable thing, matrimonial infidelity, to be right. Even long before I got to Munich, I said one ought to annex to the Metropolitan Church, of the marriage bed, a chapel of ease--in Upper Saxony I said, if that countess went on bearing for a whole year something daily: then with countesses even now, at least the foregone year were to be had--in the ten German circles I certainly expressed myself in ten different ways:--But it was not then in place anywhere to expound the matter clearly out of physiology, but only here.
It was Sanctorius[13] who seated himself upon a Delphic night stool and there sat out the truth, that man got himself clothed upon every eleven years with a new body--the old one, like the German body politic, wearing away piece by piece till there remains of the whole mummy not so much as an apothecary will give, shaved down minutely, in a tea-spoon. Bernouilli contradicted Sanctorius up and down and showed us that he had blundered, for not in eleven, but in three years, the one of the twin brothers evaporated and the other crystallized. In short French and Russians change body oftener than the shirt on the body, and a Province is getting new bodies and a new religious Provincial jointly in three years as aforesaid.
The matter is by no means indifferent. For it is accordingly impossible that a baldhead, who celebrated his marriage jubilee should point to a bit of skin on his whole body as big as a penny and remark: "With this scrap of skin I stood 25 years ago at the altar and was, together with the rest, coupled to my jubilant wife here." That the jubilee-king cannot possibly do. The marriage ring, to be sure, has not dropped off, but the ring finger which it encircled has, long ago. In fact it is a trick beyond all tricks, and I appeal to other Consistorial secretaries. For the poor bride goes up joyfully under the bed canopy with the statua curulis of a bodily bridegroom and thinks--what knows she of good physiology?--that she has in the body something solid, a piece of iron, an article of real estate, in short a head with hairs, of which she can one day say, they have grown gray on mine and on my cap! Such is her hope; meanwhile in the midst of her hoping the rogue of a body works off its whole set of members, as a student his pawned student's goods, in the course of three years, in infinitesimal particles in mist and darkness. If she turns round on New Year's Eve--there lies in the marriage bed beside her a mere wax cast or second edition which the former body has left of itself, and in which there remains no longer a single leaf of the old one. What now--when the cubic contents of the bridal bed and of the marriage bed are so different--is a wife to think of the whole matter! I mean, if, e. g., a whole female consisting of (e. g. the Lady Consistorial President, the lady Vice-President, the lady Consistorial Secretary) after three years finds upon the pillow an entirely different male Consistory, from what the marriage promised this dissolved one should be: what course is a woman to take, who, if she is a consistorial half, knows right well quid juris? She, I say, who must have heard a hundred times over at the dinner table, that such an absconding of the male body is a cursed malicious abandonment or desertio malitiosa, which entirely releases her from her marriage vows--and in fact such a straw widow may actually have read Luther de causis matrimonii and have inferred therefrom that he does not forbid a maliciously deserted wife after a year or half a year to contract a new marriage. To betake herself to the aforesaid new marriage will manifestly be the first duty and design of such a deserted one; but as the new extant body of a husband cannot help the evaporation of its predecessor, accordingly, rather than distress him, she will do it without his knowledge and without vindictive feeling--perhaps when he is at the Exchange--or in the pulpit--or at the fair--or on board ship--or behind the session table or abroad somewhere.
Meanwhile the husband is no fool, but has always enough of physiology about him to know that the wife also changes her body as often as her maids; consequently he needs not to watch any chance. Nov. 22 c.25 of itself hands him the right of divorce, if she has run away from him for a night; but here the Consistorial Counselloress has absolutely blown away for ever and moreover repeats this evaporation every three years--she, who, nevertheless, according to "Lange's Clerical Rights," which the Consistorial Counsellor has on his book-shelf, would be obliged to follow him, if he were banished the country, even though, in the marriage-contract she had reserved the right to stay at home. Thus speaks Lange to husbands on the point. In the great world, where true chastity and universal knowledge, including of course physiology, are at home, the point has long since been treated with intelligence and propriety, and conscientiousness has been carried to great length. For as, in that sphere, a husband three years after the wedding-feast no longer expects to find in his spouse an apothecary's ounce of blood, nor a thin vein in which it ran, remaining of the old one; as, therefore, he thinks to find again the emigrated parts of his good lady much sooner and more surely in any other than in herself; as, accordingly, he must, much rather, regard love for his partner as infidelity to her and with her--(and, strictly taken, it is even so)--: it follows now, that the question is mainly one of pure morality; he, therefore, leaves to that assemblage of veins, nervous ganglia, finger-nails and nobler parts, which one calls in toto his wife--leaves her (or it) his name, half his credit, and half his children, because, on the whole, in the great world, one does not like publicly to dissolve public connections, and prefers, at last, to walk in a thousand air-woven fetters; but this his respect for morality and public sentiment does not allow him, to have one and the same dwelling--table--society with a wife who has another body; he does not even (which, perhaps, is being too scrupulous) like to appear with her in public and refrains at least in his house from all that of which he or Origen made themselves incapable.
There are miserable, faded pulpits, which may object to my position, that the wedded souls remain when the bodies have evaporated. For with the soul (therefore with the memory, the thinking faculty, the moral principle, etc.), at the present day there is little or no union in wedlock, but only with that which hangs round it. Secondly, it may be learned of any materialist on the philosophic exchange, that the soul is nothing but a sucker of the body, which, therefore, with both man and wife, passes away simultaneously with the body. One need not, however, take that ground, but one need only concur with Hume, who writes that there is no such thing as a soul, but merely a collection of ideas that cling together like toads'-spawn and so creep through the brain and think themselves. Under such circumstances the bridal pair may thank God, if their pair of coupled souls will hold together only as long as the two pairs of dancing-pumps at the marriage-ball. One sees this too the forenoon after the honeymoon.
Therefore, as has been said, no Canonist can put off the week in which man and wife may lawfully proceed to breach of marriage vows, longer than to the fourth year after betrothal; only for people of the world and of standing, this is hard and too rigorous, especially if they know from their "Keil" (the anatomist) that in a year the old body has entirely thawed away--a miserable sixteen pound avoirdupois alone excepted. Hence, it has often been my idea, that if I should bring my breach of marriage into the very first year (as many do) I should really be unfaithful to only a few pounds of my consort, (who weighs 107)--namely the sixteen pounds that still remained.
On the same exchange of bodies whereon one grounds his breach of marriage vows, must the Consistory ground its rule of divorce. For, as people often remain together, in open wedlock, nine, eighteen years after marriage, whereas all physiologists know that there are two new married bodies in the case, and without priestly consecration, accordingly the Consistory is now bound to look into it and interfere and divorce the two foreign bodies by a decree or two. Hence one will never hear of a conscientious Consistory's making any difficulty in separating Christians who are already joined in wedlock; but on the other hand one will quite as seldom hear of a case in which it divorces those who have merely promised marriage, without the greatest difficulty; and very naturally; for in the former case, that of a long marriage, true infidelity is to be averted by the bill of divorcement, because there are uncoupled bodies; but here, in the case of betrothal, the bodies which have made the engagement are not yet fully present, and they must first live for a long time in wedlock, before they are ripe for divorce. This is the true solution of an apparent contradiction, which has already