Protestant countries might have been expected to produce. He did not
perceive that if modern habits and feelings have successfully resisted
what he deems the tendency of a less rigorous marriage law, it must be
because modern habits and feelings are inconsistent with the perpetual
series of new trials which he dreaded. If there are tendencies in human
nature which seek change and variety, there are others which demand
fixity, in matters which touch the daily sources of happiness; and one
who had studied history as much as M. Comte, ought to have known that
ever since the nomad mode of life was exchanged for the agricultural,
the latter tendencies have been always gaining ground on the former. All
experience testifies that regularity in domestic relations is almost in
direct proportion to industrial civilization. Idle life, and military
life with its long intervals of idleness, are the conditions to which,
either sexual profligacy, or prolonged vagaries of imagination on that
subject, are congenial. Busy men have no time for them, and have too
much other occupation for their thoughts: they require that home should
be a place of rest, not of incessantly renewed excitement and
disturbance. In the condition, therefore, into which modern society has
passed, there is no probability that marriages would often be contracted
without a sincere desire on both sides that they should be permanent.
That this has been the case hitherto in countries where divorce was
permitted, we have on M. Comte's own showing: and everything leads us to
believe that the power, if granted elsewhere, would in general be used
only for its legitimate purpose--for enabling those who, by a blameless
or excusable mistake, have lost their first throw for domestic
happiness, to free themselves (with due regard for all interests
concerned) from the burthensome yoke, and try, under more favourable
auspices, another chance. Any further discussion of these great social
questions would evidently be incompatible with the nature and limits of
the present paper.