Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
145/180 page 133
![XVI] Progress Through Selection Free Selection in Marriage It will be generally admitted that although many women now remain un¬ married from necessity rather than from choice, there are always considerable numbers who feel no strong impulse to marriage, and accept husbands to secure subsistence and a home of their own rather than from personal affection or strong sexual emotion. In a state of society in which all women were economic¬ ally independent, were all fully occupied with public duties and social or intellec¬ tual pleasures, and had nothing to gain by marriage as regards material well- being or social position, it is highly prob¬ able that the numbers of the unmarried from choice would increase. It would probably come to be considered a degrada¬ tion for any woman to marry a man whom she could not love and esteem, and this reason would tend at least to delay marriage till a worthy and sympathetic partner was encountered. In man, on the other hand, the passion of love is more general and usually stronger ; and in such a society as here postulated there would be no way of gratifying this 133](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0146.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
