The Foundations of Personality [131]
rebellion against the social impediment to sexual satisfaction. For it must be remembered that sexual satisfaction is not alone naked desire. It is that--but sublimated into finer things as well. It is the desire for stability of affection, for a sympathetic beloved, an outlet for emotion, a longing for respectable unitary status. The unit of respectable human life is the married couple; the girl wants that social recognition, and so does her man. Both yearn to cast off from their old homes and start a new one, as an initial step in successful living. The thought of children--a little form in a little bed, and the man and woman gazing in an ecstasy of pride and affection upon it--makes all other pleasures seem unworthy and gives to the ache for intimacy a high moral sanction. This brings us to the point where we must consider those characteristics that make up domesticity and homekeeping. Early impressions and the consistent teaching of literature, stage, press and religion have given to the home a semi-sacred character, which is one of the great components of the desire to marry, especially for women. The home is, in the minds of most of those who enter into marriage, a place owned, peculiarly possessed, and it offers freedom from the restraints of society and the inhibitions of ceremony and custom. Both the man and woman like to think that here is the place where their love can find free expression, where she will care for him and he will provide for her, and where their children can grow in beauty, intelligence and moral worth under their guidance. But this is only the sentimental side of their thought, the part they give freest expression to because it is most respectable and "nice." In the background of their minds is the desire for ownership, the wish to say, "This is mine and here I rule." Into that comes the ideal that the stability of society is involved and the homekeeper is its most important citizen, but when we study the real evolution of the home, study the laws pertaining to the family, we find that the husband and father had a little kingdom with wife and children as subjects, and that only gradually has there come from that monarchical idea the more democratic conception cherished to-day. Men and women may be considered as domestic or non-domestic. The domestic type of man is ordinarily "steady" in purpose and absorbed more in work than in the seeking of pleasure, is either strongly inhibited sexually or else rather easily satisfied; cherishes the ideal of respectability highly; is conventional and habituated, usually has a strong property feeling and is apt to have a decided paternal feeling. He may of course be seclusive and apt to feel the constraints of contact with others as wearying and unsatisfactory; he is not easily bored or made restless. All this is a broad sketch; even the most domestic find in the home a certain amount of tyranny and monotony; they yearn now and then for adventure and new romance and think of the freedom of their bachelor days with regret over their passing. They may decide that married home life is best, but the choice is not without difficulty and is accompanied by an irrepressible, though hidden dissatisfaction. On the whole, however, the domestic man finds the home a haven of relief and a source of pleasurable feeling. The non-domestic man may be of a dozen types. Perhaps he is incurably romantic and hates the thought of settling down and putting away for good the search for the perfect woman. Perhaps he is uninhibted sexually or over-excitable in this respect, and is therefore restless and unfaithful. He may be bored by monotony, a restless seeker of new experiences and new work, possessed by the devils of wanderlust. He may be an egoist incapable of the continuous self-sacrifice and self-abnegation demanded by the home,--quarrelsome and selfish. Sometimes he is wedded to an ideal of achievement or work and believes that he travels best who travels alone. Often in these days of late marriage he has waited until he could "afford" to marry and then finds that his habits chain