Transmitting Humanity

Abstract

Of all the institutions that formalise human relations to others in the world, marriage was the one that most divided Coleridge, leaving him tormented between theory and reality. He believed profoundly in marriage as an institution that gave stability to society and fostered the growth of the individual. While acknowledging his error in having rushed at a very early age into his union with Sara Flicker, he believed marriage to be indissoluble, offering at its best the highest form of earthly love, the most complete friendship: it was the centre of an irradiating series of attachments and widening affections which made possible more distant benevolences. Throughout his career he continued to express his belief that ‘Reciprocal & Exclusive Love [was] the undoubted Source of Marriage, domestic Charities, thence of Society, of all that secures, softens, ornaments, elevates, disanimalizes, coelestializes the human Being – and the human Being must surely be deemed the principal tho’ not sole end of this planet.’ ‘Marriage’, he continued, was ‘as essential to the growth & preservation & progressive perfection of the Man, as Coition to the propagation of the Animal’.¹