«&£j3i* A'AiteS®" 
 
 HarriaCE 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 
 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 PROFESSOR 
 GEORGE R. STEWART 
 
Z& 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 JANE DEARBORN MILLS 
 
 (MRS. JAMES E. MILLS) 
 
 Author of "Leaves from a Life-book of To-day" and 
 "Thb Mother Artist" 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 THE NUNC LICET PRESS 
 1906 
 
Copyright, 1905, by 
 The Nunc Licet Press 
 
 WM. F. FELL CO., ELECTROTYPBRS AND PRINTERS 
 1220 TO 1224 SANSOM STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 
Dedicated to 
 The memory of my Husband 
 
Prelude, 
 
 These words upon Marriage are such as only 
 a woman could speak. The " Purity " word 
 is in answer to the numerous public teachings 
 of many other women in their advocacy of the 
 " doctrine of sexlessness." A man's opinions 
 have little weight against their reasoning. 
 
 The other three " Words" also, are thoughts 
 from the woman's standpoint. There is no 
 human interest so necessary to be presented 
 by both the man's and the woman's mind as 
 marriage, for none concerns them both so 
 vitally. 
 
 This answers the question in advance, which 
 will be asked, "Why does a woman write 
 about Marriage?" The present writer knows 
 that, already, the first imperfect edition of this 
 book, privately published and circulated with 
 moderate publicity, has cheered some of the 
 lives in homes of our land. This has led to the 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 request for the renewal of the exhausted edition, 
 and she has wholly rewritten and added to it, 
 believing that it probably has a further work 
 to do. 
 
Marriage is character-growth 
 and is gained through service. 
 
MARRIAGE. 
 
 ITS PURITY. 
 
 IN these, our modern days, one of the evils 
 which thoughtful minds are seeking to 
 destroy is sexual vice. Many men and 
 women are devoting all their powers to the 
 eradicating of one form or another of this 
 deadly enemy of the race. Especially is the 
 corrupting of the children a hydraheaded 
 monster, eluding every effort to kill all of him 
 at once. Mothers, fathers, teachers, and other 
 lovers of the little ones are giving study, time, 
 money, and devotion to finding ways for keep- 
 ing children from impure thoughts and acts. 
 With equal earnestness they work for the up- 
 rooting of this evil in adult living. 
 
 The adult form is twofold, — that outside of 
 marriage and that within its legal limits. The 
 latter has expression in the bestiality of some 
 
IO MARRIAGE. 
 
 husbands, but it has not been regarded as an 
 evil until very recent times. The base of all 
 the forms is the same. It consists, primarily, 
 in the thought that the physical marriage is 
 essentially impure. Therefore, all married 
 people have been supposed to live in sensuality, 
 tolerable only by permission of the law, or 
 sanctified by a church ceremonial. Naturally, 
 the young and uneducated have been unable 
 to see the difference between sex- relations out- 
 side the marriage and within it, and have 
 easily fallen into the evil. 
 
 The cause of the degrading notion that 
 marriage is mere legalized sensuality is that 
 its spiritual power is not known. The great- 
 est value of any action, whatsoever, is in its 
 spiritual, not its physical, effects. We may 
 see this in very simple things. Looking from 
 my window on this bright winter morning, 
 the purity of the snow upon the lawn fills 
 me with delight, and, still more, that here 
 and there the sun makes little jewels of the 
 crystals, and a clear, brilliant and most ex- 
 quisite ruby color comes to my eye as a pre- 
 
ITS PURITY. II 
 
 cious stone lying in the whiteness; and there 
 is another, equally brilliant, but paler; and 
 there an emerald, and there a topaz. My eye 
 feasts on this wonderful display, and I dis- 
 cover more and more, until, for a considerable 
 space around, there lies before me a collection 
 of the rarest gems. No jeweler's tray of pre- 
 cious stones could be their equal in clearness, 
 brilliancy, delicacy, and warmth of color. The 
 mere sight, however, is the smallest part of 
 this experience. What is of lasting value in 
 it is the new sense of beauty it has given me. 
 I have never seen before, in colored snow 
 crystals, such numbers, largeness, brilliancy, 
 exquisiteness. This sense of beauty will be 
 mine forever. An added power, it will go 
 forth, if there is any love of service in me, 
 in many ways, most of them unconscious, 
 for good in my intercourse with fellow- beings. 
 As every child opens a larger association with 
 the world for father and for mother, so each 
 such mental and spiritual power as this new 
 sense of beauty leads the way out into greater 
 service to humanity. 
 
1 2 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Thus, every kind of action has its value in 
 its spiritual results. This is a mode of our 
 spiritual growth. Our acts are openers of 
 the way by which Divine Life flows down 
 through the character, even to the outmost 
 of us, and goes forth into the world. 
 
 The spiritual powers created by any act 
 are its results, more than the physical; for 
 the latter pass out of our possession, but the 
 others belong to us always. Already, as I 
 write, the sun has shifted, and my snow 
 jewels are gone. The sense of their beauty 
 stays with me and is mine forever. 
 
 Wanting this principle, the physical union 
 has been held by the world to have no purity 
 inherent in itself, but allowed only as a con- 
 cession to human nature as it is found to 
 be. This has resulted in extreme evils within 
 the limits of marriage. Many a husband has 
 lived like a brute, subjecting the one he loved 
 most dearly to the unspeakable torture of his 
 tyranny. Why should he not? If marriage 
 is an unavoidable concession to human weak- 
 ness, then must that weakness have its way, 
 
ITS PURITY. 13 
 
 at any cost whatever to the wife, in suffering, 
 sickness, and even death. 
 
 In desperate revolt against the impurity 
 and misery of these conditions, pure-minded 
 women have been looking for a remedy. The 
 one naturally suggesting itself first has been 
 that physical union must have been intended 
 only for physical procreation; and this has 
 become so widely advocated in private and 
 in public, that it has now obtained something 
 of a following. 
 
 Those accepting this alternative have done 
 so from not yet seeing the truth just spoken 
 of, — that the real effects of any act are spiritual. 
 By this law, the physical union becomes of 
 spiritual value, when entered into in mutual 
 love and willingness. The feelings and the 
 thoughts then wakened in the souls of husband 
 and wife are the real children of the marriage 
 more than all the child human beings born 
 to them. Human beings are not sons and 
 daughters in any lasting sense. As soon as 
 they are bora, they begin to grow as separate 
 individuals. In a few years, their relation to 
 
14 MARRIAGE. 
 
 their parents changes to that of companions; 
 of very dear companions, to be sure, but with 
 nothing in it of the child dependence, and 
 the mother and father guidance. They do 
 not even go forth into the world to do the 
 will of father or of mother, but their own. 
 Generally, their powers for the world's welfare 
 bear slight resemblance to those of the parents. 
 This separation, so sorrowful to the natural 
 affections, is not the calamity it is supposed 
 to be; for the lasting relation of Life is that 
 of marriage, with its spiritual, not its physical, 
 children. 
 
 The idea that marriage in externals is 
 wholly for procreation is literally true; but it 
 is for spiritual procreation, preeminently, and 
 this may or may not coincide "with the birth 
 of children. It cannot depend upon such 
 birth; for where the union is permitted only 
 at the few times when children are expected, 
 it is practically banished from the married 
 life. The theory of union for mere physical 
 procreation has grave defects and deficiencies. 
 It surrounds with an atmosphere of filth the 
 
ITS PURITY. 15 
 
 thought of the birth of all the innocent babies 
 who have come into life from the usual habit 
 of living of husband and wife. It supposes 
 the world to have been immersed for ages 
 in a state so vile, that if this had been really 
 the character of marriage, the race, if not by 
 this time annihilated, would be a monster of 
 unmixed evil. 
 
 Another defect is in the necessity it involves 
 of a certain kind of separation of the husband 
 and wife. Every real mother understands 
 how her nearness to her child is increased, 
 marvellously, by her custom of being with 
 him when he is ready for sleep. The childish 
 imperfections are, for the moment, laid aside, 
 and only the softer affections control the 
 little spirit. She realizes that there is a value, 
 for them both, not to be gained at any other 
 time, in those few minutes, before she leaves 
 him to go to sleep peacefully by himself. 
 Such affections as awaken then could never 
 be called up in daytime hours. Similar states 
 of innocence and peace may come to husband 
 and wife in those moments when they feel 
 
1 6 MARRIAGE. 
 
 themselves "alone with God and the angels"; 
 when the day's cares and perplexities may be 
 driven away, and trust and restfulness in the 
 Divine be welcomed by them. Many of the 
 mutual annoyances, the frictions which arise 
 from small or the graver offences, may dis- 
 appear without the aid of formal explanations, 
 in those times of utter rest of mind and body. 
 A mutual understanding follows of each 
 other's deeper character, in this quiet com- 
 munion. This not only soothes for the mo- 
 ment, but is of lasting value as a more gener- 
 ous interpreter of imperfections in the future. 
 Such peace, in its real depths, cannot be theirs 
 at any other hour, and those who practice 
 the doctrine of sexlessness lose largely, if not 
 altogether, the deeper forms of it. 
 
 In contrast to this sexless theory is the 
 ideal of the essential purity of marriage. The 
 object of marriage is the growing into one of 
 all the best in the husband and the wife, the 
 growing of each, constantly, toward his or 
 her highest possibilities. The aim for the 
 "oneness" is that it shall be a power for 
 
ITS PURITY. 17 
 
 stimulating the highest possibilities of the 
 race. This married "one" has energies and 
 forces far greater than those which the same 
 man and woman, singly, could possess; for 
 it not only is a form of all the best in his 
 nature and in hers, but it is these qualities in 
 united action. 
 
 It is impossible for words to picture the 
 happiness of such reciprocal giving of the 
 individual selves. In a marriage like this, 
 each delights to feed the angel in the character 
 of the other, starving out the self-love by 
 not administering to it; and to the end 
 that the "one" angel of their united selves 
 may be an added power for the world's up- 
 lifting. 
 
 Such mutual love excludes no kind of outer 
 life in its expression. Love seeks, by its very 
 nature, all possible modes of manifestation. 
 It cannot, without crippling itself, leave out 
 of life its own peculiar language, — caresses. 
 The mother who exhausts her love for her 
 child in sewing for him, cooking for him, or 
 in providing others to do these well, and in 
 
1 8 MARRIAGE. 
 
 carefully studying the best methods for his 
 education, and never gives him an endearing 
 word or a caress, is leaving out the essential 
 of his education, thus stunting all his powers, 
 and putting his affections to indescribable 
 torture. Caresses are the especial language 
 of love. They say what words cannot. The 
 warm hand-grasp of a friend, the kiss or the 
 embrace, when heartfelt, are assurances of 
 continued affection, such as no words can 
 convey. To the husband and wife who value 
 marriage oneness, — and many do who are 
 unconscious of it, — caresses are infinitely more 
 than mere assurances. Words can never say 
 that which every kiss of marriage mutually 
 tells to them. It is a pledge of continued 
 faithfulness in their united purpose, a plea 
 for overlooking all shortcomings, a wordless 
 longing for a closer union. It means mutual 
 understanding, honor, love, desire for higher 
 living, and, above all, the aspiration to give 
 and to receive the strength for that higher life, 
 which they have been created to bestow upon 
 each other. So it speaks with its own strong 
 
ITS PURITY. 19 
 
 language, and revivifies all their spiritual 
 powers, and creates new ones. 
 
 Infinitely stronger than the kiss in spiritual 
 procreative power is that nearer union, which, 
 though deprived of its true name by the com- 
 mon degradation of thought about it, is, when 
 entered into in purity, a caress more than 
 any other. When this is given and received 
 by each with the purpose of mutual growing 
 in all the deepest and strongest possibilities 
 of their characters, it is the purest spiritual 
 influence, and the most powerful, which they 
 can bring mutually into their lives. 
 
 The theory of sexlessness has, in part, 
 grown out of a desire to provide for unhealthy 
 conditions. There are wives who are disabled, 
 physically, for normal marriage; also those 
 for whom poverty makes the bringing of 
 children into the world a doubtful wisdom. 
 These conditions are abnormalities. Physical 
 disabilities are individual disorders; poverty 
 is a race crime. They must have special 
 
MARRIAGE. 
 
 treatment, case by case, until they can be 
 done away with. The methods for meeting 
 them are not the laws of normal living. Those 
 who have advocated the doctrine of sexless- 
 ness have called them so. A moment's thought 
 will show what a mistake this is: Sick people 
 often have to stay in bed; poor people, to go 
 hungry; it does not follow that the way for 
 everybody to live is to stay in bed and starve. 
 If women, generally, recognized the spiritual 
 effect upon the character of the external union 
 of marriage, there would be fewer invalids 
 among wives. They would realize that the 
 highest use they could do for humanity would 
 be to cherish the spiritual power of their 
 marriage, and they would avoid ill-health as 
 they seldom do now. Very much of sickness 
 comes to women from undue reaching after 
 what the world can give to them and their 
 children; or, sometimes, from false notions 
 of the necessity of sacrificing themselves to 
 the demands of relatives and friends; or to 
 "do good" to strangers; or, from over-atten- 
 tion to the husband's artificial wants. Men 
 
ITS PURITY. 21 
 
 often desire their wives to keep up a style 
 of living, and of dressing, for themselves and 
 children, which they, the husbands, affect 
 to despise. They often have a selfish ambition 
 that their wives should excel others in what 
 is called "good housekeeping," or they often 
 require a table so elaborate that it overtaxes 
 a wife to see that it is always up to the standard. 
 If wives could see the value to their spiritual 
 marriage, and of how much stronger and 
 finer quality all their "doing good" of every 
 kind would be in health than in sickness, many 
 of them would soon be able to make their 
 husbands understand the wrong of exactions 
 which overtax the strength of the homemaker. 
 This also would be a power for turning from 
 brutality in their intimate relations those 
 many husbands who are more thoughtlessly 
 than wickedly selfish, and leading them toward 
 reasonableness and self-control. For cherish- 
 ing the spiritual power of any affection lessens 
 the craving for its abnormal expression. The 
 effect of new-created soul-energy is to open 
 a greater variety of ways for the expenditure 
 
MARRIAGE. 
 
 of all energy, and this tends to decrease un- 
 healthy inclinations in any one direction. 
 The awakening of new spiritual powers brings 
 peace as well as strength, and this also aids 
 in allaying the restlessness of abnormal appe- 
 tites. A soul at peace with itself is lifted 
 above the slavery of the physical, and the 
 appetite, from being an exacting taskmaster, 
 becomes an obedient servant, as it was made 
 to be. The wife, no less, gains spiritual 
 heights by spiritual procreation. Much of 
 her striving to get for herself and children 
 "what others have" is, no doubt, somewhat 
 an unconscious effect of restlessness from lack 
 of spiritual marriage; for this state of peace 
 belongs, by right, to every wife, and its loss 
 must affect her mental states. It cannot be 
 hers while she sees nothing in the external 
 union but a physical act; but when she is 
 growing in the peace of the spiritual mar- 
 riage, her newly-created powers are showing 
 her more and more the little comparative 
 value of mere things, and mere position in 
 the world. Taking the externals of marriage, 
 
ITS PURITY. 23 
 
 then, as a means of spiritual growth leads 
 both the husband and the wife to put ex- 
 ternalities under their feet. 
 
 It is the wife who must lead in this uplifting, 
 for the woman is the . guardian of the mar- 
 riage, and it is her perceptions which can 
 find out its purity, and the way to it. Neces- 
 sarily, while she believes that it is delicate, 
 pure, and womanly not to care for the physical 
 in marriage, — unknowing of its spiritual value, 
 — she will continue to allow ill-health to come 
 to her from over-fatigue, which would be 
 avoided if she realized the high use in doing 
 so; and the world will go on abounding in 
 invalid wives, and in husbands who live down 
 in the degradation of the mere physical. 
 
 The falsity of this notion of "womanly 
 purity " is abundantly proved by facts. If 
 it were true, monasticism and Shakerism 
 would long ago have annihilated the race. 
 Women would have fled to them in crowds, 
 rejoicing in their deliverance from a life of 
 filth. On the contrary, asceticism in mar- 
 riage, as in everything, has always been a 
 
24 MARRIAGE. 
 
 failure as a mode of living for people in gen- 
 eral. Nuns and Shakers are no more than 
 a drop in the great ocean of humanity. 
 
 The truth is that there is no time in a 
 woman's adult life when, if she is in love 
 with her husband, she seems to herself so 
 enwrapped in an atmosphere of pure inno- 
 cence as in her early days of marriage. It 
 extends, also, beyond herself and enfolds all 
 the world. The lovelinesses of nature and of 
 human nature seem more real and deep than 
 she ever recognized before; their uglinesses, 
 more like mere blemishes, capable and almost 
 sure to turn some time toward the beautiful 
 and heavenly. Never before have her own 
 untoward circumstances seemed so certain to 
 work themselves out for good. This inno- 
 cence, coming in the days when her purity 
 is the most sensitive to outward influences, 
 is a refutation of the theory that marriage 
 has anything in it essentially impure. 
 
 The innocence of these first days has a 
 large and peculiar value of its own. It has 
 been supposed to be a mere mood of senti- 
 
ITS PURITY. 25 
 
 mentality. It is exactly the reverse. It is 
 like the innocence of babyhood, which, though 
 not the purity of wisdom, pictures it. These 
 peculiarly innocent states of the baby are 
 images of the innocence which will be reached 
 by growth in general, in spiritual character. 
 Those of the wife and husband in the first 
 days of married life picture the abounding 
 joy and peace they will come into through 
 growth in the true marriage. When the in- 
 evitable storms, sometimes terrible with dark- 
 ness, black with despair, threaten to destroy 
 the happiness of those who marry young 
 and so must work out the first stages of their 
 spiritual growth together, this exquisite purity 
 of the early days may be a beacon light through 
 the otherwise impenetrable clouds. It shines 
 steadily for them, and instead of turning away 
 from it as sentimentality, or an illusion, or 
 a dream, it is to be looked to as lighting the 
 way to the true marriage of their spirits, which 
 cannot be reached except by struggling through 
 darkness and battling with storms. 
 
 The two theories stand in dramatic con- 
 
26 MARRIAGE. 
 
 trast. Look at them! for they hold within 
 themselves deep tragedies or endless hap- 
 piness. 
 
 The one seeks the practical annihilation of 
 physical sex. 
 
 The other seeks that the power universally 
 acknowledged to be, physically and mentally, 
 the strongest which human beings possess, 
 should consecrate itself to the upward-growing 
 of the race. 
 
ITS SERVICE. 
 
 THE sermon, essay and the moral story 
 all tell us that our lives should be a 
 service to fellow-beings, and we intend 
 to make them so. We are kind, — when not 
 too cross; helpful, — when not too busy; unsel- 
 fish, — when not too much occupied with our 
 own affairs; and in moments of contrition, we 
 scold ourselves for ever being too cross, busy, 
 or self-occupied. 
 
 With this sincere purpose at heart, it puzzles 
 and discourages us to find how often our 
 service fails to serve. We sacrifice a longed- 
 for pleasure to insist upon its being enjoyed 
 by some one else, only to discover later that 
 it is what he especially disliked, but had 
 accepted in order to spare our feelings; we 
 overwork to relieve another, and become 
 broken in health, when our nervousness, 
 irritability, and necessary demands upon the 
 strength of friends cause more suffering than 
 all we have relieved; we seek to lighten some 
 
28 MARRIAGE. 
 
 unhappiness by sharing generously our small 
 resources, and find the recipients plunged into 
 deeper gloom, because, from their viewpoint, 
 we have been giving stingily from out our 
 great abundance; we spend time which we 
 crave for self-improvement, in order to minister 
 to one who has no claim upon us, and ever 
 after we are looked upon as a neglectful 
 servant, because we do not make our minis- 
 trations life-long; we set aside a larger life 
 which we might have had, in order to bring 
 easier circumstances to a dear one, with the 
 result that we have cleared the way, only, 
 for her to indulge in selfishness ruinous to 
 health, mind, morals and estate; we eagerly 
 engage in philanthropic work, in "education of 
 the masses," and ponder later, as to whether 
 we have done more for this particular "mass" 
 than to sharpen their intellectual tools for 
 making all crimes respectable. Examining 
 our public and our private benefactions, it 
 appears to us that nine-tenths of our "service" 
 has been a giving to some what they did not 
 want, and to the rest what they ought not 
 
ITS SERVICE. 29 
 
 to have. Then we sit down in blank despair 
 and wonder what is the matter with the 
 Golden Rule. 
 
 The matter is with our reading of it. It 
 does not say- 
 Whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
 you, persist in their accepting it from you, 
 whether they want it or not; 
 
 Nor— 
 
 Whatever generosity ye do to others, they 
 will always understand from your view of it, 
 not from theirs; 
 
 Nor— 
 
 Whatever foolishness ye would that men 
 should do to you, do ye even so to them. 
 
 The Golden Rule, like other spiritual truths, 
 supposedly means discretion, some knowledge 
 of human nature, and common sense, — that 
 is, Wisdom. 
 
 In contrast to the thought that these ex- 
 traneous ministrations are the highest "doing 
 good," we may recall another kind of charac- 
 ter. We all have known a few of those rare 
 men and women whose mere presence is a 
 
30 MARRIAGE. 
 
 personal service. It is not that they say and 
 do more interesting things than anybody else, 
 but that they are so interesting in everything 
 they say and do. Their mere "Good morn- 
 ing" is a gift, for it awakens inspiration in 
 us, a sense of having powers ourselves, which 
 they seem tacitly to recognize, and which we 
 have never known we were possessed of. 
 These natures carry with them an influence 
 which one feels as coming from their having 
 found life abundantly worth living. For any 
 one to be admitted into their atmosphere is 
 a rare service which they give, unconsciously, 
 to all who approach them. They do not fail 
 in ordinary offices of kindness, and whatever 
 of philanthropy they think is wise in the 
 present world, where men are striving to make 
 "giving" serve instead of justice; but, more 
 than any conscious "doing for others" is 
 what they do because of what they are. For 
 doing follows upon being as the fruit the 
 flower. The bringing of power into another's 
 life is the only possible real service. The 
 giving of a piece of bread to a hungry boy 
 
ITS SERVICE. 31 
 
 is called "doing good"; but if that be all, 
 it is worthless, for it means no more than 
 that he will die of starvation to-morrow, 
 instead of to-day. The real gift would be 
 the putting of power within his reach by which 
 he may find how to get bread for himself, 
 and never hunger again. Further still, that 
 which makes external power of any value 
 is inspiration. One might supply the hungry 
 boy with work, but if he were not roused to 
 feel that he could do it, he would fail. This 
 inspiring of others is the true service. It is 
 the bestowal upon them of the Divine Life 
 constantly flowing through one's character 
 and forth to others. When this Life is kept 
 as free as may be from one's imperfections, 
 it is an inspiration; when vitiated by one's 
 faults, it hinders, or arouses to evil. Those 
 rare souls whose mere presence is a gift, while 
 they mold by their own individuality the Life 
 which they receive, aim to keep it free from 
 their own blemishes. This constant elimina- 
 tion of their evils is their spiritual growing. 
 Marriage is the condition in which this 
 
32 MARRIAGE. 
 
 growth may be at its full height of conscious 
 happiness. Each class of duties of the hus- 
 band and the wife are grounds for its activity. 
 The wife may make her homemaking a large 
 and beautiful dwelling-place for her husband 
 by loving its order, neatness, cheerfulness 
 and beauty because it is an atmosphere in 
 which his every power may thrive. She may 
 feel, sensibly, his generous heart grow larger, 
 his noble thought finer, within the genial 
 sunshine of her loving personal care of him. 
 To make room for such deepening of his 
 character, she must constantly put out of life 
 her peculiarities, her petty selfishnesses and 
 her larger evils. Thus the doing of every 
 duty, from the shunning of inner iniquities 
 to the outmost act of making his home restful, 
 may be the means of bringing the Divine 
 Life to her husband's soul. In his turn, he 
 may carry on his business, the foundation 
 of their material existence, with honesty and 
 honorableness, to the end that she may dwell 
 in the peace which integrity brings to a house- 
 hold. His peculiarities and his larger evils 
 
ITS SERVICE. 33 
 
 may be avoided so that his manhood shall 
 be a purer home in which her ever-growing 
 womanhood may live and find communion 
 with God. His personal services may be ren- 
 dered to her with a love that shall continually 
 open her heart wider to all spiritual influences. 
 The entering in of the Divine Life to each 
 through the other will be the deepest joy that 
 human love can know. 
 
 In such a marriage, then, each seeks the 
 highest growth attainable, that each may 
 abundantly bestow life upon the other. The 
 husband enfolds the wife in the warm atmos- 
 phere of his ever-strengthening manhood, 
 and she responds with sweet appreciation 
 of its character, nourishing it with her woman's 
 wise perception of its possibilities, and thereby 
 growing in her own angelic powers. The 
 spiritual children born of such a marriage 
 are strong, deep-hearted forms of love and 
 wisdom. By these, the home becomes a 
 center from which radiates neighborly love 
 in peculiar strength and beauty. The hus- 
 band's business is an administering to the 
 3 
 
34 MARRIAGE. 
 
 needs and happiness and comfort of the com- 
 munity; the affairs of municipal, national 
 and international interest receive whatever of 
 wise influence it is in the power of such a 
 home to extend to them; while the social 
 life which gathers around is warm with gen- 
 erous interpretation of the neighbor, and deep 
 with aims for loving service in everything it 
 enters into. 
 
 There are few such marriages as yet. There 
 cannot be until both men and women under- 
 stand, each the other, as they do not now. 
 Many husbands and wives who are probably 
 well-mated in interior character are getting 
 on together with only passable comfort. They 
 have not found out that they were made for 
 harmony, for they do not take into account 
 the possibility of adjusting their differences 
 of temperament. One is mild, the other 
 hasty; one is prompt, the other slow. The 
 remedy largely offered in the past has been 
 pious platitudes about "patience," "long- 
 suffering," "never raising one's voice above" 
 (the exact pitch is just now forgotten), "never 
 
ITS SERVICE. 35 
 
 answering back," etc., ad infinitum. A little 
 common sense would make a better working 
 rule. When a woman, habitually procrastin- 
 ating, keeps her husband waiting some hours 
 overtime for his noonday dinner, — she having 
 dallied through her shopping trip in a neigh- 
 boring town, and being her own house- worker, 
 — and he storms about it, and she remarks 
 with habitual slowness and a patient sigh, 
 "Father is so impatient," the onlooker feels 
 that a more radical cure for " father" would 
 be the regeneration of "mother's" habits into 
 harmony with the necessities of the masculine 
 stomach. This the dear woman never thinks 
 of; and she goes through life, perhaps, under 
 the r61e of "saint," because of her "patience" 
 with father's temper. This patience is doubly 
 exasperating to his irascibility because every- 
 body implies, and his own conscience tells 
 him, that he is a brute to be angry with a 
 sweet wife who is never angry with him. A 
 closer thought will show that she is as great 
 a sinner as he, indulging, under cover of a 
 naturally mild temper, in a selfishness, un- 
 
36 MARRIAGE. 
 
 conscious, but gigantic, of a natural love of 
 procrastination. 
 
 The difficulty widens when the differences 
 are emphasized by sex. A man has never 
 the same outlook as a woman. He sees dif- 
 ferent things, although he is in the same world 
 and everything is before the sight of both. 
 The boy will stop in the street and watch for 
 hours the digging of a trench, the movement 
 of a car, the hoisting of weights. The girl 
 sees none of these, but gazes enraptured at 
 the textures in shop windows, the exquisite 
 combinations of colors, the grace of the de- 
 signs. They may not, either of them, have 
 the slightest personal interest in what they 
 are looking at. The girl is merely absorbed 
 in her sensations awakened by delicious color- 
 ing and forms, the boy, by strength and power. 
 This difference goes through all the woman- 
 hood and manhood of the two. The man 
 refers everything to strength and power, and 
 large, general principles; the woman, to 
 delicacy, grace, and more especial detail. 
 Each recognizes the usefulness in the par- 
 
ITS SERVICE. 37 
 
 ticular quality delighted in. The man sees 
 use in strength and knows that the world 
 would "go to pieces" if it were wholly gov- 
 erned by the woman's kind of life; the woman 
 perceives the use in all the finer elements, 
 and that the world would work its own de- 
 struction by its very strength if this strength 
 were left unmodified. Each, too, admires 
 the other's quality, — at a distance. Trouble 
 begins when they attempt to join them into 
 one. They admire, but they do not under- 
 stand; and when the quality of each comes 
 into the life of the other, it annoys, irritates, 
 hurts, displeases, angers. Their struggles are 
 a power for bringing them the discovery that 
 there exists a natural harmony between strength 
 and grace, which, if they will, they may 
 cherish and make grow into an exquisite music 
 in their inner lives. Too often they care 
 more for the lesser things, and so go on un- 
 comfortably in a state of mutual semi-criticism, 
 with little adjustment and no understanding. 
 
 The way of cherishing harmony lies in the 
 confidence of each in the quality of the other. 
 
38 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Women are apt to sigh, complainingly, "How 
 queer men are!" and men to mutter, "Just 
 like a woman!" Neither takes the trouble 
 to understand that there is some sense and 
 reason, under the other's view. For instance, 
 a man seldom says, "lam sorry." He repents 
 as often and as truly as a woman, of anger 
 and injustice; but the deeper his repentance, 
 the more insignificant do words seem to him. 
 He resolves that he will show his sorrow by 
 a convincing act; and perhaps at some per- 
 sonal sacrifice to himself, he purchases a gift 
 which he knows his wife has often coveted. 
 This will show her his real sorrow for his 
 fault. He takes it home, eager to be forgiven, 
 and to see the happy smile again. His face 
 is bright with anticipation, and with the ten- 
 derness awakened by contrition. To his 
 surprise, pain, and bewilderment, she looks 
 coldly upon the gift, scarcely thanks him for 
 it, and puts it out of sight as soon as she can 
 find excuse for doing so. It is then that, 
 in his chagrin and despair, he mutters, "Just 
 like a woman, you never can please her. I 
 
ITS SERVICE. 39 
 
 thought she wanted that more than anything, 
 else." On her part, she is saying, heart- 
 brokenly to herself, "How queer men are! 
 He has actually forgotten how unjust he was 
 to me this morning. He looks as happy as 
 if he had never said words to me that I shall 
 never forget. Or, perhaps he thinks he can 
 make up by buying baubles for me. A man 
 will do anything rather than to acknowledge 
 himself wrong. It seems as if it would be 
 so easy just to say 'I'm sorry.' It isn't hard 
 for me. I'm glad to let him know that I see 
 when I am wrong; but I really believe that 
 William would spend his last cent rather 
 than to own up. Well, he shall know that 
 my forgiveness can't be bought. He will 
 have to ask for it if he wants it." So the 
 trouble grows, through weary days, sometimes 
 through the earth-life. The remedy would 
 have been easy at first. If each had had 
 confidence in the other's different kind of 
 sense, they would have said to themselves 
 that the other must mean something that 
 seemed reasonable to him or her. Each would 
 
40 MARRIAGE. 
 
 try to find out how the other is thinking. 
 Then she, on her side, would soon learn of 
 the man's feeling that talking is cheap repara- 
 tion for a wrong, as if he thought he might 
 indulge in any injustice if he would be willing, 
 afterward, to say a few smooth words; and 
 he, on his, would discover that a sincere word 
 of sorrow for a wrong done her would be 
 more to her than all the jewels of all the 
 crowned heads of Europe. 
 
 The struggles come out in a variety of 
 ways, in the necessary, or accepted differences 
 of occupation of the man and the woman. 
 The wife begins to grieve, as the newness 
 of married life wears off, that her husband 
 gradually omits some little attentions which 
 he gave at first. " He does not love me any 
 more, as he did," she says to herself, "he is 
 growing tired of me, as they say all men do 
 of their wives, even the very best of them"; 
 and he, meantime, "Why is she so disturbed 
 because I cannot do everything for her that 
 I did at first? Doesn't she know how hard 
 I work, and as much for her as for myself? 
 
ITS SERVICE. 
 
 and that I am working to give her a pleasanter 
 home, — yes," and his eyes soften with a loving 
 light, " and one more fitted to her sweet grace ? " 
 When the children come, the problem of how 
 to care rightly for them perplexes and absorbs 
 her, and he is often lonely in his home hours. 
 He cannot understand why she should be 
 always with them, and she cannot find any 
 way to help it without neglecting them. 
 
 So the differences go on throughout the 
 myriad affairs of the daily round. The young 
 hearts suffer torture from their very love. If 
 they are wise, they soon begin to help each 
 other in adjusting matters, and thus to grow 
 in oneness. The attaining of such under- 
 standing cannot be a cold process of the 
 intellect. It is love which makes one wise. 
 There must be the love which yearns to feel, 
 beneath the seemingly cold act, a warmth 
 that makes the action Love's own messenger; 
 or to know why a sincere effort to express 
 sorrow for wrong should be unwelcome; or 
 to understand the necessity for changed habits 
 of the one or the other. The love, also, in 
 
42 MARRIAGE. 
 
 order to feel such yearning, will have needed 
 all modes of making itself felt. This is why 
 the "doctrine of sexlessness" so endangers 
 the growth of marriage oneness. It keeps 
 the husband and wife apart in almost all the 
 wordless forms of mutual understanding. 
 There is small chance for the spirits' nearness 
 when every near approach to each other must 
 be guarded by unnatural restraints, which, 
 under the name of self-control, seek to avoid 
 the expression of love. The knowledge of 
 each other's nature must be superficial, under 
 these restraints, compared with what could 
 be with the same persons, in freer conditions. 
 Those husbands and wives who come into 
 the beautiful deeper understanding often are 
 of the rare few whose mere presence is a gift 
 to all who enter it. To each other, their 
 lives are a most blessed inspiration. His 
 harshness has been softened by her sensitive- 
 ness, her morbidness has grown into a healthy 
 delicateness through the receiving of his 
 strength. His larger interpretation of life, 
 which might easily have run into disorder 
 
ITS SERVICE. 43 
 
 for want of limit, is fashioned into beauteous 
 shape by her woman's formative power; her 
 woman's tendency to limit everything to a 
 personal meaning has found larger applica- 
 tions with the aid of his manliness. Their 
 lives bless the world through the highest 
 service of human being to human being, — 
 that of marriage. 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE 
 UNMARRIED. 
 
 THERE is one principle which obtains 
 throughout the universe, and every 
 action, even the smallest, is the effect 
 of it, as truly as the entire creation. It is 
 the law of union and fruition. The sight of 
 the snow crystals was the fruit of the light 
 uniting with my eye. So every thought, and 
 act, and feeling, as well as all material things, 
 are brought forth by two somethings acting 
 as a one. Below the human plane the unions 
 are temporary, and of either good or bad 
 results. With the human, when they are true, 
 they are marriage, which is always good in 
 its effects. The various human sexual rela- 
 tions not permanent, or not good, are not 
 marriage, although some of them are called so. 
 The inner personal marriage between hus- 
 band and wife is that which gives value to 
 the external. Lacking this inner oneness, the 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 45 
 
 outer tie is mere consecrated externality. In 
 many cases, however, it only seems lacking 
 for a time, and later the real union shows 
 itself as such. 
 
 This "oneness" is not possible without 
 another union in each of the two souls. The 
 individual is, in essence, forms of affection 
 and thought, which, when the life is spiritual, 
 act as one. If the ruling affection is bad, 
 delighting in thought false to all true living, 
 it acts itself out into unholy deeds. There is 
 a kind of union between the two, but no real 
 oneness. Evil and falsity are at war, always, 
 even between themselves, and there is no 
 peace to the soul which is governed by them. 
 When the ruling affection is good, it is Love, 
 which continually seeks a marriage with 
 Wisdom, in order to bring forth forms of 
 service to mankind. 
 
 The personal real marriage is impossible 
 between a husband and wife who are not, 
 in some degree, each growing in this indi- 
 vidual oneness of soul; and the only way to 
 spiritual life for the single man and the single 
 
46 MARRIAGE. 
 
 woman is by the same union of the love and 
 wisdom of their souls, individually. 
 
 The fruit of the individual marriage is, like 
 the spiritual children of the husband and 
 wife, service. We are only beginning to know 
 what this word means. In past times it has 
 been applied to all manner of irregular doings, 
 supposed to be beneficial to somebody in 
 proportion to the amount which they destroyed 
 for the doer, of health, strength, time, income, 
 enjoyment, or real usefulness. Its usual name 
 is "sacrifice." It has for ages been supposed 
 to be the road direct to heaven, and this is 
 still insisted on in many sermons, essays, and 
 novels. We are, in spite of this, beginning 
 to know that service is the pouring out upon 
 others of blessings born to our souls through 
 the marriage of love and wisdom in them, 
 and that this marriage takes place, in its 
 fullness, only in the normal round of life. 
 Where "sacrifice" is service, the necessities 
 for it are mere "emergency cases." We 
 render real service by acting out our love 
 in forms of wisdom in the daily living. Where 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 47 
 
 this is a constant sacrifice, and cannot be 
 made a happy service, something is wrong 
 either with ourselves, which is quite likely, 
 or with the situation, which ought to be changed 
 if possible, and given the most conscientious 
 thought as to how it may be made possible. 
 
 Service may be rendered in only a moment's 
 association. You meet a mere acquaintance, 
 exchange a few commonplaces, and go your 
 way refreshed by a something beautiful which 
 has come from his atmosphere into your life. 
 It stays with you. As long as you live, the 
 memory of it inspires you. More deeply still, 
 the chief service which one does is the pouring 
 out of one's life through the wise direction 
 of the daily routine and associations. 
 
 Service, to be the child of the inner mar- 
 riage, necessitates the having of some external 
 work for which one is responsible. Mere 
 desultory duties cannot satisfy a strong affec- 
 tion. One must love steadily, to love deeply; 
 also, wisdom cannot unite with love which 
 wanders from one aim to another. The inner 
 marriage needs a body of permanency, exactly 
 
48 MARRIAGE. 
 
 as the personal marriage needs the same 
 external form. The lack of it is noticeable 
 in the "unmarried" atmosphere of single men 
 and women who have no especial interest in 
 anything of value. They may be even working 
 daily, for the getting of an income, but they 
 put into their tasks no more than an external 
 wisdom. This is not marriage. Different, 
 entirely, is the atmosphere of single men who 
 carry on their business with wise devotion, 
 in honesty, honorableness, and conscious or 
 unconscious love of service. Vastly different, 
 too, is that of single women who, perhaps 
 in their own work, perhaps only as a sub- 
 ordinate in another's, are earnestly uniting 
 their devotion (love) to good judgment (wis- 
 dom). These single men and women have 
 a roundness and a fullness of mentality in- 
 dicating marriage, which, indeed, they are 
 growing into, and are giving of its service to 
 the world. The others bear an atmosphere in 
 which something is wanting, and that something 
 is essential. It may be useful to recall here, 
 that there are husbands and wives who have 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 49 
 
 the same "unmarried" appearance, and it is 
 reasonable to judge that it is caused by their 
 not having grown, to any great extent, in the 
 individual union. 
 
 The inner marriage cannot exist, to any 
 satisfactory degree, unless the service is real. 
 A woman may plan, systematically, to spend 
 her life making sofa pillows, embroidering 
 her gowns, and putting ornaments on the 
 dress of her sister's children, interspersing 
 these "domestic duties" with pincushions and 
 dolls for fairs, and all this may be of little 
 service. If the sofa pillows and embroidery 
 are merely "something to do" they are not 
 useful, and no wisdom can join itself to such 
 a love. As for fairs, they are simply an ex- 
 travagant means for people to cheat themselves 
 into paying more money toward a cause than 
 their judgment would otherwise allow. There 
 is almost no service in such work, and women 
 who devote their lives to it are missing much 
 of the marriage which belongs to them. 
 
 On the other hand, a man or a woman may 
 have a position in which he or she seems to 
 4 
 
50 MARRIAGE. 
 
 do no real work, but only to cultivate the 
 mind, and yet may be filling an important 
 place in the world's uses. Suppose a father, 
 left by his wife's death with a motherless girl. 
 Being yet in her teens, she is not old enough 
 to assume the household cares, and there is 
 a tried and faithful upper servant who does 
 this with entire satisfaction. The father feels 
 the need of the protection and companionship 
 for his daughter, of a woman who is her social 
 equal. He has a relative who gladly accepts 
 his invitation to make her home with them 
 for this purpose. One might say, judging 
 casually, that this older woman led an idle 
 life. Yet, being a true woman, she is em- 
 ployed in real service. She interests herself, 
 as she must always have done, in all good 
 thought, and all good doings of the world. 
 She considers that it is her especial work, now, 
 to provide an atmosphere of rich mentality 
 for the young girl. She has no authority over 
 the younger one. Nevertheless, by her own 
 character, broad, deep, and true, she opens 
 to the other's vision the possibilities of a fine 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 5 1 
 
 womanhood. If the girl is one capable of 
 vision, so that she can be inspired, the other's 
 service to her is all the more real that it is 
 unconscious in detail, and without authority. 
 It is a fine service, because the one who gives 
 it is fine herself. It is so well worth working 
 for, the real character-growth. In any situa- 
 tion, it is an inspiration to the character of 
 others. It is so free from self-conceit, so 
 absolutely without self-consciousness, because 
 it is continually seeking the marriage within 
 itself of the highest love and the deepest 
 wisdom it can learn of. 
 
 Cases like the above, where a woman has 
 a real work to do without an apparent outer 
 form, are rare. Usually, service takes a 
 definite shape, and one in which success 
 measures its efficiency. This is the normal 
 life. Success is a legitimate element of the 
 individual marriage. Whether the success is 
 really the child of that marriage depends, 
 as does failure, and everything else, upon what 
 we do with it. Some people have a genius 
 for succeeding, as others have for art, music, 
 
52 MARRIAGE. 
 
 or science. By these, the interior marriage 
 cannot be gained except by loving their success 
 for the service it renders, instead of for its selfish 
 gain. To those who have not an external 
 genius for it, the failures may point out the 
 way to get it, and this can be for them only 
 by means of the union of the love and wisdom 
 of the soul. The spirituality of failure has 
 been often insisted upon, and with truth, 
 except that, usually, only the half is told. 
 Failure is spiritual as far as it points out how 
 to unite love with wisdom, and so finally to 
 bring success. For the ultimate of spirituality 
 is common sense, and "all power is in ulti- 
 mates." It is not sensible to suppose that 
 the object of spiritual service is not to do 
 the service. One's worldly gains may not 
 be very great, but that some degree of ex- 
 ternal success will follow any work loved so 
 deeply that it seeks, until it finds, forms of 
 wisdom through which to act, is simply to 
 say that God works through His own laws. 
 Failure is usually caused by one of two con- 
 ditions (the failure which is brought upon a 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 53 
 
 person in business by the errors of other 
 people is not here meant): — Either we have 
 chosen the wrong work, or we have not used 
 the wisdom necessary to make the right one 
 efficient. In one case or the other, we are 
 not marrying our love to our wisdom. Instead 
 of being discouraged by the failure, we might 
 rejoice that it is trying to point out to us the 
 way to the true service, i. e., success. 
 
 Health, that much despised and much 
 abused element of our lives, is an essential to 
 the fullness of the inner marriage. In wed- 
 lock, the wife may attain to heights of spiritual 
 wifehood and motherhood, when in health, 
 which the same woman could never dream 
 of in invalidism. Similarly, the single man 
 or the single woman, needs to preserve health 
 as earnestly, for the sake of the interior mar- 
 riage. The service of both soul and body 
 rests upon control of one's own powers, and 
 this can be gained fully only in their normal 
 condition. We have inherited from an an- 
 cestry beridden with asceticism, the notion 
 that invalidism is a synonym for godliness. 
 
54 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Consequently, not one in a thousand of us 
 is well and strong. We have dropped the 
 idea of the actual godliness, but we have not 
 yet taken into recognition the unspirituality 
 of illness. We are not responsible for our 
 invalidism in its beginning, any more than 
 we are for a naturally irritable temper; but 
 neither is the want of health more spiritual 
 than the temper. Evils can be utilized for 
 teaching us humility and patience. Neverthe- 
 less, a spiritually-minded person does not go 
 on in courses which he knows will increase 
 his violent temper on the theory that it is a 
 means of regeneration. The same principle 
 ought to be carried out in invalidism, as in 
 any other evil. We cannot help, always, 
 having come into ill-health. This often is 
 upon us before we have learned how we 
 might avoid it. When this is the case, we 
 can work as faithfully toward its alleviation 
 or its cure, as we do to control and lessen 
 irritability, obstinacy, unkind feeling, or any 
 other fault. As a means of discipline, the 
 keeping of one's health far outstrips the power 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 55 
 
 of sickness. More actual self-denial is needed 
 to guard the health, than for overworking, 
 over-eating, under- exercising, under-sleeping, 
 over-recreating, and overdoing "doing good 
 to others" until we fall sick. Ill-health often 
 comes from the selfishness of want of self- 
 control, or from timidity, which dares not 
 resist unjust demands from others upon one's 
 time and strength, or income. Self-indulgence 
 and timidity have nothing spiritual in them. 
 
 Ill-health is unspiritual, because it prevents 
 the completeness of the inner marriage. Ex- 
 cept in "emergency cases," which are rare 
 unless we manufacture them artificially, no 
 love that we can pour out upon another while 
 weakening our own powers in order to do 
 it, can compare, in stimulating life to the 
 receiver, with what we do by love united to 
 wisdom in normal physical energy and vigor. 
 
 Much. of the loneliness and forlornness of 
 single life would disappear with the adoption 
 of the conscious aim to grow in the inner 
 marriage. Single persons who desire the per- 
 sonal marriage, ascribe an undue amount of 
 
56 MARRIAGE. 
 
 loneliness to the lack of the domestic com- 
 panionship they long for. It is the inner 
 marriage which drives away loneliness, the 
 loving to do real service in the world. Without 
 this, the married woman is as much a prey 
 as the unmarried to mental miseries. If she 
 does not feel alone, she is wretched because 
 she does not, for she is overburdened with 
 the demands of the human beings whose 
 happiness and comfort she must care for. 
 Nothing but love of service can make the 
 numberless duties of the wife and mother 
 seem anything but weights depriving her of 
 mental growth, their conflicting elements 
 anything but vexations. Exactly as the bur- 
 dens of the married are turned into loving 
 responsibilities, the perplexities into interesting 
 problems, by the inner marriage in the indi- 
 vidual soul of the husband and of the wife, 
 so is the loneliness of the unmarried turned 
 into mental freedom for becoming wisely 
 loving in human service, by the same marriage 
 in the soul. To single men and women who 
 long for their own domestic life and interests, 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE UNMARRIED. 57 
 
 the inner marriage makes greater the pos- 
 sibility of the coming of the outer. The 
 thought of service in one's mind drives away 
 the shyness in association with the other sex, 
 which causes many a sweet woman and noble 
 man to appear cold and indifferent. The 
 true spiritual state would guard a woman 
 from sentimentality (the selfishness of vanity) 
 on the one hand, and from unwomanly bold- 
 ness on the other. Frank, wholesome inter- 
 course with friends of the other sex, which is 
 the soundest foundation for marriage love, 
 would become a habit. When the personal 
 marriage is finally given to such a man and 
 such a woman, they have not lost anything 
 by the lateness in its coming. For, just as 
 husband and wife, married young, have found 
 their closer union by growth into the individual 
 marriage through the experiences of life 
 together, so will the others, during the time 
 of waiting, have reached this same marriage, 
 which has been fitting their souls for becoming 
 one. 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 
 
 MARRIAGE laws would be extremely- 
 simple if marriages were always 
 happy. It is its unhappy relations 
 which make the need of elaborate regulations 
 about it. 
 
 The variety of its laws, both in Church and 
 State, causes great uneasiness to the conscience 
 of the public, or else to its sense of fitness. 
 Divorce and remarriage are the mooted issues. 
 The State, in general, allows both ; the Church, 
 — the Protestant, — inclines to frown them 
 down, although only one denomination pro- 
 hibits them. The consensus of State opinion 
 is that every person has a right to marriage, 
 and that if the present one is given up he may 
 be allowed another; the Church implies that 
 God hath joined together whomsoever the 
 priest hath pronounced husband and wife, 
 and that the breaking of this union is a viola- 
 tion of the marriage sanctity. The many 
 States of our Union, and the many sects of 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 59 
 
 the church, differ greatly in their modes of 
 expressing their general principles. 
 
 The majority of persons have an opinion as 
 to a wise and uniform code. A few have none. 
 It is clear to them that no change for the better 
 can be made with only the present kind of 
 knowledge on the subject. Marriage princi- 
 ples are not studied by the general mind of 
 even the cultivated world. The subject itself, 
 as serious philosophy, is a forbidden one in 
 conversation and in literary essay. Marriage 
 holds in its power the spiritual, moral, mental, 
 and physical welfare, and even the actual 
 continuance of the race, but its nature and 
 needs are not given as much thought as the 
 life of a dog, or the habits of a pet rabbit. 
 With a few honorable exceptions, the con- 
 troversies about it have concerned principally 
 its outer form. They have not touched its 
 inner nature, the terms of outer life best 
 fitted to the character-growth of the individuals 
 united in it, the danger to that growth, of 
 careless laxity regarding divorce; or, on the 
 other hand, of holding bound together a man 
 
6o MARRIAGE. 
 
 and a woman entirely unsuited to each other; 
 or, of keeping from remarriage some pre-emi- 
 nently fitted for strengthening by it the charac- 
 ter-growth of the race ; and thus through indi- 
 vidual inferiority, the debasing of race integrity. 
 The world looks upon marriage, now, as it 
 has for ages, as inherently a self-indulgence, 
 sanctified only by a religious rite. Such 
 sanctification, which is supposed to be "the 
 institution of marriage," when it has once 
 covered over the grossness of the self-indul- 
 gence, must be guarded, because it is the only 
 thing about the union which is supposed to 
 be sacred. 
 
 Therefore, marriage cannot be talked of 
 seriously. Fiction, to be sure, is allowed and 
 encouraged to entertain and horrify with 
 pictures of marriage violations, its miseries 
 and the crimes committed in its name. These 
 miseries and crimes, also, make the kernel 
 of one half the jokes in life and literature; 
 but serious converse upon normal marriage 
 is not good form in good society. How can 
 it be, when the common, even cultivated, 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 6 1 
 
 thought makes it a mere glossing over of the 
 grossest self-indulgence, physically, and of 
 an equally gross self-devoted self-happiness, 
 mentally? An attempt at a higher stand is 
 sometimes made in the excuse for the reticence, 
 — that marriage is too " sacred" to be talked 
 about. This would have a semblance of 
 reason if it were too sacred to be joked about. 
 It even then would be not more than a sem- 
 blance. For marriage, as the strongest human 
 power for the finest character-building, is not 
 a kind of sacredness which cannot be talked 
 about. Personal experiences, which are what 
 the excuse refers to, are not principles of 
 marriage any more than personal habits are 
 principles of neatness. The establishing, in 
 the general mind, of marriage as the great 
 principle of life, is the only foundation for 
 laws about it which shall be universal and 
 lasting. 
 
 It is not forgotten that, in the past, there 
 have been sundry volumes of "Advice to 
 Wives," and an occasional one of "Advice 
 to Husbands," and that ministers speak of 
 
62 MARRIAGE. 
 
 marriage as sacred; but the "Advices," when 
 summed up, are only commonplaces about 
 being amiable, and the ministers' remarks, 
 often equally commonplace, are taken by 
 everybody as what ought to be said in church. 
 They are all looked upon as pious sayings 
 expected in such connections. Marriage con- 
 tinues to be held as a not proper topic for 
 serious consideration in good society. 
 
 The life of marriage depends upon two 
 conditions, — permanency, and inner union. 
 Real marriage is a constant growth in spiritual 
 oneness, and temporariness cannot promote 
 it. To the husband and wife who love their 
 marriage with each other, the finding out 
 how they may make a mutual adjustment 
 of their natures is their greatest joy. No 
 blemish in the other brings discouragement 
 to either; no self-gratification can compare 
 with the delight of yielding individual prefer- 
 ences in order to increase the growing oneness. 
 Sacrifice ceases to be sacrifice, for all is ser- 
 vice, — the greatest human joy. The unselfish 
 service and joy begin in feebleness, but steadily 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 63 
 
 gain strength. All this necessitates perma- 
 nency, the body of marriage. 
 
 Its soul is inner union. Fortunately for 
 humanity, although it complicates the prob- 
 lem, marriage has a soul. It cannot be formed 
 with any two, one man and one woman, 
 however earnest and honest each may be. 
 The two must be so fitted for each other 
 that each may be able to see through sur- 
 face imperfections and even grave evils of the 
 other, to the spark from the Divine Life 
 at the center of the soul. Otherwise, there is 
 always the danger that their characters will 
 clash and destroy each other. The difficulty 
 in making adequate laws lies in this need of 
 marriage for its own soul. When this is 
 wanting, something ought to be done, and it 
 is for this reason that study is necessary. 
 
 The possibility of inner union is not always 
 lacking where it seems to be. There are 
 temporary unhappinesses, serious for a time, 
 but gradually disappearing with experience and 
 growth. Without permanence, these husbands 
 and wives would miss the final joy of their 
 
64 MARRIAGE. 
 
 real marriage. With characters well-mated, 
 where there is the feeblest desire for other 
 than a wholly selfish life, the chance always 
 remains for happiness. 
 
 Outside of these are found many unions 
 which are only legal arrangements. Some of 
 them are between men and women too ig- 
 norant or too selfish, or both, to enter into 
 anything deeper. Such joinings of the mere 
 outer life are as common in cultivated society 
 as in the slums. Another class, needing the 
 wisest laws, are the mismated husband and 
 wife who are both earnest characters, capable 
 of a true marriage; but who have made an 
 honest mistake in choice, and their daily 
 living together is a deadening of their highest 
 growth. 
 
 Every true marriage is an incalculable 
 power constantly on the increase, for the 
 upward growth of the world. The spiritual 
 effects of any life are like seeds, each producing 
 other seeds, and each of these progenitors 
 of countless millions more. The life of a true 
 marriage is such seed, of the supremest quality. 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 65 
 
 It is made up of all the best of the man and 
 all the best of the woman, with an ever- 
 increasing elimination of their evils. It thus 
 works, constantly, for the creating of a stronger 
 and finer human race. The world cannot 
 afford to lose anything of such character. The 
 story is told of Lincoln, to whom an officer 
 reported that a young Quaker, who had been 
 conscripted, would not fight and did not fear 
 either punishment or death. Should they 
 shoot him for a traitor? "No," answered the 
 great President, " don't you see the country 
 can't afford to lose a man like that for nothing ? 
 Find some reason for sending him home." 
 There may be a doubt of the fact of a Quaker 
 being forced into the army in this country, 
 but the story has a deep truth in it. The race 
 cannot afford to destroy its strongest and 
 finest fiber, nor can it any more afford to 
 prevent its growth. Yet it does this every 
 time it hinders a real marriage. The yielding, 
 meekly, of the victims, to such hindrances 
 is much advocated in real life, and promi- 
 nently in fiction, with the claim that it is the 
 5 
 
66 MARRIAGE. 
 
 highest nobility of character. The keeping 
 of a promise of marriage when one or the 
 other finds the choice a mistake has been 
 considered earthly angelhood. Sacrificing one's 
 marriage to the countless selfishnesses of rela- 
 tives is another deification of what is, in 
 reality, a sin against humanity, except in the 
 intention of the victim who does it. Also, 
 those marriage laws which prevent true mar- 
 riages are a form of destruction of the finest 
 strength of the race. Marriage cannot be 
 kept a sacred institution unless as a builder 
 of character it is not only preserved, but 
 planted, watered, and cherished in its growth. 
 
 How shall we guard marriage as the grandest 
 human character? How shall we get for the 
 world the maximum of such character, at 
 present, and work toward its constant increase ? 
 How shall we bring to bear upon every mar- 
 riageable person the strongest influence for 
 leading him to look toward his possible mar- 
 riage as an entity having both soul and body ? 
 What is the knowledge which will enable the 
 husband and wife, newly wedded, to live 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 67 
 
 toward making their marriage a constantly 
 increasing soul within its body, by seeking 
 between themselves a constantly growing 
 oneness? What is the knowledge which will 
 lead the temporarily unhappy in their union 
 to find the harmony possible to them ? What 
 kind of knowledge will guide to a decision 
 as to the wisest law for the actually mismated, 
 whose efforts to become the married "one" 
 only fashion them into individualities less and 
 less suited for welding into such oneness? 
 Those are meant here who Began with the 
 honest belief that they were mentally fitted 
 to one another, and who are sincerely living 
 as truly as they know how. They are like 
 a heart and hand which, the more perfect 
 they grow, the heart as heart, and the hand 
 as hand, are less and less able to act together, 
 as the heart can with the lungs, and the hand 
 with its mate. Or, they are like a horse and 
 an elephant, yoked together. These are both 
 noble animals, but unfitted for union. The 
 more perfect the horse as a horse, and the 
 elephant as an elephant, the more readily will 
 
68 MARRIAGE. 
 
 they destroy each other's highest powers, if 
 bound into the same harness. Finally, How 
 shall the world so emphasize the supreme 
 pricelessness for itself of the marriage-char- 
 acter that the tendency will be to turn those 
 toward it who care nothing for its outer body, 
 and know nothing of its inner soul ? 
 
 If it is true, as is here assumed, that mar- 
 riage-character is the integrity of the race, 
 definite philosophic study, at stated times, is 
 not, by any means, all the kind of thought 
 it needs. As much, it is imperative that in 
 any touch upon marriage in common con- 
 versation, we should invariably speak front 
 its principles. Talking of principles is not 
 useful in ordinary chit-chat; but it is our 
 obligation to an earnest life to talk always 
 from them. This would throw out all joking 
 about the unhappiness of marriage. Also all 
 the light conversation would be shunned 
 about weddings, as if clothes, furniture, and 
 the husband's income, actual and possible, 
 were the aim of the marriage; but it would 
 make these very things of interest as signs 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 69 
 
 of outer forms which shall contain the marriage 
 purity and its service. 
 
 There are ideas, always brought up in the 
 discussion of marriage laws, which are com- 
 monly treated with an abundance of thought 
 that does not reach far below the surface. 
 The rigorist theory of divorce is one. This 
 has, for centuries, been practiced by the 
 Roman Church, the oldest and largest Christian 
 denomination in the world. Its record, that, 
 with the exception of Ireland, the Catholic 
 countries are distinguished for an immorality 
 forming the life of a majority of their peoples, 
 high and low, leaves no need for further 
 research into the theory. 
 
 A Protestant modification of this law is, — 
 Divorce, but no remarriage. Sensible persons 
 favor this decree, yet it is among those man- 
 made laws which have no common sense for 
 their foundation. This alone, taking no other 
 proof, shows the dearth of thought upon 
 marriage as character-building, and is an 
 evidence of the attempt to uphold the institu- 
 tion artificially. One moment's consideration 
 
70 MARRIAGE. 
 
 will show its utter unreason. The divorced 
 person is bound to a dead contract, as one 
 Siamese twin, living, to his dead brother; 
 bound to a bond which does not bind, to an 
 obligation without duties or responsibilities, 
 except not to do something which the former 
 husband or wife has no longer any right to 
 care for, whether it is done or not. What 
 kind of a ghastly thing is this for sensible 
 humanity to torture itself with, — to stunt and 
 cripple and deaden the life remaining to some 
 of its members, and consequently to its own 
 as a whole? The measure is supposed to be 
 a preventive of divorce. This is trying to 
 prevent an evil by after penalty, rather than 
 by previous instruction, a method which has 
 always failed and is always failing. The 
 Protestant Church, as a whole, has never 
 lifted its voice in teaching that marriage is 
 the highest form of character-building. This 
 knowledge would be the greatest power in 
 preventing legal unions which need divorce. 
 The Church stands for motherhood. She has 
 no moral right to refuse to help her children 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 7 1 
 
 to make up for mistakes which she has not 
 had the moral force to show them how to keep 
 out of. She may claim that right, but not as 
 a mother; it has much resemblance to the 
 edict of a tyrant. There are many kinds of 
 mothers, and some of them are tyrants. The 
 Church is supposed to be worthy of the name. 
 The true mother teaches her child, helps him 
 in his errors, shows him how to make his 
 failures steps to higher living. She does not 
 cut him off from the chances of that higher 
 living. Especially, she does not give him 
 penalties for mistakes made in ignorance of 
 what she has not known how to teach him. 
 She goes to work, late as it is, with the aim 
 of remedying the evil by instruction, if she 
 now knows; by seeking it, if she does not 
 yet know. She sees that she enfeebles the 
 family life by holding him back from his 
 highest growth, not less after his mistake than 
 before. The Church, likewise, weakens the in- 
 stitution of marriage, and her own spiritual char- 
 acter, when she holds back any of her children 
 from any possibilities for their highest growing. 
 
72 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Often it is said that the prohibition of 
 divorce, or of remarriage after, is not injurious 
 to the individual, because all suffering is 
 regenerative. All needful suffering is regenera- 
 tive, like the pain which comes to the injured 
 limb, reviving into health. Unneedful suf- 
 fering is the torture which leads to death. 
 
 Also, they say, that by this theory are sacri- 
 ficed only the few for the good of the many. 
 This, too, is untenable. A hand cannot be 
 maimed, a leg crippled, or a heart diseased 
 without a weakening of the whole body. 
 Neither can the character-growth of any 
 person be obstructed without enfeebling the 
 fiber of the great humanity. 
 
 Again, "What God hath joined together, 
 let not man put asunder." This most sacred 
 truth has been much profaned, by practically 
 reversing it, — What man has joined together, 
 let not even God put asunder. God has had 
 nothing to do with some marriage ceremonies 
 except to permit them, as He does other evils. 
 They have been conceived in iniquity, shapen 
 in sin, and presided over by the Prince of 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 73 
 
 Darkness, to whom the priest has lent his 
 services, simply because he must, having had 
 no power to refuse, or interfere. It is not 
 necessary that either he or we should declare 
 that every marriage ceremony performed by 
 him is the work of God. No one can doubt 
 that such unions often take place, and that 
 they sometimes result, through the very suf- 
 fering they cause, in turning one or the other 
 of the pair in horror from their sin, and toward 
 a longing for a real marriage, as in the case 
 of Gwendolen, in Daniel Deronda ; the other 
 goes on living down in the depths, thus crip- 
 pling the life of the one. This shows the need 
 of research into the nature of spiritual adultery. 
 For adultery is the only ground of divorce 
 admitted by the Bible. Every avowed Chris- 
 tian acknowledges a glad homage to the 
 Bible as the absolute truth. Only a few, 
 perhaps none, in these days of spiritual 
 awakening, hold that all its truth dwells in 
 its literal statements. Every person who 
 believes the "graven images" we must not 
 worship to be, besides material things, or 
 
74 MARRIAGE. 
 
 the inordinate longing for them, even the 
 worship of one's intellect, or one's culture, 
 or other mentalities; that the "killing" we 
 are not to do is, besides the taking of physical 
 life, or the desire to take it, any hatred of 
 the neighbor; that the "stealing" forbidden 
 is not alone the taking of his goods, or even 
 the desire to take them, but also the depriving 
 the neighbor of happiness, or anything else 
 pertaining to his welfare, — every person be- 
 lieving these interpretations is not standing 
 on ground where he can insist that "adultery" 
 means the outer sin alone, or even the mental 
 longing to commit it. Spiritual adultery is 
 the adulterating of good and the falsifying 
 of truth. It may be committed in one's own 
 character, alone; it follows that it may be 
 effected by a husband and wife upon each 
 other's characters. A husband who holds 
 his wife down to base living, preventing her 
 growth in the possibilities within her, by 
 choking up the way with his own foulness, 
 must be adulterating the good of her character; 
 and when he turns the truth he knows into 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 
 
 75 
 
 falsity, and keeps her, by her necessity of 
 living in his life, from finding out the true 
 interpretations, he must be adulterating her 
 truth, and, consequently, the good which 
 belongs to it. Further than this, adultery is 
 the union of two who do not belong to each 
 other. It then must be the mental condition 
 of two persons mismated in marriage, even 
 when they are both honest and earnest. The 
 husband may be, for instance, social in nature, 
 and the wife of a more serious genius. He 
 feels that love to the neighbor means hospi- 
 tality, a generous giving of one's best, a living 
 in one's good things for the sake of such sharing. 
 Consequently, he loves much social life of 
 the home; and that there may be room and 
 service for such hospitality, he loves as large 
 a house and as many servants as he can afford. 
 With all this, being human, he is imperfect, 
 and his faults naturally take the form of pride 
 in his beautiful living and his hospitality. 
 He is aware of this evil, but he believes that 
 it is the pride which he should strive to lay 
 aside, not the hospitality. His wife is so 
 
76 MARRIAGE. 
 
 unlike him, that she cannot even understand 
 him. She loves serious thought. Social life 
 is mostly worldliness to her. She believes 
 that one must shun its outer forms in order 
 to shun the worldliness itself. She engages, 
 perhaps, in class work, studying much herself 
 and helping others to learn to think. She 
 finds her social pleasures in these connections. 
 It seems to her a sinful waste of life to spend 
 money and time on supplying people with 
 things to eat, beds to sleep in, and mere chit- 
 chat for entertainment. The pride of her 
 husband in doing these things seems to her 
 his realest self, his love of the neighbor in 
 them not much more than a self-made excuse 
 for the pride. To overcome the evil, she 
 would have him give up the hospitality. On 
 the other side she is just enough to know that 
 she has no right to insist upon his doing this, 
 simply because it is her way, and therefore 
 she wastes much of her life, as she believes, 
 in joining in, and carrying on her part of, 
 his hospitality. There is a continual war- 
 fare in her soul over the question whether 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 77 
 
 she is not helping him in error, instead of 
 simply yielding him wifely consideration. If 
 there are children, her sense of wronging 
 them by uniting with him in his course is 
 terrible. The battle in his soul is no less 
 fierce. In justice to her he omits many forms 
 of neighborly kindliness, that she may not 
 be disturbed in the life which she considers 
 of value. To him, though, it seems a self- 
 righteousness to be always trying to teach 
 somebody something. He is right, for she, 
 not being perfect, has this kind of pride, — 
 it belongs to her kind of nature. She is strug- 
 gling against it, but his very evident opinion 
 of it, although he tries to conceal it, magnifies 
 his worldliness so largely in her eyes, that 
 it hides from her the real greatness of her own 
 self-righteousness. She, in her turn, tries to 
 conceal her opinion from his sight, and they 
 succeed in keeping up an outward harmony. 
 Each is, within, neither himself (herself) nor 
 the other. Each is trying in vain to make 
 a union between his or her good and her 
 or his truth, and they do not belong to each 
 
78 MARRIAGE. 
 
 other. The service to others which she loves 
 expresses itself through thought. She sees 
 that the evils of the world, large and small, 
 come from thoughtlessness. If people would 
 only think what they are doing, they would 
 not injure each other by private selfishness 
 and public wrongs. Lack of thought is, as 
 she sees it, the great crime of the world. To 
 him, the world's sins come from lack of love, 
 from selfishness. People preach, and study 
 and think and then bring to the family asso- 
 ciations moodiness, unpleasant words, unjust 
 interpretations of each other. Their thinking 
 powers often work to save money for comforts 
 for themselves which they never share with 
 anybody; to carry on their business as a device 
 for getting much and giving little, or they 
 often bury themselves in a selfish love of 
 study. It is love people need, he says, and 
 they will never think themselves into it; they 
 must feel themselves into it, and then thoughts 
 enough will come. Thus, with the best 
 efforts possible the husband and wife adul- 
 terate each other's good and falsify their 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 79 
 
 truths. They strive to be just, to leave each 
 other in freedom, and the yielding makes a 
 less loving man of him, but with a growing 
 tendency to undervalue thought, and a less 
 sincerely thoughtful woman of her, although 
 with a growing tendency to undervalue love 
 as a direct motive. Love and thought are 
 both vitiated in both characters. They are 
 not a help to each other. In order that a 
 wife's influence should tend to lead a husband 
 out of his faults, she must understand the 
 good underneath, she cannot help him by 
 merely combatting his evils. Likewise, he 
 with her. 
 
 The disquietness of mind grows into a dis- 
 taste for each other's ways. The pose of her 
 head, the motion of her hand, suggests to 
 him disagreeably her self- righteousness. The 
 air with which he passes her a glass of water 
 is to her a sign that he cherishes worldliness 
 in his smallest act. Thus, they destroy each 
 other's best by preventing its growth. The 
 children, the most sensitive of mortals to the 
 spiritual states of others, soon learn, in spite 
 
So MARRIAGE. 
 
 of the conscientious efforts of father and 
 mother to hide it, that harmony is merely 
 on the outside. Each takes sides, uncon- 
 sciously, with whichever parent suits him 
 best, finding excuse for his own evils in the 
 one or the other; and learns, besides, his 
 little lesson of how life may be made a mere 
 appearance of what it is not. The family 
 life in spirit, is a warfare of mutually destroy- 
 ing elements of character. 
 
 This is an instance of one of the very mildest 
 kinds of hells of spiritual adultery. Yet 
 men and women, thoughtful on every other 
 subject, advocate with eagerness the perpetua- 
 tion of these hells, holding such nominal 
 husbands and wives in lives of sinning, and 
 ruining the innocence, for all the earth-life, of 
 little children. They do this, not because of a 
 desire to injure humankind, but in the hope 
 of stamping out the evil of divorces for in- 
 sufficient causes. That is, they are trying to 
 destroy a natural monster by creating an 
 artificial one to kill him off. This is a non- 
 uplifting and never succeeding process. The 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 8 1 
 
 problem to be worked out is, — How shall the 
 Law provide so that the danger on both 
 sides shall be brought down, absolutely, to its 
 minimum ? If it encourages separation during 
 temporary misunderstandings of any two who 
 might grow into one by longer patience and 
 a deeper effort, the character-growth of all 
 humanity is vitiated by loss of this true mar- 
 riage; and none the less, if the two grow more 
 unlike with their increase of perfection of in- 
 dividual development, an equal vitiation of 
 race- character takes place. Hasty dicta will 
 not destroy the double-headed evil. On one 
 side the arbitrary holding of two characters 
 together who never can grow into one, violates 
 the imperative demand of marriage for its own 
 soul, the inner union ; on the other, the chang- 
 ing of one's husband or one's wife with every 
 changing mood, is equally destructive of the 
 permanence imperative to the growing inner 
 oneness. The Law must be impelled by love 
 of the highest race-life possible to be attained, 
 and must be framed by wise perception of what 
 will lead the race to such life. That is, — The 
 6 
 
82 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Law, to be effective, must mean "marriage," 
 through and through. It must be, itself, a 
 marriage of race love and wisdom. It must 
 have for its purpose that other marriage, — 
 the ever-increasing-oneness of Permanence and 
 Inner union. 
 
 *Does the above mean lawlessness, loose 
 morals and free-love? It means nothing of 
 the kind. It is a statement of unfortunate 
 conditions which are, — of fortunate conditions 
 which should be, — and of the spiritual truth 
 connected with them. It is a query as to how 
 this truth may be applied to the conditions 
 which are, so that they may be turned into 
 those which should be. It appeals to human 
 beings to interest themselves in Marriage, the 
 Reality, and to abolish the masked hideousness, 
 Imitation. It is a hint that present Laws, the 
 rigid and the lenient, concern themselves with 
 the wrong element in the matter; that bringing 
 
 *This part is added in the second edition. J. D. M. 
 
MARRIAGE LAWS. 83 
 
 to the world a maximum of genuine Marriage 
 will never be accomplished by Church or State 
 with Laws as to who may or may not unmarry. 
 It suggests that genuine Marriage will be gener- 
 ated and cherished through the enforcement 
 by the State, and the giving by the Church, of 
 Education in those common Marriage princi- 
 ples of which the ignorant, even, may be taught 
 a sufficient little, and the intelligent, a satis- 
 fying much; also, that genuine Marriage will 
 be fostered by a code of Laws for, not the 
 absolute prevention of divorce, but for the 
 prevention of the wrong divorces, by means of 
 a time of probation required of each applicant, 
 during which the quality of the present union 
 shall be put to thorough test; these Laws to 
 be framed and carried out by Boards of 
 Marriage, which every State shall have, as it 
 has now its Boards of Health, and shall 
 require every Church to have for the instruction 
 and guidance of its members. 
 
 To repeat, that all who care to, may under- 
 stand without mistake : — 
 
 Free- love can never lead to Marriage. Free- 
 
84 MARRIAGE. 
 
 love seeks, rather than avoids, wandering ; 
 while Marriage lives toward the growing one- 
 ness which necessitates permanence. The only 
 preparation for the genuine Marriage is Educa- 
 tion in its principles, and this is what the normal 
 Laws will treat of when normal Laws are 
 made. The majority of the unhappy marriages 
 are so, not because they are mistakes, but 
 because those in them do not know the need 
 or methods for finding the growing oneness. 
 With those marriages turned toward the true 
 purpose, the small minority of men and women 
 who are in mismated unions will safely be 
 allowed divorce and remarriage, if they desire, 
 without endangering the general welfare, and 
 indeed, to its eternal betterment. 
 
 But, Education is such a lengthy process? 
 No! The long road is, Ignorance. 
 
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