XI.
1.—“Marriage which might have been a mateship sweet.”
“In vain Plato urged that young men and women should be more frequently permitted to meet one another, so that there should be less enmity and indifference in the married life.” (“Nomoi,” Book VI.)—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 361).
2.—“... equal souls ...”
“The feeling which makes husband and wife true companions for better and worse, can grow up only in societies where the altruistic sentiments of man are strong enough to make him recognise woman as his equal, and where she is not shut up as an exotic plant in a greenhouse, but is allowed to associate freely with men. In this direction European civilisation has been advancing for centuries.”—Westermarck (loc. cit.). (See also Note XIX., 6.)
7, 8.—“Her only hope of thought or learning wide,
Some freer lot to seek than yoke forlorn of bride.”
In Greece “the modest women were confined to their own apartments, and were visited only by their husbands and nearest relations.... The courtesans of Athens, by living in public, and conversing freely with all ranks of people, upon all manner of subjects, acquired, by degrees, a knowledge of history, of philosophy, of policy, and a taste in the whole circle of the arts. Their ideas were more extensive and various, and their conversation was more sprightly and entertaining than anything that was to be found among the virtuous part of the sex. Hence their houses became the schools of elegance; that of Aspasia was the resort of Socrates and Pericles, and, as Greece was governed by eloquent men, over whom the courtesans had an influence, the latter also influenced public affairs.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman, as to Mind,” &c., p. 334).