“And yet in the face of all this, think of the embrutalized form of marriage-ceremony which thrusts words into the mouth of a spiritual man who is suitor for a life-long union with a woman who is an image of the feminine in Deity! Think of a decent man having to take into his mouth that indecent, shoppy remark; a remark which is prescribed to him by a shoppy-church in response to woman’s enforced promise that she will obey him. The decent man is made to say (and worse still, the intellectually-hungry maiden is made to hear him say) ‘With my body (why not with my brain?) I thee worship.’ ‘And with all my worldly goods (why not with his best intelligence?) I thee endow.’”
“Is there not some immediate way to lift the grace of fine living out of the sloughs with which a most materialistic on-striding form of religion is saturating it?” he asked impatiently. “It is you women who are to blame for upholding this materialistic-sacerdotalism,” continued Robert.
“There is a way,” said Daniel.
“And we will fetch it forward,” said they all at once, steadying poor Robert, who had had a peculiar state of nature, added to a sight of “the better way,” to rightly adjust.
“Yes,” said Daniel, “there is a way; and it is bourgeoning forth on every side. It is the Resurrection-dawn, for now the Lord into his garden has come, and the lilies grow and thrive.”
AD FINIS.
“... the lover ascends to the highest beauty (to the love and knowledge of the Divinity) by steps on this ladder of created souls. Somewhat like this the truly-wise have told us of love, in all ages; the doctrine is not old nor is it new.
“If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriage, with words that take hold on the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its greatest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering tubs.
“Worst, when this sensualism intrudes on the education of young women, and teaches that marriage means nothing but a housewife’s thrift; and that woman’s life has no other aim.”—Emerson.
FINIS.