"I may have to deal a blow to many existing institutions and suffer a bit for my convictions," went on Peter, looking as if this would not prove the least enjoyable part of the campaign, "for instance, Marriage must go."
"Oh, really, Peter? I am rather sorry."
"It is a starkly barbarous survival of prehistoric ages; and now half the people who uphold, or at least weakly condone it, are making vows they do not intend to keep before altars whose sacrificial fires have long been cold."
He talked very well, thought Ferlie, and probably did not mean all he said.
"But, Peter, do you really think that the majority of people have stopped believing in God?"
"Few have stopped who ever believed. Many have never believed who assumed they did because the Christian ethics were necessary to the civilization which they found comfortable. Scientific minds are now demanding proof, and finding none, of many things upon which those ethics are said to be based. Therefore they begin to have the courage of their convictions. Lack of that has, up to now, caused them to accept marriage on the surface and to deny it by secret act. They have entered into lying contracts which are not only against Nature but against common sense, because they feared to be pioneers.
"In all great movements there must be pioneers. It's not a pleasant job, pioneering; nor is it for cowards. At present, my own brain refuses to admit the existence of a Personal God, who can be cajoled or roused to anger according to the behaviour of a swarm of little ants on one of the countless millions of whirling globes He is said to have made in His spare time. The Herd Law, developed by the strongest of those little ants, is followed by the weak majority under the guise of a Divine Law, until a stronger little ant than the first one comes along and amends it to suit himself, still sounding the Divinity slogan. Whatever name is given to this religion or binding principle, the non-courageous part of the Herd, which is the greater part, follow, etc., etc., and etc."
Visions of Peter followed by a Herd released from lawful matrimony caused Ferlie an instant's misgiving.
Of course it was admitted that the marriage service had been somewhat unfortunately reformed already once in the past by Cranmer, who, influenced by German relatives, had introduced the Germanic idea of servile obedience for the woman, absent in the old Catholic form. The modern Anti-Reformationists were rightly demanding fresh revision and omissions. "Stronger ants," she supposed. But, if they proved less strong than the Peters, would Free Love make a superior substitute to an institution hitherto regarded as God-given, though Cranmerized? Even if God had become, for the Scientific Mind, as obsolete as Cranmer? Whoever re-created two imperfect sexes out of One Perfect Sex had made a very thorough job of it. Besides, were all Peter's ideas quite so shiningly new as he touchingly considered them?
"You really have remarkable powers of assimilation for your age," said Peter, "and, unlike many women, are not hysterically upset by the Unobvious." (Ferlie hoped that Cyprian might, also, appreciate these newly-developed qualities when he came home.) "And, therefore, I feel inclined to trust you with an important secret."