Did I know a man, upon the face of the earth, who had a still deeper sense of your high qualities and virtues than I have, who understood them more intimately, would study them, emulate them more, and profit better by them, I have confidence enough in myself to say I would resign you without repining. But, when I think on the union between mind and mind—the aggregate—! I want language, madam—!
I understand you.
When I reflect on the wondrous happiness we might enjoy, while mutually exerting ourselves in the general cause of virtue, I confess the thought of renouncing so much bliss, or rather such a duty to myself and the world, is excruciating torture.
Your idea of living for the cause of virtue delights me; it is in full concord with my own. But whether that great cause would best be promoted by our union, or not, is a question which we are incapable of determining: though I think probabilities are for the negative. Facts and observation have given me reason to believe that the too easy gratification of our desires is pernicious to mind; and that it acquires vigour and elasticity from opposition.
And would you then upon principle, madam, marry a man whom you must despise?
No, not despise. If indeed I were all I could wish to be, I am persuaded I should despise no one. I should endeavour to instruct the ignorant, and reform the erroneous. However, I will tell you what sort of a man I should wish to marry. First he must be a person of whom no prejudice, no mistake of any kind, should induce the world, that is, the persons nearest and most connected with me in the world, to think meanly—Shall I be cited by the thoughtless, the simple, and the perverse, in justification of their own improper conduct?—You cannot wish it, Frank!—Nor is this the most alarming fear—My friends!—My relations!—My father!—To incur a father's reproach for having dishonoured his family were fearful: but to meet, to merit, to live under his curse!—God of heaven forbid!
Must we then never dare to counteract mistake? Must mind, though enlightened by truth, submit to be the eternal slave of error?—What is there that is thus dreadful, madam, in the curse of prejudice? Have not the greatest and the wisest of mankind been cursed by ignorance?
It is not the curse itself that is terrible, but the torture of the person's mind by whom it is uttered!—Nor is it the torture of a minute, or a day, but of years!—His child, his beloved child, on whom his hopes and heart were fixed, to whom he looked for all the bliss of filial obedience, all the energies of virtue, and all the effusions of affection, to see himself deserted by her, unfeelingly deserted, plunged in sorrows unutterable, eternally dishonoured, the index and the bye-word of scandal, scoffed at for the fault of her whom his fond and fatherly reveries had painted faultless, whispered out of society because of the shame of her in whom he gloried, and I this child!
Were the conflict what your imagination has figured it, madam, your terrors would be just—But I have thought deeply on it, and know that your very virtues misguide you. It would not be torture, nor would it be eternal—On the contrary, madam, I, poor as I am in the esteem of an arrogant world, I proudly affirm it would be the less and not the greater evil.
You mistake!—Indeed, Frank, you mistake!—The fear of poverty, the sneers of the world, ignominy itself, were the pain inflicted but confined to me, I would despise. But to stretch my father upon the rack, and with him every creature that loves me, even you yourself!—It must not be!—It must not be!