I have learnt that the righteous soul should avoid all
appearance of evil. I will not palter and parley with the unholy
thing. Even though you go to a registry-office and get rid as far
as you can of every relic of the sacerdotal and sacramental idea,
yet the marriage itself is still an assertion of man's supremacy
over woman. It ties her to him for life, it ignores her
individuality, it compels her to promise what no human heart can be
sure of performing; for you can contract to do or not to do, easily
enough, but contract to feel or not to feel,--what transparent
absurdity! It is full of all evils, and I decline to consider it.
If I love a man at all, I must love him on terms of perfect
freedom. I can't bind myself down to live with him to my shame one
day longer than I love him; or to love him at all if I find him
unworthy of my purest love, or unable to retain it; or if I
discover some other more fit to be loved by me. You admitted the
other day that all this was abstractly true; why should you wish
this morning to draw back from following it out to its end in
practice?"
Alan was only an Englishman, and shared, of course, the inability
of his countrymen to carry any principle to its logical conclusion.
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