interest,
is attractive in ways of which those who have no such wants can scarcely
form a conception. A most distinguished foreign writer, of the female
sex, has made a succession of domestic arrangements which, if generally
imitated by others, would be subversive of any conceivable system of
morality; and yet it is clear in this case that the temptation was
chiefly, if not entirely, intellectual. The successive companions of
this remarkable woman were all of them men of exceptional intellectual
power, and her motive for changing them was an unbridled intellectual
curiosity.

This is the sort of immorality to which cultivated people are most
exposed. It is dangerous to the well-being of a community because it
destroys the sense of security on which the idea of the family is
founded. If we are to leave our wives when their conversation ceases to
be interesting, the foundations of the home will be unsafe. If they are
to abandon, us when we are dull, to go away with some livelier and more
talkative companion, can we ever hope to retain them permanently?

There is another danger which must be looked fairly in the face. When
the lives of men are refined beyond the real needs of their
organization, Nature is very apt to bring about the most extraordinary
reactions. Thus the most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and
painting have frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness. Within
the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene Chateaubriand that
would burst forth occasionally in talk that no biographer could repeat.
I have heard the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine. We know that
Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the pleasures of a sailor
on the spree. A friend said to me of one of the most exquisite living
geniuses: "You can have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes;
he associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough
brutality."

These cases only prove, what I have always willingly admitted, that the
intellectual life is not free from certain dangers if we lead it too
exclusively. Intellectual excesses, by the excitement which they
communicate to the whole system, have a direct tendency to drive men
into other excesses, and a too great refinement in one direction may
produce degrading reactions in another. Still the cultivation of the
mind, reasonably pursued, is, on the whole, decidedly favorable to
morality; and we may easily understand that it should be so, w