t is the parent of speech, or of any external appeal to the
senses. Back of all objectivity is the thought that molded it; but
back of thought is desire; and back of desire is design--cosmic design
we may say--expressing itself discretively; in individuals.

Affinities that are based upon intellectual similarities are of a
finer nature and generally more lasting than those of sense-conscious
attraction only; and it is no uncommon thing to find two persons of
the opposite sex enjoying a protracted friendship or preference for
each others' society which deceives the average on-looker into
thinking that there is also sexual affinity, when as a matter of fact
there may never have been any thought of such relationship.

A few brilliant women in former times, notably Madame de Stael, or
Margaret Fuller, have enjoyed the attentions and apparent devotion of
men for many years without having entered into any more intimate
relationship with them. But these examples have been few in the past,
and have been much commented upon. In the present, such desirable
companionship is becoming much more common and a woman may now be seen
twice with the same man without having the neighbors speculating as
to a suitable name for the baby.

More and more, as women become freed from the necessity to "settle
themselves" in marriage, we find evidences of this intellectual
affinity between the sexes; and more and more, as we get away from the
old thought that a man has but one desire, that of sexual intercourse,
and a woman but one motive, that of enslaving man through his sexual
appetite, we will find that men and women will meet on the plane of
intellectual affinity and not be driven by gossip of outsiders, or by
the force of the race-thought in their own minds, into seeking to
spoil such companionship by a matrimonial alliance, when nature did
not intend it to be so.

A number of years ago, when even the little freedom which human beings
now accord each other in this matter was denied the struggling sexes,
a certain man and woman, who were intellectual companions, married. He
was a writer; she was a physician; which is evidence in itself of a
degree of intellectual power not so common at that time as now; she
was moreover an unusual woman in many ways. They parted after a month
of married life and to the horror and scandal of the entire community,
remained friends. The scandal reached the climax of disapproval and
shocked morality when the m