ort of mystic, exalted love,
looking upon it as a sacred right, making of themselves great priests
rather than genuine human lovers. This love, issuing from God, is
sacred; therefore, the yielding to it is a pious act; he who resists
commits sacrilege, while he who blames others for it is impious; for
love legitimizes itself by itself. Such a theory naturally led her
to a sensual ideality, and her heroes rose to the highest phase of
fatalism and voluptuousness; this impelled her to protest against the
social laws. Jacques says:

"I do not doubt at all that marriage will be abolished if humankind
makes any progress toward justice and reason; a bond more human and
none the less sacred will replace this one and will take care of
the children which may issue from a man and woman, without ever
interfering with the liberty of either. But men are too coarse and
women are too cowardly to ask for a law more noble than the iron
law which binds them--beings without conscience--and virtue must be
burdened with heavy chains."

Yet, in none of her books did George Sand ever submit any theories as
to how such children would be cared for; apparently, such a difficulty
never troubled her, since almost all of the children of her books die
of some disease, while to one--Jacques--she gives the advice to take
his own life, so that his wife may be free to love elsewhere.

Her social theories are marked by an exaltation of sentiment, a
weakness, an incoherency in conception, caused by her ardent love for
theories and ideas, but which, in her passionate sentiment and her
loyal enthusiasm, she always confounds and confuses. From early youth
she manifested an immense goodness, a profound tenderness, and a deep
compassion for human misery. She rarely became angry, even though she
suffered cruelly. Her own law of life and her message to the world
was--be good. The only strong element within her, she said, was the
need of loving, which manifested itself under the form of tenderness
and emotion, devotion and religious ecstasy; and when this faith was
shaken, doubt and social disturbances overwhelmed her.

Throughout life her consolation was Nature. "It was half of her genius
and the surest of her inspirations." No other French novelist has
been able to "express in words the lights and shades, harmonies and
contrasts, the magic of sounds, the symphonies of color, the depth
and distances of the woods, the infinite movement of the sea and the
sky-