They should understand that love is in the human heart,
and that real love is virtuous. People who love each other will
be true to each other. The death of love is the commencement of
vice. Besides this, there is a public opinion that has great
weight. When that public opinion is right, it does a vast amount
of good, and when wrong, a great amount of harm. People marry, or
should marry, because it increases the happiness of each and all.
But where the marriage turns out to have been a mistake, and where
the result is misery, and not happiness, the quicker they are
divorced the better, not only for themselves, but for the community
at large. These arguments are generally answered by some donkey
braying about free love, and by "free love" he means a condition
of society in which there is no love. The persons who make this
cry are, in all probability, incapable of the sentiment, of the
feeling, known as love. They judge others by themselves, and they
imagine that without law there would be no restraint.

What do they say of natural modesty? Do they forget that people
have a choice? Do they not understand something of the human heart,
and that true love has always been as pure as the morning star?
Do they believe that by forcing people to remain together who
despise each other they are adding to the purity of the marriage
relation? Do they not know that all marriage is an outward act,
testifying to that which has happened in the heart? Still, I always
believe that words are wasted on such people. It is useless to
talk to anybody about music who is unable to distinguish one tune
from another. It is useless to argue with a man who regards his
wife as his property, and it is hardly worth while to suggest
anything to a gentleman who imagines that society is so constructed
that it really requires, for the protection of itself, that the
lives of good and noble women should be wrecked, I am a believer
in the virtue of women, in the honesty of man. The average woman
is virtuous; the average man is honest, and the history of the
world shows it. If it were not so, society would be impossible.
I don't mean by this that most men are perfect, but what I mean is
this: That there is far more good than evil in the average human
being, and that the natural tendency of most people is toward the
good and toward the right. And I most passionately deny that the
good of society demands that any good person should suffer. I