rriage as "the tomb of love,"
"the source of the stupidity and ugliness of the human race," his
admissions as to the necessity of maintaining some element of
permanence in the contract, if only for the sake of children, is well
worthy of our attention. It shows how grounded in nature is that
conception of the marriage tie which the Roman digest has put before us.

We may see the truth, once again, in the acknowledged instability of
the passional element in human nature--particularly in man. It is
nothing short of amazing to see this very instability urged as a reason
why the marriage tie should be still further weakened, as though man
should deliberately subject himself to the vagaries of sense, instead
of the guidance of reason. We hear much to-day about the "return to
nature," and, soundly interpreted, that gospel sounds like a breath of
pure mountain air after the stifling atmosphere of modern convention
and unreality. Would to heaven, I say from my heart, that we were more
natural, that a greater frankness and directness marked our intercourse
with one another, that the shams and pretences of so much of our social
life were made away with, that our lives were more open and free! The
grand old Stoic maxim had it thus: _Live in accordance with nature_.
Yes, but with what nature? No thinker, from Socrates to Kant, from
Buddha to Hegel, ever had a doubt but that man's nature was twofold,
and that the law of reason must be supreme in him. Let an animal live
for sense; it is its nature; but for man another law is ordained, which
bids him think last of enjoyment, and to partake only of that in
obedience to the law of the mind. The modern evangel of the apotheosis
of the unstable we understand to convey the teaching, "Live in
accordance with sense, or the feeling of the moment". Be like the
_dame du monde_ whom Mrs. Ward has so accurately drawn in _Madame de
Netteville_, who did not hold herself responsible to our petty codes,
and judged that feeling was guidance enough for her. That may be all
very well for Madame de Netteville, but how does such teaching look in
the light of Kant's solemn injunction: "Act so that thy conduct may
become a law unto all men"? Could any one seriously propose to erect
feeling into a supreme criterion whereby to judge of the conduct of
life?

And, to show that the line of argument here adopted is no mere false
asceticism surviving from an undisciplined and pre-scientific age, as
th