ong
and worthy of them would profane themselves, as they so often
otherwise do, in vile affections, in those relations of a day, giving
themselves a holocaust to beauty without soul, or even to
licentiousness without beauty?'"

Emerson says: "If, however, from too much conversing with material
objects the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the
body, it reaped nothing but sorrow, body being unable to fulfill the
promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these
visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul
passes through the body and fails to admire strokes of character, and
the lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their
actions, then they pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more
inflame their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base
affection, as the sun puts out fire by shining on the hearth, they
become pure and hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself
excellent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes to a warmer
love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he
passes from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the
one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the
society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his
mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her
beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out,
and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offense, to
indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all
help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in many souls the
traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is
divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover
ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the
Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls."

And this all means that when the thought of the sex-relation
constitutes in the mind of either the idea of marriage, then the
wedding ceremony will be supposed to remove all restrictions, and the
only limit of gratification will be the limit of desire. Under these
circumstances the close familiarity of a long engagement would be a
mental and physical tax, because the self-control exercised is felt to
be only temporary, and will be no longer needed when the wedding
ceremony has been said.

But if the idea of marriage is nobler, if the sex-relati