CERTAIN SOCIAL REACTIONS
merits of the wife. Merely ostensible reasons have never sufficed. No sort of religious conviction, without a real practical utility, has ever availed to hold classes of men unhampered by circumstances to its restrictions. In all times, and holding all sorts of beliefs, the specimen humanity of courts and nobilities is to be found developing the most complex qualifications of the code. In some quiet corner of Elysium the bishops of the early Georges, the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the contemporary French and Spanish courts, the patriarchs of vanished Byzantium, will find a common topic with the spiritual advisers of the kingdoms of the East in this difficult theme,—the theme of the concessions permissible and expedient to earnest believers encumbered with leisure and a superfluity of power. . . . It is not necessary to discuss religious development therefore, before deciding this issue. We are dealing now with things deeper and forces infinitely more powerful than the mere convictions of men.
Will a generation to whom marriage will be no longer necessarily associated with the birth and rearing of children, or with the immediate co-operation and sympathy of husband and wife in common proceedings, retain its present feeling for the extreme sanctity of the permanent bond? Will the agreeable, unemployed, childless woman, with a high conception of her personal rights, who is spending her husband's earnings or income in some pleasant discrepant manner, a type of woman there are excellent reasons for anticipating will become more frequent—will she continue to share the honours and privileges of the
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