lf. But
seeing in his own age the impossibility of woman being the intellectual
helpmate or friend of man (except in the rare instances of a Diotima
or an Aspasia), seeing that, even as to personal beauty, her place was
taken by young mankind instead of womankind, he tries to work out the
problem of love without regard to the distinctions of nature. And full
of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the spurious form of
love, he proceeds with a deep meaning, though partly in joke, to show
that the 'non-lover's' love is better than the 'lover's.'

We may raise the same question in another form: Is marriage preferable
with or without love? 'Among ourselves,' as we may say, a little
parodying the words of Pausanias in the Symposium, 'there would be
one answer to this question: the practice and feeling of some foreign
countries appears to be more doubtful.' Suppose a modern Socrates,
in defiance of the received notions of society and the sentimental
literature of the day, alone against all the writers and readers of
novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not the younger 'part of the
world be ready to take off its coat and run at him might and main?'
(Republic.) Yet, if like Peisthetaerus in Aristophanes, he could
persuade the 'birds' to hear him, retiring a little behind a rampart,
not of pots and dishes, but of unreadable books, he might have something
to say for himself. Might he not argue, 'that a rational being should
not follow the dictates of passion in the most important act of his or
her life'? Who would willingly enter into a contract at first sight,
almost without thought, against the advice and opinion of his friends,
at a time when he acknowledges that he is not in his right mind? And yet
they are praised by the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of
their friends or parents, rather than those who listen to them in such
matters. Two inexperienced persons, ignorant of the world and of one
another, how can they be said to choose?--they draw lots, whence also
the saying, 'marriage is a lottery.' Then he would describe their way of
life after marriage; how they monopolize one another's affections to
the exclusion of friends and relations: how they pass their days in
unmeaning fondness or trivial conversation; how the inferior of the
two drags the other down to his or her level; how the cares of a family
'breed meanness in their souls.' In the fulfilment of military or public
duties, they are not help