ers but hinderers of one another: they cannot
undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women
famous, from domestic considerations. Too late their eyes are opened;
they were taken unawares and desire to part company. Better, he would
say, a 'little love at the beginning,' for heaven might have increased
it; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike. In
the days of their honeymoon they never understood that they must provide
against offences, that they must have interests, that they must learn
the art of living as well as loving. Our misogamist will not appeal to
Anacreon or Sappho for a confirmation of his view, but to the universal
experience of mankind. How much nobler, in conclusion, he will say, is
friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and
poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is
much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes,
and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the
courts. Besides, he will remark that there is a much greater choice of
friends than of wives--you may have more of them and they will be far
more improving to your mind. They will not keep you dawdling at home, or
dancing attendance upon them; or withdraw you from the great world and
stirring scenes of life and action which would make a man of you.

In such a manner, turning the seamy side outwards, a modern Socrates
might describe the evils of married and domestic life. They are evils
which mankind in general have agreed to conceal, partly because they are
compensated by greater goods. Socrates or Archilochus would soon have
to sing a palinode for the injustice done to lovely Helen, or some
misfortune worse than blindness might be fall them. Then they would take
up their parable again and say:--that there were two loves, a higher and
a lower, holy and unholy, a love of the mind and a love of the body.

'Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.

.....

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.'

But this true love of the mind cannot exist between two souls, until
they are purified from the grossness of earthly passion: they must