under. If a woman cares ardently enough about
religion to feel keen distress at the idea of dissent from it on the
part of those closely connected with her, she surely may be expected to
take reasonable pains to ascertain beforehand the religious attitude of
one with whom she is about to unite herself for life. On the other hand,
if a man sets any value on his own opinions, if they are in any real
sense a part of himself, he must be guilty of something like deliberate
and systematic duplicity during the acquaintance preceding marriage, if
his dissent has remained unsuspected. Certainly if men go through
society before marriage under false colours, and feign beliefs which
they do not hold, they have only themselves to thank for the degradation
of having to keep up the imposture afterwards. Suppose a protestant
were to pass himself off for a catholic because he happened to meet a
catholic lady whom he desired to marry. Everybody would agree in calling
such a man by a very harsh name. It is hard to see why a freethinker,
who by reticence and conformity passes himself off for a believer,
should be more leniently judged. The differences between a catholic and
a protestant are assuredly not any greater than those between a believer
and an unbeliever. We all admit the baseness of dissimulation in the
former case. Why is it any less base in the latter?

Marriages, however, are often made in haste, or heedlessly, or early in
life, before either man or woman has come to feel very deeply about
religion either one way or another. The woman does not know how much she
will need religion, nor what comfort it may bring to her. The man does
not know all the objections to it which may disclose themselves to his
understanding as the years ripen. There is always at work that most
unfortunate maxim, tacitly held and acted upon in ninety-nine marriages
out of a hundred, that money is of importance, and social position is of
importance, and good connections are of importance, and health and
manners and comely looks, and that the only thing which is of no
importance whatever is opinion and intellectual quality and temper. Now
granting that both man and woman are indifferent at the time of their
union, is that any reason why upon either of them acquiring serious
convictions, the other should be expected, out of mere complaisance, to
make a false and hypocritical pretence of sharing them? To see how
flimsy is this plea of fearing to give pain to