the religious
sensitiveness of women, we have only to imagine one or two cases which
go beyond the common experience, yet which ought not to strain the plea,
if it be valid.

Thus, if my wife turns catholic, am I to pretend to turn catholic too,
to save her the horrible distress of thinking that I am doomed to
eternal perdition? Or if she chooses to embrace the doctrine of direct
illumination from heaven, and to hear voices bidding her to go or come,
to do or abstain from doing, am I too to shape my conduct after these
fancied monitions? Or if it comes into her mind to serve tables, and to
listen in all faith to the miracles of spiritualism, am I, lest I
should pain her, to feign a surrender of all my notions of evidence, to
pretend a transformation of all my ideas of worthiness in life and
beyond life, and to go to seances with the same regularity and
seriousness with which you go to church? Of course in each of these
cases everybody who does not happen to share the given peculiarity of
belief, will agree that however severely a husband's dissent might pain
the wife, whatever distress and discomfort it might inflict upon her,
yet he would be bound to let her suffer, rather than sacrifice his
veracity and self-respect. Why then is it any less discreditable to
practise an insincere conformity in more ordinary circumstances? If the
principle of such conformity is good for anything at all, it ought to
cover these less usual cases as completely as the others which are more
usual. Indeed there would be more to be said on behalf of conformity for
politeness' sake, where the woman had gone through some great process of
change, for then one might suppose that her heart was deeply set on the
matter. Even then the plea would be worthless, but it is more
indisputably worthless still where the sentiment which we are bidden to
respect at the cost of our own freedom of speech is nothing more
laudable than a fear of moving out of the common groove of religious
opinion, or an intolerant and unreasoned bigotry, or mere stupidity and
silliness of the vulgarest type.[23]

Ah, it is said, you forget that women cannot live without religion. The
present writer is equally of this opinion that women cannot be happy
without a religion, nor men either. That is not the question. It does
not follow because a woman cannot be happy without a religion, that
therefore she cannot be happy unless her husband is of the same
religion. Still less, that s