Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / by Alexander Walker.

  • Alexander Walker
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    when, in order to preserve this passion, she refused to marry her beloved Abelard : i ‘ Mow oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said, Curse on all laws but those which love has made : Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.’ But friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit, springing from long- acquaintance and mutual obligations, without jealousies or fears, and without those feverish fits of heat and cold, which cause such an agreeable torment in the amorous passion. So sober an affection, therefore, as friendship, rather thrives under constraint, and never rises to such a height, as when any strong interest or necessity binds two persons together, and gives them some common object of pursuit. We need not, therefore, be afraid of drawing the marriage-knot, which chiefly subsists by friendship, the closest possible. The amity between the persons, where it is solid and sincere, will rather gain by it ; and where it is wavering and uncertain, this is the best expedient for fixing it. How many frivolous quarrels and disgusts are there which people of common prudence endeavour to forget when they lie under a necessity of passing their lives together, but which would soon be inflamed into the most deadly hatred were they pursued to the utmost under the prospect of an easy separation ? [I have already shown that friendship and love have little or nothing to do with each other. Friendship exists between men : it is love which exists between the two sexes. This argument therefore is worthless.]
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