Well, well, 'tis little likely anyhow that all tales shall be lacking, or all sorrow cured."He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him. At last he began again: "But you must know that we of these generations are strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable strife with nature exercising not one side of ourselves only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of the orld. So it is a point of honour with us not to be self-centered;not to suppose that the world must cease because one man is sorry;therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these matters of sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other pleasures besides love-making. You must remember, also that we are long-lived, and that therefore beauty both in man and woman is not so fleeting as it was in the days when we were burdened so heavily by self-inflicted diseases.
So we shake off these griefs in a way which perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike. As ib the other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our love-matters, so also we have ceased to be _artificially_ foolish. The folly which comes by nature, the unwisdom of the immature man, or the older man caught in a trap, we must put up with that, nor are we much ashamed of it; but to be conventionally sensitive or sentimental--my friend, I am old and perhaps disappointed, but at least I think we have cast off _some_ of the follies of the older world."He paused, as if for some words of mine; but I held my peace: then he went on: "At least, if we suffer from the tyranny and fickleness of nature or our own want of experience, we neither grimace about it nor lie. If there must be a sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder so it must be: but there meed be no pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel:; thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so it is no longer needed. Don't misunderstand me.
You did not seem shocked when I told you that there were no law-courts to enforce contracts of sentiment or passion; but so curiously are men made, that perhaps you will be shocked when I tell you that there is no code of public opinion which takes the place of such courts, and which might be as tyrannical and unreasonable as they were. I do not say that people don't judge their neighbors' conduct, sometimes, doubtless, unfairly. But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are _forced_ to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy. Are you shocked now?""N-o-no," said I, with some hesitationl "It is all so different.""At any rate," said he, "one thing I think I can answer for: whatever sentiment there is, it is real--and general; it is not confined to people very specially refined. I am also pretty sure, as I hinted to you just now, that there is not by a great way as much suffering involved in these matters either to men or to women as there used to be. But excuse me for being so prolix on this question! You know you asked to be treated like a being from another planet.""Indeed I thank you very much," said I. "Now may I ask you about the position of women in your society?"He laughed very heartily for a man of his years, and said: "It is not without reason that I have got a repuation as a careful student of history I believe I really do understand `the Emancipation of Women movement' of the nineteenth century. I doubt if any other man now alive does.""Well?" said I, a little bit nettled by his merriment.
