222 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



for money. In France the mariage de convenance, 

 deeply rooted as it is, cannot indefinitely withstand 

 the hostility of literature and the stage, the frequent 

 condonation of adultery in the works of French 

 novelists and dramatists being in reality an un- 

 conscious protest against loveless unions. 



The tendencies we have described will favour 

 the equalisation of the sexes before the law. All the 

 civil disabilities of the female sex, having their origin 

 in the stealing, buying, or selling of wives, will 

 disappear ; women will be allowed to dispose of their 

 affections as they will, and to exercise their talents 

 in any profession they may care to take up. Men 

 will continue, however, to govern, by virtue of their 

 greater physical strength and endurance. The 

 necessities of child-bearing will always be a bar 

 to the free exercise by women of political rights. 

 For this reason the sphere of their influence will 

 necessarily continue to be domestic ; whence a 

 radical difference between the instincts and senti- 

 ments of the two sexes, which the experience of 

 widows or spinsters who may be independent house- 

 holders and citizens will never modify in any essential 

 degree. 



Divorce as understood in England is bound 



