The art of life by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Conduct of life
Publisher: New York, G. P. Putnam's sons
Published: 1902-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

do well ; but carried to extremes the system results in people not marrying at all, or, at any rate, not if they can help it.

For if marriage is a mere matter of utility, neither more nor less, a poor man will obviously suffer himself to be tempted when he sees a chance of fetching his price; while it is equally obvious that a rich man is in no hurry. Marriage and paternity are expensive ; it was not yesterday the Epicureans discovered that love brings trouble into a man's life, and that the wise man does well to eschew it.

To follow another line of thought, there are some men, elect spirits, who live on ideas, intellectual work, ideals ; and these, not being open to considerations of personal interest, shrink from the marriage bond as too material. Mystics have handed down through the ages the praise of virginity and celibacy—one eternal paraphrase of the famous axiom of St. Paul : " Both he that giveth his own virgin in marriage doeth well; and he that giveth her not in marriage shall do better."

" I laud wedlock," said St. Jerome, " because it engenders virgins : I draw a pearl out of an oyster."

" Nothing debases a man," said St. Augustine, " like the caresses of a woman."

"'Tis vices that people the earth, and virginity that peoples heaven," wrote St. Thomas of Aquinas

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