By many well-meaning young people these deadly
interferences with natural impulse are accepted as part of a higher and
nobler law of conduct. The wretched belief that one should subordinate
the promptings of one's own soul to the dictates of a miscalculating and
misdirecting prudence has been instilled into the minds of girls
especially, until at last many of them have almost come to look upon
their natural instincts as wrong, and the immoral, race-destructive
counsels of their seniors or advisers as the truest and purest earthly
wisdom. Among certain small religious sects, again, such as the Quakers,
the duty of 'marrying in' has been strenuously inculcated, and only the
stronger-minded and more individualistic members have had courage and
initiative enough to disregard precedent, and to follow the internal
divine monitor, as against the externally-imposed law of their
particular community. Even among wider bodies it is commonly held that
Catholics must not marry Protestants; and the admirable results obtained
by the mixture of Jewish with European blood have almost all been
reached by male Jews having the temerity to marry 'Christian' women in
the face of opposition and persecution from their co-nationalists. It is
very rarely indeed that a Jewess will accept a European for a husband.
In so many ways, and on so many grounds, does convention interfere with
the plain and evident dictates of nature.
Against all such evil parental promptings, however, a great safeguard is
afforded to society by the wholesome and essentially philosophical
teaching of romance and poetry.
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