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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/celestialconfereOOpeasrich 
 
Celestial Conferences 
 on Love 
 
 By ELSIE PEASE 
 
 DISCUSSION BASED ON THE LAWS OF 
 NATURE SEEKING A PHILOSOPHY OF 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE THAT WILL 
 IMPROVE THE SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 LIFE OF MANKIND 
 
 A BOOK FOR SUPERMEN AND WOMEN 
 
 ■*— r 
 
 THfi SflAKERPEARE PEBSS 
 
 114-116 E. 28tb St. 
 
 New York 
 
 1914 
 
< 
 
 "For if an author does not penetrate to the essential 
 in the human soul to its deepest depth; if he has not 
 dared, or has not been able to write his book regardless 
 of consequences ; if he has not ventured to represent his 
 ideas in statuesque nakedness; has not imaged human 
 nature as it showed itself to him, improving nothing, but 
 has taken counsel with his public, been guided by its 
 prejudices, its ignorance, its untruthfulness, its vulgar 
 or sentimental taste — he may have been highly distin- 
 guished by his contemporaries: for me he does not 
 exist, to what I call literature his work is valueless. All 
 the offspring of the authors MARRIAGE DE CON- 
 VENIENCE with that doubtful character Public 
 Opinion; all those literary children which their author 
 begets, giving a side thought to the taste and morality of 
 his public, are defunct a generation later. There was 
 no real life in them. But every work in which an inde- 
 pendent writer has, without any side thought, uttered 
 what he felt, and described what he saw, is, and will 
 continue to be, no matter how few editions of it may be 
 printed, a valuable document." — Brandes' "Main Current 
 In Literature," 
 
 
 '('■ 
 
 by Shakespeare Press. 
 
The Conflict of Love 
 and Duty. 
 
 PLATO, 
 
 BEATRICE, 
 
 CONFEREES. 
 
 SPIRITS 
 EMERSON, 
 HUMANS 
 
 REPORTER 
 ELSIE PEASE. 
 
 AMIEL. 
 
 LYCIDAS. 
 
 301910 
 
P from earth's center through the Seventh 
 
 Gate 
 I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, 
 And many Knots unraveled by the Road; 
 But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate. 
 
 There was a Door to which I found no Key; 
 There was a Veil past which I could not see; 
 Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee 
 There seem'd — and then no more of Thee 
 and Me. 
 
 Then to the rolling Heaven itself I cried, 
 Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide 
 "Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?" 
 And — "A blind Understanding!" Heav'n 
 replied. 
 
 Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn 
 My Lip the Secret Well of Life to learn; 
 And Lip to Lip it murmur' d — "While you live 
 "Drink I — for once dead you never shall 
 return." 
 
 Oh, Thou who man of baser Earth didst 
 
 make. 
 And who with Eden didst devise the snake; 
 For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
 Is blacken'd, Man's forgiveness give — and 
 
 take I 
 
 — Omar Khayyam. 
 
Scene. In the large living room of the artistic 
 little bungalow that Lycidas has pro- 
 vided for his bride. Time, a couple of months 
 later, the honeymoon past, Lycidas and Beatrice 
 are prepared as well settled married people to 
 discuss the more intimate questions of love. The 
 conference this evening represents the storm and 
 stress period in the love-life,— the period of dark- 
 ness, doubt and wandering. 
 
CELESTIAL CONFERENCES ON LOVE. 
 The Conflict of Love and Duty. 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 AIL forth into the sea of life, 
 
 O gentle, loving, trusting wife, » 
 
 And safe from all adversity 
 
 Upon the bosom of that sea 
 
 Thy comings and goings bel 
 
 For gentleness and love and trust 
 
 Prevail over angry waves and gust; 
 
 And in the wreck of noble lives , 
 
 Something immortal still survives. 
 
 AmieL I am inclined to Eelieve that for woman 
 love is the supreme authority, — that 
 which judges the rest and decides what is good 
 and evil, — for a man love is subordinate to right. 
 It is a great passion but it is not a source of order, 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love y 
 
 the synonym of reason, the criterion of excel- 
 lence. It would seem then the woman places her 
 ideal in the perfection of justice. It was in this 
 sense that St. Paul was able to say 'The woman 
 is the glory of man, and man the glory of God." 
 Thus the woman who absorbs herself in the 
 object of her affection is, so to speak, in the line 
 of nature; she is truly woman, she realizes her 
 fundamental type. On the contrary a man who 
 should make his life to consist of'conjugal adora- 
 tion, and should imagine he had lived sufficiently 
 when he had made himself a priest of a beloved 
 woman, such an one is but half a man; he is 
 despised by the world, and perhaps secretly dis- 
 dained by the women themselves. The woman 
 who loves truly seeks to merge her individuality 
 into that of the man she loves. She desires that 
 her love should make him greater and stronger, 
 more masculine, more active. Thus each sex 
 plays the appointed part, the woman is first des- 
 tined for the man, and man destined for society. 
 Woman's duty is love, man's love is duty. In 
 other words, the guiding star of woman is love, 
 while the twin star of love and duty ever rises 
 towards the zenith of man's heaven. Woman 
 owes herself to one, man owes himself to all, and 
 each obtains peace and happiness only when he 
 or she has recognized this law and accepted this 
 
8 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 balance of things. The same thing may be good 
 in woman and evil in man, may be strength in 
 her, weakness in him. 
 
 Beatrice. It is wise that man's heart can turn 
 more easily from love to other things 
 as weighty and serious. How else could the state 
 be maintained and governed, battles fought and 
 won, and souls saved ? Woman's greatest happi- 
 ness comes when her love and duty are one, her 
 greatest battle when they are in opposition. Let 
 me illustrate this conflict of love and duty by 
 relating a vision or a dream which I recently 
 experienced, although perhaps it is no more than 
 the Story of Eden retold. 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 Eden with its angels bold, 
 
 Love and flowers and coolest sea, 
 Is less an ancient story told 
 
 Than a glowing prophecy. 
 
 In the spirits perfect air, 
 
 In the passions tame and kind, 
 
 Innocence from selfish care. 
 The real Eden we shall find. 
 
 When the soul to sin hath died. 
 True and beautiful and sound. 
 
 Then all earth is sanctified. 
 Up springs Paradise around. 
 
The New Eden 
 
 Beatrice Relates Her Vision of the Conflict of 
 Love and Duty. 
 
 ^iN the long ago, in the midst of a great desert, 
 M there was a beautiful garden, called the 
 ''Garden of Pleasure," within which was a 
 golden stairway, leading, it was said, to the in- 
 visible throne of The Great King. An ancient 
 servitor named Duty had charge of this garden, 
 and very aged was he, for he was born when the 
 foundations of the universe were laid. Most of 
 the inhabitants of the garden were born there, 
 some few had made the journey across the great 
 desert. Among the household of Duty was a 
 beautiful maiden named Brighteyes, for 
 
 Whatever her eyes are turned upon 
 Spirits of love do issue in flame, 
 And in her smile love's image you may see, 
 Whence none can gaze upon her steadfastly. 
 
 Living in an atmosphere of love within and 
 without, Brighteyes could hardly be said to know 
 what love really was, other than her pleasure in 
 
 9 
 
10 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 the flowers of the garden, which she attended and 
 gathered to adorn her beautiful golden hair. She 
 was but a lovely and gentle animal whose soul 
 had not yet been awakened. Yet during all these 
 years it seemed no prohibition that Duty would 
 not permit her to pick the pansies of blue and 
 gold, which were partitioned off from the rest. 
 But many a time as she gazed on them she 
 wondered 
 
 Why pansies' eyes that laugh 
 
 Bear beauty's prize 
 
 From violets' eyes that dream. 
 
 Perfect obedience comes to the free-will being 
 only through perfect wisdom or through perfect 
 innocence and ignorance. Innocent as Bright- 
 eyes was, there was woven in the texture of her 
 pure nature the golden threads of love. Now as 
 Plato has said, Love, — the weaver, is an aspirer 
 after wisdom, and along this road lies the knowl- 
 edge of good and evil. Thus it came to pass that 
 when a shepherd lad travelling with his flock 
 from oasis to oasis, paused upon the garden walls, 
 the maiden talked with him, and the truth and 
 love from her eyes were reflected back from his. 
 She told him about the forbidden pansies of blue 
 and gold, and he told her they were more precious 
 than all the rest of the flowers, and that they gave 
 the possessor power to command the earth to 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love li 
 
 open and pour forth its treasures of silver and 
 gold and precious stones. He also told her if she 
 would gain one of these they might go forth into 
 the great world beyond, and live in a beautiful 
 palace more beautiful than the invisible throne 
 before which she worshipped, and that instead of 
 being the handmaiden of the stern and ugly old 
 gardener Duty, she might be a Queen over many. 
 So the ignorant one resolved to leave the garden, 
 and as in the grey twilight she wandered among 
 the beds, and gathered her hands full of flowers, 
 their rich, sweet scents never seemed so sweet 
 before, now that she was about to leave them^ 
 Then Duty with his clear white features came 
 and looked at her. She ceased from her gather- 
 ing, but walked among the flowers smiling with 
 her hands full. Then Duty with his still white 
 face came and looked at her again, but she turned 
 her head away. At last she saw his face and 
 dropped the fairest flowers and walked silently 
 away. Then he came to her, and she bent her 
 head low, and turned towards the gate. But as 
 she went out she looked at the last flickering rays 
 of the sunlight on the faces of the flowers, and 
 wept in anguish. The gate closed with solemn 
 clang. But still she held in her hands the buds 
 she had gathered, and their sweet scent was very 
 grateful to her in the desert. But Duty still fol- 
 
12 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 lowed her. Once more he stood before her with 
 his white deathlike face, and she knew what he 
 had come for. She unclasped her fingers and let 
 the flowers drop out — flowers she had loved so 
 well, and walked on with dry, aching eyes. Then 
 for the last time he came, and she showed her 
 empty hands, — the hands that had nothing now. 
 But still he looked. Then at length she opened 
 the bosom of her dress, and took out the pansies 
 of blue and gold which she had hidden there, and 
 laid them on the sand. The shepherd lad, angry 
 at such easy obedience, turned his back upon 
 her. She had nothing more to give now, love 
 and flowers all, had been given, and so she wan- 
 dered out into the night and the desert alone, 
 disappearing in the whirling grey sand. 
 
 She wandered on with nothing but darkness 
 and death before her, hoping to find a Garden of 
 Pleasure where she could pluck flowers as she 
 willed, and where there was real love. And day 
 after day as she wandered she sang this song: 
 
 THE WANDERER'S SONG. 
 
 1 wander here, I wander there, 
 
 Through the desert of life all wearily; 
 No joy on earth for the pilgrim soul — 
 On, on forever drearily; 
 O'er the mountain height 
 In the tempest night, 
 Through the mist and through the gloom. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 13 
 
 We press on to the tomb, 
 While the deathlike pall of a midnight sky 
 Hangs over past and futurity. 
 
 And the echo of wandering feet I hear, 
 And human voices and hearts are near; 
 But lonely, lonely each one goeth 
 On his dark path and little knoweth 
 
 Of love, kind words and sympathy. 
 Oh, fain I would lay me down to die; 
 For the upward glance of a tearful eye. 
 
 Is all that I have known of humanity. 
 
 Yet must I on, the darker and drearer. 
 
 And lonelier ever the pathway seems, 
 
 And the spectral shadow of death draws nearer, 
 
 And rare and faint are the sunlight gleams; 
 
 An unseen power impelleth us on — 
 
 Till we reach the shores of the fathomless sea. 
 
 Where time poureth down to eternity. 
 
 Lycidas Improvises an Answer to Beatrice's 
 
 Vision. 
 I am not surprised that you leave your tale thus. 
 Woman can sacrifice all for love, but life looks 
 hopeless when she is called upon to sacrifice for 
 duty. But I think yourconception of duty some- 
 what erroneous, although fashioned after that 
 simple folk-tale. The Story of Eden, and typifies 
 the average parents who pride themselves on the 
 ignorance and innocence of their daughters as 
 they go forth into love and marriage. As Plato 
 has explained, the intermediate or human state 
 
i4 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 of man made the desire for the knowledge of 
 good and evil inevitable, and was necessarily a 
 part of the Divine purpose. Likewise Virgil 
 took Dante first to Hell, i. e., to the Knowledge 
 of Sin, because such knowledge is the beginning 
 of repentance, and evil must be known to be 
 avoided. But at this stage of the world's history 
 we do not have to experience all things to obtain 
 this knowledge of good and evil, much can be 
 obtained by instruction. But it never seems to 
 have occurred to many parents that in a matter 
 that plays so large a part in lifers happiness, that 
 they should instruct their children in the science 
 and art of love. Love has its laws, its psychol- 
 ogy and physiology, and furthermore like music 
 and painting is one of the finest arts requiring 
 much practice and instruction. They should also 
 be instructed in domestic art No man would be 
 employed to build the Panama canal without 
 special training, yet women the country over are 
 intrusted with the vital, mental, social and moral 
 welfare of the individuals who make up th^ state 
 without any preparation whatever other than 
 inherited tradition, and the pages of the Fireside 
 Companion. With this knowledge, love and 
 duty would be less in conflict. In the Divine 
 Comedy Virgil represents Knowledge, and Bea- 
 trice Revelation or Divine Philosophy. I will 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 15 
 
 attempt to finish your story, assuming a knowl- 
 edge of good and evil to be a part of the divine 
 intention, and necessary to spiritual evolution — 
 a story of Eden more up-to-date. 
 
 The Harmony of Enlightened Love and Duty. 
 
 After wandering for many days, and failing to 
 find the garden of free love, unrestricted by Duty, 
 Brighteyes decided to return to Duty^s Garden 
 of Pleasure. 
 
 As Aurora with rosy fingers opened the crimson 
 doors of the Orient, and permitted Apollo, the far- 
 darter, to emerge in his golden chariot and drive 
 the shadows of night before him, making the 
 heavens resplendent with his glory, and the 
 desert more inhospitable and bare, Brighteyes 
 thought she beheld a beautiful garden beyond. 
 She journeyed on and on, but came no nearer, 
 and at last the garden faded away. Deluded by 
 these visions she wandered long. Again a garden 
 appeared that surely looked like her home,"-was 
 she to be deceived by another mirage ? No ! At 
 last, she beheld the garden of her childhood,— for 
 had she not in this short time become a woman,— 
 and there Siood Duty at the gate. But though her 
 C( urage rose as she approached, her limbs grew 
 weaker and weaker, and she sank down fainting. 
 
i6 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 dying, in the desert with the Garden of Pleasure 
 just beyond. But a noble knight came riding by, 
 one who had fought his way through the ''Vale 
 of Tears" and ''Desert of Life'' and had been 
 shown the "Cities of the World'* by One from a 
 high Mountain, and yet preferred the quiet of 
 Duty's Garden. He lifted the limp form of 
 Brighteyes up gently onto his prancing palfrey, 
 and bore her into the Garden. As they entered 
 Duty said: "Enter Thou in and enjoy the fullness 
 thereof, and know that love is only at its highest 
 when one has learned to suffer and obey." At 
 these words Brighteyes opened her eyes and 
 looked at Duty, and was surprised to see that 
 his was not a white and deathlike face, but was 
 a face radiant with love. Soon she recovered 
 her strength and was permitted to wander among 
 the flowers and pick them as her best judgment 
 dictated, and they seemed so much more beauti- 
 ful, and so much sweeter than before, that she 
 could not help questioning them thus: 
 
 O! Tell me flowers 
 
 When hour by hour 
 I doting gaze upon thy beauty 
 
 Why thou the while 
 
 Dost only smile 
 On one whose purest love is duty. 
 
 But she no longer cared for the pansies of blue 
 and gold, for she had found the true pansy of 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love ly 
 
 blue and gold, Enlightened Love, and with this 
 she had struck the invisible rock of life, and it 
 had opened and laid at her feet the silver of kind- 
 ness, the gold of friendship, pearls of truth, and 
 the crystal dewdrops of a lover's tears. 
 
 Daily she walked among the flowers as of yore, 
 listening to the whisperings of their loves, and 
 smiling back smile for smile. But now she 
 walked with a more womanly, aye, a true queenly 
 mien, because of the noble knight who walked by 
 her side. And thus she spake: 
 
 The flowers are talking and whispering, 
 
 With pity my features they scan. 
 O pray do not chide our sister, 
 
 Thou sorrowful pale-faced man. 
 
 Moved by the plea of the flowers, the knight 
 spoke very gently to Brighteyes, of Duty, thus: 
 
 There are those who ask not if thine eye 
 
 Be on them; who in love with truth, 
 Where no misgiving is, rely 
 
 Upon the genial sense of youth; 
 Glad hearts without reproach or blot. 
 Who do thy work and know it not; 
 Ohl if through confidence misplaced, 
 
 They fail, thy saving arms, dread powerl 
 Around them cast. 
 
 Serene will be our days and bright 
 
 And happy will our natures be. 
 When love is an unerring light, 
 
 And joy its own security. 
 And they a blissful course may hold 
 
l8 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 Even now, who not unwisely bold 
 Live in the spirit of this creed, 
 i Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need. 
 
 Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear 
 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 
 As the smile upon thy face. 
 Flowers laugh before thee in their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 
 And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and 
 strong. 
 
 And thus Brighteyes replied to the knight: 
 
 O, blest seclusionl when the mind admits 
 
 The law of Duty; and can therefore move 
 
 Through each vicissitude of loss and gain. 
 
 Linked in entire complacence with her choice; 
 
 When youth's presumptousness is mellowed down, 
 
 And womanhood's vain anxiety dismissed; 
 
 When wisdom shows her seasonable fruit, 
 
 Upon the boughs of sheltering leisure hung 
 
 In sober plenty; when the spirit stoops 
 
 To drink with gratitude the crystal stream 
 
 Of unreproved enjoyment; and is pleased 
 
 To muse and be saluted by the air 
 
 Of meek repentance, wafting wall-flower scents 
 
 From out the ruins of crumbled pride. 
 
 And chambers of transgression now forlorn. 
 
 O, calm, contented days, and peaceful nights! 
 
 Who when such good can be obtained, would strive 
 
 To reconcile her womanhood to a couch 
 
 Soft, as may seem, but, under that disguise. 
 
 Stuffed with the thorny substance of the past 
 
 For fixed annoyance: and full oft beset 
 
 With floating dreams, black and disconsolate, 
 
 The vapory phantoms of futurity? 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love ig 
 
 Plato. Life needs the stage of duty, which must 
 in large measure be crystallized into law, 
 in order that natural impulses may be restrained, 
 and higher orders of life recognized. But beyond 
 duty and law there must be the stage of love, 
 which alone reveals to man the heart of reality. 
 On the other hand, love that would be genuine 
 comes not to destroy but to fulfill just law. 
 Through the history of the world much of the 
 conflict of love and duty has been man-made. 
 Overthrow unjust and unnatural law, and love 
 and light will make the rest easy. Love pro- 
 claims the emergence of a New World, and the 
 development of a higher spiritual being, who 
 undertakes to conduct his life from a point of 
 view of objective truth and comprehensiveness. 
 More and more as man realizes this impersonal 
 and universal standpoint, more and more will he 
 become capable of genuine love and justice. 
 
Will Woman Fail in Duty? 
 
 W 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 ARK the birds of Edenl 
 How their voices ring! 
 Bubbling notes from lyric throats! 
 How the rapture rises, floats 
 O'er the hills of Eden, 
 Down the vales of Eden, 
 Hark the birds that sing! 
 
 Miracle in Eden! 
 Lo — ^Jehovah spake: 
 **I will leave man not alone! 
 I will give him for his own 
 A meet help in Eden!" 
 And he gave in Eden! 
 From man's sleep in Eden, 
 Man and woman wake! 
 
 Lycidas. 
 
 A helpmeet for man. O woman, made 
 Like him in God's own image! — make reply 
 To challenge of the ages: Didst thou fail 
 To be what God created thee to be? 
 We await thine answer! 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 When failed I thee? 
 Thou cravest of me 
 Myself. I gave my flesh — my soul, 
 
 20 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 21 
 
 To mate with thine, 
 That thine and mine, 
 According to a law divine 
 Should make a perfect whole. 
 
 When failed I thee? 
 
 Full joyfully 
 
 1 gave thy strong sons breath. 
 
 Did I bewail 
 
 The shadowed vale 
 
 My feet must traverse? Did I fail 
 
 In life, for dread of death? 
 
 When failed I thee? 
 
 Thou cravest of me 
 
 A home. In cave, in hut, I made 
 
 Mild hearth-flames leap. 
 
 When thou wouldst sleep. 
 
 Of skins, of fleeces, soft and deep, 
 
 Thy bed for thee I laid. 
 
 When failed I thee? 
 
 Meet help in me 
 
 Didst thou not find in every need? 
 
 Through praise, through blame, 
 
 I dared to claim, 
 
 Unforfeited, my Eden name — 
 
 Help meet for man, indeed! 
 
 Lycidas. 
 
 Beyond the vales of Eden lies the worldl 
 Beyond the rivers four lie seas and plains 
 Lie tents, lie towns, lie citiesl Woman speak! 
 This age requires it of thee: Hast thou failed 
 To be man's meet help in his later days? 
 
22 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 When have I failed thee? From Paradise banished 
 
 Forth from its portals together we came, 
 
 Straight they were sealed with the sword that was flame! 
 
 Eden, our Eden of ignorance, vanishedl 
 
 Nay, 'twas our destiny — 'twas not our shamel 
 
 Failed I in counseling? Failed I to minister 
 
 Unto thy soul's need as well as thy clay's? 
 
 If we chose right at some parting of ways, 
 
 Though the way chosen frowned darkling and sinister, 
 
 Claim 1 too boldly my share of the praise? 
 
 When have I failed thee? My feebler steps lengthening, 
 Still kept pace with thee, lest thou should find, 
 Suddenly lonely, thou'dst left me behind. 
 Tirelessly, wistfully, strove I for strengthening 
 Bonds that our comradeship firmer should bind. 
 
 Lycidas. 
 
 O woman, made to be man's comrade, made 
 To toil together with him (never he 
 Alone, thrice never thoul) unto the solemn end 
 That God shall at last look upon His world 
 And see that it is good! — O woman, spe-kl 
 The future craves it of thee! All the world 
 To-day awaits thine answer. Wilt thou fail 
 To be man's comrade when the morrow breaks? 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 1 shall not fail theet Ask of me 
 New help in every newest need! 
 Thine Eden comrade still shall be. 
 With more than Eden loyalty. 
 Meet help for thee indeed! 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 23 
 
 I did not fail thee when I guessed 
 My soul was breath like thine. 
 Our comradeship was never blessed 
 Before, as it shall be, in quest 
 Together of a grail divine. 
 
 I did not fail thee when I came 
 Forth from those walls where thou and 1 
 Have cloistered love. Did my fair name 
 Lose aught of whiteness? Did the flame 
 Upon Love's altar sink and die? 
 
 Nay — rather, never hath it burned 
 So bright, so steadfast as to-dayl 
 Unto my altar task returned, 
 I bring new wisdom I have learned: 
 New fagots on my fire to lay. 
 
 I did not fail thee when the door 
 Of knowledge tardily swung wide, 
 Still learning, 1 shall prove the more 
 Thy perfect comrade than before — 
 Shall keep me closer to thy side.* 
 
 * 
 
 For further development of this thought, see Miss Wild- 
 man's Western Reserve Anniversary poem. 
 
The Woman Movement 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 J HAVE been reading quite a little lately about 
 the New Woman movement, one wing of 
 which seeks to do away with a consider- 
 able portion of the conflict between love and 
 duty by making love free, marriage free and 
 divorce free. They say: 
 
 "May we not now 
 Our contract make and marry before heaven? 
 Are not the laws of God and Nature more 
 Than formal laws of men? Are outward rites 
 More virtuous than the very substance is 
 Of holy nuptials solemnized within? 
 
 The eternal acts of our pure souls 
 
 Knit us with God, the soul of all the world, 
 He shall be priest to us; and with such rites 
 As we can here devise we will express 
 And strongly ratify our hearts' true vows. 
 Which no external violence shall dissolve." 
 
 Love, indeed, is the real marriage, the legal 
 marriage is only the outward and social confir- 
 mation. But so long as the law does not enforce 
 the natural obligations of love without compli- 
 
 24 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 25 
 
 ance with the legal forms, they are essential. So 
 long as woman must bear and feed children from 
 her own body, it is utter nonsense for her to talk 
 of maintaining her independence, earning her 
 own living, going her own way, and remaining 
 fettered only by love. True love is not merely 
 an incidental aspect of life, it is the total expres- 
 sion of the union of minds and bodies in a single 
 life-stream. The best interests of the child re- 
 quire a division of labor, and it is absurd for the 
 woman to attempt to assume it wholly or deny it 
 altogether. The result of a too high philosophy 
 is sure to lead to the lowest things. So long as 
 the law does not enforce the natural obligation 
 of love, legal marriage is essential, for the 
 attempt to fight the social currents and carry out 
 the natural obligations of love purely from a 
 sense of duty is usually a failure. Therefore the 
 only course open is to make the natural laws of 
 love and legal laws coincide. 
 
 Lycidas. It often happens that a young couple, 
 perhaps little more than children, 
 momentarily dazed by an emotion which Plato 
 has called a madness, are hurried before a minis- 
 ter to bind themselves for life. They make 
 eternal vows of constancy, knowing nothing of 
 the world, scarcely more of each other, knowing 
 
26 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 nothing of the marriage laws, scarcely more of 
 the arts of love and housekeeping. No wonder 
 the poet speaks of destiny's 'little children 
 stumbling in the dark" with a "blind understand- 
 ing/' with the result that they put their lips to 
 the bowl and laugh at duty. There will always 
 be a veil past which these children cannot see if 
 they will not learn, if parents will not instruct, 
 but Beatrice and I believe that they can find the 
 Golden Key that opens the door of happiness in 
 Enlightened Love, and while this may need sup- 
 port by Enlightened Law, happiness is certainly 
 not to be found beyond the pale of the law. Even 
 so great and noble a soul as George Eliot found 
 this true, to cite only one instance. 
 
 Amiel. What is constancy in Love? Either an 
 accident or a fortunate state of mind. 
 To promise to continue in a state over which 
 your will has no control. It is never an honest 
 promise, it can only be an honest hope. Love 
 comes and goes, no man can stay it. The law 
 should seek to give play to its natural movements. 
 
 Emerson. All true souls are progressive, and to 
 
 these progressive souls all loves and 
 
 friendships are momentary. Do you love me? 
 
 means, do you see the same truth? If you do 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 27 
 
 we are happy with the same happiness; but pres- 
 ently one of us passes into the perception of new 
 truth; — we are divorced, and no tension in 
 nature can hold us to each other. I know how 
 delicious is this cup of love, — 1 existing for you, 
 you existing for me; but it is a child clinging to 
 his toy, — an attempt to eternize the fireside and 
 nuptial chamber. 
 
 When we speak truly, is not he only unhappy 
 who is not in love ? his fancied freedom and self- 
 rule, is it not so much death? He who is in love 
 is wise and becoming wiser, sees newly every 
 time he looks at the beloved object, drawing from 
 it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which 
 it possesses. Therefore if the object is not a 
 living, expanding soul, he presently exhausts it. 
 But the love remains in his mind; and it craves 
 a new and higher object. And the reason why 
 all men honor love, is because it looks up and 
 not down; aspires and not despairs. 
 
 Lycidas. Granting that this is the law of love, 
 and that it holds uncontrolled sway in 
 the Celestial Sphere, it cannot hold such sway in 
 this Human Sphere, for as the sap rises in the 
 plant and suspends the law of gravitation, so the 
 Law of Childhood must in no small measure sus- 
 pend this Law of Love. Yet there is no question 
 
28 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 in the minds of the philosophical sociologists who 
 have made a specialty of this subject that the 
 monogamic institution of marriage needs to be 
 modified and varied in the way of greater free- 
 dom. Think of the dark shadow cast by the 
 hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of un- 
 happy and unattached women on the institution 
 of matrimony, which the sociologists say is essen- 
 tial to the happiness and well-being of the matron. 
 Is it creditable that the spiritual exaltation of the 
 happy wife rests on a pyramid of degraded souls ? 
 Think of the thousands of homes where drunken- 
 ness and brutality rule. Is it creditable that so 
 beautiful an institution as matrimony should 
 sanction a slavery worse than death ? We do not 
 need absolute freedom that would produce chaos, 
 but we need such freedom as results from the 
 natural laws of love, the rights of childhood and 
 social order. 
 
 Beatrice. Another important writer on the "New 
 Women Movement,*' proposes that 
 the prostitute should receive social recognition as 
 filling an honorable and necessary place in the 
 social order. A recognition, I suppose, such as 
 the hetasras received in Grecian society. 
 
 Considering the matter as calmly and sanely 
 as we may, giving due weight to all the facts, we 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 29 
 
 must say that if there is no other way to correct 
 the present state of affairs this is a necessary 
 logical conclusion. If there is a better way, as I 
 am convinced there is, the suggestion is simply 
 the reductio ad absurdum of the present order. 
 
 That important women writers should propose 
 free love and free prostitution as ideals of the 
 new "Feminist State" is certainly amazing, and 
 shows how a too sudden increase of freedom 
 leads to license, and emotion takes the place of 
 thought. If these proposals had come from men, 
 who have the reputation of being lax and liberal, 
 it would not have been so surprising as coming 
 from the supposedly conservative women. We 
 can only believe that they are not true to their 
 type. 
 
 The absolute freedom that these New Women 
 want would not be advisable, for a great many 
 men and women are very fickle, as shown by the 
 fact that they not infrequently get a divorce and 
 marry over again. With these emotional people 
 each emotion sets up a claim to fill the whole of 
 life. For each new emotion the earnest poetic 
 soul feels willing to die. Yet each is driven away 
 by its followers. The feet of them that shall bear 
 it out are before the door even while the trium- 
 phant emotion is reigning over the heart within. 
 
 The poet Novalis, upon the death of his be- 
 
30 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 trothed, made a sort of divinity of the departed, 
 and dated a new era from the date of her death. 
 He resolved to follow her to the grave within one 
 year. Within the year he was betrothed anew. 
 If such is Novalis what will be a lesser spirit? 
 But if it is necessary to choose between free love 
 or free prostitution and liberal divorce, I prefer 
 the latter. For in spite of the fickleness referred 
 to it must be admitted that the individual rather 
 than society should be the principal factor in 
 determining this freedom. Neither religion nor 
 law, neither society nor the family, can decide 
 what a marriage kills in a human being, or what 
 it may be the means of saving. Only that being 
 knows the one and feels the other. Only that 
 being can determine how far it may be possible 
 to have so far finished with existence as to be 
 willing to sacrifice the remainder for the children. 
 A mother can do this oftener than a father, but 
 in no case is there any standard that others can 
 use to determine when an excess of suffering is 
 present. 
 
 Plato. It is amazing that a civilization that has 
 produced the steam engine, dynamo, 
 wireless telegraphy and the talking machine, 
 should have made no improvements in the insti- 
 tution of matrimony. When one surveys the 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 31 
 
 whole course of human history nowhere can the 
 institution of marriage be found in so sad a state 
 as under Christianity. Religious dogma and 
 bigotry erected a stone wall between the institu- 
 tion of marriage and natural laws, thus in effect 
 setting up two Gods, one of Nature and one of 
 Authority. 
 
 The Catholic Church held that since marriages 
 entered into with the warmest love often turn 
 out badly, it was absurd to base marriage on the 
 emotion of love. In fact the richer and more 
 developed the personality the less stable its soul. 
 Thus the highest as well as the lowest need an 
 inflexible and irremovable tie to prevent their 
 being at the mercy of the winds and waves of 
 their emotions. Protestantism made love the 
 basis of marriage, but having no well-grounded 
 conception of the nature of the institution fell 
 half way back on the Canon Law. Marriage as 
 an indissoluble sacrament and the wife as a piece 
 of property are still the warp of that institution 
 in spite of the pretty designs that have been 
 woven into its woof to deceive the young. 
 Nothing is more natural than that love's longing 
 for eternity should prompt the lovers to vows of 
 eternal fidelity; nothing is more Satanic than that 
 Society should seize upon this promise and base 
 a legal institution. Every lover believes himself 
 
32 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 to be exempted from the sacrifice of illusion, and 
 no experience of the irretrievable mistakes of 
 others has ever opened the eyes of those blinded 
 by love. We ought to perceive that unconditional 
 fidelity to one person may be just as disastrous 
 to the personality as unconditional continuance 
 in a faith or an employment. Those who are 
 now patching the sackcloth of asceticism with a 
 few shreds from the purple mantle of personality 
 are spoiling both; no human being is master of 
 his fate when he has united it to another's. The 
 possibility of being a complete personality in and 
 through love depends in half upon the pure and 
 whole desire of the other to share in developing 
 the common life. 
 
 The notion that the church has fostered that 
 the present form of monogamic union is in com- 
 plete harmony with the claims of evolution, — 
 with the laws of nature, has left the race in the 
 same state of ignorance as to the conditions most 
 favorable for its development, as in my time. 
 Therefore the vital needs of the race and the indi- 
 vidual demand the right to a more extended 
 experience; for granting that monogamy must 
 ever remain the central fact, it seems certain that 
 variations may be discovered to meet the various 
 needs of complex personalities. Of course no 
 one knows whether, at the end of the new paths, 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 33 
 
 you will not be confronted by the riddle of the 
 Sphinx: how the parents are to avoid being sacri- 
 ficed for the children or the children for the 
 parents. But there is one thing certain, that on 
 the path we have been following we have already 
 arrived at the Sphinx. And all those who have 
 been torn to pieces at its feet are witnesses that 
 on this path mankind did not arrive at the solu- 
 tion of the riddle. 
 
 Emerson. In Christianity, and more particularly 
 Catholic Christianity a contempt of 
 the sense element is still largely in evidence. We 
 have here to do with a Manichean element 
 which has forced its way into Christianity, and, 
 in spite of all outward strictness, tends to pro- 
 duce inward shallowness; for shallowness it is 
 when the chief care of life is to carry on a strug- 
 gle against the sensuous, to weaken, degrade, 
 and stultify it as far as possible, and when those 
 who have been peculiarly successful in stamping 
 out the sense element are honored as heroes, and 
 selected as patterns, no matter how hard and 
 shallow they may be. For, after all, what inner 
 purification of the soul or development of the 
 spiritual life is gained by such a misuse of the 
 senses? Moreover, this repression of the senses, 
 like everything else unnatural, must produce 
 
34 Celestial Conferences en Love 
 
 greater evils than those it undertakes to remove. 
 Nature is in the habit of taking severe revenge 
 for misuse. But the matter does not end with 
 the rejection of this type of asceticism. The 
 sensuous and sexual side of life shows us man 
 associated in the most intimate manner with 
 nature; here, more than anywhere else, nature 
 holds him fast. Yet, at the same time, the de- 
 velopment of spiritual life has raised him far 
 above nature, and therefore the simple and unso- 
 phisticated attitude is no longer possible. The 
 sensuous has become a problem which from the 
 point of view of human life admits of various 
 solutions. Should it be free to follow its own 
 course in complete freedom, without reference 
 to the higher aims of the spirit, according to the 
 whim and desire of the individual, or should 
 it subordinate itself to the purposes of the 
 spiritual life, here finding its measure? Those 
 who, bearing in mind the indisputable right 
 of nature, decide in favor of the former 
 course, usually overlook the fact that in 
 our complex civilization we have no longer to 
 deal with a pure nature; the sense element is 
 often refined and artificial, nay, degenerate. In 
 order to separate what is genuine in nature from 
 what is not, we need the assistance of spiritual 
 work. A simple capitulation to the so-called 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 35 
 
 sense element in the life of to-day is absolutely 
 out of the question. It is quite probable that any 
 reform of the institution of marriage in the inter- 
 est of spiritual progress would be abused by the 
 sensualist, and subject reformers to grave criti- 
 cism. But when we believe we have found the 
 right way, we must go forward with it, for no 
 abuse of marriage inside of law and order and 
 under the weight of responsibility could equal 
 the sensual chaos that now exists outside of law 
 and freedom from responsibility. Law and re- 
 sponsibility are the only methods of forcing the 
 sensuous nature along the path of moral and 
 spiritual progress. 
 
 Lycidas. The reason that so many people think 
 that the face of Duty is white and 
 deathlike is that our present code of morals re- 
 quires so much that is unnecessary. Whereas if 
 Society required only what was necessary for 
 social stability and to conform to the Laws of 
 Nature, the face of Duty would be seen to be 
 beautiful. Society burdens humanity with too 
 many artificial duties. 
 
 The institution of marriage should be so large 
 and roomy as to give full play to normal human 
 nature. It should be a bright temple where love 
 and happiness find its most perfect nurture. Then 
 
36 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 the dark shadow that has always lain across its 
 portal would vanish. Duty would become a 
 kind friend instead of a white and deathlike face 
 staring at one out of dark corners to frighten. 
 
 Beatrice. Our conference seems now to have 
 reached a supreme contradiction. It 
 has been made out very clearly that love is not 
 only the crown and glory of humanity, but is 
 indispensable to its development. Further, it has 
 been made plain that the love-life can only be 
 successfully lived in the married state without 
 great damage to the individual and society. On 
 the other hand, it has been made probable that 
 for the great majority the married state is a place 
 of sorrow and not infrequently tragedy; and that 
 in order to maintain this institution Society, like 
 the Egyptians of old, is obliged to sacrifice not 
 simply one virgin to the dark waters of the Nile, 
 but untold thousands. Marriage then seems to 
 be a trap, into which the 'little children stumbling 
 in the dark'' have been caught without warning 
 from their elders, and left to beat out their life 
 against the bars. Can this contradiction be 
 resolved ? 
 
 Lycidas. I have already indicated that if the cage 
 was made large enough, and suitable 
 enough to meet the demands of the captives they 
 would never discover their captivity. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 37 
 
 Beatrice. The question still remains, — is this 
 possible ? 
 
 Lycidas. Love and marriage are inextricably 
 mixed up with virtue, and form a part 
 of the central theme of the divine purpose. To 
 doubt that happy love and marriage is possible 
 for all normal and typical men and women, who 
 take the trouble to learn nature's laws, is to doubt 
 the divine wisdom. 
 
 Beatrice. What form is this marriage to take? 
 
 Lycidas. Like the discovery of all other import- 
 ant natural and social laws, it will come 
 as the result of the study of experience and ex- 
 periment. This much I feel sure of, the transi- 
 tion stage to the new order will make the old 
 bones of bigotry and dogma rattle, in fact the old 
 skeletons that have so long imposed upon us as 
 living things may fall all to pieces. This may 
 make it appear to the worshippers of these ghastly 
 relics that the world is coming to an end; but in 
 a thousand years from now this, to us, very 
 enlightened period will appear as the dark ages. 
 If people could only rise to the cosmical point of 
 view, they would plainly see that the race is still 
 in its infancy, still in the barbarous period. 
 

 Divorce versus Duty 
 
 Plato. 
 
 fOU seem to have divined my thought. In 
 my "Republic" I advocated too great a 
 license for the body, while modern peoples 
 have so fettered the body in a legal way that their 
 society is crumbling in an illegal way. In former 
 times it was sufficient that the union should 
 involve physical reciprocity, but in this age the 
 union must involve psychical reciprocity as well. 
 But this latter is each day becoming more difficult 
 because of the tendency to discourage a woman 
 from merging her individuality with that of her 
 husband's. Much of the trouble must be charged 
 to the growing number of masculine women and 
 degenerate men like Ibsen and Nietzsche, preach- 
 ing a doctrine of ''self-realization" that ignores 
 all social obligations. 
 
 But an even more difficult problem is to com- 
 bine physical and psychical reciprocity in a 
 satisfactory marriage institution, because of the 
 disharmony between mind and body. This diffi- 
 
 38 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 39 
 
 culty you will recollect I pointed out under the 
 figure of the charioteer (intelligent will) govern- 
 ing the black and white horses (body desires and 
 mind affections), and which I have said is more 
 pressing among peoples where culture is generally 
 so high. 
 
 Beatrice. It seems strange, Lycidas, that you 
 would tear down the institution of 
 marriage without having any constructive ideas 
 to advance. 
 
 Lycidas. I have reached no definite conclusion, 
 for the reason that human nature is so 
 complex and also so changeable, as indicated by 
 the change since the time of Plato. Then if one 
 were to propose a strictly scientific institution, it 
 would have to meet with prejudice, custom, 
 taste, sentiment, and one could not tell just how 
 these would manifest themselves until experi- 
 ments were made with different classes of people. 
 A transition institution might be necessary until 
 a change in opinion and feeling were brought 
 about, and social adjustments made. Therefore 
 I have said I would like to see all proposals first 
 tested in the laboratory before being adopted by 
 any nation. 
 
40 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 Beatrice. How are you going to test marriage in 
 a scientific laboratory ? 
 
 Lycidas. We have many state governments, 
 and if these would make it permissible 
 for their citizens, or better yet for the citizens of 
 a county to try some plan that appealed to them, 
 in co-operation with the department of sociology 
 of the state university, in order that careful data 
 might be kept, and if these different experiments 
 were scattered about the country, we could get 
 some idea how they would work, and how the 
 prejudices and tastes of the people would react 
 towards them. But it is probably Utopian to 
 expect to do anything of this sort under a popular 
 government. As Carlyle long ago pointed out 
 the best government is a monarchy, provided we 
 could always be sure of getting the ablest man 
 for monarch. 
 
 Beatrice. If you were king what experiments 
 would you try out in your sociological 
 laboratory? 
 
 Plato. We will listen with a great deal of interest 
 
 to your plans for a New Utopia. My 
 
 Utopian Republic became obsolete before it ever 
 
 had a trial, but 1 am content with the knowledge 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 41 
 
 that it has had a powerful influence upon all re- 
 formers, has given courage to all progressive 
 thinkers. 
 
 Lycidas. Not having expected to be appointed 
 king, even of Utopia, the best I can do 
 is to mention some of the plans proposed by 
 others. One woman has published a book in 
 which she advocated trial marriage for one year, 
 the parties thereto having the option of dissolv- 
 ing or continuing it provided there were no chil- 
 dren. This of course would only touch the sur- 
 face of the problem and might do for trial by 
 some timid New England county. 
 
 Goethe proposed a contract for five years. The 
 distinguished anatomist, Prof. E. D. Cope, pro- 
 posed a system of contracts. The first was to 
 run for a period of not less than five years, 
 terminable by either party; the next for ten or 
 fifteen years, terminable only by mutual consent; 
 and the third contract to be indissoluble. The 
 objection made by Robert Ingersoll against a 
 proposition of this kind, was that it placed woman 
 at a disadvantage, due to the loss of beauty after 
 five or fifteen years. Again, if during the first 
 year it is discovered there are no binding ties, 
 four more years out of one's life is too long. 
 Still it might do for some conservative county as 
 
42 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 a transitional form, until it got courage to try 
 something more scientific. 
 
 Ellen Key proposes divorce by mutual consent, 
 as in China, .Japan, Sweden, and the Grand 
 Duchy of Luxumberg. The views of this great 
 Swedish reformer are ably maintained in her 
 work *'Love and Marriage/' Ellen Key, with the 
 insight of a seer, saw that the movement for the 
 emancipation of woman tended to emancipate 
 her from her sex and make her masculine. She 
 was wise enough to claim for woman a place in 
 the world as a woman. 
 
 Havelock Ellis, who has devoted his life to this 
 general subject, states, in his work on *'Sex and 
 Society," that many variants of monogamy will 
 be needed to fit human nature. Ellis speaks with 
 the highest consideration of the great experiment 
 of Humphrey Noyes. Noyes, you will recall, 
 started a real laboratory experiment on his own 
 account, in what is known as the Onieda Com- 
 munity. It was an experiment of some 300 in 
 group marriage and eugenics, and doubtless 
 would have continued the success it attained but 
 for the religious bigotry of the neighboring people 
 who were undoubtedly living on a lower moral 
 level. This community effectually provided for 
 the widow and widower, the orphan and the 
 infirm. Its level of health and culture, industry 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 43 
 
 and happiness was superior to the general level 
 in the world outside. While the community pro- 
 vided for the physiological law of one and many, 
 it is not clear how well it provided for the psy- 
 chological law of one and one. To provide for 
 this defect, and for the fact that it was found 
 necessary to have a limit to the size of the family, 
 it has been proposed to constitute a small group 
 of fifteen or twenty monogamic units into a 
 Greater Family or corporation. Incompatibility 
 would be provided for by a divorce granted by 
 the Executive Committee and ratified by the Pro- 
 bate Court, if the desire continued for same dur- 
 ing a period of six months. Both parties would 
 remain members of the Greater Family, and 
 could marry again either within or without the 
 Family subject to the approval of the Committee. 
 This is substantially the view of Schleiermacher. 
 Bernard Shaw lays down the following two 
 principles as axiomatic: 
 
 ( 1 ) Every adult normal and healthy individual 
 has the right to parentage. 
 
 (2) Every adult normal and healthy individual 
 has the right to love and sex experience, without 
 interference by law, so long as no children result. 
 
 His discussion of these principles is interesting 
 because he finds the difficulties in carrying them 
 
44 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 out SO great that he winds up with recommending 
 easy and cheap divorce. 
 
 Paul and Victor Marguerite propose the parties 
 shall choose arbitrators to settle the matter of 
 children and property, and that when both agree 
 to divorce it shall be registered in six or twelve 
 months, and in three years if only one desires it. 
 This seems the most likely direction in which a 
 conservative people will first institute reform. 
 Certainly all people who believe that the legal tie 
 is only a symbol for an inward spiritual grace, 
 and that when this does not exist divorce is a 
 sacramental duty, will be in favor of some such 
 reform. Possibly a private contract setting forth 
 how the parties understand the present marriage 
 laws will precede general divorce laws. For 
 example, I notice this clause in the prenuptial 
 contract of a young university couple: "Marriage 
 shall not be a contract giving either any control 
 over or possession of the other; that it shall not 
 be a bar to other marriage should this prove un- 
 fruitful; that the tie shall terminate simultane- 
 ously with the death of love on either side, and 
 neither shall have the right to restrain the other 
 should he or she see fit to incur other parental 
 responsibility." This is significant only as show- 
 ing that people are beginning to awaken out of 
 their dogmatic slumber on this subject. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 45 
 
 Beatrice. I wonder what the spirits would think 
 of our New Thought marriage? 
 
 Lycidas. If you can recall the service, suppose 
 you repeat it. 
 
 Beatrice. Every word is engraved upon my 
 heart. 
 
 "Do you, Beatrice, take this man for your other self, to so 
 blend yourselves together into one harmonious soul, that while 
 neither one shall lose his individuality, yet neither one shall 
 be wholly complete without the other? 
 
 "Do you solemnly vow to the great God consciousness within 
 you, which permeates the entire universe, to live under the law 
 of harmony and to displace in your life all inharmonies, no 
 matter from what source they may arise, and quickly as you 
 recognize their presence, and that you will renev/ this vow 
 as often as it may be broken? 
 
 "Do you pledge yourselves anew to each other on the altar 
 of harmony, and vow to the God consciousness within each of 
 you to teach each other, but to keep the hands off the other's 
 life as to permit each to grow and unfold in his own way to 
 the utmost limit?" 
 
 Plato. That seems to agree with my teaching 
 of the unity of soul and body and of man 
 and woman on the man-orb plane of being, and 
 also with my teaching of the dialectic of love. 
 It will be undoubtedly sufficient for such ideal 
 counterparts as you and Lycidas, but for the gen- 
 erality of mankind there should be provisions for 
 annulment, as in the contract of marriage men- 
 
46 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 tioned by Lycidas, and then there should be the 
 assurance that the parties entering into the mar- 
 riage are in mental and physical self-harmony. 
 Your service has the right keynote, — harmony. 
 The message that God has sent to man through 
 his conscience is, — 1 ought to be in harmony with 
 all, — self, mankind, nature, God. 
 
 Beatrice. But why meddle further with the insti- 
 tution of marriage? It suits me per- 
 fectly, — you are all the world to me, and I am 
 sure I am all the world to you. 
 
 Lycidas. Love has its selfish moods, and when 
 love is very comfortable and happy it 
 can see no excuse for the misfortunes of others, 
 just as the rich can see no excuse for anybody 
 being poor. Our little world cannot be taken 
 as a sample of the larger world. Just because 
 we have been fortunate in securing some enlight- 
 enment to guide our loving, and in meeting in 
 the great jostle of human beings our counterpart, 
 and perhaps in some measure by accident struck 
 the right path that leads from sex-love to spiritual 
 love, and have climbed the Olympian Mount, and 
 now from this high seat hold celestial confer- 
 ences; we have no right to assume that this is 
 equally possible for all others under present 
 conditions. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 47 
 
 Love, before the reflective faculties have fully 
 developed (and sometimes afterwards) is almost 
 always a species of madness, possibly due to a 
 recapitulation of the stages of our animal evolu- 
 tion. Hence it has been said from the earliest 
 times, — ''Love is blind.'' It is certainly very 
 difficult to enlighten once the madness has seized 
 the person, and as a consequence many become 
 misraated, which has led Plato to say that mar- 
 riage is a lottery. When we were experiencing 
 the ecstasy of love were we capable of disinter- 
 ested judgment, might you not have been easily 
 induced to play the leading part in some ''Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream'"' ? 
 
 Our institution of marriage instead of provid- 
 ing for the correction of these human errors, 
 rests upon another form of the notion of "taking 
 celestial things by storm'"' which is as equally 
 erroneous as free love. It holds that the finest 
 things of the spirit are only reached by the celi- 
 bate, and marriage according to St. Paul is per- 
 missive only in deference to a depraved human 
 nature. 
 
 Other theologians find in theT}arden of Eden 
 legend that the monogamic and indissoluble mar- 
 riage is a divinely ordained institution; it never 
 having occurred to them that God would make 
 one revelation in the Bible and a contrary one in 
 
48 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 nature. The revelation embedded in the laws of 
 nature we know to be authentic, and therefore 
 if we are to remain rational, we cannot accept 
 any interpretation of the Bible that contradicts 
 such laws. Especially is this the case when we 
 apply the pragmatic criterion of successful work- 
 ing. What has been the result of forcing love 
 into this mold of theological dogma? I have 
 answered this question for you by piling the 
 library table high with books which show that 
 the institution of marriage has broken completely 
 down. To go over this literature makes the heart 
 heavy with despair, and lays such a burden upon 
 the soul that the only alternative seems to be for 
 the race to destroy itself, or to curse God for hav- 
 ing permitted the human race to thus debase 
 itself. Then in this darkest hour a ray of light 
 begins to pierce the gloom. We remember how 
 we often thought God had fettered man's free- 
 dom too greatly while now it appears he has 
 given him too much freedom. The light grows 
 brighter, we realize that this freedom which we 
 have perverted under the influence of religious 
 dogma can be used better. We are stimulated 
 by the thought, — man can and must do better in 
 the future. 
 Among the books you will find, — 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 49 
 
 Sanger's ''History of Prostitution." 
 
 Ellis' ''Psychology of Sex," 6 vols. 
 
 Maupassant's works, 15 vols. 
 
 Balzac's "Comedie Humaine," 20 vols. 
 
 Century Co.'s "White Slave" series, 4 vols. 
 
 Stead's Pall Mall Gazette revelation. 
 
 Report of Chicago Vice Commission. 
 
 Psychopathia Sexualis. 
 - Then there are volumes of reports and statis- 
 tics on divorce, desertion, orphan and insane 
 asylums, on the blind, imbecile, deaf and dumb, 
 and the heavy percentage of diseased and defec- 
 tives throughout general society, reports of infan- 
 ticide, baby farms, operations on women due to 
 unmentionable causes, poisoning, suicide, murder 
 and the whole dismal series. But there is no 
 account of the suffering that has destroyed souls, 
 except as the attempt is made in some cases to 
 classify the causes of insanity. There is no at- 
 tempt to measure the sorrow hidden deep in the 
 heart. No Dante could live and picture the 
 Inferno of soul-torture due to this destruction of 
 the love-life due to the bigotry that denies nature's 
 laws. Until one has become acquainted with 
 this literature I do not think they are competent 
 to form a judgment as to duty and divorce. 
 
 All of these black pages are the result, — aside 
 from some allowance for natural depravity that 
 
50 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 would probably prevail under any system, — of 
 the religious fanatics laying a too heavy burden 
 of artificial duties upon humanity, of attempting 
 to force sex-love into such a narrow mold as to 
 stifle the soul and warp the body. One might 
 just as well attempt to force the Mississippi into 
 narrow levees, only unlike the river sex-love is 
 not content with overflowing a few states, but 
 has overflown all Christendom, submerging all 
 but a small percentage, in one way or another. 
 Rather than admit the stupendous failure of the 
 present institution of marriage, our religious 
 fanatics stifle their own sorrow and say "Hush! 
 Hush!'' and make laws against the mailing and 
 printing of books that tell the truth about the 
 decay of our civilization. The young people 
 must know nothing of this failure of the divine 
 institution of marriage, nor are they enlightened 
 how to win happiness. No! Smiling friends 
 with hopeless hearts lead them to the altar to the 
 sweet strains of the Wedding March, and watch 
 them ''united until death'' under a canopy of 
 roses, from which they know they can only 
 escape by crawling through a sewer, — the divorce 
 court. 
 
 Parliaments, councils and commissions may 
 sit on the ''social evil" from now until dooms- 
 day, and it will bob up serenely; unless they 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 51 
 
 reform the institution of marriage so that it will 
 completely satisfy the desires implanted by 
 nature in the normal soul and body. Do this 
 and you can weight man and woman as heavily 
 with responsibilities and obligations as need be, 
 and force them along the road of an orderly and 
 efficient life. If such life does not square with 
 your dogmas and theologies, so much the worse 
 for the theologies, — they need reforming. But 
 I have no notion that the majority of our people 
 will have sufficiently risen from their barbarism 
 and bigotry to reach this rational height for sev- 
 eral generations. With the theological fervor of 
 those that caused the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew and the burning of Bruno, they will watch 
 with sanctimonious faces the slow scorching and 
 withering of souls, the progress of the "White 
 Slave traffic,'* pictured for all to see in hundreds 
 of feet of moving pictures, and ask, "Am 1 my 
 brother's keeper?'* No horror can cause them 
 to re-examine their premises. If this supreme 
 devilishness is due to the revelations of the Bible 
 in opposition to the revelations of the Divine 
 Purpose in Nature and on the tablets of the Soul, 
 it would be far better to throw the Bible into the 
 flames than man. I am convinced that the final 
 
52 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 authority, the supreme revelation, is to be found 
 in nature and in the soul of man; and the ''Social 
 Evir'" has testified for thousands of years that we 
 are working in opposition to nature. 
 
 I know that there are a great many who think 
 that if they had created the world they could 
 have done a better job; while a good many more 
 think that the world must be made to go in 
 accordance with their personally constructed 
 dreams. The theologians hold that the world 
 has somehow gotten oflf the track and that it only 
 requires their inflexible determination to set 
 everything right. As to making a careful study 
 of the situation, — What's the use? Have we not 
 firmly settled it in our minds that man is a fallen 
 creature and only needs to be redeemed, in face 
 of the fact that is being forced upon us from all 
 sides that man was originally a brute to whom a 
 divine spark has been added, and that the animal 
 cannot be suppressed in a day and an angel made 
 by redemption? All this is wrong; we are here 
 to live a human life, a life of body as well as soul, 
 and our society should be organized accordingly. 
 This is a task requiring great wisdom on the part 
 of parliaments and councils, owing to the great 
 range of culture among our people from savage 
 to savant, from degenerate to divine. 
 
Woman's Sphere 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 ANOTHER phase of the conflict of love and 
 duty among the New Women is that be- 
 tween the soul and the family. They see 
 duty on the side of self-realization, with intellec- 
 tual education of themselves rather than of the 
 race. Perhaps you remember that Ibsen's drama 
 of 'The Doll's House" ends with Nora going out 
 the door leaving her family. She had experienced 
 an intellectual awakening, and never having been 
 instructed in the philosophy and art of love, and 
 the mission of the family, sees self-realization 
 only in the breaking of family ties. It is calcu- 
 lated that the women of the world will produce 
 annually a hundred thousand novels and works 
 of art, which might better have been boys and 
 girls. 
 
 Lycidas. Let me read some passages from ''Love 
 and Marriage'^ 
 "The brain-woman's time tables know nothing' 
 of collisions. Her train schedule is clear: nurs- 
 
 53 
 
54 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 ing, institute, and kindergarten, school and dormi- 
 tory for the children, whose number is fixed 
 according to the requirements of society. The 
 meals are served automatically from a common 
 kitchen; the housekeeping is done by adding up 
 the cash book. In a costume designed for work 
 or athletics, she goes to her study. When the 
 work is done, there is five minutes' conversation 
 on the telephone with each of the children; two 
 hours' exercise in the open air. In the afternoon, 
 ten minutes' conversation on the telephone with 
 her husband, thirty-five minutes' pause for the 
 reception of ideas; the evenings are given up to 
 meetings of a utilitarian or social nature. On 
 Sundays, the husband and children are invited, 
 when three hours are set apart for the elimination 
 of their defects, the rest of the time for profitable 
 amusement. Such a woman has never a thought 
 of her children while at work; never wants to 
 snatch ten minutes' extra chat with her husband. 
 She wakes refreshed after the hygienic number 
 of hours' sleep, — everything goes like clockwork. 
 ''Never has the world seen a more contradic- 
 tory creature than this woman, melancholy and 
 wistful, cold and sensitive, thirsting for life and 
 tired of life at the same time. The blood dances 
 otherwise in her veins, sings another song in her 
 ears, than it has any other woman since time 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 55 
 
 began. She sees through her husband and is a 
 stranger to him; his desires seems brutal to her 
 finely shaded and contradictory moods; she is 
 not won even when she allows herself to be em- 
 braced. When fate attempts to tune these 
 fragile beings to their full pitch they break like 
 harp strings under a rough touch. But the irony 
 of it all is when she is confronted with the choice 
 of not succeeding at all or of succeeding by the 
 means she abhorred in him before she herself 
 discovered that it is the struggle for existence 
 that gives the bird of prey its beak and claws. 
 
 "At a Scandinavian meeting on the woman's 
 question, a cantata was sung which proclaimed 
 that the human race under the supremacy of 
 man had stumbled in darkness and crime. But 
 the race was now to be newly born from the soul 
 of woman, the sunrise would scatter the darkness 
 of night, and the advent of the Messiah was 
 certain." 
 
 Plato. Having been able to follow the work of 
 man from my time to the present day, 
 and to see around the world at a glance, I have 
 been impressed with his mastery of physical 
 laws. See the industries he has created, and their 
 wonderful products. See his towns and cities, 
 with their temples and churches, the skyscrapers 
 
56 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 and marts of trade, and above all the infinite 
 number of fine homes. Then remember that 
 every machine, every stone and brick, has been 
 put into its place by the hand of man. In the 
 last analysis this stupendous achievement has 
 been inspired by the love of woman. If it had 
 not been for that inspiration man would be still 
 dwelling in caves. Now, why should woman 
 desire to compete with man in his mastery of 
 physical law, and become just another man? I 
 recant my former teaching, the eternal truth 
 having been revealed to me. Is it not plain that 
 her business is to inspire, and that she can only 
 do that so long as she remains truly feminine? 
 Should not her specialty be to obtain that mas- 
 tery over spiritual law that man has obtained 
 over physical, building in the divine world the 
 home not made with hands? Therefore Society 
 should see that the marriage relation should be 
 so ordered as to make this love principle, — the 
 dynamic principle of industrial and spiritual 
 progress, constantly effective. 
 
 Beatrice. Then there are the women militant 
 suffragettes who would enter politics, 
 who would be policemen, cabdrivers, farmers, 
 blacksmiths, etc. These women are for the most 
 part half men, and they ought to be compelled 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 57 
 
 to wear a distinctive half-man dress so that the 
 typically feminine women may not be deceived 
 by their cry ''Votes for Women" and be disgraced 
 by a caricature. In fact the state ought to decree 
 in case of war: JJ^ \jul(mK. 
 
 Thou in rude armour must thy limbs invest, aoju^ \XJi • 
 
 A plate of steel upon thy bosom wear; VamT'^'^'^^ 
 
 Vain earthly love may never stir thy breast, U ja'^ciW^ x<f\> 
 
 Nor passion's sinful glow be kindled there. \^|iuiffc t ^Yfli 
 
 Ne'er with bride wreath shall thy locks be drfceff*^ U*^^* 
 
 Nor on thy bosom bloom an infant fair; Ka^J^ ^Uaajl 
 
 But war's triumphant glory shall be thine, xAAjao-* 0< \A^ 
 Thy martial fame all women's shall outshine. ^"^^i/^-.J, # 
 
 Plato. Look back to the beginning of civiliza- cma^^ 
 tion, and follow it down to the present W . 
 day and you will see that it was founded upon \Mh^ 
 and is ruled by a truce of God as between man ^^/iju^ 
 and woman. The truce is based upon the solemn y^. 
 covenant that the weapon of physical force may /^j 
 not be applied by man against woman, by woman 
 against man. Under this covenant that half of *^3Vua - 
 the human race that most needs protection is 
 raised above violence. Under this covenant a 
 full half of the program of Christianity has been 
 realized, and a foundation has been laid upon 
 which it is possible to build higher, and perhaps 
 abolish war. And now this solemn covenant so 
 faithfully kept by man, not to strike a woman 
 even with a flower, has been violated by the mili- 
 
58 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 tant suffragette in the interest of her morbid, 
 stupid, ugly and dishonest programs. 
 
 Lycidas. Men and women, like plants and ani- 
 mals, adapt themselves to an environ- 
 ment. The human race is of course more sus- 
 ceptible to a mental environment. 
 
 In primitive times man and woman lived very 
 nearly the same life; the woman was very nearly 
 as masculine as the man, and the family existed 
 on a low plane. Then came the division of labor, 
 the growth of culture, the establishment of a 
 real home life in connection with the develop- 
 ment of the feminine graces. It was not until 
 the time of Dante and Petrarch that real conjugal 
 love, or, as it is sometimes called, romantic love, 
 made its appearance in the world. Psychical reci- 
 procity now became essential to a happy mar- 
 riage. It would appear that since that time human 
 happiness had reached its highest point, and 
 that, with the advent of woman's suffrage and 
 equality of labor, society is to return to its primi- 
 tive antagonism. Men are antagonistic to men, 
 and masculine women are antagonistic to men. 
 
 Adjustment and consequent happiness is 
 brought about through the supreme attraction of 
 a feminine woman and a masculine man. Much 
 data might be brought forward at this point to 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 59 
 
 show how women entering into man*s employ- 
 ment and modes of thought are making them- 
 selves masculine, how the suffrage will greatly 
 increase this, and that an increase of ten to fifteen 
 per cent, of masculinity in women will destroy 
 the happiness of the home. 
 
 The science of biology shows that there is no 
 such thing as the ''eternal feminine," unless 
 there is a permanent environment. Woman is 
 about to sell her birthright gained through thou- 
 sands of years of struggle for a mess of pottage, 
 and is being decoyed by the loveless and unloved 
 masculine women into this fanaticism, which is 
 to destroy all that is most worth while. 
 
 Beatrice. Havelock Ellis agrees with you that 
 man and woman are indefinitely modi- 
 fiable (within certain limits) and that for this 
 reason we cannot dogmatize concerning their 
 respective spheres. 
 
 Lycidas. 1 believe it to be a biological fact that 
 there is one type among human beings 
 around which other types oscillate. In this I see 
 an indication of the Divine purpose, and counter- 
 parts of this type are happiest and most firmly 
 united. It is for this reason that I protest against 
 the New Woman movement which tends to 
 
6o Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 develop a masculine type of woman. They can 
 never form a strong or happy family. 
 
 Amiel. At bottom, woman's mission is essen- 
 tially conservative without discrimina- 
 tion. On the one hand, she maintains God's 
 work in man — all that is lasting, noble and truly 
 human in the race, poetry, religion, virtue, ten- 
 derness. On the other hand she maintains the 
 results of circumstances — all that is passing, 
 local, and artificial in society; that is to say cus- 
 toms, absurdities, prejudices, littlenesses. She 
 surrounds with the same respectful and tenacious 
 faith the serious and the frivolous, the good and 
 the bad. Well — what then? Isolate — if you 
 can — the fire from the smoke. 
 
 It is a divine law you are treating, and there- 
 fore good. The woman preserves; she is tra- 
 dition as man is progress. And if there is no 
 family and no humanity without these two sexes, 
 without these two forces there is no history. 
 
 Beatrice. Can it be that the talented woman has 
 actually forgotten that destiny in- 
 tended her to be a woman, and bound her by eter- 
 nal laws ? Can it be that the best women desire to 
 be half men? A woman cannot have a destiny 
 of her own, because she cannot exist alone. The 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 6i 
 
 more womanly she is, the more richly endowed, 
 all the more surely will her destiny be shaped by 
 the man who takes her for his wife. There is no 
 doubt that there is a kind of genius peculiar to 
 women, and it is when a woman is a genius that 
 she is most unlike man and most womanly: it is 
 then that she creates through the instrumentality 
 of her womanly nature and refined senses. The 
 pendulum receiving sudden shock swings too 
 far, — the martial Amazon on the one hand is as 
 far from woman's true position as the intellec- 
 tual Amazon on the other. To cite only one 
 example Zonia Kolvalevsky was a great mathe- 
 matical genius, and had a large acquaintance with 
 men all through Europe, but not one of them 
 said to her, ''1 cannot exist without you." Thus 
 she became an unhappy, injured little woman, 
 running through the woods with a wailing cry 
 for a husband. Mrs. Browning has voiced the 
 tragic aspect of the woman's life that has achieved 
 a literary career in the following lines: 
 
 My father! Thou hast knowledge, only thou, 
 
 How dreary 'tis for woman to sit still 
 
 On hearing the nations praising them far off 
 
 Too far! ay praising our quick sense of love 
 
 Our very heart of passionate womanhood, 
 
 Which could not beat so in verses, without. 
 
 Also being present in the unkissed lips, 
 
 And eyes undried because there were none to ask 
 
 The reason why they grew moist. 
 
62 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 To sit alone, 
 And think for comfort, how that very night 
 Affianced lovers, leaning face to face. 
 With sweet half-listenings for each others' breath, 
 And reading haply from a page of ours 
 To pause with a thrill (as if their cheeks had touched) 
 When such a stanza level to their mood. 
 Seems floating their own thought out — "So I feel 
 For thee" — "And I for thee; this poet knows 
 What everlasting love is!" 
 
 To have our books 
 Appraised by love, associated with love. 
 While we sit lovelessl Is it hard you think? 
 At least it is mournful. Fame, indeed 'twas said, 
 Means simply love. It was a man said that. 
 And then there is love and love; the love of all. 
 Is but a small thing to the love of one. 
 You bid the hungry child be satisfied. 
 With a heritage of many cornfields; nay 
 He says he's hungry; he would rather have 
 That little barley cake you keep from him 
 While reckoning up his harvests. So with us, — 
 We're hungry. 
 
 Emerson. So far as women simply enter the 
 callings hitherto occupied by men, 
 compete with them, performing the same ser- 
 vices with the same objects in view, there is 
 nothing won for the qualitative advance of 
 civilization. The result would be merely the 
 accomplishment of a greater amount of work of 
 an average quality and an unoriginal character. 
 But such a movement means the declassing of 
 women, since in the field of the merely useful, it 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 63 
 
 is unavoidable that masculine attainments should 
 be made the ideal of women, and they should 
 appear as mere apes of men. 
 
 Lycidas. Quite so. To ignore the peculiar 
 organization of women, and attempt 
 to find a place for them in the masculine scheme 
 of things instead of utilizing them for certain 
 lines of work for which no men are fitted, is just 
 as foolish as it would be to confine persons of 
 special gifts to unskilled labor. 
 
 It is quite probable that in literature, art, 
 music, medicine, religion and education, dis- 
 tinctly feminine shadings are possible. A new 
 industrial society in which a purely feminine pro- 
 duct is possible, a new world of culture having 
 a significance for women only; is the highest 
 and most spiritualized ideal that the New Woman 
 movement offers. 
 
 To explain away the generic diflferences be- 
 tween masculine and feminine souls is to deprive 
 life of one of its finest and most powerful 
 attractions. Man is a being whom both nature 
 and civilization have conspired to differentiate, 
 and the masculine tendency displayed by this 
 movement lowers the sum of these differences, 
 and consequently of life itself in a far greater 
 degree than is possible to any other tendency. 
 
64 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 And this will result in lowering the estimation in 
 which women are held, since this rests upon their 
 dissimilarity and the fact that their spiritual indi- 
 viduality cannot be replaced by anything else. 
 The sexes should be regarded as of the same 
 worth, but every effort should be niade to main- 
 tain their marked dissimilarity. 
 
 Many historical phenomena show that the 
 masculinization of woman goes hand in hand 
 with the feminization of man. The obliteration 
 of specific sex characteristics is everywhere the 
 sign of biological decadence, so that these femi- 
 nine struggles for freedom are a symptom of the 
 degeneration of the race. In two generations 
 after the women of Sparta entered political life 
 the nation disappeared because of empty cradles. 
 Christianity brought woman to the front, and 
 the resulting feminization made the classic 
 civilizations easy for the barbarians to overthrow. 
 
 Beatrice. Sixty per cent, of all the women 
 workers in the United States receive 
 less than $325 per year. Now most of these 
 women were employed solely because they were 
 able and willing to work for lower wages than 
 men; so it is fair to say that they underbid the 
 men, and either displaced them or forced them 
 to accept the same wretched pay. As a result, 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 65 
 
 there are "textile towns" in New England, where 
 the vast majority of operatives are women and 
 children, and the men stay at home and take 
 care of the babies. We do not have to go to 
 ancient history for illustrations of the feminiza- 
 tion of men due to women seeking a career apart 
 from her home. 
 
 On the other hand, the women seeking an 
 intellectual career carry it to extremes, become 
 unfit or unattractive for mariage, or marry late 
 and fail in their duty as child bearers, leaving the 
 defectives to populate the country. Woman 
 must recognize her limitation and place. 
 
 Amiel. When one has studied the part sex has 
 played in the evolution of mind, and the 
 development of the organism in relation to 
 mating; when one begins to get an insight into 
 the supreme role that sex plays in the human 
 organism to-day, they will then begin to realize 
 the importance of resisting all environmental 
 influences that tend to modify this difference in 
 man and woman. As an illustration, take the 
 influence of sex upon the development of the 
 voice. The primary function of the voice in the 
 vertebrates was to serve as a sex-call, as is now 
 its exclusive function among the amphibia. 
 Later and secondarily it came to be employed in 
 
66 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 relation to the protection of the young, and as a 
 means of communication with other members of 
 the species. Finally, in man it came to aflFord 
 the means of articulate language. It is not im- 
 probable that the evolution of the voice, with all 
 its tremendous consequences with respect to the 
 evolution of mind, is an outgrowth of sex. The 
 voice of a masculine woman grates on me like 
 the filing of a saw. 
 
 Plato. I forsee that unless the direction of the 
 New Woman movement is changed, it 
 will do more damage to civilization than the in- 
 cursion of barbarians did to ancient society. By 
 the time it is realized that society is on the wrong 
 path, the cost of turning back and starting over 
 again, will be greater than the Napoleonic wars, 
 in fact, it will be incalculable. Therefore, I warn 
 you not to be hypnotized, not to be carried away 
 by the fanaticism of these unlovely and unlov- 
 able old maids, who, jealous of the happier lot of 
 their more attractive sisters, are trying like Sam- 
 son to pull down the central pillar of the temple. 
 Be true to your own womanly instincts, and 
 mark out a path of advancement along feminine 
 lines instead of being a mere *'ape of man." 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 6y 
 
 Lycidas. Now let me give you a couple of con- 
 crete illustrations of the futility of a 
 great ^'Career" for woman, taken from a collec- 
 tion of several hundred. This is the heart cry of 
 a great singer: 
 
 *'Happy? Nol A woman is only happy when she is married 
 
 under happy circumstances. I am only A G , a unit, 
 
 a machine for the production of music. I am now devoted to 
 the art of music. If ever the true home beckons to me I will 
 no longer be an artist, but will give up singing. A woman 
 cannot serve two masters, art and home. Though I may live 
 
 at the S^ , I think the factory girl or the girl behind the 
 
 counter in your stores is happier than I, because she leads a 
 more natural life." 
 
 Madame De La Ruelle, the fifth woman ad- 
 mitted to the French bar, and who holds an im- 
 portant government position, ends her account 
 of her hard struggle as follows: 
 
 "Thus it is that I would never encourage a 
 young girl who is in a happy condition and who 
 enjoys a happy family life to try to be independ- 
 ent, or ever think of being une femme arrive. A 
 woman who arrives must do so by herself; it 
 means loneliness. I would rather advise her to 
 be, in the true and noble sense of the word, the 
 wife of un homme arrive." 
 
 Beatrice. In promoting humanitarian work, 
 
 which sphere woman should make 
 
 especially her own, she can work much more 
 
68 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 effectively as a wife, than as a politician. The 
 president of the National Red Cross Society testi- 
 fies as to how much more effectively she can 
 work as a non-partisan, in her appeal to all 
 parties. Other women leaders in humanitarian 
 work testify likewise. The proposition is self- 
 evident. Whatever career a woman may have, 
 she should never step down from the pedestal of 
 wife. The ballot is not only absolutely unessen- 
 tial but detrimental. No good woman lives to 
 herself. She has always been part of a family, — 
 as wife, sister, daughter, — from the time of Eve. 
 God created man, not as an individual but as a 
 family, — man and woman together. 
 
 According to a law divine ' 
 
 I gave my flesh — my soul 
 
 To mate with thine 
 
 That mine and thine 
 
 Should make a perfect whole. 
 
 Lycidas. A historian of Woman's Suffrage, says 
 that Mrs. Bernard Shaw exactly ex- 
 pressed the sentiments of all suffragists, when 
 she said as the result of a speech by the Prime 
 Minister in which he indicated his intention to 
 leave woman's suffrage out of the Electoral 
 Reform Bill, that she felt an "impulse of blind 
 rage," and felt as personally insulted as if he 
 had said to her, that *'the vilest male wretch who 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 69 
 
 can contrive to keep a house of ill fame shall 
 have a vote, and that the noblest woman in Eng- 
 land shall not have one, because she is a female."' 
 Aside from the irrational character of the lady's 
 emotion, we may remark that the question is not 
 the respective rights of human beings, as such, 
 to the ballot, but of the practical advantage to 
 mankind in the long run of such procedure. Our 
 conference indicates the high improbability of 
 any such advantage. The present situation does 
 not need correction by increasing the franchise, 
 but by limiting male franchise to worthy and 
 intelligent members rather than by doubling the 
 numbers of the unworthy. 
 
Conflict of Love and Duty in 
 Choosing a Soul-Mate 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 m 
 
 E have just discussed the sphere of woman 
 from the standpoint of the New Women 
 Movement, and have found the major 
 current, or perhaps more correctly the more 
 noisy current, demanding an independent home 
 Hfe and an independent career; to be a move- 
 ment for the debasement and unhappiness of 
 woman, as well as for the disintegration of the 
 finest achievements of our cililization. The 
 minor and quieter movement which seeks to find 
 a career for woman peculiarly her own, rather 
 than making her a mere ''Ape of man" was also 
 pointed out and requires further discussion. But 
 I would like you to consider just now another 
 phase of the Conflict of Love and Duty, — the 
 dilTiculty of finding a suitable soul-mate under 
 our present social conditions and with our present 
 knowledge. 
 
 70 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 71 
 
 Duty seems to call on man and woman not to 
 abate one jot of their ideals in choosing a mate, 
 while love cries compromise. 
 
 The bard has sung that God never formed a soul 
 
 Without its own peculiar mate, to meet 
 Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole, 
 
 Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most completel 
 But thousand evil things there are that hate 
 
 To look on happiness, these hurt, impede, 
 And leagued with time, space circumstance, and fate 
 
 Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, pant and bleed. 
 
 And as the dove over Palmyra flying 
 
 From where her native fount of Antioch beams; 
 Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, 
 
 Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream — 
 So many a soul over life's desert faring. 
 
 Love's pure congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, 
 Suffers, recoils, — then thirsty and despairing 
 
 Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught. 
 
 Lycidas. However it may be with woman, we 
 must remember that for man he can- 
 not make too great a compromise for love as 
 against duty. He should remember that love is 
 only a noble means to the fullness of life. Com- 
 munion with the holy spirit give us glimpses that 
 life has a grandeur beyond our dreaming, and 
 that rather than profane it we must, like Amiel, 
 take our solitary way to cold and barren peaks 
 as best we may. For a voice is calling, and climb 
 we must, if we outclimb all we love and leave 
 them as milestones in our progress. 
 
73 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 What are perils to men who scorn them? 
 
 Perils what to men who dare? 
 Chains to hands that once have torn them, 
 
 Thenceforth are chains of air! 
 The winds above the snowplains fleet — 
 Like them 1 race with winged feet. 
 My bonds are dropped; my spirit thrills 
 A freeman of the eternal hillsl 
 I run before the radiance sent 
 From every mountain's silver mail, 
 Across the dark gulfs from vale to vale. 
 
 Beatrice. I know that the poet sings: 
 
 Through the deep caves of thought, 1 hear a voice that sings 
 
 Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll! 
 
 Leave thy low vaulted past! 
 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last 
 
 Shut thi^ from a heaven more vast, i 
 
 Till thou at length are free, 
 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by Life's unresting seaf 
 
 But the poet is singing to man's not to 
 woman's heart, if it be not the call of love. 
 Man's love is universal, woman's particular. He 
 loves the sentiment of love, she the person. He 
 has something left; the more womanly she, the 
 less remains. 
 
 Lycidas. What has he left? A wide woe over 
 the whole heart; but the heart too re- 
 mains — empty, of course, but firm and sound 
 and hot. Loved ones are lost, not love itself; 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 73 
 
 the blossoms are fallen, not the branches. Verily 
 he still wishes, he still wills; the past has not 
 stolen from him the future. Arms he still has to 
 embrace withal, a hand to lay upon the sword, 
 and eye to survey the world. But what has gone 
 down will come again, and that will remain true 
 to him which is forsaken, — thy self alone. Free- 
 dom is the glad eternity. 
 
 It is true that each of us has a noble destiny 
 that brooks no hindrance. There is a robbery 
 against which a man always protests with an ir- 
 repressible fire, and though a goddess committed 
 it out of love, and offered him in compensation a 
 world of paradises, — it is the robbery of his free- 
 dom and free development. 
 
 AmieL Think not, Lycidas, that I found any 
 glory or satisfaction in my martyrdom 
 in doing without love. As I came to look back 
 over life, my ideals became less austere. Let us 
 not be over-ingenious. There is no help to be 
 got out of subtleties. Besides one must live. It 
 is best and simplest not to quarrel with any illu- 
 sion, and to accept the inevitable good tem- 
 peredly. Plunged as we are in human existence, 
 we must take it as it comes, not too bitterly, not 
 too tragically, without horror, and without sar- 
 casm, or a too exacting expectation; cheerful- 
 
74 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 ness, serenity, and patience, these are best, — let 
 us aim at these. 
 
 I have made use of the ideal itself to keep me 
 from any kind of bondage. It was thus with 
 marriage; only perfection would have satisfied 
 me; and, on the other hand, I was not worthy of 
 perfection — so that finding no satisfaction in 
 things, I tried to extirpate desire by which things 
 enslave us. Independence has been my refuge; 
 detachment my stronghold. I have lived the 
 impersonal life, — in the world, yet not of it, 
 thinking much, desiring nothing. It is a state of 
 mind which corresponds with what in women is 
 called a broken heart; and it is in fact like it, since 
 the characteristic of both is despair. When one 
 knows that one will never possess what one 
 could have loved, and that one can be content 
 with nothing less, one has, so to speak, left the 
 world, one has cut the golden hair, parted with 
 all that makes human life, — that is to say illusion 
 — the incessant effort towards an apparently 
 attainable end. 
 
 Baatrice. I trust, Lycidas, that this word direct 
 from your sage and hero, will some- 
 what modify your heroics. I am sure that 
 woman's love cannot wait for the ideals of life, 
 for there are constantly welling up from the 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 75 
 
 depths of her soul, voices singing of home, com- 
 panionship and love. Angels* voices calling, 
 ever calling from out the coming years, little 
 angel hands beckoning, ever beckoning from 
 across the Vale of Tears. O, how can she wait 
 altogether for ideals of duty when beauty is 
 swiftly flying by! 
 
 And yet I know, a man's work, that is his real 
 work, must be first with him, because his chosen 
 work is his character. 
 
 A man's love of woman is not his character, a 
 love of women comes to men of all characters, 
 but a man's ideal work is himself, and if a man 
 is false to that, then he can be false to anything. 
 And while I am sometimes jealous of your work, 
 1 would not love you near so much if you were a 
 mere drifter. Perhaps my petulance is due to 
 the fact that your great interest in your work 
 overlooks the mood that craves your attention. 
 
 Plato. A Supreme love, a motive that gives a 
 rhythm to a woman's life and exalts 
 habit into partnership with the soul's needs, is 
 not to be had where and how she wills; to know 
 that high initiation, she must often tread where 
 it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and 
 watch through darkness. 
 Remember! that love itself in it3 highest 
 
76 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 earthly bearing, as the ground of the marriage 
 union, becomes love, not by ''elective affmities'*' 
 alone, but by an inward fiat of the will, by a 
 completing and sealing act of moral election, and 
 can lay claim to permanence only under the form 
 of duty. 
 
 Emerson. Though the stuff of tragedy and of 
 romances is in a moral union of two 
 superior persons, whose confidence in each other 
 for long years, in sight and out of sight, and 
 against all appearances, is at last justified by vic- 
 torious proof of probity to gods and men, caus- 
 ing joyful emotions, tears and glory: though 
 there be for heroes this moral union, yet they 
 too, are as far off as ever from intellectual union. 
 Such is the tragic necessity which strict science 
 finds underneath our domestic life, insensibly 
 driving each adult soul as with whips into the 
 desert. Therefore I am greatly interested in the 
 proposal of Lycidas for a Greater Family, as it 
 affords opportunity for intellectual union accord- 
 ing to our growing needs, while the Minor 
 Family based on moral union provides for social 
 stability. 
 
 Lycidas. I would have a woman marry, not be- 
 cause it is the only thing that offers, 
 but because a magnificence sweeps by, in whose 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love y*j 
 
 glorious sun her stars faint and fade. Her soul 
 shall be filled and fired with heavenly radiance. 
 All her dross shall be consumed and all her gold 
 refined. She shall go to the marriage feast as 
 Zenobia went to Rome, crowned with flowers, 
 but bound with golden chains, a captive, and the 
 banner over her shall be love. I would have her 
 go obedient, not to the requirements of a false 
 materialism, naming itself with the names of 
 morality and womanhood, but to the unerring 
 instincts of her own nature. She shall not fly to 
 the only refuge from the vacuum and despair of 
 life; but her great heart, and her strong hands 
 shall be wrenched from their bent, by the mys- 
 terious force of an irresistible magnetism. When 
 you have character that can so command, a love 
 that can so control, you have set up on earth 
 the pillars of heaven, and redemption draweth 
 nigh. Her motto should be 
 
 Who weds me, at least with equal pace 
 Sometimes must move with me at my being's height; 
 To follow him to his more glorious place. 
 His purer atmosphere, would be keen delight. 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 And yet because thou overcamest so, 
 Because thou art more noble and like a king, 
 Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling 
 Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow 
 
7S C-elestial Conferences on Love 
 
 To close against thine heart, henceforth to know 
 
 How it shook when alone. Why conquering 
 
 May prove as lordly and complete a thing 
 
 In lifting upwards as in crushing low. 
 
 And a soldier struck down by a sword 
 
 May cry, "My strife ends here" and sink to earth, 
 
 Even so, Beloved, I at last record 
 
 Here ends my doubt 1 If thou invite me forth 
 
 I rise above abasement at the word, — 
 
 Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth. 
 
 1 recognize the laws of man and woman's love, 
 but this battle of woman's love with duty is 
 harder than that of man's, for there is much truth 
 in the old saying: 
 
 Man's love is of man a thing apart, 
 'Tis woman's whole existence. 
 
 Lycidas. True, Beatrice. But let her be stead- 
 fast, and whatever her weary waiting 
 and watching, let her not break the golden bar- 
 riers of heaven which lie about her. 
 
 It was the rampart of God's house 
 
 That she was standing on; 
 By God built over the sheer depths 
 
 The which is space begun; 
 So high that looking downward thence 
 
 She could scarce see the sun. 
 
 And thus she spoke: 
 
 When round his head the aureole clings 
 
 And he is clothed in white 
 I'll take his hand and go with him 
 
 To the deep wells of light; 
 As unto a spring we will step down 
 
 And bathe in God's sight. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 79 
 
 Emerson. That brings another defect of your 
 society into view, — its lack of flu- 
 idity, the extreme difficulty of making a large 
 acquaintance and finding a counterpart. You 
 are not so much in need of men's clubs and 
 women's clubs, as family clubs, where your 
 young people can meet and entertain under the 
 best conditions. Again perhaps, some of these 
 young women are too ideal, too great dreamers, 
 and are not really fitted under the actual condi- 
 tions of human life to give as much as they 
 demand. 
 
 Lycidas. Something in the way of Family 
 Clubs has been accomplished by the 
 co-operative societies of Belgium, which have 
 provided magnificent club houses, which provide 
 for the material and social needs of their mem- 
 bers. Such clubs would provide an excellent 
 training in community life. But intellectual and 
 cultured people need more select and intimate 
 society. 
 
 Beatrice. That is all very fine, but there are 
 thousands of women who are crying: 
 Why have I been born with all these warm aflFec- 
 tions, these ardent longings for what is good, if 
 they lead only to sorrow and disappointment ? I 
 
8o Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 would love some one, love him once and forever 
 — devote myself to him alone — live for him, die 
 for him — exist alone for him! But alas! in all 
 this world there is none to love me as I would be 
 loved — none whom I may love as 1 am capable of 
 loving! How empty, how desolate the world 
 seems about me! Why has heaven given me 
 these affections, only to fail and fade ? 
 
 Amial. Life indeed is most always a compro- 
 mise between common sense and the 
 ideal, — the one abating nothing of its demands, 
 and the other accommodating itself to what is 
 practical and real. But marriage by common 
 sense ! — arrived at by a bargain ! Can it be any- 
 thing but a profanation? On the other hand is 
 it not a vicious ideal which hinders life from 
 completing itself and destroys the family in the 
 germ? Is there not too much pride, Lycidas, in 
 the ideal you have been holding up, — pride 
 which will not accept the common destiny? My 
 pride found its abasement. Every dollar I owned 
 mocked me every hour with the thought of the 
 woman on whom my happiness would have been 
 to have lavished it. But my excessive caution 
 led me to be a bachelor rather than a man. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 8i 
 
 Lycidas. Perhaps you are right, perhaps this is 
 another case where both men and 
 women should apply the doctrine of the Golden 
 Mean. But how can one compromise with the 
 Law of Counterparts, which determines the 
 ratio of intellect and feeling, of masculinity and 
 femininity, as well as of magnetic equilibrium; of 
 the men and women that are adapted to each 
 other. All of these elements are in each, some 
 intellect, some maleness in the woman and some 
 feeling and some femaleness in the man, but no 
 matter what their amount, those that are coun- 
 terparts should jointly equal one absolute male 
 and one absolute female. Thus it comes about 
 that nature has implanted an attraction for each 
 other in those who are opposite and those who 
 are similar in maleness and femaleness. Thus 
 extremely feminine women and extremely mas- 
 culine men, as well as the new woman and the 
 feminine man, — who are very similar, attract 
 each other. But these are abnormal types. These 
 abnormals cannot expect the happiness of the 
 counterpart normals, which are intermediate, but 
 this attraction of extremes tends to restore the 
 type in the next generation. That nature thus 
 oscillates about a type indicates that the New 
 Woman and feminine man are diverging from 
 the plan marked out by nature. It would be 
 
82 
 
 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 unnecessary to mention this law, except for the 
 fact in our artificial life many influences over- 
 come it, e. g., wealth and social position. The 
 perfect counterpart, the other half of an original 
 single soul is a dream, and we must face the fact 
 that in practical life we must do the best we can. 
 Still with full knowledge of the law we ought to 
 be able to do better than we have been doing. 
 
Mitj^^^W^^^W^kti^^^^ ^j¥(tj' 
 
 2Ki2fe^^Z£r^Z?l^fe!2fei£ fei£fe! 
 
 Spiritual Evolution Our 
 Supreme Duty 
 
 HOW THE LAW OF COUNTERPARTS 
 IS RELATED THERETO 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 ^^ HIS law of counterparts is not very clear to 
 
 iMl nie. You promised that after we were mar- 
 
 ^■^ ried you would explain the mystic relations 
 
 of man and woman and your own esoteric doctrine. 
 
 Lycidas. The philosophy of sex has -already in some 
 measure been developed in these confer- 
 ences, but the Law of Counterparts indicates that 
 Nature has provided a bond far stronger than if she 
 had made man merely a man and woman merely a 
 woman. 
 
 Beatrice. Well! I should like to know what else 
 they are than just men and just women. 
 
 Lycidas. Did you not know that a man is part 
 woman, and a woman part man? The 
 evolution of sex is a long story, but I will sketch the 
 subject briefly. 
 
 83 
 
84 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 Nature seldom does things suddenly. When she 
 has an end to attain, she attains it by a method of 
 gradual approach. As Bacon said, Nature is very 
 subtle and leaves no seam. So to understand the 
 sex relation of man and woman, we must study its 
 beginnings in plants, follow it through the animal 
 kingdom, and the history of mankind. So you see 
 the sex arrangement has been put to a long test, and 
 only adopted in the human kingdom after a thorough 
 demonstration of its worth. 
 
 Many plants can be propagated by slips, that is 
 asexually. In addition to this method the fern is 
 propagated by an alternation of the sexual and asexual 
 methods. On the under side of the frond you will 
 find many little seeds or spores; from one of these there 
 will grow a little plantlet called the prothallus, which 
 very few people have ever seen. Now, one portion of 
 this prothallus is male and another portion female. 
 The seed from the male portion of one falling off and 
 floating about meets the seed from the female portion 
 of another; they become united, and as a result of 
 their union a new fern begins to grow. Many plants, 
 however, are self-fertilizing; the male and female ele- 
 ments within the same flower are united and pro- 
 duce seed from which new plants will grow. Such 
 seed I understand tend to vary greatly, and to revert 
 back, — which is called atavism. Hence those who 
 wish to continue improved varieties, as, for example, 
 the oranee, take a bud from the bark of the desired 
 kind, and graft it into the bark of a young seed- 
 ling of a primitive and vigorous type. But quite a 
 few plants are not self-fertilizing, as, for example, the 
 fig and date. There are male and female date and 
 fig trees just as there are men and women. In na- 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 85 
 
 ture there are about an equal number of each kind 
 of tree, but the growers of the date, for example, find 
 it advantageous to cultivate polygamous families, with 
 only about two males to an acre on which there are 
 planted about fifty female trees. To make sure of 
 pollination, a beautiful spray of the male blossoms 
 is plucked and tied into a cluster of the female blos- 
 soms, and while in this loving embrace the zephyrs 
 distribute the sweet-scented pollen among the other 
 flowers. Now here is an interesting fact, — the female 
 tree would produce even more fruit without this pol- 
 lination, but it would be seedless and of such a poor 
 quality as to be valueless. Why the date requires 
 this method any more than the apple, I am unable 
 to explain, unless it is that we are here at the transi- 
 tion stage where nature finds it necessary to adopt 
 this method to preserve vigor in the individuals. 
 
 In the animal kingdom there is a similar develop- 
 ment. Among the unicellular animals we find propa- 
 gation by division of the cell into two or more parts, 
 which grow and again divide, and thus have an im- 
 mortal life unless they meet with some accident. But 
 this bodily immortality is precluded among multi- 
 cellular animals, for the reason that in order to live 
 the higher and more complex life, a division of labor 
 among cells is necessary, and hence we ha\e various 
 organs, body (or somatic) cells and germ cells. Now 
 the body cells tend to become stationary and thus 
 accumulate the decay of the metabolic process, which 
 causes a hardening. Butjthis_as, no reason why^^e 
 should not live Jo^^be_a_£DJifil e of hunHre d y ea r s old, 
 if we take^pfoper care of ourselves, that is if we are 
 temperate, active and hygenic, and have married a 
 suitable counterpart who is a true tonic to soul and 
 body. 
 
86 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 Returning to the thread of my story, a little higher 
 in the animal scale, propagation takes place by small 
 buds instead of a large division, which is an ap- 
 proximation to the germ cell. But before the sex 
 arrangement is fully adopted, we find an alternation 
 of the sexual and asexual methods similar to that 
 found in the fern. 
 
 There is parthenogenesis, or so-called virgin birth, 
 which may continue for many generations, with in- 
 creasing degeneration of the individuals. But the 
 value of sex is shown by the fact that this degenera- 
 tion may be stopped by a return to conjugation. The 
 latest experiments have shown, however, that this 
 rejuvenescence does not take place except between 
 counterparts, or individuals who are suitably polar, 
 which causes a stimulation of the metabolic activities. 
 Among the bees we have virgin birth, the males or 
 drones coming from unfertilized eggs. Queens, how- 
 ever, come from fertilized eggs. 
 
 I presume you know that the metabolic activities 
 of the cell depend upon a certain rhythm or see-saw 
 between the anabolic or constructive movement and 
 the katabolic or destructive movement. Of course, 
 the anabolic movement predominates in both man 
 and woman or we would not live ; but it predominates 
 in a much greater degree in woman, causing her to 
 live in a state of periodical overflow ,so as to be pre- 
 pared for reproduction up to the period of menopause. 
 In man, however, the margin between the two move- 
 ments being less, he is able to give out more energy 
 in the form of work for the benefit of society. Here 
 is the physiological reason wh y woman should not 
 undertakeThe same career as man, as it will either 
 disorganize her system, or cause Nature to try and 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love Zy 
 
 adapt herself to the situation by attempting the male 
 swing in her metabolic activities, which results in 
 the masculination of woman. Thus the New Woman 
 in adopting the career and environment of man is 
 causing a fundamental change in the plans of nature, 
 the profound wisdom of which I will exhibit to you. 
 
 We can readily see that it would not do for human 
 beings to reproduce themselves like plants by cutting 
 off slips, — fingers or toes, and planting them ; nor by 
 virgin birth ; for under the stress of life abnormal in- 
 dividuals would be developed and there would be no 
 way of eliminating them except by putting them to 
 death. Now it is not necessary to put militant suf- 
 fragettes or other freaks to death in order to prevent 
 their continuance, because there is a tendency im- 
 planted in the nature of human beings that they marry 
 their counterpart, not in the old sense that the tall 
 marry the short and the dark the light, but that 
 opposites and similars in sex characters shall attract 
 each other so as to preserve a certain golden mean 
 or type. Thus the militant is attracted by that other 
 useless freak the "sissy man" and the resulting hybrid 
 is a normal individual. 
 
 I spoke a moment ago of the bisexual or self-fertil- 
 izing characters of certain flowers. Well, this also 
 occurs normally in the animal kingdom up to the very 
 threshold of the vertebrates, and abnormally among 
 higher forms ; and it is believed to be an embryonic 
 stage in the development of all higher individuals. 
 Indications of this race history are seen in every indi- 
 vidual, in whom there is simply a predominance of one 
 sex over the over. When it is considered that the 
 new individual arises from the union of half a male 
 cell and half a female cell, which continues to divide 
 
88 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 and sub-divide to form the new body, which is thus \ 
 equally male and female, you will not wonder that 
 over five hundred theories have been advanced to 
 account for the preponderance of one sex over the 
 other in a given individual. But the best theory, it 
 seems to me, is that of an initial magnetic prepotence 
 determining either a greater anabolic or katabolic 
 movement in the metabolism of the cell. 
 
 In saying that one-half each of a male and female 
 cell go to form the new being, I mean that one-half 
 of the chromosomes or determining elements in each 
 cell are extruded before union. It is the chromosomes 
 that are supposed to transmit the hereditary charac- 
 ters, and while there are not as many as there are 
 characters, there is reason to believe that several 
 characters are linked in one chromosome. It begins 
 to look as though it would be important for each 
 individual to have an expert record made of his char- 
 acters, in order that when this matter is more fully 
 understood, a study of this data for several generations 
 back will enable one to tell what characters to combine 
 in order to produce a desired type of individual in ac- 
 cordance with Mendelian principles. 
 
 But whatever the cause for the relative preponder- 
 ance of one sex over the other in a given individual, 
 you have only to look about you to see the fact that 
 some men are so masculine as to show only slight 
 traces of feminine secondary sex-characters, — they arc 
 hard and brutal. You will also see some women so 
 feminine as to show hardly any trace of masculinity, — 
 they are soft and without spirit, You will find men 
 and women in whom there is an approximate equality 
 of male and femaleness. The man is a "sissv" and 
 the woman prides herself on being a "New Woman" 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 89 
 
 or a "militant." Illustrations of such new women 
 are George Eliot, George Sand, Rosa Bonheur and 
 Dr. Mary Walker. The first two took men's names, 
 and all but the first wore pants. George Sand was 
 in love with Chopin and Musset — particularly femi- 
 nine men. 
 
 Between the extreme types above mentioned there 
 is a type which may be regarded as normal, because 
 nature seeks to maintain it if given a reasonable 
 chance, — that is if no attempt is made to oppose nat- 
 ural instincts. A man of this type will possess about 
 25-35 per cent, of the woman's characteristics, both 
 physical and mental. The woman will possess a like 
 amount of the man's characters, which are maleness 
 and intellect. Sex is as significant a feature of mind 
 as of body. In woman the distinctive character is 
 feeling; in man, intellect. There is usually a definite 
 correlation between the mind and body ; but of course 
 there is a transition stage in which the mind moves 
 faster than the body. Thus we may see a woman 
 with a distinctively feminine body with a militant 
 mind ; if she lives long enough and takes up masculine 
 activities and environment, she will undoubtedly de- 
 velop masculine characteristics such as a beard and 
 flat chest and narrow hips. Sargent's studies of ath- 
 letic girls are interesting in this respect. 
 
 It is in this region of the Spiritual Life high above 
 sex diflFerences that it is possible for man and woman 
 to become truly united. It is a grand adventure, 
 starting ecstasy of love to so practice love through 
 life that pure spirits become united in the love of God. 
 
 With Swedenborg, Emerson, Balzac and many 
 others, I hold that sex differences do not reach the 
 highest regions of the soul, — the conscience, — the Spir- 
 
90 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 itual Life. The purpose of sex has been to develop 
 this Higher Life to the point where sex-differences 
 gradually disappear. This is not to be accomplished 
 by the old doctrines of the "mortification of the flesh," 
 by the passiveness of "Nirvana," but by the union of 
 flesh and spirit in active loving and doing. It is a 
 great adventure beginning with the ecstasy of love, 
 to study and practice the mysteries of love through 
 life to become united as Pure Spirits, and join the 
 Society of Spirits in the love of God. 
 
 Beatrice. Should not a woman seek to have as great 
 an intellect as man? 
 
 Lycidas. However great her intellect, it should never 
 exceed one-third of her mentality ; two- 
 thirds should be given over to those faculties which 
 come under the general head of feeling or emotion. 
 She may, indeed, have an intellect which both in ca- 
 pacity and training exceed that of many men ; but 
 such men would not make suitable husbands. As 
 Amiel has pointed out, she should marry a man with 
 a still greater intellect than hers, or she will never 
 be happy. w'^^/vG- 
 
 Beatrice. Should not a woman's intuitions be given 
 an equal share in determining the course 
 of life? 
 
 Lycidas. They should certainly be given due weight, 
 and they have an especial part to play in 
 the aesthetic and spiritual life, subjects which I hope 
 to discuss with the spirits later. You know what 
 Bergson says. But the essential quality of the in- 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 91 
 
 tellect is that of unbiased judgment, although I must 
 confess that in many men there developes an ar- 
 terio-schlerosis of the intellect. In general, however, 
 the intellect is a safer guide than the emotional im- 
 pulses. The intellect has been developed out of the 
 feelings in the struggle for existence to meet this 
 need. The intellect is like the apical bud of the plant 
 which has been developed to meet the conditions of 
 life and push its way through the hard earth. As 
 the sense of sight and hearing have developed out of 
 the general feeling or touch sense, so the intellect has 
 been developed out of the general feeling or emotional 
 nature as a check to impulse, the Will being simply 
 the concentrated result embodied in action that fol- 
 lows the ratiocinative process. The Will is a judg- 
 ment impregnated with impulse. 
 
 Returning to my explanation, we have found that 
 the best type of man is one whose mind and body 
 is about one-third woman, that is governed by that 
 type of activity to the extent of one-third and 
 two-thirds male activity. The best type of woman 
 is in brief one-third man and two-thirds woman. Per- 
 haps I can illustrate this by use of formulas, letting 
 M represent maleness of both body and mind, and 
 F femaleness. 
 
 Now the extreme masculine man might be repre- 
 sented by 90% M -\- 10% F, and the extremely feminine 
 woman by 90% F -f- 10% M. Now, don't you see that 
 these two would have very little of the nature of the 
 other in common? Their lives would be far apart, and 
 yet nature makes them natural counterparts in order 
 that the next generation may be brought to a normal 
 or intermediate type. The general law is that the sum 
 of the male and female characters in two individuals 
 
92 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 shall jointly make two complete male and female 
 individuals, thus: Man (90% M + 10% F) plus Woman 
 (90% F -f 10% M)=2. 
 
 The same want of a bond of union is manifest in 
 formula for the New Woman and the "sissy" man who 
 are likewise counterparts, thus: Man (55% M + 45% 
 F) plus Woman (55% F + 45% M)=2. 
 
 Now, I want to call your particular attention to the 
 formula for the normal type which lies between these 
 two. These types are markedly male and female, ex- 
 ceeding the "sissy" and the "militant" on the one hand, 
 and yet not so extreme as the first types mentioned. 
 They have, however, sufficient of the characters of the 
 opposite sex to enable them to thoroughly understand 
 each other, to have a wide ransre for contact of common 
 interests, and yet sufficiently different to be attractive. 
 
 Man (70% M -f 30% F) plus Woman (70% F + 
 30% M)—2. 
 
 Do you not see the supreme wisdom of nature in at- 
 tempting to preserve this type which makes a family 
 bond of the most powerful kind, as against the fool- 
 ishness of the New Woman who is attempting to weaken 
 this bond and destroy the family? A 10 to 15 per cent, 
 increase of masculinity in woman will do it. In de- 
 stroying this type you not only destroy the family bond, 
 but also that wise division of labor in the industrial field, 
 to say nothing of the more important spiritual realm. 
 
 Beatrice. Rose Mayreder, in her "Survey of the 
 Woman Problem," says that "the distin- 
 guishing mark of synthetic people (your normal type) 
 is that they have an outlook over the barriers of sex, 
 a power of sweeping away the bonds entailed by sexu- 
 ality, enabling them to reach a mental sphere common 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 93 
 
 to both sexes of the human species. The wider the 
 sphere the more easily will the process of amalgama- 
 tion be carried out, the more pertect and extensive will 
 it be. Since sex does not connote for synthetic people 
 an entirely different sort of existence, but only a dif- 
 ferent form of being, they are able, apart from sexual 
 affairs, to enjoy a common existence. Thus they raise 
 themselves to a universality of perception which is de- 
 nied to the acratic (your extreme type.) Their nature 
 acquires an element of freedom which enables individuals 
 of even moderate talents to have a Hberal and intelli- 
 gent understanding of the other sex, while those who 
 are not synthetic in nature cannot break through the 
 barriers of sex, even though their minds may be of the 
 most emancipated type." 
 
 Lycidas. But with the solution of the above problem 
 our difficulties are not at an end. Nature cer- 
 tainly has set before us a great game, which taxes all 
 our resources. Even if one could always find an ideal 
 counterpart, the magnetic attraction which drew them 
 together tends to become neutral, just as the ion loses 
 its energy when it finds its pole. What is more tragic 
 than where one of a loving and mentally adapted pair 
 is magnetically deficient, and like the vampire sucks all 
 the physical and spiritual vitality from the loved one, 
 leading to slow death, vampirization or demagnetization. 
 The story of Bluebeard probably symbolizes something 
 of this sort, and in almost every community a Bluebeard 
 or Bluewoman can be pointed out who has followed 
 three to seven wives or husbands to the grave within 
 a few years, — because of a lack of magnetic balance. 
 Divorce and intelligent choice are of course the only 
 corrective. This is a subject that should receive careful 
 
94 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 investigation in order to understand the conditions under 
 which one robs, bestows or becomes neutral with re- 
 spect to the vital energy of another. This is undoubt- 
 edly one of the most fruitful causes of divorce, for as 
 soon as the magnetic balance is destroyed all sorts of 
 little troubles become big. As long as the powerful at- 
 traction and mutual stimulus remain, small troubles 
 become very small indeed. This is the reason why a 
 man and woman can get along together and constitute 
 a family while two men, or a man and a suffragette, 
 cannot. 
 
 Again, on the mental plane, where the relations of 
 capacities are ideal, the marriage may have taken place 
 too late in life, or the parties have made no effort to 
 develop common interests, and have therefore drifted 
 apart. Through the present state of opinion with re- 
 spect to marriage, whereby friendships are not permitted 
 with other men and women, except of a most superficial 
 character, the individual is robbed of that variety needed 
 for the stimulation and growth of his or her intellectual 
 and spiritual life. We seem to have arrived at an 
 impasse; it is only the few that find the path leading 
 to spiritual development and culture ; for the many it is 
 a question whether it is their duty to continue in a mar- 
 riage which is only a hollow symbol of love, or throw 
 society into a turmoil by dissolving every marriage that 
 fails of happiness. Either alternative seems intolerable. 
 
 Elinerson. In the spiritual world we change sexes 
 every moment. You love the worth in me, 
 then I am your husband; but it is not me but the worth 
 that fixes the love; and that worth is but a drop in the 
 ocean of worth that is beyond me. Meantime I adore 
 the greater worth in another, and I am his wife. He 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 95 
 
 aspires to the higher worth in another spirit and is wife 
 or receiver of that influence. 
 
 Lycidas. But in this world we are hampered by ma- 
 terial bodies and their material needs, and 
 the problem is to organize society in such a form that 
 one may always have their soul-mate and yet protect 
 the interests of all concerned. 
 
 Beatrice. This is a matter that has been troubling me 
 
 ever since Emerson stated the Law of Love 
 
 at the beginning of our conference. Must Lycidas and 
 
 I drift away from each other if we continue to develop? 
 
 Emerson. The Law of Worth is not identical with 
 intellectual and aesthetic culture of which 
 Lycidas has been speaking, for it includes moral 
 worth as well. Where the intellectual bond may be- 
 come weak, the habits of joint labor, the memory of 
 many griefs divided and the many joys doubled by being 
 shared together, establishes a bond of moral worth and 
 makes many difficulties endurable; but of course life 
 lacks a great deal of a full realization. The only way 
 in which progressive souls can avoid divorce is by join- 
 ing the Law of Mutual Progress with the Law of Love. 
 When this is impossible there should be readjustment 
 or else the whole purpose of life is almost certain to be 
 defeated, for the love of the sexes is the sole road 
 (exceptions only apparent) by which salvation of the 
 spirit is to be achieved. 
 
 Beatrice. It is this illusion of Mutual Progress that 
 has lured lovers to an uncertain and disas- 
 trous fate, ever since the dawn of Romantic Love in the 
 
96 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 days of Dante and Petrarch. I confess I am still labor- 
 ing under this illusion, although I have only to look 
 about to see how few have achieved this monogamic 
 ideal. Therefore it would seem as if the Greater Family 
 plan which Lycidas mentioned were adopted, it would 
 relieve some of the conflict between love and duty. If, 
 after marriage, there is no special motive for intellectual 
 development, the parties to the marriage soon exhaust 
 each other and the result is mental and spiritual pov- 
 erty. If one goes outside of marriage for intellectual 
 stimulus there is scandal, but in the Greater Family with 
 proper safeguards and responsibilities all this is avoided. 
 
 Lycidas. I think it must be confessed that the finding 
 of a soul-mate or true counterpart in the 
 present order of society is exceptional, and that the 
 Greater Family would be a great boon for those whose 
 culture has advanced beyond the gossip stage. In fact, 
 I see no reason why this association of cultured people 
 should not lead to the revival of the French salon, and 
 give women an opportunity to develop into Madame de 
 Staels. 
 
 With the rapid growth of urban population, and the 
 tendency to live in large flats, I can see no reason why 
 a dozen families could not incorporate and build a large 
 apartment house, each family having its own flat, and 
 in addition thereto large parlors, library, dining room 
 and kitchen. The minor meals ipight be served in the 
 rooms of the minor families, preserving the family life ; 
 while the dinner could be served in the common dining 
 room, promoting the social life. This work could be 
 looked after by such members as cared to do it, which 
 would afford considerable relief for those having in- 
 terests in other directions. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 97 
 
 Beatrice* That would be splendid. The home should 
 be the center of all woman's activities ; with 
 few exceptions her activities should be subordinate to the 
 home. A complementary institution would be educa- 
 tional and industrial schools, where the art crafts should 
 not only be taught, but an opportunity afforded for 
 women to put in their spare time producing articles for 
 sale. A woman demands change, and is not so well 
 fitted for the minute division of labor and its monotonous 
 tasks. I see no reason why all the art work of our 
 factories could not be produced by women in their 
 leisure hours. Certainly with a powerful society back- 
 ing the movement a market could be established even 
 if prices were a little higher. Thus an outlet could be 
 found for her restlessness which now manifests itself 
 in fads and follies, frivolity and fanaticism. But on the 
 other hand I am afraid that when one found their coun- 
 terpart in another's husband or wife there would be a 
 good deal of jealousy. 
 
 Lycidas. It would certainly put everyone on their 
 mettle. If a man had a fine wife, he would 
 have to make himself attractive if he expected to retain 
 her, and vice versa. As for jealousy, it would have to 
 be one of the agreements at the beginning that it should 
 be barred. I do not think it would take long for cul- 
 tured people to adapt themselves to this mode of life. 
 Certainly no one would expect that all difficulties would 
 disappear; human nature is a difficult proposition. 
 
 You spoke of the need of a powerful society to back 
 your industrial movement. This suggests that several 
 of the Greater Families in a city, and in cities through 
 the country could form themselves into an order. This 
 order would become a powerful aristocracy, — a true 
 
98 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 aristocracy based on true worth. It would come to 
 have a powerful influence politically as well as socially, 
 and if it determined that it was for the benefit of society 
 to buy the product of the art crafts institution, here 
 would be a sale for the product. It would soon be as 
 great an honor to belong to such a society as to be a 
 32nd degree mason. To be expelled from such a so- 
 ciety would be a calamity, and therefore the executive 
 officers would be able to exert a powerful pressure in 
 keeping the members in the right path. 
 
 Beatrice. I would not grudge the Executive Com- 
 mittee the task of settling all the domestic 
 squabbles, keeping the children of Newlyweds in order, 
 et cetera. 
 
 Lycidas. It would undoubtedly be a great task for 
 the pioneers to get such an institution into 
 working order, but gradually customs and methods of 
 procedure would be developed just as in our present 
 society which is the product of hundreds of years. 
 
 In looking after the widows and orphans, helping the 
 unfortunate, and caring for the sick, there would be 
 opportunity to develop the altruistic side of our nature, 
 which at the present time hardly extends beyond "me 
 and my wife, my son John and his wife." But the 
 Greater Family would carry its own insurance, look 
 after all charity among its families, and if this institution 
 were generally adopted there would be no occasion for 
 public charity, which is a poor, cold thing for the indi- 
 vidual. One-half of the delinquent boys and girls 
 brought before the probate court come from families 
 broken by the three D's — death, desertion and divorce. 
 The permanence of the Greater Family is a strong 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 99 
 
 argument for it; the three D's would make little differ- 
 ence to the loving care of the children, — they would 
 be brought up to have so many aunts and uncles that they 
 would always feel that they had a home, rather than cast 
 adrift upon the world detached from all bonds of 
 affection. 
 
 Recently a prominent minister was arrested for main- 
 taining a "soul-mate." It is easy for us to condemn 
 him. It is always best to conform to the law, and while 
 it would have been best for him to have sought a di- 
 vorce, he may have thought it would cause a less dis- 
 turbance to continue his double life, providing he was 
 not discovered. The minister attributed the cause of his 
 course to the unsympathetic character of his wife. 
 
 "She was of no help to me in my ministry. Since 
 
 meeting Mrs. I have been a better man and a better 
 
 preacher." This and many similar cases, as well as 
 unnumbered cases that result in divorce, and still more 
 unnumbered cases that result in a dryrot of the soul, 
 are to the social-philosopher real soul-tragedies, and in- 
 stead of hurling curses at these people he sees the deep 
 need of social reorganization in such a way as to meet 
 the laws of nature. 
 
 Beatrice. With the liberal divorce laws you have ad- 
 vocated, I am afraid there would be a fre- 
 quent exchange of wives in these families. 
 
 Lycidas. I am inclined to think the result would be 
 just the opposite. If a marriage had to 
 exist on its merits rather than by force of law, the par- 
 ties thereto would put forth their greatest rather than 
 their least efforts to make themselves agreeable, — it 
 would be a stimulus to character building. Such mental 
 
100 ■ ;, Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 intercourse with a woman who understands her role as 
 inspirer produces a rejuvenescence of the tired soul, and 
 generates immense power. 
 
 Would it not be nice to have members of your family 
 look after you when sick or in distress? How many 
 men and women go to pieces with the breaking up of 
 their family! It is not pleasant to be an object of 
 public charity, or dependent on charity, even in a home 
 for the aged, to say nothing of the poorhouse. Would 
 it not be nice to have a home in every city that you 
 might visit, — a society of free masons which both men 
 and women could enjoy, with no secrets other than 
 those enjoined by good taste? The present city life is 
 cold and selfish; you seldom know your neighbors; but 
 these families and orders of pledged friends would give 
 warmth and light to life, and make the Brotherhood of 
 Man an actual living thing. 
 
 A husband may be a great lover of music, for which 
 the wife cares nothing. A wife may be passionately 
 fond of Browning, but the husband regards it as non- 
 sense. He may care for science or philosophy; she for 
 art or literature. They may care a great deal for each 
 other; but under present conditions life loses one of its 
 great lights and glories, — mutual enjoyment of the 
 things we love. From the more practical point of view 
 there is a great loss; there is a lack of stimulus in intel- 
 lectual work and in spiritual progress, which only a 
 sympathetic and appreciative person of the opposite sex 
 can give. When it was only necessary to step into the 
 public parlor of the Greater Family to find your soul- 
 mate and enjoy her society freely and above board, 
 there would be far less reason to disturb the family life 
 of children and rearrange property. But if the case did 
 require this there would be no such disturbance as 
 
Celestial C,onf.'e^re^cirS/ o,n; I,cpe] loi 
 
 formerly, — no occasion for kicking up a great hub-bub 
 or even getting angry. The home remains the same, 
 the children still have their parents. Inherited notions 
 may feel that there is something wrong about this all- 
 too-easy adjustment, but if it corrects the terrible state 
 of society which we have indicated as daily dragging 
 unnumbered souls to hell, don't you think it time to re- 
 form our irrational and a priori notions, and try to 
 cast off the shell of barbarism and get in tune with the 
 infinite ? 
 
 But theorize as much as we may, we cannot map out 
 plans of this kind precisely and definitively. All schemes 
 must be tried in the laboratory of experience. This 
 plan might work finely for people of a high degree of 
 culture; but people where the struggle of existence was 
 more acute might find a different plan more beneficial. 
 But it is a great step in advance to place the discussion 
 of this question on a rationalistic and naturalistic basis, 
 instead of on the dogmatic. Just as the chemist has 
 predicted new chemical elements in the periodic table, 
 the social psychologist predicts the need of a new social 
 unit or rung in the ladder of love leading to the Divine, 
 in order to resolve the present distressing conflict be- 
 tween Love and Duty. 
 
 Beatrice. I am convinced of the general correctness 
 of your position, but I am not quite clear 
 how the intimate family life would work among the com- 
 mon herd, where meat and drink and the material things 
 of life are the sole aim. It might do for "transcedentals" 
 to try some new romance, but I am afraid that anything 
 more intimate than the clan would develop the jealousy 
 of the plebeian. I am afraid you have in mind such 
 supermen as Dante, Petrarch, Mill and Thackeray, who 
 
102 ^s\ : (^e^^sihl ^'dnfirehces^ on Love 
 
 found in their love for other men's wives inspiration 
 only for the best things. 
 
 Lycidas. The marriage of the units of the Greater 
 
 Family is only to be formal. In the Oneida 
 Community, where the marriage was real, I am unable 
 to learn that they had any such trouble, and they were 
 neither "transcedentals" nor supermen, unless their leader 
 Noyes be regarded as such. Noyes was a minister, a 
 man of sincerity and earnestness, who sought to solve 
 the same problem I am. He was ahead of his age, just 
 as I am. I seek to give a little greater play for the indi- 
 viduality than he did. I start on a higher spiritual plane 
 and concede less to the flesh than he, but like him I hold 
 that no family, whatever its form, can hope to achieve 
 success without a religious basis. If it has this it will 
 not matter whether the family is composed of "manuals" 
 or "intellectuals"; there will be every reason to hope 
 for success. I am convinced that the majority of cul- 
 tured men and women are unfortunate in their mar- 
 riage. What else could you expect of the choices of 
 an immature youth? But owing to their education in 
 these matters, and to the state of public opinion, they 
 feel obliged to go through life without that inspiration 
 and co-operation that results in work that would greatly 
 benefit the world. Men like Lavoisier, Agassiz, Schlie- 
 man, Huber, Faraday and Curie, who have had wives 
 that were real soul-mates and partners in their work, 
 are few. It is quite possible that but for the inspiration 
 and co-operation of their wives they would never have 
 been heard of. On the other hand, men like those you 
 mention, who have the courage to find inspiration in the 
 love of other men's wives, are also few. Not many 
 care to sacrifice duty to love in this way. But this sacri- 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 103 
 
 fice can be avoided if society by mutual agreement will 
 so constitute itself that every man and woman can find 
 the high friendship essential to their work, and in such 
 a manner as to preserve social order and conform to 
 an enlightened public opinion, and which would not ap- 
 prove of a state of society like that of Greece, where 
 the hetaerse were the women of inspiration. 
 
 The Orientals kept their women in seclusion; the 
 Greeks did not allow their women to sit at their own 
 table if male guests were present. Now I ask if the 
 demand that public opinion countenance intimate friend- 
 ships among groups of married men and women involves 
 any greater transformation of society than has already 
 taken place? 
 
 If the world is going to move on to the highest things 
 of the spirit, love must be made active and efficient, 
 and youthful marriages cannot be depended upon to 
 accomplish this. Then the notion that a human being 
 cannot or ought not to love more than one is all non- 
 sense. One ought to live in an atmosphere of deep ; 
 love on all sides. The notion that the sole function of 
 love is to create children is a mistaken one. Plato taught 
 the doctrine of creating spiritual children, but he failed 
 to realize its full implications and practical possibilities. 
 In these days of scientific management and industrial 
 efficiency, it is strange that the possibilities of the social 
 organism as a whole have been overlooked. Science has 
 been very backward in the sociological field. Religious 
 dogma has had science bluffed, but a Copernicus is sure 
 to arise sooner or later. 
 
 In the old days the wives of great writers and thinkers 
 were wont to hold the lamp while their husbands, for 
 example, Cicero, Pliny and Apuleus, read or wrote. I 
 love to dwell upon this picture of woman as the lamp- 
 bearer to the great orators and thinkers; for through 
 
104 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 the ages, where men and women have been fortunately 
 mated, and where women have been accorded the same 
 social plane, they have been not only as lamps to their 
 feet, and as lights on their path in the ordinary affairs 
 of life, but have been their guiding stars in the highest 
 fields of intellectual effort. 
 
 This is the beacon guides to deeds of worth 
 And urges me to see the glorious goal; 
 This bids me leave behind the vulgar throng. 
 
 Madame Lavoisier worked with her husband in his 
 laboratory, wrote out his experiments and illustrated his 
 treatise on Chemistry, and edited his memoirs. Mrs. 
 Schb'cman was her husband's right hand in those glorious 
 enterprises at Hissarlik and Mycenae, which secured for 
 both undying fame. Huber, the naturalist, blind from 
 his 17th year, worked through the eyes and hands of his 
 wife for forty years. He devised the experiments; she 
 executed and recorded them. For nearly half a century 
 Mrs. Faraday was not only the soul-mate but a help- 
 mate and inspirer of one of the world's greatest physi- 
 cists. During the long search into the inner heart of 
 nature Pierre Curie was often so discouraged and de- 
 pressed that had he not been sustained by his more san- 
 guine wife, he would time and again have given up in 
 despair. But she never lost faith. Before her deft hand 
 and fertile brain difificulties disappeared. You know the 
 result of their combined labor, which has placed them 
 in the front rank of great chemists. Perhaps of all 
 these women it may be said: 
 
 And whenever the way seemed long, 
 
 Or his heart began to fail, 
 She would sing a more wonderful song 
 
 Or tell a more wonderful tale. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 105 
 
 These men and women were accidentally fortunate. 
 But why should other men and women, through the 
 inevitable mistakes of youthful immaturity, lack this 
 assistance and inspiration? Why should the world fail 
 to benefit by such joint labor? The best results in art, 
 literature, science, philosophy or any other field of en- 
 deavor are secured when men and women work together. 
 This is particularly true of science, where man supplies 
 the slow, logical reasoning power, and the woman the 
 vivid, far-reaching imagination. Men generalize from 
 facts; women deduce from ideas. Thus collaborating, 
 each with his or her predominating faculties, combine 
 to make up two complete individuals as already ex- 
 plained, and they are thus able to achieve results that 
 would not otherwise be possible. 
 
 Beatrice. But if women are to engage in such labors 
 it would destroy the home life that you 
 deem so essential to the welfare of mankind. 
 
 Lycidas. I am not acquainted with the home life of 
 the women I have mentioned; but I do not 
 think your conclusion a necessary one. Mary Somer- 
 ville was a great mathematician, whose "Mechanism of 
 the Heavens" was something more than a translation 
 of La Place's "Mechanic Celeste." She did not let her 
 pursuit of science interfere with her social and domestic 
 duties any more than did Gaetana Agnesi, a great mathe- 
 matician of an earlier period. Laura Bassi, a European 
 celebrity and professor of physics in the University of 
 Bologna, was a mother of twelve children, and was as 
 much at home with needle and spindle as with the appa- 
 ratus of her laboratory. Mme. Lapaute, a distinguished 
 astronomical computer, never allowed her engrossing 
 
io6 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 work to cause her to neglect her household duties. On 
 the other hand, I have never known a suffragette to be 
 a good housekeeper; but then, these were nearly all 
 women of the masculine type. I think the question is 
 largely one of type ; the truly feminine woman will never 
 fail man. 
 
 The proper division of labor, it would seem to me, 
 would be for men to educate themselves for special lines 
 of work, while women should educate themselves along 
 artistic and musical lines, and seek to acquire a general 
 knowledge of sciences as an antidote for the nar- 
 rowness and bigotry of the specialist. For it has truth- 
 fully been said, that nothing gives falser views of nature 
 as a whole ; nothing more unfits the mind for the proper 
 appreciation of higher truth ; nothing more incapacitates 
 one for the enjoyment of the masterpieces of literature, or 
 the sweet amenities of life, than the narrow occupation 
 of the specialist who sees nothing in the universe but 
 electrons, microbes and protozoa. The wider culture, 
 which is really more suited to the feminine mind, would 
 correct and enlarge that of the man, and the growing 
 unity of the sciences, and the increasing difficulty of 
 discovery makes this an important factor in the scientific 
 method of creating spiritual children. 
 
 Beatrice. It has been running through my mind that 
 perhaps Society has been too severe upon 
 those men and women of genius who have violated her 
 rules regarding marriage. Conscious of their powers 
 and knowing that they must bask in the sunshine of love 
 in order to develop them, they have cut the Gordian 
 knot and grasped at love where they could find it. Duty 
 in the narrower sense did not bother them; but their 
 duty to promote the eternal stream of progress was 
 imperative. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love I1J7 
 
 Lycidas. There appears to be considerable force in 
 what you say, but failing to feel the im- 
 perative demands of genius, I must number myself 
 among those cowardly souls who prefer that reform be 
 brought about in an orderly manner, and would prefer 
 to sacrifice any needs I might have to conventional duty. 
 Here as elsewhere Freedom demands revolution. For- 
 tunately I have near me a store of inspiration far greater 
 than I am able to respond to. 
 
 Beatrice. Let me illustrate what I mean. Take the 
 case of Byron. It was through his love for 
 the Countess Guiccioli that his poetry entered upon a 
 higher plane. To her, says Brandes, the world owes a 
 debt of gratitude. It was some years before the old 
 Count developed jealousy. Take the case of Shelley. 
 He married Harriet Westbrook when she was i6, and 
 found her impossible. He then ran away with Mary 
 Goodwin. In his essay on love he says: "If we reason 
 we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that 
 the airy children of our brain were formed anew within 
 another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves 
 should vibrate with our own ; that lips of motionless ice 
 should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the 
 heart's best blood." 
 
 Lycidas. Literature offers many similar illustrations 
 of society's rules being violated with seem- 
 ing benefit to society. A. W. Schlegel married Caroline, 
 widow of Dr. Bohmer, and she collaborated with him in 
 his translations of Shakespeare. When later she met 
 Schelling, and it became evident that she was indis- 
 pensable to him, Schlegel gave his consent to break the 
 bond between them with perfect good feeling. Schlegel 
 
io8 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 soon after took up life with Sophia Bernhardi, who 
 divorced her husband for his sake. After the death of 
 Caroline, SchelHng wrote of her : 'This rare woman, 
 who to masculine strength of soul united the tenderest, 
 most womanly, most loving heart. We shall never see 
 her like again." 
 
 Dorothea, the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, mar- 
 ried the banker Viet to please her parents. The mar- 
 riage being uncongenial she obtained a divorce and took 
 up life with Frederick Schlegel. She became the orig- 
 inal of his sensational novel Lucinde, and acquired con- 
 siderable distinction as a writer herself. 
 
 The philosopher Fichte proposed to his wife that they, 
 the two Schlegels and their wives, and Schelling, take 
 a large house, form one family, have one cook and so 
 forth. 
 
 The philosopher Schleiermacher, writing regarding the 
 many degrading and unreal marriages, and the many 
 unsuccessful attempts at real marriage, which the state 
 makes binding, says "many attempts are necessary, and 
 that if four or five couples were taken together really 
 good marriage might result, provided they were allowed 
 to exchange." 
 
 Everyone of course knows the story of how Wagner 
 set aside his first wife, although she had been a great 
 help to him in his days of struggle with poverty. But 
 from an artistic standpoint she was impossible. He 
 married Cosima von Bulow, daughter of Liszt. To her 
 he said : "Nothing has significance ; nothing has any pur- 
 pose for me save through you. With you I can achieve 
 everything; without you nothing." Of course you know 
 how after Wagner's death she became the head and front 
 of the Wagnerian movement. 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 109 
 
 Beatrice. Should Society deny such a supreme genius 
 the inspiration of the woman he needed, 
 and who felt a call to help him? 
 
 Lycidas. There have undoubtedly been unnumbered 
 souls who have not been so brave as these 
 we have mentioned, or as Society says, so foolish or 
 criminal. They have failed to find their counterpart; 
 they have gone through life feeling like a spirit in 
 prison, failing the inspiration necessary to release that 
 spirit. Amiel, as everyone knows, was such a spirit; 
 the diary he left makes this clear, as well as gives proof 
 of his great powers. His presence at our conference 
 is in the hope of contributing to the New Freedom. 
 
 Beatrice. Shelly, as spokesman for the English of the 
 19th century, held that the purpose of love 
 is to promote happiness. George Sand, speaking for 
 the French, holds that to love is an end, and that the 
 demands of the heart should be supreme. This prob- 
 ably explains why the French birth-rate is running be- 
 hind. Schleiermacher, who was a more profound 
 thinker, found the purpose of love in the development 
 of character. This is very close to our view, that all 
 the rays of love should be so focused as to develop the 
 spiritual life, and yet so planned as to make joy a neces- 
 sary incident. In discovering that the law of love is 
 the most certain and positive path by which souls may 
 mount to God, I believe you have discovered a law in 
 the spiritual world comparable to the Law of Gravi- 
 tation, for as the one holds souls in their orbit the other 
 holds planets. 
 
 Lycidas. As the mechanical engineer would like to sec 
 all of the waste water power used, I would 
 
I lo Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 have the individual so united in and surrounded by love, 
 that the maximum of mental and spiritual power would 
 be developed. The amount of energy wasted through 
 dogma and prejudice is simply enormous, and the un- 
 happiness incalculable. The individual is half dead un- 
 less stimulated by a loving society. The love of one is 
 great, but the love of many is greater, more inspiring. 
 I am a strong individualist, but am forced to recognize 
 that there are inexorable social elements in our nature. 
 But if it is possible, as I believe that it is, by some social 
 scheme to utilize this waste energy arising from broken 
 lives, broken or unhappy homes, through making love 
 active and efficient, the whole social and spiritual life 
 of mankind would be transformed. A perfectly happy 
 love-life would abolish the prostitute, the libertine, and 
 a good many of the suffragettes, and we would be on 
 the road to abolish war and establish the brotherhood 
 of man. But the good church people would rather se^ 
 the world go to perdition than go contrary to the rev- 
 elations of the Bible, the revelations of God in the Laws 
 of Nature to the contrary notwithstanding. The great- 
 est achievement in the world is the acquirement of an 
 open mind. Someone has referred to the infinite ca- 
 pacity of the human mind to resist the penetration of 
 knowledge. Society must enter upon a more social life, 
 the individual is not so self-sufficient as he has been 
 wont to think. Goethe was greatly dependent upon the 
 inspiring society of women, and at the Court of Weimar 
 established an intellectual society wherein Jean Paul 
 says, "That a woman is married signifies nothing." 
 Schiller and Jean Paul came under the influence of 
 Frau von Kalb at Weimar, and the latter was led to 
 exclaim, "This much is certain, the heart of the world 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love iii 
 
 is beating with a more spiritual and greater revolution 
 than the political, and one more destructive." 
 
 Beatrice. I can see quite plainly that the loss to the 
 world would have been incalculable if genius 
 had not broken the conventions and insisted upon having 
 the inspiration and help of women whenever and wher- 
 ever they found it suited to their needs, and if women 
 had not equally felt the call to contribute to the world 
 stream of progress. The individual and the social life 
 should be organized to that supreme end. But the court 
 of Weimar went too far when it insisted that the heart 
 had the right to regard its own code of love as the New 
 Moral Code. This was substantially the French view, 
 is a one-sided view of life, and leads to evil results. The 
 heart will secure a more enduring kingdom, by holding 
 to Schleiermacher's view that love should be guided so 
 as to promote character, or as you say spiritual develop- 
 ment and evolution. 
 
 Lycidas. The limitations of the monogamic marriage 
 relation, and the needs of the mind and soul 
 for a freer association between the sexes, has often been 
 felt and various attempts have been made to meet this 
 need. For example, there was the League of Virtue 
 founded by Wm. von Humboldt and Henrietta Herz. 
 The members of this League sought to develop them- 
 selves by writing long letters in Greek and Hebrew 
 wherein they tore themselves up into lint, and exhibited 
 themselves to each other's contemplation in this unrav- 
 eled condition. They put themselves under pressure ano 
 squeezed out tears and heart's blood There was another 
 German society which developed the cult of Spiritual 
 Wives. When they found a counterpart in another 
 
112 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 man's wife, they agreed to be husband and wife in the 
 next world and friends in this. But the best results 
 cannot be achieved without living the community life in a 
 legal manner. I therefore have proposed to meet the 
 defects of many experiments by incorporating a number 
 of married couples into a Greater Family, and assume 
 definite social obligations. 
 
 Beatrice. I am inclined to think that it would require 
 a society of supermen and women to live 
 in such a family free from jealousy. 
 
 Lycidas. It certainly would require men and women 
 of superior culture, and those of a jealous 
 nature should not join. Jealousy is an anti-social emo- 
 tion, and should be numbered among the vices; but our 
 present marriage institution makes it one of the chief 
 virtues, and jealousy regards it as a crime that a mar- 
 ried partner should have a friendship with a person of 
 the opposite sex beyond the chit-chat of a public function. 
 Society under the influence of religious dogma has 
 allowed the individual to cultivate this selfish side of his 
 and her nature greatly to its detriment. But jealousy 
 is not an essential element of human nature. Consider 
 the friendship between the distinguished German writer 
 Borne and the widow Jeanette Wohl, which continued 
 for seventeen years in the tenderest manner. She was 
 his secretary and inspiring genius. Having been unfor- 
 tunate in her first marriage, she refused to marry him 
 lest it should break the charm of their happy relations. 
 He writes to her, "Though I did not confess it to you, 
 I always dreaded that marriage might drag down ouv 
 beautiful friendship to the level of every-day sordid 
 reality. But I thought, what I still think, that you 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 113 
 
 would gain something by it, and this would have indi- 
 rectly increased my happiness. So there is nothing to 
 prevent you from marrying another man; you and I 
 would lose nothing by it." It was not long after that 
 she put to proof this last assertion. A man by the name 
 of Strauss proposed to her, and she wrote in reply, "The 
 Doctor has no one in the world but me; I am to him 
 friend, sister, all that these words convey of kindliness, 
 friendliness, sympathy. Can you grudge this to him, 
 to whom Hfe has given nothing else, and who has recon- 
 ciled himself to his fate — is even contented with it? I 
 can think of no better possibility than that the Doctor 
 should come to live with us when, where, and for as 
 long as he chooses; for altogether if he wishes. I can't 
 say you, my heart is too full ; canst thou think any- 
 thing else possible? If so, then all is different from 
 what I thought. I ! — we ! dream of deserting a man 
 like the Doctor — why he would be a ruined, a lost man ! 
 I would rather give up everything, rather die, than have 
 that upon my conscience," etc., etc. Strauss became a 
 friend of Borne; all three lived together until the death 
 of Borne, and Strauss defended the honor of Borne in 
 a duel with Heine. 
 
 Charlotte Steiglitz gives a remarkable example of free- 
 dom from jealousy and a desire to contribute to world 
 progress. She made the mistake of taking an effeminate 
 Leipzig student for the ideal man of her day dreams, — 
 an inferior poet for a great artist. She uses all her re- 
 sources to inspire him, and failing in this and thinking 
 it is a lack in herself rather than in him she writes to 
 him, "I wish, Heinrich, you would have more intercourse, 
 either personal or by correspondence, with clever, 
 womenly women. They are the poet's true public. It 
 would be of interest to you to learn, frankly and truth- 
 
114 Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 fully, what they think of you and your work. Such 
 intercourse would be both instructive and refreshing, a 
 useful and agreeable diversion to you." This was un- 
 doubtedly the correct program, but this or nothing else 
 was capable of making him a great poet. Caroline then 
 conceived the idea that he required a great sorrow to 
 effect his spiritual regeneration. His apathy increasing, 
 she wrote him a letter hoping that the sorrow that was 
 to come to him would make him calm, strong and great. 
 Then she lay down on the bed and with a firm hand 
 plunged the dagger of their wedding tour into her heart. 
 Beatrice. The example of this woman, who gave up 
 life in the hope of advancing the Spiritual 
 Kingdom, certainly puts to shame all those women who 
 refuse to cast their jealousy aside. 
 
 "The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free. 
 
 For woman is not undeveloped man 
 
 But diverse; could we make her as the man, 
 
 Sweet love were slain; his dearest bond is this, 
 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow; 
 
 The man be more of woman, she of man; 
 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 
 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
 
 Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; 
 
 Till at last she set herself to man. 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words; 
 
 And as these twain upon the skirts of time, 
 
 Sit side by side, full summed in all their powers, 
 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the to-be, 
 
Celestial Conferences on Love 
 
 "5 
 
 Self-reverent each, and reverencing each, 
 Distinct in individualities, 
 But like each other even as those who love, 
 Then comes the statelier Eden back to men; 
 Then springs the crowning race of human-kind. 
 May these things be." 
 
 FINIS. 
 
CELESTIAL CONFERENCES ON LOVE 
 
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 Conference One — The Ecstasy of Love 
 " Two — The Practice of Love 
 
 ** Three — The Mystery of Love 
 
 •* Four — The Philosophy of Love 
 
 ** Five — The Religion of Love 
 
 Six—The Conflict of Love and Duty 
 •• Seven — Love and Immortality 
 
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UNIVERSITY OK CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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