Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/96

Rh We have societies for the protection of beasts; and need a larger one for the protection of human beings in certain vital respects. It ought to be just ground for instant divorce wherever and whenever a human male forces unwelcome embraces upon any female, whatever. The beasts of the field don't do so. Why should men? More than that; it ought to be a criminal offence in the eye of the law; and as such, punishable, for any human male, under any cirumstances, whatever, to force the inclinations of any woman, whatever, or to exact or seek wifely offices or concessions, except when she wills and ordains that such may be. Make this a law, and we shall have less work for sextons in digging graves for "Mrs. so and so," at any age between sixteen and thirty-five. The common sense of mankind knows full well that he is no man, but only a satyr, who demands what cannot be granted, save with a shudder of unutterable horror and disgust; pangs past endurance, or at the risk of health and life.

The action of the muscles is as clear an expression of a passion, and the mental states behind it, as are the tones which utter it; for "Actions speak louder than words" is not only a truism, but an absolute and unqualified truth itself. Wherefore if you mean love, look love from top to toe, and all over!

LI. You never saw a sick man, really, desperately sick, whoever denied the existence of a God. It requires a fine stomach, keen appetite, and excellent digestion to make a first-class sceptic. Why? Because conditions of body effect changes in the soul's feelings; and the play between the outer and the inner being is mutual, for the soul affects the body for good or ill quite as much as the body affects the invisible soul. Married people arc either not aware of this double-acting law of the homos, or else wilfully ignore its heavy meanings. They live a cat-and-dog life, because neither reasons that some physical disturbance unhinges the soul, or that some metaphvsical derangement unfits the body to express what the soul itself may be completely full of. Thus, a woman suffering catamenial pains, or some other ill, is apt to be rather Novemberish externally, even while July really reigns deep down in her sweet, but ruffled, soul; and a man, worried to death with worldly cares, is