Page:Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome - William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax (1909).djvu/20

 6 means so strong in France: nevertheless there is a conventional bond, there, apparently a survival of the tyranny of the civil law of the Roman Empire, that is much stronger than any family tie in England. The family council is submitted to by all Frenchmen and Frenchwomen as a piece of unwritten law which is inexpugnable: a Frenchman cannot marry without leave of his parents before the age of twenty-five; the relationship of mother and child, which with all exaggerations is more or less natural in England, is almost sacerdotal in France, and is illuminated by a curious kind of conventional sentiment in literature, which sometimes fairly degrades for the time even the greatest authors into the rank of twaddlers. We do not say that a certain amount of sentiment bred by the family system is not genuine: it is reasonable to feel tenderness for the persons who have taken the pains and trouble of cherishing us in our helplessness, and to wish to pay them back with some little kindness when we no longer need that care, even when time has shown us to have no special sympathy