Under the influence of the emotion thus manufactured the
most detestable people are spoilt with entirely undeserved
deference, obedience, and even affection whilst they live, and
mourned when they die by those whose lives they wantonly or
maliciously made miserable. And this is what we call natural
conduct. Nothing could well be less natural. That such a
convention should have been established shews that the
indissolubility of marriage creates such intolerable situations
that only by beglamoring the human imagination with a hypnotic
suggestion of wholly unnatural feelings can it be made to keep up
appearances.
If the sentimental theory of family relationship encourages bad
manners and personal slovenliness and uncleanness in the home, it
also, in the case of sentimental people, encourages the practice
of rousing and playing on the affections of children prematurely
and far too frequently. The lady who says that as her religion is
love, her children shall be brought up in an atmosphere of love,
and institutes a system of sedulous endearments and exchanges of
presents and conscious and studied acts of artificial kindness,
may be defeated in a large family by the healthy derision and
rebellion of children who have acquired hardihood and common sense
in their conflicts with one another.
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