Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/188

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MARRIAGE AS A TRADE

tation of the ideal of the "silly angel," have all contributed to make of her not only a domestic animal, more or less sleek and ornamental, but a Philistine as well. Silly angels may, from the male point of view, be desirable and even adorable creatures; but one would not entrust them with the building of temples or the writing of great books. (Personally, I would not entrust them with the bringing up of children; but that is another matter.)

Art that is vital demands freedom of thought and expression, wide liberty of outlook and unhampered liberty of communication. And what freedom of thought and expression can be expected from a section of humanity which has not even a moral standard of its own, and adds to every "thou shalt not" in its law the saving and unspoken clause, "unless my master shall desire it of me." A man's body may be enslaved and subdued and the faculties of the thinker and the artist still be left alive In him; but they have never been known to survive when once his mind has been subdued and brought down to utter subjection. Epictetus came of a race that had known freedom; and the nameless man who