Closely associated with high ideals of womanhood is necessarily a pure
understanding of love, even in its physical basis. While preparing this
lecture I discovered that James Oliphant (in the _International Journal
of Ethics_, Vol. 9, pp. 288-289, 1898) has well expressed some of the
views that in a more or less unformulated shape have been in my mind
for years.
[Sidenote: Ideals of love in art.]
"If the true preparation for love and marriage is, as I hold it to
be, to learn to associate physical passion with the higher
emotions developed by social sympathy--with a single-hearted
devotion that demands courage, and self-sacrifice and considerate
forethought and tenderness; if we wish to bind all these qualities
together in the imagination of the young and clothe the conception
with every attribute of beauty that fancy can devise, how can we
forego the precious opportunities that lie to our hand in the
persuasive witchery of art? The power that may be exercised in the
formation of character by the presentment of ideal types is as yet
very imperfectly utilized. Love is _par excellence_ the theme of
the artist, and young people will soon find this out for
themselves; but there is a wide difference in the degrees of
idealization, and, while we concern ourselves to exclude the
grosser forms, we neglect the only effective means of
accomplishing this, namely, the persistent presentation of the
sentiment in its noblest examples. It is the prevalent idea that
the longer we can keep all notions of love, even in its romantic
guise, out of children's heads, the better it will be for them.
Surely it would be a wiser policy to fill their minds as soon as
they are able to receive them, with the creations of art in which
love is represented in its sublimest aspects. The youth who is
familiar with the love-stories of Shakespeare, and George Eliot,
and Meredith, will suffer little harm from the gilded sensualism
of the Restoration drama. Let us hasten to implant the images of
beauty that will keep the soul sweet and wholesome, and free from
the taint of any later influences, however sordid these may be."
In the lecture on marriage as offering one of the problems for the
larger sex-education (Sec. 12) and in the reference to general literature
in Sec. 23, I have called attention to literature which will be suggestive
and useful to those who are considering the young man's attitude
towards love and marriage.