The state makes laws, not for love, but for the family.
Happy that family the parents of which are bound by cosmic not by
municipal affection. Nevertheless,
Say what one will, Love scoffs at laws; howsoever marriage and divorce
may be regulated by parliamentary statute.
Man, as a member of a political community, may make marriage laws to suit
that community--laws to suit that community--laws "de vinculo
matrimonii" and laws "de mensa et thoro", decrees "nisi prius" and
decrees absolute; but
Law can no more bind the affections than it can bind the sweet influences
of the Pleiades. And yet, at bottom,
Beneath all municipal and parochial regulations, a great and cosmic law
does govern the relations of the sexes; and
The lightest whim of the lightest lady has a definite, perhaps a cosmic,
fount and origin.
* * *