The “eternal triangle,” you see; but it differs from other triangles in that it is not a story of passion, but of punishment. We do not see the guilty love in the days of its happiness, but only in the days of its remorse. As in all Hawthorne’s stories, we meet, not people who are acting, but people who are looking back upon actions long since committed. This is one kind of art, and I admit the greatness of “The Scarlet Letter” as a piece of technique. But we are here discussing art works as human and social products; and I point out, as in the case of so many other tragedies, how temporary and unsubstantial is the ground upon which it rests. The ethical basis of “The Scarlet Letter” is the conviction that marriage is indissoluble, and that a young woman who has been given in marriage to an elderly man, and finds herself unhappy, is bound by the laws of God to remain in the bonds of that unhappy marriage. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the ideas of mankind should undergo a change; suppose we should come to the conviction that a young woman who finds herself married to an elderly man whom she does not love, and who conceives an intense and enduring passion for a younger man, and desires to have children by that younger man--suppose we should decide that this woman, in remaining with the older and unloved man, and denying life to children by the younger man, is committing a crime against posterity, violating a fundamental law upon which race progress depends? You can see that in that case “The Scarlet Letter” would become entirely archaic, an object of curiosity mingled with repugnance. The American government honored this eminently respectable novelist by making him, first a gauger of customs, and then its consul to Liverpool. He was a prematurely old man then, and fled from the cold fogs of England to Rome--which he liked no better. But he patiently collected information concerning Roman antiquities, and composed a novel called “The Marble Faun,” which is dutifully read as a guide book by all school-marms visiting the Eternal City. How well adapted this Puritan genius was to interpret the Latin world, you may judge from the fact that he was shocked by nude statues, and could not see why sculptors continued to overlook the necessity for marble clothing. That skin was made before clothing, and may continue to be worn after clothing is forgotten, is a fact which did not occur to this traveler from Salem.