The Renaissance woman, then, a woman of essentially fine grain, and well versed in everything it was her business to know, was a woman of absolute sincerity, and we must believe her when she speaks well of marriage. She considered that institution as perfectly reconcilable with the fulfilment of a mission in the world, indeed as favourable, almost indispensable, to it. She had no more reason to give up marriage than to give up eating and drinking: it is not this that enchains the soul. The idealists differed from the utilitarians solely in the belief that one marriage is enough: the former covered their faces if a widow, not ethereal enough to satisfy them, went by on the arm of a new husband; the latter applauded, and fancied that by this transaction the animal nature was held in check. But this is of little interest to us. The only result important to note is that a woman, without ceasing to be a woman, could win freedom for her affections and her activities as well as a man. When she had attained that condition of liberty, she ascribed all the honour to marriage, and blessed it instead of thinking that she owed everything to herself. Marriage, like many human inventions, is a contrivance capable of producing either liberty or tyranny, and women had simply altered its direction. They wielded intimate and domestic powers. Their rival was not the husband, they came to terms with him; it was the man who looked after their body or their soul, and to whom, out of weakness or indolence, they were led to attach themselves like an anaemic ivy-plant. To mark their place in this world they had themselves to learn how to obtain what brings happiness: health of body and of soul. Respected in regard to the body, it remained for them to gain self-respect in regard to the soul, and to show that true Christianity consists in bestowing power and liberty, not in withdrawing them. BOOK II. LIFE IN THE WORLD CHAPTER I THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE Margaret of France said, very incisively: “The defect of women is timidity.” They are born to fear. Women had become habituated to a passive and secondary part. They desired to escape from it, they felt the need of activity and a freer air, their wings were growing and they adored intellectual liberty, at any rate they said so—and they had in fact already snapped many of their chains; but when you come to close quarters and exchange confidences with them, you perceive that they are still held fast by a multitude of secondary diffidences, by tenuous invisible threads starting often enough from social conventions of little or no importance. They are unable to wing their flight, or they require a man to go first and shew them the way; or an absolute necessity, an enthusiasm, an impulse of devotion is necessary to start them off.