Common sense and its cultivation / by Hanbury Hankin ; with a foreword by Dr. C.S. Myers.

  • Hankin, E. Hanbury (Ernest Hanbury), 1865-1939.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Common sense and its cultivation / by Hanbury Hankin ; with a foreword by Dr. C.S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the emotional appeal made by the rest of the opera. In his younger days Herbert Spencer once heard that a friend of his was engaged to be married and thereupon sent him a letter of congratulation which consisted chiefly in a disquisition on marriage in which he ex¬ pressed such sentiments as the following :— “ There should be a thorough recognition on both sides of the equality of rights, and no amount of power should ever be claimed by one party greater than that claimed by the other. The present relationship as existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love ; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, by denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself ? To me the exercise of command on the part of a husband seems utterly repugnant to genuine love, and I feel sure that a man of generous feeling has too much sympathy with the dignity of his wife to think of dictating to her, and that no woman of truly noble mind will submit to be dictated to.” Spencer, in his autobiography, comments on this letter that “ It seems proper to remark that at the age of 73, one must not be held bound to all the opinions one expressed at the age of 24.” A young lady once wrote to a lady of my acquaintance in almost identical terms about the indignity of obeying one’s husband. She had an excuse for her opinions that was lacking to the philosopher in that she was a militant suffragette