23.


Extra-Legal Devices



It is, of course, a rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class
men escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that
their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one
hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them,
perhaps by reason of their very detachment and preoccupation, are
intrigued into the holy estate, and that not a few of them enter it
deliberately, convinced that it is the safest form of liaison possible
under Christianity. And on the other hand one must not forget the
biological fact that it is quite feasible to achieve offspring without
the imprimatur of Church and State. The thing, indeed, is so
commonplace that I need not risk a scandal by uncovering it in
detail. What I allude to, I need not add, is not that form of
irregularity which curses innocent children with the stigma of
illegitimacy, but that more refined and thoughtful form which
safeguards their social dignity while protecting them against
inheritance from their legal fathers. English philosophy, as I have
shown, suffers by the fact that Herbert Spencer was too busy to
permit himself any such romantic altruism--just as American
literature gains enormously by the fact that Walt Whitman
adventured, leaving seven sons behind him, three of whom are now