for the time when marriage is abolished.

"We will adopt an orphan, imagine that it is our child, and bring it up
in our principles. We could educate a child of each sex, and then marry
them when the time came, before God, with no other temple than the
desert and no priest but love. We should have formed their souls to
respect truth and justice, so that, thanks to us, there would be one
pure and happy couple on the face of the earth."

The suppression of marriage, then, was the idea, and, in a future more
or less distant, free love!

It is interesting to discover by what series of deductions George Sand
proceeds and on what principles she bases everything. When once her
principles are admitted, the conclusion she draws from them is quite
logical.

What is her essential objection to marriage? The fact that marriage
fetters the liberty of two beings. "Society dictates to you the formula
of an oath. You must swear that you will be faithful and obedient to me,
that you will never love any one but me, and that you will obey me in
everything. One of those oaths is absurd and the other vile. You cannot
be answerable for your heart, even if I were the greatest and most
perfect of men." Now comes the question of love for another man. Until
then it was considered that such love was a weakness, and that it might
become a fault. But, after all, is not passion a fatal and irresistible
thing?

"No human creature can command love, and no one is to be blamed for
feeling it or for ceasing to feel it. What lowers a woman is untruth." A