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It is simply because adultery corrupts the home and strikes at the welfare of the children; while fornication is very likely to found a home and protect the resulting children. You see the details of our religious thought are aimed at the preservation of the young. Our present moral code tends to the same direction. All of our novels and plays which exhibit life beyond kindergarten experience fall under the censorship of the Cornstock society. The novelist who presents life as pap for babes is praised for his loftiness of purpose and purity of ideas. In fact, there has always been an effort in America to cut its artistic output to fit the nursery.
"Now, is it at all probable, if men possess an eternal soul, that its advancement in a future life would depend on exactly those acts and sentiments which assist in making the world safe for children? Would it not be quite the reverse? It would be a grasping of the actual complexities of life in order thoroughly to master it if we really had an infinitude of life bearing down upon us. No, the general tendency of human culture shows that our personalities cease at the grave." Mr. Ditmas thumped his cigar stump away.
"So you really are an atheist, after all," said Belshue.
"Not at all," denied Ditmas sharply, "if the whirl of nebulous gas can develop worlds which produce creatures of such profound sacrificial instincts that they refuse to look truth in the eye for the benefit of the unborn, creation cannot be dubbed Godless. Consider the pains and the trouble the human race goes to never to think coherently on any question; it is as beautifully pathetic as the stork which feathers its nest from the down plucked from its own bleeding bosom. All other animals see things simply as they are, but man has reached a point where he sees nothing as it is. Only a God could accomplish that."
The two men walked on through the evening with scarcely another word. The jeweller was offended. It seemed to him somehow sinful to speak ironically of nothingness. Belshue's feeling were probably the result of the hill life,