Thus, if my wife turns catholic, am I to pretend to turn catholic too, to save her the horrible distress of thinking that I am doomed to eternal perdition?  Or if she chooses to embrace the doctrine of direct illumination from heaven, and to hear voices bidding her to go or come, to do or abstain from doing, am I too to shape my conduct after these fancied monitions?  Or if it comes into her mind to serve tables, and to listen in all faith to the miracles of spiritualism, am I, lest I should pain her, to feign a surrender of all my notions of evidence, to pretend a transformation of all my ideas of worthiness in life and beyond life, and to go to seances with the same regularity and seriousness with which you go to church?  Of course in each of these cases everybody who does not happen to share the given peculiarity of belief, will agree that however severely a husband’s dissent might pain the wife, whatever distress and discomfort it might inflict upon her, yet he would be bound to let her suffer, rather than sacrifice his veracity and self-respect.  Why then is it any less discreditable to practise an insincere conformity in more ordinary circumstances?  If the principle of such conformity is good for anything at all, it ought to cover these less usual cases as completely as the others which are more usual.  Indeed there would be more to be said on behalf of conformity for politeness’ sake, where the woman had gone through some great process of change, for then one might suppose that her heart was deeply set on the matter.  Even then the plea would be worthless, but it is more indisputably worthless still where the sentiment which we are bidden to respect at the cost of our own freedom of speech is nothing more laudable than a fear of moving out of the common groove of religious opinion, or an intolerant and unreasoned bigotry, or mere stupidity and silliness of the vulgarest type.[23]

Ah, it is said, you forget that women cannot live without religion.  The present writer is equally of this opinion that women cannot be happy without a religion, nor men either.  That is not the question.  It does not follow because a woman cannot be happy without a religion, that therefore she cannot be happy unless her husband is of the same religion.  Still less, that she would be made happy by his insincerely pretending to be of the same religion.  And least of all is it true, if both these propositions were credible, that even then for the sake of her happiness he is bound not merely to live a life of imposture, but in so doing to augment the general forces of imposture in the world, and to make the chances of truth, light, and human improvement more and more unfavourable.  Women are at present far less likely than men to possess a sound intelligence and a habit of correct judgment.  They will remain so, while they have less ready access than men to the best kinds of literary and scientific training, and—­what is far more important—­while social arrangements exclude them from all those kinds of public activity, which are such powerful agents both in fitting men to judge soundly, and in forming in them the sense of responsibility for their judgments being sound.