Christianity.  In words translated into English by herself, Feuerbach says, “that alone is a religious marriage which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage—­love.”  Again, he says that marriage is only sacred when it is an inward attraction confirmed by social and personal obligations; “for a marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction of love—­in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing—­is not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage.”  As a moral and social obligation, marriage is to be held sacred; its sacredness grows out of its profound human elements of helpfulness, nurture and emotional satisfaction, while its obligation rises from its primary social functions.  It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with deep moral and social responsibilities.  Some such conception of marriage as this she seems to have accepted, which found its obligation in the satisfaction it gives to the inner nature, and in the fulfilment of social responsibilities.  The influence of Compte may also have been felt in the case of both Lewes and Marian Evans; they saw in the marriage form a fulfilment of human, not of legal, requirements.

While there is no doubt they would both gladly have accepted the legal form had that been possible, yet they were sufficiently out of sympathy with the conventionalities of society to cause them to disregard that form when it could not be complied with.  They regarded themselves, however, as married, and bound by all the ties and requirements which marriage imposes.  They proclaimed themselves to their friends as husband and wife, and they were so accepted by those who knew them.  In her letters to literary correspondents she always mentioned Lewes as “my husband.”  The laws of most civilized nations recognize these very conditions, and regard the acceptance of the marriage relation before the world as a sufficient form.

Those who have written of this marriage, bear testimony to its devotion and beauty.  The author of the account of her life and writings in the Westminster Review, an early and intimate friend, says the “union was from the first regarded by themselves as a true marriage, as an alliance of a sacred kind, having a binding and permanent character.  When the fact of the union was first made known to a few intimate friends, it was accompanied with the assurance that its permanence was already irrevocably decreed.  The marriage of true hearts for a quarter of a century has demonstrated the sincerity of the intention.  ‘The social sanction,’ said Mr. Lewes once in our hearing, ‘is always desirable.’  There are cases in which it is not always to be had.  Such a ratification of the sacrament of affection was regarded as a sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement