(Free Review, Sept., 1896), in opposition to those who believe that jealousy “makes the home,” declares that, on the contrary, it is the chief force that unmakes the home.  “So long as egotism waters it with the tears of sentiment and shields it from the cold blasts of scientific inquiry, so long will it thrive.  But the time will come when it will be burned in the Garden of Love as a noxious weed.  Its mephitic influence in society is too palpable to be overlooked.  It turns homes that might be sanctuaries of love into hells of discord and hate; it causes suicides, and it drives thousands to drink, reckless excesses, and madness.  Makes the home!  One of your married men friends sees a probable seducer in every man who smiles at his wife; another is jealous of his wife’s women acquaintances; a third is wounded because his wife shows so much attention to the children.  Some of the women you know display jealousy of every other woman, of their husband’s acquaintances, and some, of his very dog.  You must be completely monopolized or you do not thoroughly love.  You must admire no one but the person with whom you have immured yourself for life.  Old friendships must be dissolved, new friendships must not be formed, for fear of invoking the beautiful emotion that ’makes the home.’”

Even if jealousy in matters of sex could be admitted to be an emotion working on the side of civilized progress, it must still be pointed out that it merely acts externally; it can have little or no real influence; the jealous person seldom makes himself more lovable by his jealousy and frequently much less lovable.  The main effect of his jealousy is to increase, and not seldom to excite, the causes for jealousy, and at the same time to encourage hypocrisy.

All the circumstances, accompaniments, and results of domestic jealousy in their completely typical form, are well illustrated by a very serious episode in the history of the Pepys household, and have been fully and faithfully set down by the great diarist.  The offence—­an embrace of his wife’s lady-help, as she might now be termed—­was a slight one, but, as Pepys himself admits, quite inexcusable.  He is writing, being in his thirty-sixth year, on the 25th of Oct., 1668 (Lord’s Day).  “After supper, to have my hair combed by Deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world, for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl....  I was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girl also, and I endeavored to put it off, but my wife was struck mute and grew angry....  Heartily afflicted for this folly of mine....  So ends this month,” he writes a few days later, “with some quiet to my mind, though not perfect, after the greatest falling out with my poor wife, and through my folly with the girl, that ever I had, and I have reason to be sorry and ashamed of it, and more to be troubled for the poor girl’s sake.  Sixth November.  Up, and presently my wife up with me,