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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: all the writers and readers of novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not
the younger 'part of the world be ready to take off its coat and run at him
might and main?' (Republic.) Yet, if like Peisthetaerus in Aristophanes,
he could persuade the 'birds' to hear him, retiring a little behind a
rampart, not of pots and dishes, but of unreadable books, he might have
something to say for himself. Might he not argue, 'that a rational being
should not follow the dictates of passion in the most important act of his
or her life'? Who would willingly enter into a contract at first sight,
almost without thought, against the advice and opinion of his friends, at a
time when he acknowledges that he is not in his right mind? And yet they
are praised by the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of their
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