I make every allowance for the effects of habit, for the growth
of sentiment, for the gradual approximation of tastes and sympathies;
but surely, even so, it is a common consciousness with every one of us
who has been long married, that we could hardly conceivably have made
ourselves happy with any of the partners whom others have chosen; and
that we have actually made ourselves so with the partners we chose for
ourselves under the guidance of an almost unerring native instinct. Yet
adaptation between husband and wife, so far as their own happiness is
concerned, can have had comparatively little to do with the evolution of
the instinct, as compared with adaptation for the joint production of
vigorous and successful offspring. Natural selection lays almost all the
stress on the last point, and hardly any at all upon the first one. If,
then, the instinct is found on the whole so trustworthy in the minor
matter, for which it has not specially been fashioned, how far more
trustworthy and valuable must it probably prove in the greater
matter--greater, I mean, as regards the interests of the race--for which
it has been mainly or almost solely developed!
I do not doubt that, as the world goes on, a deeper sense of moral
responsibility in the matter of marriage will grow up among us. But it
will not take the false direction of ignoring these our profoundest and
holiest instincts. Marriage for money may go; marriage for rank may go;
marriage for position may go; but marriage for love, I believe and
trust, will last for ever.
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