right to marry. There should be a
kind and amount of love that will justify and sanctify such a
relation. There should be a pure motive and the fixed intention of
making the relation what it ought to be to husband, wife, and
children. There should be a reasonable assurance of the power to
provide for a family. There should be that amount of health, that
freedom from bodily and mental disease, that physical and moral
constitution which will give a reasonable prospect of children whose
lives will be a blessing to themselves and to society.

When there is deformity of body, or an unhappy peculiarity of temper
or mind liable to be inherited, people should not marry, or if they
live together, should resign the uses of marriage. People should
conscientiously refrain from propagating hereditary diseases. Persons
near of kin are wisely forbidden to marry, for there is in such cases
the liability of imperfect generation--the production of blind, deaf,
idiotic or insane offspring.

SHOULD MARRIAGE BE FOR LIFE?

As a rule, undoubtedly. Every real, proper, true marriage must be. It
takes a lifetime for a husband and wife to make a home and rear and
educate and provide for a family of children. But what if people make
mistakes and find that they are not suitably married? These are
mistakes very difficult to remedy. If a man, after deliberately making
his choice of a woman, ceases to love her, how can he honorably
withdraw from his relation to her, and enter upon another,

WHEN SHE STILL LOVES HIM,

and is ready to fulfill her part of the contract? Laws cannot very
well provide for mistakes. If the distaste for each other be mutual,
and both parties desire to separate, a separation may of course be
permitted; but it is a serious question whether two such persons can
go into the world and find new partners, with justice to the rest. The
law which permits of no divorce certainly bears hard upon individual
cases; but if it leads to greater seriousness and care in forming such
relations, it may be, on the whole, the best thing for society that it
should be strictly observed.

CHAPTER V.

WHEN TO MARRY--HOW TO SELECT A PARTNER
ON RIGHT PRINCIPLES.

The proper age to marry is a somewhat vexed question, but needlessly
so, because that age varies much, according to temperament and other
circumstances rela