iage among us to-day
are witness to our failure; they have a far closer connection than often
is recognized with the romantic and vulgar poverty of our point of view.

Our romances are slightly vulgar. Vulgarity is a sign of confusion and
weakness of spirit. We still far too much associate romance with
courtship and not with marriage; that is one reason English marriages so
often are unhappy. "Thank God that our love-time is ended!" cried a
north country bride on the day that marriage terminated her long
engagement.

Now, I do not know whether this delightful story is true, but it does
illustrate the attitude of many ordinary couples, whose love adventure
ends at the very hour it should begin. Every true marriage ought to be a
succession of courtships.

Love is not walking round a rose-garden in the sunshine; it's living
together, growing together. And the honeymoon is as trifling as the
_hors d'oeuvre_ in comparison with wedded-love, and as unable to satisfy
the deep needs of women and men. Falling in love, wooing, and
honeymooning are a short and easy episode, but marriage is long and
always difficult. And the finding and maintaining happiness is a
definite achievement and not an accident, for _it is beyond accident_.
It is the result of a steadfast ideal and a diligent cultivation.

III

Marriage has not escaped the general disturbances of the past five
years. The causes are many and obvious. Man is generally guided, not
directly by the automatic instincts, working through the lower nerve
centers, but rather by ideas acting in the higher nerve centers of his
brain. Instincts with him are not instinctive, but are checked and
supervised by intelligence. Only when a great shock, a sudden fear or
joy, occurs does the instinctive working replace the consciously planned
action: the man or the woman find themselves speaking in an unaccustomed
voice, saying what they did not know they would say; doing unaccustomed
things, which they had never intended to do, sometimes they lose control
of their body--they rage, their speech descends to inarticulate cries.
Then the old system of instinctive response to the outer world, which
generally is inactive and so imperceptibly becomes disused, becomes by
the sudden generation of excessive emotion stocked with energy, so that
it exceeds in power the energy of which the intelligence makes use.
Impulses leap into being, and very often there is a sudden response to
adventure and mo