stabler self into Prince Muishkin, the idiot, and every one
of the six hundred odd pages of this amazing description of a neuropathic
nation is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVI

MARRIAGE

"Between two beings so complex and so diverse as man and woman, the
whole of life is not too long for them to know one another well, and to
learn to love one another worthily."--Comte.

No neuropath should have children, but marriage is good in mild cases, for
neuropaths are benefited by sympathetic companionship, and their sexual
passions are so strong that they must be gratified, by marriage,
prostitution, or unnaturally.

Bernard Shaw's sneer--

"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with
the maximum of opportunity"--

is justifiable, though the "maximum of opportunity" is better than a
maximum of unnatural devices to satisfy and intensify normal and abnormal
cravings.

There is a popular belief that an epileptic girl is cured by pregnancy, a
state that ought never to occur.

The lack of sex-education causes millions of miserable marriages. Sexual
desire is cultivated out of all proportion to other desires, the will
cannot control the desire to relieve an intolerable sense of discomfort,
and men eagerly seize the first chance of being able to satisfy these
fierce cravings at pleasure.

If sex were treated sensibly it would develop into a powerful instead of an
overpowering appetite, and reason would have some say in the choice of a
life-partner.

A neuropath needs a calm, even-tempered, "motherly" wife. For him,
gentleness, self-control, sound common sense and domestic virtues are
superior to wit or beauty. Unfortunately, contrary to public belief, people
are attracted by their like, not by their opposites. The sensitive, refined
neuropath finds the normal person insipid and dull; the normal person is
rendered uncomfortable by the morbid caprices of the neuropath.

There must be no disparity of age, for at the menopause the woman no longer
seeks the sexual embrace, and if her husband be young unfaithfulness
ensues. Not only that, but she, knowing, probably to her sorrow, how rarely
the hopes of youth mature, cannot take a keen interest in his ambitions
like a younger woman, or fire his dying enthusiasm at difficult parts of
the way. If he be his wife's senior he will be as little able to appreciate
her ideas