is really such: or if the man succeeds in
obtaining it, he does so by choosing a woman who is so complete a
nullity that she has no _velle_ or _nolle_ at all, and is as ready to
comply with one thing as another if anybody tells her to do so. Even
this calculation is apt to fail; dulness and want of spirit are not
always a guarantee of the submission which is so confidently expected
from them. But if they were, is this the ideal of marriage? What, in
this case, does the man obtain by it, except an upper servant, a
nurse, or a mistress? On the contrary, when each of two persons,
instead of being a nothing, is a something; when they are attached to
one another, and are not too much unlike to begin with; the constant
partaking in the same things, assisted by their sympathy, draws out
the latent capacities of each for being interested in the things
which were at first interesting only to the other; and works a
gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another,
partly by the insensible modification of each, but more by a real
enriching of the two natures, each acquiring the tastes and
capacities of the other in addition to its own. This often happens
between two friends of the same sex, who are much associated in their
daily life: and it would be a common, if not the commonest, case in
marriage, did not the totally different bringing-up of the two sexes
make it next to an impossibility to form a really well-assorted
union. Were this remedied, whatever differences there might still be
in individual tastes, there would at least be, as a general rule,
complete unity and unanimity as to the great objects of life. When
the two persons both care for great objects, and are a help and
encouragement to each other in whatever regards these, the minor
matters on which their tastes may differ are not all-important to
them; and there is a foundation for solid friendship, of an enduring
character, more likely than anything else to make it, through the
whole of life, a greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the
other, than to receive it.

I have considered, thus far, the effects on the pleasures and
benefits of the marriage union which depend on the mere unlikeness
between the wife and the husband: but the evil tendency is
prodigiously aggravated when the unlikeness is inferiority. Mere
unlikeness, when it only means difference of good qualities, may be
more a benefit in the way of mutual improvement, than a drawback f