e instincts of food and drink and of
self-preservation. Man, like all other animals, has two main functions:
to feed his own organism, and to reproduce his species. Ancestral habit
leads him, when mature, to choose himself a mate--because he loves her.
It drives him, it urges him, it goads him irresistibly. If this profound
impulse is really lacking to-day in any large part of our race, there
must be some correspondingly profound and adequate reason for it. Don't
let us deceive ourselves with shallow platitudes which may do for
drawing-rooms. This is philosophy, even though post-prandial. Let us try
to take a philosophic view of the question at issue, from the point of
vantage of a biological outlook.

Before you begin to investigate the causes of a phenomenon _quelconque_,
'tis well to decide whether the phenomenon itself is there to
investigate.

Taking society throughout--_not_ in the sense of those "forty families"
to which the term is restricted by Lady Charles Beresford--I doubt
whether marriage is much out of fashion. Statistics show a certain
decrease, it is true, but not an alarming one. Among the labouring
classes, I imagine men, and also women, still wed pretty frequently.
When people say, "Young men won't marry nowadays," they mean young men
in a particular stratum of society, roughly bounded by a silk hat on
Sundays. Now, when you and I were young (I take it for granted that you
and I are approaching the fifties) young men did marry; even within this
restricted area, 'twas their wholesome way in life to form an attachment
early with some nice girl in their own set, and to start at least with
the idea of marrying her. Toward that goal they worked; for that end
they endured and sacrificed many things. True, even then, the long
engagement was the rule; but the long engagement itself meant some
persistent impulse, some strong impetus marriage-wards. The desire of
the man to make this woman his own, the longing to make this woman
happy--normal and healthy endowments of our race--had still much
driving-power. Nowadays, I seriously think I observe in most young men
of the middle class around me a distinct and disastrous weakening of the
impulse. They don't fall in love as frankly, as honestly, as
irretrievably as they used to do. They shilly-shally, they pick and
choose, they discuss, they criticise. They say themselves these futile
foolish things about the club, and the flat, and the cost of living.
They believ