s
it, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened." It may be said that
marriage itself is not necessary for the maintenance of the species;
but it is useful both for its maintenance and its improvement; hence
natural selection has favored it--especially the monogamous form--_in
the interest of coming generations._ Love is simply an extension of
this process---making it efficacious before marriage and thus
quintupling its importance. It makes many mistakes, for it is a young
instinct, and it has to do with a very complex problem, so that its
development is slow; but it has a great future, especially now that
intelligence is beginning to encourage and help it. But while
admitting that love is fallible we must be careful not to decry it for
mistakes with which it has no concern. It is absurd to suppose that
every self-made match is a love-match: yet, whenever such a marriage
is a failure, love is held responsible. We must remember, too, that
there are two kinds of love and that the lower kind does not choose as
wisely as the higher. Where animal passion alone is involved, parents
cannot be blamed for trying to curb it. As a rule, love of all kinds
can be checked or even cured, and an effort to do this should be made
in all cases where it is found to be bestowed on a person likely to
taint the offspring with vicious propensities or serious disease. But,
with all its liability to error, romantic love is usually the safest
guide to marriage, and even sensual love of the more refined, esthetic
type is ordinarily preferable to what are called marriages of reason,
because love (as distinguished from abnormal, unbridled lust) always
is guided by youth and health, thus insuring a healthy, vigorous
offspring.

If it be asked, "Are not the parents who arrange the marriages of
reason also guided as a rule by considerations of health, moral and
physical?" the answer is a most emphatic "No." Parental fondness,
sufficing for the preservation and rearing of children, is a very old
thing, but parental affection, which is altruistically concerned for
the weal of children in after-life, is a comparatively modern
invention. The foregoing chapters have taught us that an Australian
father's object in giving his daughter in marriage was to get in
exchange a new girl-wife for himself; what became of the daughter, or
what sort of a man got her, did not concern him in the least. Among
Africans and American Indians the object of bringing up daughters a