d married life, as though it were a burning
pit of live coals.' --_Dhammika Sutta._

I

THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MARRIAGE

'Marriage is the great mistake that wipes out the smaller
stupidities of Love.' --SCHOPENHAUER.

In one of his essays Stevenson says: 'I am so often filled with wonder
that so many marriages are passable successes, and so few come to open
failure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on which
people regulate their choice.'

Out of the chaos which envelops this 'principle' four special motives
seem to stand out, and we can therefore roughly divide the marriages
that take place into five sections thus--

1. The Marriage of Passion.
2. The Marriage of Convenience.
3. Marriage for a Purpose.
4. Haphazard Marriage.
5. The Marriage of Affection.

* * *

_The Marriage of Passion._--One of Mr Somerset Maugham's characters in
_The Merry-Go-Round_ says: 'I'm convinced that marriage is the most
terrible thing in the world, unless passion makes it absolutely
inevitable.' Although a profound admirer of Mr Maugham's work, here I
find myself entirely at variance with him. Most of the mad, unreasonable
matches are those which 'passion makes inevitable.' Theoretically this
is one of the most promising types of marriage--in practice it proves
the most fatally unhappy of all. 'They're madly in love with each other,
it's an ideal match' is a comment one often hears expressed with much
satisfaction, but it is a painful fact that these desperate loves lead
very frequently to disaster and divorce. Most of the miserable married
couples personally known to me were 'madly in love' with each other at
the start.

Is it to be wondered at when one considers the matter? Nature, who
seldom makes a mistake where primitive mankind is concerned is by no
means infallible when dealing with the artificial conditions of our
Western civilisation. In the East where greater sex licence is allowed,
it seems quite safe to trust Nature and follow the instincts she
implants. Not so in our hemisphere. The young man and maid who fall
under passion's thrall are temporarily blind and mad; their judgment is
obscured, their reasoning powers non-existent, nothing in the world
seems of the slightest importance except the overwhelming necessity _to
give_ themselves--_to possess_ the beloved, the being who has fired
their blood.

If the Fates are cruel, these two are permitted to rush into matri