Windows of Love

the persons themselves who enter into it. But I do not quite see whyeach generation should thus be sacrificed to the welfare of thegenerations that afterwards succeed it. Now it is one of the strongestpoints in favour of the system of falling in love that it does, bycommon experience in the vast majority of instances, assort togetherpersons who subsequently prove themselves thoroughly congenial andhelpful to one another. And this result I look upon as one great proofof the real value and importance of the instinct. Most men and womenselect for themselves partners for life at an age when they know butlittle of the world, when they judge but superficially of characters andmotives, when they still make many mistakes in the conduct of life andin the estimation of chances. Yet most of them find in after days thatthey have really chosen out of all the world one of the persons bestadapted by native idiosyncrasy to make their joint lives enjoyable anduseful. I make every allowance for the effects of habit, for the growthof sentiment, for the gradual approximation of tastes and sympathies;but surely, even so, it is a common consciousness with every one of uswho has been long married, that we could hardly conceivably have madeourselves happy with any of the partners whom others have chosen; andthat we have actually made ourselves so with the partners we chose forourselves under the guidance of an almost unerring native instinct. Yetadaptation between husband and wife, so far as their own happiness isconcerned, can have had comparatively little to do with the evolution ofthe instinct, as compared with adaptation for the joint production ofvigorous and successful offspring. Natural selection lays almost all thestress on the last point, and hardly any at all upon the first one. If,then, the instinct is found on the whole so trustworthy in the minormatter, for which it has not specially been fashioned, how far moretrustworthy and valuable must it probably prove in the greatermatter–greater, I mean, as regards the interests of the race–for whichit has been mainly or almost solely developed!

I do not doubt that, as the world goes on, a deeper sense of moralresponsibility in the matter of marriage will grow up among us. But itwill not take the false direction of ignoring these our profoundest andholiest instincts. Marriage for money may go; marriage for rank may go;marriage for position may go; but marriage for love, I believe andtrust, will last for ever. Men in the future will probably feel that aunion with their cousins or near relations is positively wicked; that aunion with those too like them in person or disposition is at leastundesirable; that a union based upon considerations of wealth or anyother consideration save considerations of immediate natural impulse, isbase and disgraceful. But to the end of time they will continue to feel,in spite of doctrinaires, that the voice of nature is better far thanthe voice of the Lord Chancellor or the Royal Society; and that theinstinctive desire for a particular helpmate is a surer guide for theultimate happiness, both of the race and of the individual, than anyamount of deliberate consultation. It is not the foolish fancies ofyouth that will have to be got rid of, but the foolish, wicked, andmischievous interference of parents or outsiders.