become possessed of any and every
kind of external advantage, but there is that in the man which is
unlovely or which she, at any rate, cannot love, her marriage will
assuredly be a failure. As we have occasion to observe every day, she
will be glad to jump at any chance of sacrificing all externals, where
essentials thus fail her.

This is only to preach once again the simple doctrine that a girl is to
marry a man not for what he has but for what he is. If, as a eugenist, I
am thinking at this time as much of the future as of the present, the
advice is none the less trustworthy. It is certain that this advice is
no less necessary than it ever was. Everyone knows how the standard of
luxury has risen during the last few decades, both in England and in the
United States. All history lies if this be not an evil omen for any
civilization. It means, among other things, that more effectively than
ever the forces of suggestion and imitation and social pressure are
being brought to bear, to vitiate the young girl's natural judgment,
deceiving her into the supposition that these things which seem to make
other people so happy are the first that must be sought by her. If only
she had the merest inkling of what the doctor and the lawyer and the
priest could tell her about the inner life of many of the owners of
these well-groomed and massaged faces! We hear much of the failure of
marriage, but surely the amazing thing is its measure of success under
our careless and irresponsible methods. For happily married people do
not require intrigues nor divorces, nor do they furnish subject matter
for scandal. It is because people do not marry for their personal
qualities, but for things which, personal qualities failing, will soon
turn to dust and ashes in their mouths, that their disappointed lives
seek satisfaction in all these unsatisfactory and imperfect ways. As we
all know, social practice differs in say, France and England, in such
matters as this; and there are those who tell us that the method whereby
natural inclinations are ignored is highly successful, and has just as
much to be said for it as has the more specially Anglo-Saxon method of
allowing the young people to choose each other. It is incomprehensible
how any observer of contemporary France, its divorce rate and its
birth-rate, can uphold such a contention. On the contrary, we may be
more and more convinced that Nature knows her business, and that
marriage, which is a nat