e immense failure of marriage to-day arises from the
confusion of our minds and our chaotic desires so that we have no firm
ideal, no fixed standard of conduct either for the wife or for the
husband. Every couple starts anew and alone, and the way is too
difficult for solitary experiments.

The existence of many standards, of what ought to be done and what
ought not to be done, the liberty permitted to the husband, the liberty
permitted to the wife, if the wife shall continue her work or profession
or remain at home dependent on the husband's earnings, whether the
marriage shall be fruitful or sterile--these are but a few of the
questions left undecided. And thus to leave unguided each wife and each
husband, with their own idea of what is good to do and what is evil,
makes for narrowness and waste of effort; while further, our inability
to set up a standard of right and wrong conduct--of ideals to strive
after--leaves vacant room for false ideals of every kind. These empty
places of the mind have been occupied by the ravings of advanced people.
The harm has been incredibly active in the consciousness of the young.
We have put before their imagination nothing worthy of contemplation,
therefore they easily sink downward attracted by what is base.

Then we suggest economic changes. But the evil is not economic. No evils
are fundamentally economic. The structure of society is the unforeseen
result of the conflicting desires and capacities of the individuals who
comprise the society. A false view of marriage, a false view of the
relative values of life and money, of service and liberty, of happiness
and duty, is not dependent on economic conditions. Yet, let us not
forget that this is the age of the gadding mind and the grabbing hand.
We tend to value everything by what it brings in to us, in feelings if
not in more tangible results.

You will see what this must mean. I am brought back to our wrong ideals;
I have no new remedy to give; I can only again insist upon this truth: A
preoccupation with a desire for love does not, and never can, result in
happiness. But the personal (or perhaps my meaning will be clearer by
saying the egoistic) view of love has assumed such gigantic proportion
in our minds to-day that we accept these selfish desires as a safe basis
for permanent happiness. _Marriage has ceased to be a discipline; it has
become an experiment._

The romantic view of love as the basis of marriage is, of course, the