ry rich is so great and so
increasing, this generosity should not be wanting.

FOOTNOTE:

[67] _Notes on Life._

CHAPTER XIV

MARRIAGE

The beautiful saying of Newton, that he felt like a child who had been
picking up a few pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of undiscovered
truth, may well occur to any writer who attempts to say something on the
vast subject of marriage. The infinite variety of circumstances and
characters affects it in infinitely various ways, and all that can here
be done is to collect a few somewhat isolated and miscellaneous remarks
upon it. Yet it is a subject which cannot be omitted in a book like
this. In numerous cases it is the great turning-point of a life, and in
all cases when it takes place it is one of the most important of its
events. Whatever else marriage may do or fail to do, it never leaves a
man unchanged. His intellect, his character, his happiness, his way of
looking on the world, will all be influenced by it. If it does not raise
or strengthen him it will lower or weaken. If it does not deepen
happiness it will impair it. It brings with it duties, interests,
habits, hopes, cares, sorrows, and joys that will penetrate into every
fissure of his nature and modify the whole course of his life.

It is strange to think with how much levity and how little knowledge a
contract which is so indissoluble and at the same time so momentous is
constantly assumed; sometimes under the influence of a blinding passion
and at an age when life is still looked upon as a romance or an idyll;
sometimes as a matter of mere ambition and calculation, through a desire
for wealth or title or position. Men and women rely on the force of
habit and necessity to accommodate themselves to conditions they have
never really understood or realised.

In most cases different motives combine, though in different degrees.
Sometimes an overpowering affection for the person is the strongest
motive and eclipses all others. Sometimes the main motive to marriage is
a desire to be married. It is to obtain a settled household and
position; to be relieved from the 'unchartered freedom' and the 'vague
desires' of a lonely life; to find some object of affection; to acquire
the steady habits and the exemption from household cares which are
essential to a career; to perpetuate a race; perhaps to escape from
family discomforts, or to introduce a new and happy influence into a
family. With these motives a real a