elings and habits, or modifications of old feelings and
habits, are constantly passing not only into his life but into his
nature, taking root there, and in some degree at least reproducing
themselves by the force of heredity in the innate disposition of his
offspring. If this be true, it gives a new and terrible importance both
to the duty of self-culture and to the duty of wise selection in
marriage. It means that children are likely to be influenced not only by
what we do and by what we say, but also by what we are, and that the
characters of the parents in different degrees and combinations will
descend even to a remote posterity.

It throws a not less terrible light upon the miscalculations of the
past. On this hypothesis, as Mr. Galton has truly shown, it is scarcely
possible to exaggerate the evil which has been brought upon the world by
the religious glorification of celibacy and by the enormous development
and encouragement of the monastic life. Generation after generation,
century after century, and over the whole wide surface of Christendom,
this conception of religion drew into a sterile celibacy nearly all who
were most gentle, most unselfish, most earnest, studious, and religious,
most susceptible to moral and intellectual enthusiasm, and thus
prevented them from transmitting to posterity the very qualities that
are most needed for the happiness and the moral progress of the race.
Whenever the good and evil resulting from different religious systems
come to be impartially judged, this consideration is likely to weigh
heavily in the scale.[70]

Returning, however, to the narrower sphere of particular marriages, it
may be observed that although full confidence, and, in one sense,
complete identification of interests, are the characteristics of a
perfect marriage, this does not by any means imply that one partner
should be a kind of duplicate of the other. Woman is not a mere weaker
man; and the happiest marriages are often those in which, in tastes,
character, and intellectual qualities, the wife is rather the complement
than the reflection of her husband. In intellectual things this is
constantly shown. The purely practical and prosaic intellect is united
with an intellect strongly tinged with poetry and romance; the man whose
strength is in facts, with the woman whose strength is in ideas; the man
who is wholly absorbed in science or politics or economical or
industrial problems and pursuits, with a woman