n ascertained that the marriage can ever become a
fact at all, is not only impossible but absurd.

It is of course true that this impossibility, this absurdity, are never
visible to the contracting parties. They have applied to the question all
the very restricted tests that are conventionally permitted to them, and
the satisfactory results of these tests, together with the consciousness
of possessing an immense and apparently inexhaustible fund of loving
emotion, seem to them adequate to the fulfilment of the contract
throughout life, if not indeed eternity.

As a child of seven I chanced to be in a semi-tropical island of the
Pacific supplied with fruit, especially grapes, from the mainland, and a
dusky market woman always presented a large bunch of grapes to the little
English stranger. But a day came when the proffered bunch was firmly
refused; the superabundance of grapes had produced a reaction of disgust.
A space of nearly forty years was needed to overcome the repugnance to
grapes thus acquired. Yet there can be no doubt that if at the age of six
that little boy had been asked to sign a contract binding him to accept
grapes every day, to keep them always near him, to eat them and to enjoy
them every day, he would have signed that contract as joyously as any
radiant bridegroom or demure bride signs the register in the vestry. But
is a complex man or woman, with unknown capacities for changing or
deteriorating, and with incalculable aptitudes for inflicting torture and
arousing loathing, is such a creature more easy to be bound to than an
exquisite fruit? All the countries of the world in which the subtle
influence of the Canon law of Christendom still makes itself felt, have
not yet grasped a general truth which is well within the practical
experience of a child of seven.[362]

The notion that such a relationship as that of marriage can rest
on so fragile a basis as a pre-ordained contract has naturally
never prevailed widely in its extreme form, and has been unknown
altogether in many parts of the world. The Romans, as we know,
explicitly rejected it, and even at a comparatively early period
recognized the legality of marriage by _usus_, thus declaring in
effect that marriage must be a fact, and not a mere undertaking.
There has been a widespread legal tendency, especially where the
traditions of Roman law have retained any influence, to regard
the cohabitation of marria