we are considering.

Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from
a civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an
institution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as
a contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an
institution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are
bound: they have father and mother, and they will have children.
Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect.
Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which,
from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.

Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property
or children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children
constitutes happiness. The command, "Increase and multiply," does not
imply love. To ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in
fifteen days, to give you love in the name of law, the king and
justice, is an absurdity worthy of the majority of the predestined.

Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in
marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair.
Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself
bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the
benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he
must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold
themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must
himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.

But to feel this passion is always to feel desire. Can a man always
desire his wife?

Yes.

It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love
the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician
needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose
a charming melody.

Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which
is great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought.
Either it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists
forever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which the
ancients made the child of heaven and earth.

Literature revolves round seven situations; music expresses everything
with seven notes; painting employs but seven colors; like these three
arts, love perhaps founds itself on seven principles, but we leave
this investigation for the next