CHAPTER II.
SEXUAL CHOICE IN MARRIAGE.—THE ART OF CHOOSING WELL.
There are two principal ways by which we may arrive at the fatal yes, that terrible monosyllable which must decide our happiness or misfortune; that yes which may make for us a paradise on earth, or a hell of twenty-four hours for every day in the 365.
Either love first and marriage after, or marriage first and love after. Which of these two ways is the better, and the most certain to lead us to the paradise of two?
Theoretically, the answer cannot be doubted; one ought to love first and marry after.
In practice, however, it is not always so. Many marriages inspired by love end badly, while others, planned by reason more than the heart, turn out well.
And why? If the theory is true, it ought to accord with the practice, and if it contradicts the practice the theory must be mistaken.
The apparent contradiction can be explained at once if we reflect that love is every day spoken of as the desire for the possession of the woman, and this alone is certainly not sufficient to make two people happy. Give love and lust their real names and every difficulty immediately disappears, and we then see the happy dogma, Love first and marriage after, shine out in all its splendour. If by legal means alone a man can possess the woman he loves and if the passion be violent, the greatest libertine, and even the enemy of matrimony, bow their heads under the Furcæ Caudinæ of female virtue and the civil code, and marry. It is a stony road and full of pitfalls, but one which, nevertheless, may sometimes lead to the happiness of the two. Gradually there becomes associated with the desire of the senses, that more valuable sense of the affinity of hearts, and when the desire is satisfied there remains still the enjoyment of the more delicate dainties of the understanding and affection. To transform lust into love is a difficult work, but worthy of woman’s holy virtue, and the woman can succeed in doing so, even when possession has cooled desire and age dimmed her beauty; but she must be a sublime being and possess lasting gifts of sentiment and thought; if her companion be also an elect soul, who knows how to value this lasting and solid virtue, and who understands ideality of spirit as well as grace of form, so much the better.
Sublime beings and elect souls are always exceptional, and if, in the innumerable crowd of husbands and wives, they have reached the yes by the way of desire of the flesh, they soon find that the game was not worth the candle, and that the muddy swamp of weariness and animal familiarity of sex follows upon the first outburst of voluptuousness. The woman sometimes succeeds in fanning and reviving it with inexhaustible coquetry, but one gets scorched, and the distaste may become even more obstinate the more ingenious are the remedies used to oppose it. A marriage inspired only by the desires of the flesh, maintained only by the bread of lust, is a very poor and abject thing, that can very rarely give peace to the mind, and much less happiness. Even in the most vulgar and sensual natures, there is something that rebels against the permanent animal, and raises its voice in demand for a more human form of food. Man, like the swine, wallows in the mud, but with this difference: he likes to wash himself, and to look up to the heavens from the trough. It must be added that in marriage the dignities of father and mother only increase the responsibility of the two consorts to animate and enlarge the human nut at the expense of the animal pulp. The spirituality of the family impresses itself upon the coarsest nature and the most obtuse nerves, by warming the atmosphere and revealing a streak of blue in the heaven above.
Woe to the man who, in solitary and sad contemplation of his wife, says to himself: My companion is only a female!