Marriage may also very easily have opposite effects. It is not unfrequently founded on the sympathy of a common weakness, and when this is the case it can hardly fail to deepen the defect. On the whole, women, in some of the most valuable forms of strength—in the power of endurance and in the power of perseverance—are at least the equals of men. But weak and tremulous nerves, excessive sensibility, and an exaggerated share of impulse and emotion, are indissolubly associated with certain charms, both of manner and character, which are intensely feminine, and to many men intensely attractive. When a nature of this kind is wedded to a weak or a desponding man, the result will seldom be happiness to either party, but with a strong man such marriages are often very happy. Strength may wed with weakness or with strength, but weakness should beware of mating itself with weakness. It needs the oak to support the ivy with impunity, and there are many who find the constant contact of a happy and cheerful nature the first essential of their happiness.
As it is not wise or right that either partner in marriage should lose his or her individuality, so it is right that each should have an independent sphere of authority. It is assumed, of course, that there is the perfect trust which should be the first condition of marriage and also a reasonable judgment. Many marriages have been permanently marred because the woman has been given no independence in money matters and is obliged to come for each small thing to her husband. In general the less the husband meddles in household matters, or the wife in professional ones, the better. The education of very young children of both sexes, and of girls of a mature age, will fall almost exclusively to the wife. The education of the boys when they have emerged from childhood will be rather governed by the judgment of the man. Many things will be regulated in common; but the larger interests of the family will usually fall chiefly to one partner, the smaller and more numerous ones to the other.
On such matters, however, generalisations have little value, as exceptions are very numerous. Differences of character, age, experience, and judgment, and countless special circumstances, will modify the family type, and it is in discovering these differences that wisdom in marriage mainly consists. The directions in which married life may influence character are also very many; but in the large number of cases in which it brings with it a great weight of household cares and family interests it will usually be found with both partners, but especially with the woman, at once to strengthen and to narrow unselfishness. She will live very little for herself, but very exclusively for her family. On the intellectual side such marriages usually give a sounder judgment and a wider knowledge of the world rather than purely intellectual tastes. It is a good thing when the education which precedes marriage not only prepares for the duties of the married life, but also furnishes a fair share of the interests and tastes which that state will probably tend to weaken. The hard battle of life, and the anxieties and sorrows that a family seldom fails to bring, will naturally give an increased depth and seriousness to character. There are, however, natures which, though they may be tainted by no grave vice, are so incurably frivolous that even this education will fail to influence them. As Emerson says, 'A fly is as untameable as a hyæna.'
The age that is most suited for marriage is also a matter which will depend largely on individual circumstances. The ancients, as is well known, placed it, in the case of the man, far back, and they desired a great difference of age between the man and the woman. Plato assigned between thirty and thirty-five, and Aristotle thirty-seven, as the best age for a man to marry, while they would have the girls married at eighteen or twenty.[71] In their view, however, marriage was looked upon very exclusively from the side of the man and of the State. They looked on it mainly as the means of producing healthy citizens, and it was in their eyes almost wholly dissociated from the passion of love. Montaigne, in one of his essays, has expounded this view with the frankest cynicism.[72] Yet few things are so important in marriage as that the man should bring into it the freshness and the purity of an untried nature, and that the early poetry and enthusiasm of life should at least in some degree blend with the married state. Nor is it desirable that a relation in which the formation of habits plays so large a part should be deferred until character has lost its flexibility, and until habits have been irretrievably hardened.
On the other hand there are invincible arguments against marriages entered into at an age when neither partner has any real knowledge of the world and of men. Only too often they involve many illusions and leave many regrets. Some kinds of knowledge, such as that given by extended travel, are far more easily acquired before than after marriage. Usually very early marriages are improvident marriages, made with no sufficient provision for the children, and often they are immature marriages, bringing with them grave physical evils. In those cases in which a great place or position is to be inherited, it is seldom a good thing that the interval of age between the owner and his heir should be so small that inheritance will probably be postponed till the confines of old age.
Marriages entered into in the decline of life stand somewhat apart from others, and are governed by other motives. What men chiefly seek in them is a guiding hand to lead them gently down the last descent of life.
On this, as on most subjects connected with marriage, no general or inflexible rule can be laid down. Moralists have chiefly dilated on the dangers of deferred marriages; economists on the evils of improvident marriages. Each man's circumstances and disposition must determine his course. On the whole, however, in most civilised countries the prevailing tendencies are in the direction of an increased postponement of marriage. Among the rich, the higher standard of luxury and requirements, the comforts of club life, and also, I think, the diminished place which emotion is taking in life, all lead to this, while the spread of providence and industrial habits among the poor has the same tendency.
A female pen is so much more competent than a masculine one for dealing with marriage from the woman's point of view that I do not attempt to enter on that field. It is impossible, however, to overlook the marked tendency of nineteenth-century civilisation to give women, both married and unmarried, a degree of independence and self-reliance far exceeding that of the past. The legislation of most civilised countries has granted them full protection for their property and their earnings, increased rights of guardianship over their children, a wider access to professional life, and even a very considerable voice in the management of public affairs; and these influences have been strengthened by great improvement in female education, and by a change in the social tone which has greatly extended their latitude of independent action. For my own part, I have no doubt that this movement is, on the whole, beneficial, not only to those who have to fight a lonely battle in life, but also to those who are in the marriage state. Larger interests, wider sympathies, a more disciplined judgment, and a greater power of independence and self-control naturally accompany it; and these things can never be wholly wasted. They will often be called into active exercise by the many vicissitudes of the married life. They will, perhaps, be still more needed when the closest of human ties is severed by the great Divorce of Death.