TMk EVOLUTION OP A FATHER 389 



with whom the custom of buying a bride has long 

 since passed away. By degrading the object of 

 barter to the level of a chattel, this system is a 

 barrier to high affection. But in most cases this is 

 heightened by the impossibility of that preliminary 

 courtship which leads to mutual knowledge and in- 

 telligent love. The bride and bridegroom, in the 

 extremer cases, meet as total strangers ; and though 

 affection may bud in after years, the mingling of 

 unknown temperaments, together with the destruc- 

 tion of reverence for woman by treating her as 

 an article of barter, make the chances small of it 

 blossoming into a flower. 



Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened 

 emotions, is a great opportunity for Evolution ; and 

 to institute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich 

 in impression is one of its latest and highest efforts. 

 To give love time, indeed, has been all along, and 

 through a great variety of arrangements, the chief 

 means of establishing it on the earth. Unfortunately, 

 the lesson of Nature here is being all too slowly 

 learned, even among nations with its open book 

 before them. In some of the greatest of civilized 

 countries real mutual knowledge between the youth 

 of the sexes is unattainable ; marriages are made 

 only by a higher kind of purchase, and the supreme 

 step in life is taken in the dark. Whatever safe- 



