248 PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



insight, the due appreciation of what is beautiful, the thorough 

 acquisition of a suitable vocation, a fair understanding of life 

 or the "world", the assimilation of the chief virtues demanded 

 by the intimate common life of husband and wife, sufficient 

 and practical knowledge of the education of children in the 

 home, and training in domestic economy generally. Such a 

 preparation is requisite if marriage is to achieve its significant 

 ends ; and this process of preparation, like that of physiological 

 maturing, necessitates that those who are to be married should 

 have reached man's and woman's estate that is, about the 

 age of twenty-five. 



(5) If the children are eventually to become personalities and 

 cultured, both parents should be personalities and cultured. 



(6) This implies a feeling and an acknowledgment of equality 

 between husband and wife. 



(7) Intimate co-operation between the parents would be also 

 impossible unless a sense of comradeship prevailed. 



(8) A life task of such magnitude as human marriage, pre- 

 supposes, of course, mutual and deep devotion between the 

 partners in marriage. With the above demands satisfied, the 

 flame of love, once it has been kindled, is easily kept alive. 

 Love is indispensable in every arduous enterprise in elevating 

 offspring, in social causes, in serving one's country. At the 

 same time, sustained love becomes almost an impossibility 

 when life is not rationally organised, and where there is no 

 adequate preparation for the state of matrimony. 



(9) Marriage fulfils the universal, or all but universal, desire 

 for a home for a place and a world which one can claim as 

 one's very own, since mother, father, and children are one. 



(10) Whatever be the attitude of the world, whether it is 

 appreciative or contumelious, there can be no greater boon than 

 to have a life companion another self with whom one can 

 confidently consult in every emergency, however intimate the 

 matters might be. What parents are to children, parents are 

 as truly to each other in respected families. This form of mar- 

 riage postulates, consequently, the indissolubility of the marriage 

 tie under all save the extremest circumstances. A marriage 

 lightly entered into, or lightly regarded or dissolved, is no ge- 

 nuine marriage at all. A form of marriage restricted to a certain 

 period, would imply absence of real intimacy the quintessence 

 of marriage. 



(11) In a typical marriage of the best type it is generous ideals, 

 including mutual love and respect, which govern decisions, the 

 individual conceiving himself or herself as the servant of an 

 idea, and not as the ruler or exploiter of another. 



(12) If the meaning and the implications of marriage are such 

 as we have sketched above, the well-nurtured youth and maiden 

 will look forward to marriage with a sentiment akin to sacred 

 awe and joy. They will be pure in spirit, and therefore pure 



