On marriage

节选《The Gay Genius》

all marriages, however arranged, are a gamble and an adventure upon an uncharted sea. The prescient parent or fortuneteller who knows exactly how his son's marriage is going to turn out, even if arranged by him, does not exist. In an ideal society where marriages are made in a blindfold game in a dark forest, participated in by unmarried men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, but where social ethics and community life are stable, the percentage of happy marriages may still be the same. Men, whether at the age of eighteen or fifty-eight, select their mates, with rare exceptions, still on the basis of sexual selection designed by nature, while women attract, but do not select, on the same basis. They make more of an attempt to approach an intelligent choice, and this alone prevents a modern marriage from completely resembling the amorous mating of animals. The advantages of the system, of arrangement by parents are merely that it is simpler, more efficient, les wasteful of time, and allows a much greater freedom and wider range of choice. All marriages are contracted in heaven but made on earth and by the men and women who have to make it after they come away from the
altar.