are not always a guarantee of the submission which is so
confidently expected from them. But if they were, is this the ideal
of marriage ? What, in this case, does the man obtain by it, except
an upper servant, a nurse, or a mistress? on the contrary, when
each of two persons, instead of being a nothing, is a something;
when they are attached to one another, and are not too much unlike
to begin with; the constant partaking in the same things, assisted
by their sympathy, draws out the latent capacities of each for
being interested in the things which were at first interesting only
to the other; and works a gradual assimilation of the tastes and
characters to one another, partly by the insensible modification of
each, but more by a real enriching of the two natures, each
acquiring the tastes and capacities of the other in addition to its
own. This often happens between two friends of the same sex, who
are much associated in their daily life: and it would be a common,
if not the commonest, case in marriage, did not the totally
different bringing up of the two sexes make it next to an
impossibility to form a really well-assorted union. Were this
remedied, whatever differences there might still be in individual
tastes, there would at least be, as a general rule, complete unity
and unanimity as to the great objects of life. When the two persons
both care for great objects, and are a help and encouragement to
each other in whatever regards these, the minor matters on which
their tastes may differ are not all-important to them; and there is
a foundation for solid friendship, of an enduring character, more
likely than anything else t~ make it, through the whole of life, a
greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the other, than to
receive it.  I have considered, thus far, the effects on the
pleasures and benefits of the marriage union which depend on the
mere unlikeness between the wife and the husband: but the evil
tendency is prodigiously aggravated when the unlikeness is
inferiority. Mere unlikeness, when it only means difference of good
qualities, may be more a benefit in the way of mutual improvement,
than a drawback from comfort. When each emulates, and desires and
endeavours to acquire, the other's peculiar qualities
the difference does not produce diversity of interest, but
increased identity of it, and makes each still more valuable to the
other. But when one is much the inferior of the to in mental
ability and cultivation, and is not actively attempting by the
other's aid to rise to the other's level, the whole influence of
the connexion upon the development of the superior of the two is
deteriorating: and still more so in a tolerably happy marriage than
in an unhappy one. It is not with impunity that the superior in
intellect shuts himself up with an inferior, and elects that
inferior for his chosen, and sole completely intimate, associate.
Any society which is not improving is deteriorating: and the more
so, the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man
almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually (as the
phrase is) king of his company: and in his most habitual company
the husband who has a wife inferior to him is always so. While his
self-satisfaction is incessantly ministered to on the one hand, on
the other he insensibly imbibes the modes of feeling, and of
looking at things, which belong to a more vulgar or a more limited
mind than his own. This evil differs from many of those which have
hitherto been dwelt on, by being an increasing one. The association
of men with women in daily life is much closer and more complete
than it ever was before. Men's life is more domestic. Formerly,
their pleasures and chosen occupations were among men, and in men's
company: their wives had but a fragment of their lives. At the
present time, the progress of civilisation, and the turn of opinion
against the rough amusements and convivial excesses which formerly
occupied most men in their hours of relaxation-- together with (it
must be said) the improved tone of modern feeling as to the
reciprocity of duty which binds the husband towards the wife--have
thrown the man very much more upon home and its inmates, for his
personal and social pleasures: while the kind and degree of
improvement which has been made in women's education, has made them
in some degree capable of being his companions in ideas and mental
taste, while leaving them, in most cases, still hopelessly inferior
to him. His desire of mental communion is thus in general satisfied
by a communion from which he learns nothing. An unimproving and
unstimulating companionship is substituted for (what he might
otherwise have been obliged to seek) the society of his equals in
powers and his fellows in the higher pursuits. We see, accordingly,
that young men of the greatest promise generally cease to improve
as soon as they marry, and, not improving, inevitably degenerate.
If the wife does not push the husband forward, she always holds him
back. He ceases to care for what she does not care for; he no
longer desires, and ends by disliking and shunning, society
congenial to his former aspirations, and which would now shame his
falling-off from them; his higher faculties both of mind and heart
cease to be called into activity. And this change coinciding with
the new and selfish interests which are created by the family,
after a few years he differs in no material respect from those who
have never had wishes for anything but the common vanities and the
common pecuniary objects.  What marriage may be in the case of two
persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and
purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality,
similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in
them--so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other,
and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led
in the path of development--I will not attempt to describe. To
those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot,
it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with
the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal
of marriage; and that all opinions, customs, and institutions which
favour any other notion of it, or turn the conceptions and
aspirations connected with it into any other direction, by whatever
pretences they may be coloured, are relics of primitive barbarism.
The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when