It is true that it is a
relation beset with wildly extravagant illusions for inexperienced
people, and that even the most experienced people have not always
sufficient analytic faculty to disentangle it from the sentiments,
sympathetic or abhorrent, which may spring up through the other
relations which are compulsorily attached to it by our laws, or
sentimentally associated with it in romance. But the fact remains
that the most disastrous marriages are those founded exclusively
on it, and the most successful those in which it has been least
considered, and in which the decisive considerations have had
nothing to do with sex, such as liking, money, congeniality of
tastes, similarity of habits, suitability of class, &c., &c.
It is no doubt necessary under existing circumstances for a woman
without property to be sexually attractive, because she must get
married to secure a livelihood; and the illusions of sexual
attraction will cause the imagination of young men to endow her
with every accomplishment and virtue that can make a wife a
treasure. The attraction being thus constantly and ruthlessly used
as a bait, both by individuals and by society, any discussion
tending to strip it of its illusions and get at its real natural
history is nervously discouraged.
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