Well, I think about it a great deal, with joy and with
fear mixed. This is what I think. If one marries in order to
enjoy oneself more, no good will ever come of it. To set up as
one's main object, ousting everything else, marriage, union with
the being you love, is a great mistake. And an obvious one, if you
think about it. Object, marriage. Well, you marry; and what then?
If you had no other object in life before your marriage, it will be
twice as hard to find one.
As a rule, people who are getting married completely forget
this.
So many joyful events await them in the future, in wedlock and
the arrival of children, that those events seem to constitute life
itself. But this is indeed a dangerous illusion.
If parents merely live from day to day, begetting children,
and have no purpose in life, they are only putting off the question
of the purpose of life and that punishment which is allotted to
people who live without knowing why; they are only putting it off
and not escaping it, because they will have to bring up their
children and guide their steps, but they will have nothing to guide
them by. And then the parents lose their human qualities and the
happiness which depends on the possession of them, and turn into
mere breeding cattle.
That is why I say that people who are proposing to marry
because their life SEEMS to them to be full must more than
ever set themselves to think and make clear to their own minds for
the sake of what each of them lives.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88