Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1917 — MARRIAGE AND ITS MEANING [ARTICLE]

MARRIAGE AND ITS MEANING

Happiness Only an Incident, Its Real Purpose Is Protection of Family Idea. “The individualist believes that happiness is the purpose of marriage,” writes Margaret Deland. “The purpose of marriage is the protection of the family idea. Happiness and marriage may go together; God send they do! But if the incident of happiness is lost, dqty remains; the obligation of contract remains; marriage remains—it remains, even though for profoundly righteous reasons the principals have seen fit to separate by the width of the world. “Marriage is civilization’s method of remaining civilized. It is deep with the elemental human pulses pf life for generations which are to come; it is solemn with its opportunities of spiritual insight through suffering; it is dreadful with its sense of responsibility for the ideal of permanence, which makes us men and women and not beasts; an ideal which we are to hand on, like a torch, from heart to heart, from soul to soul 1