It is the parents who decide who their children shall marry, and a young Chinaman does not know his _fiancée_ until the day of his wedding. This explains why Confucius thought it necessary to go into all these details on the subject of suitable husbands. [Sidenote: REASONS FOR DIVORCE] "A husband," he adds, "has the right to put away his wife, but he must not use this right in an arbitrary manner; he must have some legitimate cause for enforcing it. The legitimate causes of repudiation reduce themselves to seven: The first when a woman cannot live in harmony with her father- or mother-in-law; the second, if she is unable to perpetuate the race because of her recognized sterility; the third, if she be justly suspected of having violated conjugal fidelity, or if she gives any proof of unchastity; the fourth, if she bring trouble into her home by calumnious or indiscreet reports; the fifth, if she have; any infirmity such as every man would naturally shrink from; the sixth, if it is difficult to correct her of the use of intemperate language; the seventh, if unknown to her husband she steals anything secretly in the house, no matter from what motive. "Although any one of these reasons is sufficient to authorize a husband to put away his wife, there are three circumstances which forbid him to use his right: the first, when his wife has neither father nor mother, and would have nowhere to go to; the second, when she is in mourning for her father- or mother-in-law, for three years after the death of either of them; the third, when her husband, having been poor when he married her, has subsequently become rich." [Illustration: FIG. 30.--A MARRIAGE PROCESSION.] Truly there is much wisdom in the counsels of Confucius on the vexed subject of marriage, but it is impossible to help feeling that the very low view he took of the position of women detracts greatly from the merit of the discourse quoted above. We are, in fact, inclined to endorse the opinion of the missionary Gutzlaff, who, speaking of the revered sage, remarks: "By not giving a proper rank in society to females, by denying to them the privileges which are their due as sisters, mothers, wives, and daughters ... he has marred the harmony of social life, and put a barrier against the improvement of society. The regeneration of China will, in fact, never take place, unless the females be raised from the degraded state which Confucius assigned to them." [Sidenote: SUICIDE]