However, this doctrine may easily be exaggerated, and certainly married people ought to be very slow in allowing themselves to think that it is impossible for them to hit it off or pull with the partners of their lives. Those who cherish unhealthy sentimentalism on this subject would do well to brace themselves up by reading a little of the robust common sense of Dr. Johnson. Talking one evening of Mrs. Careless, the doctor said: "If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me." _Boswell_: "Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular?" _Johnson_: "Ay, sir, fifty thousand." _Boswell_: "Then, sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts." _Johnson_: "To be sure not, sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter." The following, too, is interesting, for we may gather from it how, in Johnson's opinion, the feat of living happily with any one of fifty thousand women could be accomplished. The question was started one evening whether people who differed on some essential point could live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the _idem velle atque idem nolle_--the same likings and the same aversions. _Johnson_: "Why, sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke; I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party." _Goldsmith_: "But, sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard, 'You may look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk over that subject." _Johnson_ (with a loud voice): "Sir, I am not saying that _you_ could live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point: I am only saying that _I_ could do it." In matrimony, as in religion, in things essential there should be unity, in things indifferent diversity, in all things charity.