Yet the subject, even so limited, is one on which it is extremely difficult to get a calm audience. Marriage customs (however much they may differ from race to race) are at any one time and among any one folk remarkably tenacious, being sanctioned by almost a violence of public opinion; and as in the case of theology or politics, their mere discussion is liable to infuriate people--perhaps from the very fact that the subject is so complex and so deeply rooted in personal feeling. Nevertheless--since alterations have to take place in these as in other customs, and since, as many things indicate, we are moving towards a distinct period of change in matters matrimonial--it would seem that the more rationally we can survey these questions beforehand, the better. It will probably be felt that certain present difficulties in the marriage-relation are not merely casual or local, but are deeply intertwined with a long series of historical causes, which have led up to that exaggerated differentiation, and consequent misunderstanding, between the sexes, of which we have spoken in a former paper.* Behind the relation of any individual man and woman to each other stands the historical age-evolved relation of the two sexes generally, spreading round and enclosing the former on all sides, and creating the social environment from which the individuals can hardly escape. Two young people in the present day may come together, but their relation is already largely determined by causes over which they have no control. * Woman: Labour Press Society, Manchester. As a rule they know but little of each other; society has kept the two sexes apart; the boy and the girl have been brought up along different lines; they hardly understand each other's nature; their mental interests and occupations are different; and as they grow up their worldly interests and advantage are seen to be different, often opposed; public opinion separates their spheres and their rights and their duties, and their honor and their dishonor* very sharply from each other. The subject of sex is a sealed book to the girl; to the youth it is possibly a book whose most dismal page has been opened first; in either case with its very mention is probably connected a painful and irrational sense of wickedness. In this state of confusion of mind, of mutual misunderstanding, and often of suffering, the Sex-glamor suddenly descends upon the two individuals and drives them into each other's arms. It envelopes in a gracious and misty halo all their differences and misapprehensions. They marry without misgiving; and their hearts overflow with gratitude to the white-surpliced old gentleman who reads the service over them. It is only at a later hour, and with calmer thought, that they realise that it is a life-sentence which he has so suavely passed upon them--not reducible (as in the case of ordinary convicts) even to a term of 20 years.