In most cases different motives combine, though in different degrees. Sometimes an overpowering affection for the person is the strongest motive and eclipses all others. Sometimes the main motive to marriage is a desire to be married. It is to obtain a settled household and position; to be relieved from the 'unchartered freedom' and the 'vague desires' of a lonely life; to find some object of affection; to acquire the steady habits and the exemption from household cares which are essential to a career; to perpetuate a race; perhaps to escape from family discomforts, or to introduce a new and happy influence into a family. With these motives a real affection for a particular person is united, but it is not of such a character as to preclude choice, judgment, comparison, and a consideration of worldly advantages. It is a wise saying of Swift that there would be fewer unhappy marriages in the world if women thought less of making nets and more of making cages. The qualities that attract, fascinate, and dazzle are often widely different from those which are essential to a happy marriage. Sometimes they are distinctly hostile to it. More frequently they conduce to it, but only in an inferior or subsidiary degree. The turn of mind and character that makes the accomplished flirt is certainly not that which promises best for the happiness of a married life; and distinguished beauty, brilliant talents, and the heroic qualities that play a great part in the affairs of life, and shine conspicuously in the social sphere, sink into a minor place among the elements of married happiness. In marriage the identification of two lives is so complete that it brings every faculty and gift into play, but in degrees and proportions very different from public life or casual intercourse and relations. The most essential are often wanting in a brilliant life, and are largely developed in lives and characters that rise little, if at all, above the commonplace. In the words of a very shrewd man of the world: 'Before marriage the shape, the figure, the complexion carry all before them; after marriage the mind and character unexpectedly claim their share, and that the largest, of importance.'[68]