Marriage is of universal interest. The weal or woe of the race is involved in it. It is a natural incident in the lives of lovers; but the marriage of lovers, although an incident in love, becomes an event in their lives because of the business partnership, which phase they did not contemplate. The primal purpose in the marriage of lovers is that they may be perpetually purified, that they may live constantly their best. To do this they must have the Ideal forever before them. When the business part of marriage shows another "side" of their natures, the Ideal may take wings. Then they naturally feel they are cheated. Their first impulse is to run away from this "trouble," to get back to the Ideal before it has been effaced. AN AWAKENING _Love, indeed, is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire by Allah given.--Byron._ The expressions, "falling in love," and "making love," are terms suggesting something that is impossible. No one falls in love. The experience of loving may come when a person has evolved where fine perceptions are possible. All living is an awakening process in which there are many degrees of consciousness. At a certain stage in his evolution, a human being is able to see and feel certain truth. The imagination is a power which is developed with intellect and fine feeling. The imagination can create a world and people it. In this way, ideals are perpetually made. Humanity's effort to realize ideals is evolution. When man can image a human being that fulfils the highest ideal he can create, the soul rejoices. Man forgets the imperfect in his ecstacy when contemplating the perfect. And when one human being sees another human being who reminds him, more or less, of his ideal, he is said to love. He does not "fall" nor "make," he realizes, he awakens, and sometimes re-creates. It may often occur that the person who awakens one to this ideal may recall this ideal once, twice, again and yet again. Or this person may constantly recall it, or cease altogether to recall it. That man and woman are lovers who constantly keep before each other the Ideal. They wish to abide together, because together they live their best lives, do their best work, are most kind to their fellow-man, do no wrong, can do no wrong. This is commonly accepted today as the basis of marriage. It is this ideal which is vaguely or definitely in the minds of thinking people when they wish to marry. The poet Dante had a wonderful, complete ideal. He saw but twice the woman who reminded him of his Perfect. He wrote in poetry of his Ideal and called Her by this woman's name. His wife, the mother of his children, was another woman.