The continuance of the power of mental growth and expansion, even to extreme old age, in such men as Michael Angelo, Goethe, Victor Hugo, and other men of genius, exemplifies the enormous power of persistent mental growth which is possible where the intellect is keenly active throughout life. The man of unusual mental force and activity is often merely in his psychic adolescence at thirty or thirty-five, when his physical growth has already ceased, and when the mental expansion of even the ordinarily cultured and mentally active individual is generally complete. And this fact, perhaps, largely accounts for the phenomenon, often remarked, of the evil almost always resulting from the very early marriages of men of genius, and the often exceeding happy results of their sex relations and companionships when formed more maturely. And it may perhaps be set down as an axiom, that the greater the mental power and activity, the later should be the riveting of a life-long relationship; and the smaller the mental activity, as opposed to physical, the earlier may it safely be accomplished. An analogous condition exists with regard to physical development. The average man or woman, and more especially those leading sedentary lives and using the muscles little, develop little or not at all in muscularity after the ages of eighteen or twenty, while the dancer, the labouring man, or the athlete, who continually cultivates his muscles by use, continues to develop enormously; so that an iron band riveted round the arm of the blacksmith at eighteen would have eaten its way into the flesh almost to the bone by the time the man were thirty (if, indeed, it has not arrested all growth); while on the arm of the student it might still hang loose; and the athlete who at thirty should be compelled to use the dumb-bells he had used at eighteen would find them worse than useless. Those who unqualifiedly condemn early marriage under all conditions, and those who fail to recognize the atrophy and evil caused by it under others, have probably failed to look at the matter from both sides. There is little or no mental suffering or moral evil caused by the early unions among simple up-country folk, far removed from the stir of cities, and whose monotonous and unstimulating surroundings give scope for little intellectual activity, however great may be their natural mental powers and strength of will. As to the material utility, under their social conditions, of these early marriages, there is no doubt.