It might be thought that if it is so very unnatural the positive couple would instinctively rebel against it?—Not so! How many of them are aware even that it is not a natural law? Custom deceives the young positive couple in the same way as it deceives us all. We are accustomed to innumerable constraints which to a man unfamiliar with them would be intolerably irksome. When, therefore, the young positive couple stand at the altar and hear the priest say to the man: “Wilt thou love her, comfort her, and keep her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?” and the young positive man answers innocently “I will,” neither of them suspects the cloven hoof of social fear or social constraint behind the words. They imagine not only that the question is a perfectly normal one, implying a normal condition, but they also imagine that this implied condition itself—that of lifelong love—is a possible and generally acceptable proposition. They are not even led to suppose that it is an _ideal_ difficult to realize, otherwise the man would not be invited to take such an enormously difficult vow with so little preparation and warning. To answer the priest’s question honestly—that is to say, with a full knowledge of the terms of the vow and with a perfect conviction that he is ready to fulfil them—a young positive man would require to be in possession of knowledge regarding himself and the future which he can hardly be expected to possess. For a man to say on March 20, 1922, that, if he live so long, he will entertain the same æsthetic or moral or political sentiments on March 20, 1952, as those he holds on the day he makes the vow, would be daring—or to say the least, presumptuous—as implying a claim to a gift of prophecy. But for a man to say of a sentiment in which passion enters as an important factor, that he will hold it thirty years hence, he must either be quite ignorant of what he is being asked to declare, or a prophet capable of accurately reading the future; or else he must be the most unprincipled blackguard that ever lived, and prepared to take any vow in order to obtain his immediate needs. Now, since it would be unfair to assume that the majority of the young men who answer “I will” to that question are blackguards; since, moreover, it would be unscientific to suppose that any of them are gifted with the superhuman power of prophecy, we can only conclude that they are completely ignorant of what it means. They are completely ignorant of the whole significance of the marriage rite, and it is their ignorance, coupled with the fact of the force of custom, that enables them to accept the unnatural imposition of the State-ordered marriage as if it were a natural condition. Besides, the young positive couple are, as a rule, not very analytical. The only thing they insist upon with all the impatience of what is called “love,” is union; and since their elders