Having dealt with divorce in so far as it concerns positive couples, I have now to deal with it in its relation to the negative man and woman. My present task is, therefore, by far the more difficult of the two, seeing that the moment we leave the uniformity of natural law and the regularity of indomitable forces, we find ourselves in a maze of possibilities, which, while they defy enumeration owing to their extreme multiplicity, also elude all effort at classification because of the infinite combinations and permutations that low health and eccentricity are capable of producing. It must be clear that the moment the driving force of healthy, normal passion ceases to be the motive actuating male and female, the vagaries of human conduct are no longer calculable. One knows what in certain circumstances a healthy passionate animal will do. It is impossible to foretell what an unhealthy or unpassionate one will do.[96] To describe all the possible complications that will ultimately lead a negative couple into the Divorce Court, or cause them to seek a judicial separation, or induce them to conclude that they would be happier living apart, is therefore beyond the powers of any human being. The negative man and woman, like the invalid or the eccentric, must remain an enigma, because natural laws and forces no longer operate normally or calculably in them. Nevertheless, it is possible, in a rough way, to outline certain features which are more or less common even to sub-normal people, and from which, therefore, certain general rules of conduct may be inferred. For instance, we may say of negative men and women that:— (_a_) The physiological promptings of an instinctive and organic kind are never likely (as with their healthier brethren) to weigh very heavily with them. (The ethereal lovers who believe that marriage is a union of souls.) (_b_) The sentimental and intellectual aspects of a sexual situation are more likely to determine their conduct than its vital or reproductive aspects. (The lovers in most modern novels, in which “Luvv” is supposed never to have bodily union as its aim, but only companionship, or sweet words, or pure affection, or a life of “unselfish” mutual service, or some other high-falutin’ nonsense.) (_c_) The force of passion being no longer the ruling determinant in them, such factors as vanity, caution, cowardice, and even indolence, may dominate the sex impulses and direct conduct to their own ends. (The bulk of hasty marriages made during the war were of this nature, vanity both in the man and the woman giving rise in each individual to such elated feelings that these were mistaken for depth of passion.)