Few people, in estimating the happiness of a married couple, make due allowance for human imperfection.  No two human beings can be brought into the intimate relationship of husband and wife without the occasional development of something discordant.  Only perfect, absolutely sinless persons could live absolutely perfect lives together and such men and women can never be found in the world: and as in another world there will be not marrying absolutely perfect marriages can never be realized either in this world or in that which is to come. But, are not the vast majority of married persons quite as happy as an equal number of unmarried ones?  Nay, mere, are not the great majority of married people as happy in their married state as they would be unmarried? And still more, are they not as happy with each other as they would be with anybody else?  By a change of partner they might get rid of someone or more causes of disturbances between them-some constitutes agreeable, cherished habits: but they would find in other parties other causes of disturbance quite as serious, though of an entirely different kind: so that after all, it be very difficult to say on which side there was the greatest amount of happiness or misery.  The fact is that men and women are susceptible of only a given amount of contentment and happiness, in any condition of life and marry who they will.  They can never exceed their capacity for enjoyment.  Many people are foolish enough to imagine that marriage is the sovereign cure for all the disquietudes and miseries of life.  When they get married and yet find their favorite panacea does not work perfectly, they jump to the conclusion that is because their marriage is not a true one, that it was ill-assorted and therefore an unhappy one; whereas the only trouble is, that both husband and wife are human-neither divine nor angelic-and have like all other human beings more or less of sinful infirmity about them

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