It would be foolish to deny, on the other hand, that Reason should be
consulted as much as possible as long as Love allows it to have the
floor for a moment. Thus men might, before it is too late, have an eye
to Benjamin Franklin’s advice in regard to large families and the age of
marriage.
Mr. F. W. Holland of Boston has collected some statistics concerning
which Mr. Galton says, “One of his conclusions was that morality is more
often found among members of large families than among those of small
ones. It is reasonable to expect this would be the case, owing to the
internal discipline among members of large families, and to the
wholesome sustaining and restraining effects of family pride and family
criticism. Members of small families are apt to be selfish, and when the
smallness of the family is due to the deaths of many of its members at
early ages, it is some evidence either of weakness of the family
constitution, or of deficiency of common sense or of affection on the
part of the parents in not taking better care of them. Mr. Holland
quotes in his letter to me a piece of advice by Franklin to a young man
in search of a wife, ‘to take one out of a bunch of sisters,’ and a
popular saying that kittens brought up with others make the best pets,
because they have learned to play without scratching. Sir W. Gull has
remarked that those candidates for the Indian Civil Service who are
members of large families are on the whole the strongest.”
A second bit of advice given by Franklin is perhaps less unquestionable:
“From the marriages that have fallen under my observation,” he says, "I
am rather inclined to think that early ones stand the best chances of
happiness. The temper and habits of the young are not become so stiff
and uncomplying as when more advanced in life: they form more easily to
each other, and hence many occasions of disgust are removed.... ‘Late
children,’ says the Spanish proverb, ‘are early orphans.’ With us in
America (1768) marriages are generally in the morning of life; our
children are therefore educated and settled in the world by noon; and
thus, our business being done, we have an afternoon and evening of
cheerful leisure to ourselves.... By these early marriages we are
blessed with more children; and from the mode among us founded by
nature, every mother suckling and nursing her own child [1768], more of
them are raised. Thence the swift progress of population among us,
unparalleled in Europe."
“Marriages,” says Theodore Parker, “are best of dissimilar materials;”
and Coleridge remarks, similarly: “You may depend upon it that a slight
contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.” But
would it be possible to find two individuals who did not present “a
slight contrast of character”? Coleridge apparently did not think much
of the average conjugal union of his day: “To the many of both sexes I
am well aware,” he says, “this Eden of matrimony is but a
kitchen-garden, a thing of profit and convenience, in an even
temperature between indifference and liking.” What a married person
wants is “a soul-mate as well as a house or yoke-mate.”
Young men are often warned not to marry for beauty, because it is but
skin-deep. But surely a millimetre of beauty is worth more than a yard
of ugliness, though whitewashed with rank, money, or general utility. “A
thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”