Unfortunately it is very hard to make an average citizen take impersonal
views of any sort in matters affecting personal comfort or conduct. We
may be enthusiastic Liberals or Conservatives without any hope of seats
in Parliament, knighthoods, or posts in the Government, because party
politics do not make the slightest difference in our daily lives and
therefore cost us nothing. But to take a vital process in which we are
keenly interested personal instruments, and ask us to regard it, and
feel about it, and legislate on it, wholly as if it were an impersonal
one, is to make a higher demand than most people seem capable of
responding to. We all have personal interests in marriage which we are
not prepared to sink. It is not only the women who want to get married:
the men do too, sometimes on sentimental grounds, sometimes on the
more sordid calculation that bachelor life is less comfortable and more
expensive, since a wife pays for her status with domestic service as
well as with the other services expected of her. Now that children are
avoidable, this calculation is becoming more common and conscious than
it was: a result which is regarded as "a steady improvement in general
morality."