WHICH IS THE ONE?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14931, 2 March 1912, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHICH IS THE ONE?

" Mabiuack, which makes two one, is a lifelong struggle to discover which is that one." It sounds, perhaps, like one of the things that wo all say in moments of exaltation, to recall afterwards with wonder how we could have been so brilliant, and what wo could have meant by it. Let us assume provisionally that it means something. Wo may then apply the general principle that the kind of marriage which makes two one is chiefly theoretical. A generation ago we might have said ideal. But there are so many ideate in 1911.-*

Take any ordinary, commonplace, humdrum, happy marriage. You will find it necessary to stretch a point to assert that tho two of them have become perfectly and completely one. There are divergencies, idiosyncrasies. They do not think quite the same thing about the same subject. There is no quarrel, no collision, but they look at the business from different points. And as tho same person cannot be looking from more than outpoint at a time, we have to infer that he and she axe not exactly one and the same. They preserve separate identities, separate habits of thought, separate impulses. They are not one— yet not precisely two.

They work well together, they ruse on all matters of importance such a unison of sentiment and t thought as no two people who are merely • friends or;- kinsfolk or master and servant ever attain. There is a working agreement, a capacity for subordinating on a matter which either thinks of the first moment the hesitation or ciouLt of the ono who feels less, strongly. So far as this, and no further, the ordinary commonplace, comfortable marriage makes two people one. . It is not, of course, denied that there are closer, more complete unions, in which, so; far as mortal mind can tell, the two individualities have been fused into one f something greater—or less —than either. ~ But these are not in the majority. These are rare.

At all events they do not, rare or otherwise, come under this dictum about a " lifelong struggle to discover which is the one." But then we might very well go on to argue that such a description describes no happy marriage. It describes something real, though. - Who among us lias not met marriages in which the object of each partner is to absorb . the oilier, and use the other solely to carry out private ambitions T These unions, no doubt, are the exceptions. _ But any account of marriage as an institution has to bo full of exceptions.

Yet another variety of marriage is indicated by our epigram. There are a good many quite comfortable conjugal partnerships, ..in which one partner is supremely confident of being the managing director, while the fortunes of the firm are really controlled by the other. There is in a sense " a lifelong struggle to discover which" of the two is the one, but it is chiefly an unconscious struggle, and very often" both partners are equally unaware of which is tho master spirit. Nor would they be in the least better off if they knew. Fortunately, if you -told them, neither would believe.