“From those early marriages proceeds, likewise, the rivalry of parents and children; the son is eager to enjoy the world, before the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room, at once, for two generations.  The daughter begins to bloom, before the mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for the absence of the other.

“Surely all these evils may be avoided, by that deliberation and delay, which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice.  In the variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough supported, without the help of a partner.  Longer time will increase experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of inquiry and selection:  one advantage, at least, will be certain; the parents will be visibly older than their children.”

“What reason cannot collect,” said Nekayah, “and what experiment has not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others.  I have been told, that late marriages are not eminently happy.  This is a question too important to be neglected, and I have often proposed it to those, whose accuracy of remark, and comprehensiveness of knowledge, made their suffrages worthy of regard.  They have generally determined, that it is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their fate upon each other, at a time, when opinions are fixed, and habits are established; when friendships have been contracted on both sides; when life has been planned into method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own prospects.

“It is scarcely possible that two, travelling through the world, under the conduct of chance, should have been both directed to the same path, and it will not often happen, that either will quit the track which custom has made pleasing.  When the desultory levity of youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride, ashamed to yield, or obstinacy, delighting to contend.  And, even though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines, likewise, the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to the manners.  Long customs are not easily broken:  he that attempts to change the course of his own life, very often labours in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves!”

“But, surely,” interposed the prince, “you suppose the chief motive of choice forgotten or neglected.  Whenever I shall seek a wife, it shall be my first question, whether she be willing to be led by reason.”

“Thus it is,” said Nekayah, “that philosophers are deceived.  There are a thousand familiar disputes, which reason can never decide; questions that elude investigation, and make logick ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.  Consider the state of mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed to act, upon any occasions, whether small or great, with all the reasons of action present to their minds.  Wretched would be the pair, above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason, every morning, all the minute detail of a domestick day.