each other, and therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage
is one of the means of happiness.«
    »I know not, said the princess, whether marriage be more than one of the
innumerable modes of human misery. When I see and reckon the various forms of
connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities
of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire
where both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contests of disagreeing
virtues, where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am
sometimes disposed to think with the severer casuists of most nations, that
marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the
instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with
indissoluble compacts.«
    »You seem to forget, replied Rasselas, that you have, even now, represented
celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions may be bad, but they
cannot both be worst. Thus it happens when wrong opinions are entertained, that
they mutually destroy each other, and leave the mind open to truth.«
    »I did not expect, answered the princess, to hear that imputed to falsehood
which is the consequence only of frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is
difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in
their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once we readily note the
discriminations and decide the preference: but of two systems, of which neither
can be surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magnitude and
multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that judging of the whole by
parts, I am alternately affected by one and the other as either presses on my
memory or fancy? We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other,
when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious relations of
politicks and morality: but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical
computations, all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies his opinion.«
    »Let us not add, said the prince, to the other evils of life, the bitterness
of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in subtilties of argument.
We are employed in a search, of which both are equally to enjoy the success, or
suffer by the miscarriage. It is therefore fit that we assist each other. You
surely conclude too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its
institution; will not the misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the
gift of heaven? The world must be peopled