Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/53

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 41

the case of that relationship which depends most definitely upon the dyad type, that is, monogamous marriage. The by no means rare fact that among thoroughly worthy persons decid- edly unfortunate marriages occur, and very fortunate ones between defective persons, points at once to the fact that this structure, however dependent it is upon each of the members, still may have a character which coincides with that of neither asso- ciate. If, for example, each of the wedded pair suffers from vagaries, difficulties, and unavailabilities, but at the same time understands how to localize these upon himself, while he invests in the marital relationship only his best and purest, and thus holds the relationship free from all the discounts which affect himself as a person, this may immediately be to the credit merely of the partner in marriage as a person, but there nevertheless arises from it the feeling that marriage is something superper- sonal, something in itself worthy and sacred, which stands over and above the unsanctity of each of its elements. Since within a relationship the one is sensitive only on the side toward the other, and behaves only with regard to him, his qualities, although they are, of course, always his own, nevertheless attain a quite different shading, status, and meaning from that which they have when, referring only to the proper ego, they weave themselves into the total complexity of the ego. Hence for the consciousness of each of the two the relationship may crystallize to an entity outside of himself, which is more and better under certain circumstances also worse than himself; something toward which he has obligations, and from which there come to him, as from an objective existence, benefits and injuries. With respect to marriage, this tracing of the group- unity to something more than its construction upon the mere I and thou is facilitated by the two sorts of circumstances. In the first place, by its incomparable intimacy. That two such fundamentally different natures as man and woman constitute such a close union ; that the egoism of the individual is sus- pended so fundamentally, not merely in favor of the one, but in favor of the total relationship which includes the family inter- ests, the family honor, and more than all the children, is really