Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/140

 It is just as important in the matter of marriage as in anything else. And we have to learn these things by instruction first. Later on we learn by experience.

Let us say that one wanted to take up a course in engineering of one kind or another. Would he try to learn by experience without taking instruction first? He would after a lifetime not know as much as he could learn by getting the experience represented in the schools.

Experience is indispensable, but we need first of all instruction. Instruction represents the experience of ten thousand others and it is just as necessary in marriage as elsewhere.

That is the trouble today about marriage. People are trying to learn by experience alone without any previous instruction, and in doing so they are just as apt to fail as a young man who tried to become a doctor or a lawyer without taking advantage of the stored-up knowledge of the race in books and schools. The fact is that society does not allow a young man to become a doctor or lawyer without training in the theory of medicine or law; but we allow anyone at all to marry without any instruction whatsoever.

Is it any wonder that divorces occur so frequently?