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THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE
17 in every society that is not far gone towards dissolution and death. Bacon says "In youth, wives are our mistresses, companions in middle ages and nurses when we get old, so that a man has always reasons in favour of matrimony." But the Hindu conception of marriage is something higher, something loftier than this ideal. Here marriage is regarded not as an end in itself but only as a means to an end. As Count Tolstoy puts it, “One will never succeed if one marries merely to ensure a pleasant life. It is a great mistake to place marriage, that is. union with the person one loves, as one's chief purpose in life, superseding everything else. Marriage as an end? Well, one marries, and what then? If there is no other purpose in life before, then, afterwards for the two together, it will be terribly difficult almost impossible to find another. It is even certain that in the absence of a common purpose before marriage, one cannot possibly converge after it but only diverge. Marriage brings happiness only when purpose in life of both is one and the same." This represents the spiritual side of marriage whose aim consists not in mere procreation and multiplication of the race in which case, human beings, endowed with highest gifts, the vision and faculty divine, are no better than brutes, but in the attainment of moral and mental perfection and the realization of true-love i.e., love to God and love to fellow-beings.
Having thus established the need for and the utility and sanctity of marriage, from social, health and religious viewpoints, we shall proceed to discuss the age at which marriage should be solemnized. In determining the marriageable age of a boy, three fundamental factors must be considered viz., (1) whether the boy has passed the student stage--the stage, as Shakespeare describes it, of 'the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail, unwillingly to school; (2) whether he has attained sexual maturity and is physically strong, hale and healthy and fit to enter into marital relations and (3) whether he is in a position to earn his bread and bear the family burden. We have already pointed out in a previous article that a boy under modern conditions can only complete his student's career in his twentyfifth year and that during this
3 Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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