Note 822 — Chapter XVIII · PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY (continued 2)

There are many reasons why all persons do not marry. Among these is a loftier ideal of love. "Persons often live single a whole life-time because they are unable to obtain the only one in the world for whom they can ever experience a throb of pure passion.... We see then that this more diffused and elevated form of love becomes at once the greatest incentive and the greatest barrier to marriage. It differs wholly from the localized passion in being selective. While it is less selfish, it must be called out by, and exclusively directed toward, one definite object. From this circumstance it may be called the objective form of love."—Ward, Dynamic Sociology, I, 626.