(6) A further advantage of marriage is that there should be someone to take care of the house; cook the food, wash the dishes, and sweep the floor, etc. If a man is busy in such work he cannot acquire learning, or carry on his business, or engage in his devotions properly. For

(13) A third disadvantage of marriage is that the cares of a family often prevent a man from concentrating his thoughts on God and on a future life, and may, unless he is careful, lead to his destruction, for God has said, "Let not your wives and children turn you away from remembering God."

(1) Marriage plays such a large part in human affairs that it must necessarily be taken into account in treating of the religious life and be regarded in both its aspects of advantage and disadvantage.

(2) Seeing that God, as the Koran says, "only created men and genii for the purpose of worshipping" the first and obvious advantage of marriage is that the worshippers of God may increase in number. Theologians have therefore laid it down as a maxim that it is better to be engaged in matrimonial duties than in supererogatory devotions.

(9) Concerning a certain saint it is related that his wife died and he would not marry again, though people urged him, saying it was easier to concentrate his thoughts in solitude. One night he saw in a dream the door of heaven opened and numbers of angels descending. They came near and looked upon him, and one said, "Is this that selfish wretch?" and his fellow answered, "Yes, this is he." The saint was too alarmed to ask whom they meant, but presently a boy passed and he asked him. "It is you they are speaking about," replied the boy; "only up to a week ago your good works were being recorded in heaven along with those of other saints, but now they have erased your name from the roll." Greatly disturbed in mind as soon as he awoke, he hastened to be married. From all the above considerations it will be seen that marriage is desirable.

(5) Another advantage of marriage is that to sit with and be friendly to one's wife is a relaxation for the mind after being occupied in religious duties, and after such relaxation one may return to one's devotions with renewed zest. Thus the Prophet himself, when he found the weight of his revelations press too heavily upon him touched his wife Ayesha and said, "Speak to me, O Ayesha, speak to me!" This he did from that familiar human touch, that he might receive strength to support fresh revelations. For a similar reason he used to bid the Muezzin Bilal give the call to prayer, and sometimes he used to smell sweet perfumes. It is a well-known saying of his, "I have loved three things in the world: perfumes, and women, and refreshment in prayer." On one occasion Omar asked the Prophet what were the things specially to be sought in the world. He answered, "A tongue occupied in the remembrance of God, a grateful heart, and a believing wife."

(11) Another drawback to marriage is this, that to treat one's family kindly and patiently and to bring their affairs to a satisfactory issue can only be done by those who have a good disposition. There is a great danger lest a man should treat his family harshly, or neglect them, and so bring sin upon himself. The Prophet said: "He who deserts his wife and children is like a runaway slave; till he returns to them none of his fasts or prayers will be accepted by God." In brief, man has a lower nature, and, till he can control his own lower nature, he had better not assume the responsibility of controlling another's. Someone asked the saint Bishr Hafi why he did not marry. "I am afraid," he replied, "of that verse

(8) Marriage has, moreover, this good in it, that to be patient with feminine peculiarities, to provide the necessaries which wives require, and to keep them in the path of the law, is a very important part of religion. The Prophet said, "To give one's wife the money she requires is more important than to give alms." Once, when Ibn Mubarak was engaged in a campaign against the infidels, one of his companions asked him, "Is any work more meritorious than religious war?" "Yes," he replied, "to feed and clothe one's wife and children properly." The celebrated saint Bishr Hafi said, "It is better that a man should work for wife and children than merely for himself." In the Traditions it has been recorded that some sins can only be atoned for by enduring trouble for the sake of one's family.

(3) Another advantage of marriage is that, as the Prophet said, the prayers of children profit their parents when the latter are dead, and children who die before their parents intercede for them on the Day of Judgment. "When a child," said the Prophet, "is told to enter heaven, it weeps and says, 'I will not enter in without my father and mother.' " Again, one day the Prophet seized hold of a man's sleeves and drew him violently towards himself, saying, "Even thus shall children draw their parents into heaven." He added, "Children crowd together at the gate of heaven and cry out for their fathers and mothers, till those of the latter who are outside are told to enter in and join their children."

(461) Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are the prime of physical as well as of intellectual vigour. Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust. Very true, he replied. And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated. Very true, he replied. This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not marry his daughter or his daughter’s daughter, or his mother or his mother’s mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying their sons or fathers, or son’s son or father’s father, and so on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange accordingly. That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how

(10) We come now to treat of the drawbacks to marriage. One of these is that there is a danger, especially in the present time, that a man should gain a livelihood by unlawful means in order to support his family, and no amount of good works can compensate for this. The Prophet said that at the resurrection a certain man with a whole mountain load of good works will be brought forward and stationed near the Balance.(1) He will then be asked, " 'By what means did you support your family?' He will not be able to give a satisfactory answer, and all his good works will be cancelled, and proclamation will be made concerning him, 'This is the man whose family have devoured all his good deeds!' "

(7) this reason Abu Suleiman has said, "A good wife is not a blessing of this world merely, but of the next, because she provides a man leisure in which to think of the next world"; and one of the Caliph Omar's sayings is, "After faith, no blessing is equal to a good wife."

(26) This, too, it says, that whoever has been the size of a man, they restore him then with an age of forty years; they who have been little when not dead, they restore then with an age of fifteen years; and they give every one his wife, and show him his children with the wife; so they act as now in the world, but there is no begetting of children.

(55) Therefore God established the State of Wedlock with Adam and Eve, and bound it fast with a strong Chain, in that he said; A Man shall leave Father and Mother, and cleave to his Wife, and they two shall be one Flesh. And God tolerates their as one Body and its Members, and must aim (in the Fear of God) at the Getting of Children; or else the Wantonness [or Lust] in itself (without that true Love of the State of Wedlock) is continually a bestial Lust, [Infection,] and Sin. And if you (in the State of Wedlock) seek nothing but the Lust and Lechery, then in such a Condition, thou art not a Jot better than a Beast, And do but consider it rightly, that without this, thou standest [already] in a bestial Birth [or Generation,] contrary to the first Creation, like all Beasts. For the holy Man in Adam was not predetermined to have propagated so, but in great modest Love out of himself.

(458) they will be together, and will be brought up together, and will associate at gymnastic exercises. And so they will be drawn by a necessity of their natures to have intercourse with each other—necessity is not too strong a word, I think? Yes, he said;—necessity, not geometrical, but another sort of necessity which lovers know, and which is far more convincing and constraining to the mass of mankind. True, I said; and this, Glaucon, like all the rest, must proceed after an orderly fashion; in a city of the blessed, licentiousness is an unholy thing which the rulers will forbid. Yes, he said, and it ought not to be permitted. Then clearly the next thing will be to make matrimony sacred in the highest degree, and what is most beneficial will be deemed sacred? Exactly. And how can marriages be made most beneficial?—that is a question which I put to you, because I see in your house dogs for hunting, and of the nobler sort of birds not a few. Now, I beseech you, do tell me, have you ever attended to their pairing and breeding? In what particulars? Why, in the first place, although they are all of a good sort, are not some better than others? True. And do you breed from them all indifferently, or do you take care to breed from the best only? From the best.

(18) Fifthly, she should not be barren. "A piece of old matting lying in the corner of the house is better than a barren wife.'' (3)