"Marriages, even those that are most carefully considered, must inevitably be conditioned by so many chances (those of fortune, circumstance, sentiment and opportunity) that it would be absurd to explore the ground armed with the rules of mathematics. Besides, human choice in the matter is so wrapped in obscurity that anyone who would choose too carefully, who is obsessed by any such notion as finding a "sister soul", runs a very grave risk of not marrying at all, or else of making some perfectly ridiculous choice, the kind of choice (to quote La Fontaine) "one would never have thought possible" — though we see it happening every day! […] Even in the most enlightened unions, there is always an element of the leap in the dark, an element of gamble — the Pascalian pari."