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and complicated decisions, are often vested in two persons who have to rely solely on mutual confidence to settle all differences of opinion.
It is not found necessary to reason abstractly that government must be in the hands of one person, and that therefore the one partner must be an autocrat and the other a figure-head only.
We thus know that in the most active business of life-that, indeed, which is technically and habitually called “business,” as if it were the only serious matter-things may be as well managed by two leads as by one.
Indeed the assumption is that the two heads will be even better than one, as the common proverb goes, for purposes of consultation; and where final action is needed, it can be delegated by mutual agreement to the one or the other.
Now if two business partners, coming together with only material interests at stake, can thus work successfully on what may be called the two-headed plan, why is it not to be expected that two married persons can do it?
They meet, as Lotze says, in “perfect moral equivalence,” as do the business partners; they have to unite them all the common interests which business partners share; but they have, unlike business partners, the whole realm of sentiment and association and parentage and household life to hold them in harmony.
Their success, if they succeed, is a success far more important
