CHAPTER XLV

CHOOSING A COMPANION

=Indications of constitutional degeneracy.=--Feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, insanity, scrofula, cancer, rheumatism and gout are the outward indications of constitutional degeneracy and inherited tendencies which are often transmitted from one generation to another of a deteriorating family. These conditions in nearly every instance were due either to strong drink or to sexual sin. In most cases consumption may be added to the above list.

=Choosing a degenerate companion.=--If you and your family have a clear record of physical, mental and moral health, you can form habits of vice or marry into a family addicted to vice or into a family constitutionally degenerate and hand down to your posterity hereditary conditions and tendencies.

=A clear bill of health to your children.=--If you and your family have a bad record of health, you can, by a virtuous and temperate life, strict observance of the laws of health, and an intelligent choice of a companion, largely overcome the effects of bad heredity and environment in yourself and transmit a clean bill of health to your children.

=Neurotics.=--Don’t marry into a neurotic family. Your partner might become insane and your children be afflicted.

=Drunkards.=--Don’t marry into a family where there are several drunkards and don’t marry a person addicted to strong drink. Remember that you are choosing the father or the mother of your children; and that choice is final. If children could choose their parents, they would hesitate before making such a choice.

=Consumptives.=--If you are suffering from any form of tubercular disease, you should not marry. Neither should you marry one having consumption, nor into a family where consumption is common. It is possible to overcome all tendencies to consumption and to effect a cure in the earliest stages.

=Consumption and cancer.=--For a person having consumption to marry into a home where cancer is common would be a combination fraught with great danger to the offspring. The children would be handicapped from birth with frail bodies, liable to similar diseases, and most of them would die during adolescence, or before. The worst results follow where both companions have inherited the same disease.

=A low vitality.=--A parent cannot transmit to the child what he does not possess himself. Children of immoral parents, invalid parents, feeble-minded parents, sexually exhausted parents will necessarily inherit impoverished vitality.

=The immature.=--In all countries where immature marriages are tolerated or encouraged the children are small, wretched, unhealthy and shortlived. This was observed in the days of Greece, in past generations in France, to-day in India and may be observed wherever encouraged in our country. From four to ten per cent, more children born of immature parents will die in the first year than among children of matured parents. Idiocy and physical imperfections; a lack of energy and courage will be quite common among them. As a rule girls mature at twenty and boys at twenty-four. Marriage earlier than these ages should be considered immature.

=Difference as to age.=--The young man, as a rule, should be four to six years older than his bride. Unless a man’s strength and vigor are exceptionally well maintained, he should not become a father after he is fifty. Sociologists claim that a larger per cent. of the children born after their fathers were fifty become sexual offenders, dishonest and criminals than among children whose fathers were younger.

=Criminals.=--Don’t marry into a family where there is a number of criminals. Where crime is common in a family you will find many of the outward signs of constitutional degeneracy mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Frequency of crime in a family indicates deterioration.

=Wealth should have no influence.=--The choice of a companion should not be influenced by money interests, base desires, or any other unworthy motive. If one’s choice is influenced in one of these ways domestic harmony and well-born children will not be possible.

=Masculine women and feminine men.=--Don’t marry an effeminate man. Don’t marry a masculine woman. The masculine should predominate in man. The feminine should predominate in woman. Where the feminine nature predominates in the wife and the masculine nature in the husband soul-union will be possible, domestic harmony will prevail and the children will be well-born.

=Marriage of cousins.=--Don’t marry into a family where first and second cousins have married for several generations. This custom gradually leads to constitutional degeneracy. Should first cousins marry where there have been no previous intermarriages, no serious defects will likely be transmitted to the children.

=Value of chastity.=--True marriage is based on genuine, pure love and the harmonious mental and temperamental adaptation. True love between the sexes is the child of the sex life. When lascivious thinking and habits change sexuality into sensuality lust becomes a substitute for love. If the real cause of divorce were known it would be found in most cases to be due to the dissipation of the vital energy, which is the basis of love. In nearly every case man is responsible for his home’s being wrecked. In the choice of a companion, chastity is of vital importance.

=Temperaments.=--Authorities recognize three distinct temperaments: the motive, the vital and the nervous or mental. Where the motive organs, the muscles and bones, predominate, the physical powers will be most prominent. Where the vital organs, indicated by a heavy-set body and a full chest, predominate, the manifestations of life will be most prominent. Where the nervous system predominates, the mental powers will be most prominent.

=Motive temperament.=--The motive temperament is indicated by bones broad and large; muscles slim, firm and tough; the individual is tall, angular, brow prominent, cheek-bones high, shoulders broad, chest full, eyes and hair usually dark. Such persons are usually very pronounced in their views; firm, ambitious, stern and severe. Two persons having very pronounced motive temperaments should not marry. There would be two bosses in the home and the children would be willful and unsociable.

=Nervous temperament.=--The nervous temperament is indicated by sharp features, light frame, head rather large, face oval, forehead high, eyes expressive, movements quick, neck slender and feelings usually intense. Should parties of this temperament marry disagreements would be frequent and the children would be delicate, weak and over precocious.

=Vital temperament.=--The vital temperament is indicated by a rather low, heavy-set body, hands and feet small, neck short and thick, chest full, shoulders broad, face and head round, hair and eyes generally light. Persons of this temperament are, as a rule, not great students, inclined to be impulsive, very sociable, versatile, cheerful and ardent and liable to be fickle. Where these characteristics are very pronounced, marriage with a person of another temperament would be advisable. However, most persons of the vital type have a harmonious, balanced temperament. Here likes may marry like.

=Like should not marry like.=--If one has a very pronounced motive temperament he should choose a companion having a more plump and symmetrical form, with a genial and yielding nature. This would be conducive to domestic harmony and would give the children a favorable heredity.

=The law of compliments.=--One with a pronounced nervous temperament should select a companion having a vital temperament or one having a moderate motive temperament. If young people were prompted by unselfish motives and a pure chaste love, mistakes in marriage would be extremely rare. Where choice of a companion is determined by financial interests, sensual desire, or other selfish motives, the soul is denied its prerogative in the selection of a mate. No man in a normal condition and prompted by unselfish motives would select for his companion a masculine woman, a consumptive, a neurotic or one with an excessive motive or nervous temperament, and vice versa. The subjective minds of possible soul-mates come naturally and easily to comprehend each other’s joys and sorrows, longings and love. Most married people are fairly well-mated and comparatively happy. Their adaptation to each other and their soul oneness grew out of a natural affinity to which they unselfishly yielded rather than from an intelligent choice based on a knowledge of the laws of adaptation.

=Mismates.=--Perhaps one-half of the married are not well-mated, for reasons already stated. Owing to the fact that so many are mismated, a condition growing out of artificial and unnatural social, economic and moral conditions, the advice of this chapter should be carefully studied by young people before they make the choice of a life companion.

=Atavism.=--All students of natural history have occasionally observed among plants and animals the reappearance of something that belonged to their remote progenitors, but which did not belong to their immediate parents. This tendency for remote ancestral characteristics to reappear after lying dormant for one or more generations, is called atavism. This fact is sometimes observed in the human family.

=Examples.=--As a rule, when one child in the home possesses some marked morbid tendency or special gift not possessed by other members of the family, it can be accounted for on the basis of some initial or maternal impression. But this is not always true. A deaf mute may be born in a home and the cause traced to some remote deaf mute ancestor. Consumption, insanity and other diseases may disappear for one or more generations and then reappear. This is a fact recognized by many physicians.

Two first cousins from families remarkably free from intemperance were ruined by intemperance. Both seemed powerless from the first indulgence to resist the habit. One was dissipated from childhood, the other did not begin until he was twenty and was a wreck in six brief years. Their grandfather was a periodic drinker. The appetite had slumbered in one generation but broke out in the next.

=Love the basis of marriage.=--In the choice of a life companion one should be absolutely sure that his choice is prompted by pure and unselfish love. If love in courtship and marriage is genuine it will have but one idol. Selfish interests and base desires may lead one to admire and worship more than one, but this is not love.

=Chastity the basis of genuine love.=--This genuine love that draws young people into beautiful courtship, happy marriage and makes them one is vitally related to the sex nature. Without sexuality this expression of the affectional nature would not be possible. When this God-honored, love-creating nature is converted into sensuality, lust, not love, reigns in courtship and marriage.

=Love tested.=--The genuineness of love may be tested in several ways. Whenever the choice is largely determined by financial interests or social prestige the parties are drawn to each other for selfish reasons, and not by unmixed love. If a young woman wins a companion by wearing low-necked dresses, permitting young men to hold her hands, play with her hair, kiss and caress her, by going with them to public dances, and low theatrical entertainments, she makes her appeal on the plane of the sensual. Courtship and marriage on this plane are a travesty on love. It is not always easy for the vigorous and healthy to distinguish between selfish interest, base desire and love. A good test would be for lovers to cease their calls and correspondence for ten days; meanwhile they should attend social functions and call on and accept calls from others. If they find it impossible to admire and love some other person and their love for each other remains intense and warm under these conditions, they may safely conclude that their love is genuine.