CHAPTER VII.
THE ETHICS OF MARRIED LIFE.
The Wedding Journey; the Ethics of Married Life; Shall Husband and Wife Occupy the Same Bed? the Comsummation of Marriage; the Marital Relation; Times when Marital Relations Should be Suspended.
"If it is possible to perfect mankind, the means of doing so will be found in the medical sciences." DESCARTES.
The Wedding-journey. The wedding-journey, which was formerly the cause of so much discomfort to both husband and wife, has fortunately gone out of vogue; and in its place has come the retirement to a quiet country or seaside spot, away from the prying eyes of friends. Thus the nervous strain incident to sight-seeing and travel is avoided.
The Ethics of Married Life. It has been said that God set men and women in pairs in order that they might perfect each other and complete each other's happiness. The secret of all true happiness in life lies in the spirit of altruism; one must be able to wholly forget herself and to find her happiness in the welfare of others.
The woman who exhausts herself physically and financially on the preparation of her trousseau and her wedding does her husband a wrong by bringing him a wife who is on the verge of nervous prostration.
The secret of a happy married life depends to no small extent on the very beginning: the relation is so entirely new, and much lies hidden in the character of each that was never suspected by the other.
Between husband and wife there must always be mutual concessions, forbearance, and sympathy; a mutual helpfulness to attain all that is best. This, of course, implies that the life of each is an open book for the other to read; that there is an unreserved exchange of thought; and that no privilege is claimed by the one that would not willingly be accorded to the other.
"How many men," says Balzac, "proceed with women as the monkey of Cassan with the violin; they have broken the heart without knowing it, as they have tarnished and disdained the jewel whose secret they never understood. Almost all men are married in ignorance of women and of love. They have commenced by forcing open the doors of a strange house and have wished to be well received in its salon. But the most ordinary artist knows that there exists between him and his instrument his instrument which is made of wood or ivory a sort of indefinable friendship. He knows by experience that it has taken years to establish this mysterious rapport between an inert material and himself. He could not have divined at the first stroke all its resources and caprices, its faults and its virtues. His instrument only became a soul for him and a source of melody after long study; he only came to understand it as two friends after the most learned interrogation.