The question of marriage is, under existing conditions The attitude of parents to the marriage of their children one of special importance in this connection, since nothing else (with the exception perhaps of permanent separation in space) tends to cut off individuals to an equal extent from the direct influence and contact of their parents. Parents who ardently desire to retain a strong influence over their children are therefore as a rule opposed to the marriage of the latter, and usually display marked antagonism to their sons or daughters-in-law: an antagonism which is the source of very frequent domestic unhappiness. Since the marriage of their children is however in many cases difficult or impossible to avert, such parents will often seek to minimise the disturbing effect of marriage by arranging that their children shall live near them after marriage or that they shall marry a partner whom they regard as suitable. In estimating suitability for this purpose, they are usually guided by the extent to which the partner in question is likely to constitute a serious obstacle to the operation of their own (the parents') influence. Hence it often comes about that the persons selected are sexually unattractive, of weak character or deficient in intellectual power[215].
The avoidance of the evils consequent upon the insufficient Means of avoiding insufficient parental re-adjustment readjustment of the parents attitude towards their children is one of the most pressing tasks of an enlightened hygiene of family life. In the accomplishment of this task it would seem that there are two factors which are of great importance: in the first place, the happiness of the relationship between the two parents themselves (for, as we have seen, it is especially in cases when marriage is unsuccessful that there is likely to be an excessive outflow of emotion in the direction of the children); in the second place, the maintenance of outside interests, hobbies or occupations throughout the period of parenthood and the gradual reinforcement of such interests as the growth of the children renders the demand upon the parent's energy less extensive and continuous. Where the circumstances in these two respects are satisfactory, they usually permit of the necessary readjustment of parental energies with the minimum of friction and suffering.
CHAPTER XV
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
OF THE FAMILY TENDENCIES—HATE ASPECTS
The descriptive portion of our task is now completed. We Recapitulation have traced, with such degree of detail as the scope of this book has permitted, the growth within the individual mind of some of the more important of those feelings and tendencies which owe their origin and development to the relations of the individual to the other members of his family. We have seen how these feelings and tendencies are of fundamental importance in the formation of individual character and how they have also exercised a vast influence on social life and social institutions. We have seen also that, throughout their multitudinous transformations and ramifications, the tendencies originally connected with the family preserve some likeness to their primitive character, being ultimately reducible upon analysis to a series of displacements of a very few original trends and impulses. These original impulses fall naturally into two main groups:—those which bind the individual to the family (or to one or more of its members) through a relationship of love, esteem or dependence; and those which are based on a relationship of hate or fear; the trends falling within each of these groups being manifested either in a direct and positive, or in a reactionary and negative form; the latter being assumed as the result of a conflict between one of the trends in question and some other trend of an opposite, or at any rate a different, character (very often one of the family trends belonging to the opposite group).
Since these groups of impulses have shown themselves to play a part of such importance in human mind and human conduct, it is not unnatural that, having completed our review of The theoretical treatment of our subject and its difficulties their manifestations, we should feel some curiosity as to the manner in which they have come to play this part in the course of the past history of the human race and as to the nature of the influence which they have exerted on this history. Unfortunately in the present state of our knowledge it would not seem possible to gratify this curiosity except in a very partial, unsatisfactory and uncertain manner. The psychological mechanisms with which we have been dealing have themselves, for the most part, been too recently discovered to have as yet been adequately correlated, or brought into connection, with the relevant facts of anthropological, ethnographical or biological science. The data from these latter sources are moreover, in spite of much diligent research in recent years, still in many important respects too incomplete to afford a satisfactory basis for such correlation. As a consequence of these conditions, it is to be feared that any attempt that we may make to exhibit the psychical tendencies with which we have been concerned, in their bearings upon early human history, or to explain their origin in the light of this history or of the general conditions of human life and mind, will result in little more than a restatement of our psychological principles from a slightly different point of view. Nevertheless the attempt may be worth making. A summary of some of the main implications of our psychological knowledge in this field may perhaps not seem amiss—especially in view of the astonishing and unlooked-for character of much of this knowledge—and if we succeed in establishing a few connections between our psychological data and the related facts of anthropology or biology, these may perhaps serve as starting points—to be either proved or else corrected—for subsequent enquiries based on a more sound foundation. The reader will understand therefore that, in so far as in the present and the two succeeding chapters there is anything that is not—explicitly or implicitly—contained in what we have already said, we shall have left the region of comparative certainty afforded by the results of observation and induction, and shall be travelling for the most part on the unsure ground of speculation—speculation that can be justified only on the plea of natural curiosity, and by the hope of opening up a few vistas which may be more fully surveyed by better equipped workers in the future.
Of the two main groups of tendencies to which we have The hate tendencies to some extent inevitable above referred—which we may briefly call the love and hate groups—the former opens up a number of problems in this connection which would seem to be in some significant respects deeper, more important and more complex than those raised by the latter. The hate tendencies are, indeed, as regards the cause and nature of their origin and development, in the main not so very difficult to understand. Psychologists are pretty well agreed as to the circumstances which give rise to anger and fear—the emotions which chiefly underlie the attitude of hate. Anger arises when the activities, tendencies or wishes of the individual are interfered with or when the individual is unwillingly forced to undergo some disagreeable or undesirable experience, and it is directed to the object from which such interference or such infliction of undesired experience is forthcoming. Fear arises when harm is threatened to the individual or to that which he possesses or holds dear, and is directed to the threatening object[216].