The marriage of two young people need not be postponed over a month or two after they have learned enough of each other to be sure that they are placing each motive, the love motive and the egoistic-social motive, in the proper relations to the other; namely, that the egoistic motive is recognized as being of less value toward their happiness. No fears should be allowed to enter their minds about the happiness of their marriage. Birth control should prevent any fear from the egoistic-economic point of view.
§ 174
If it should seem to some that the potentialities of the marriage that has been called a lottery are usually those of misery, and that the ordinary marriage only brings out the miseries of existence to which some shut their eyes, and from which others run away, it need only be suggested that almost nothing runs itself in the world as we know it, but everything needs constant upkeep, and it would be unreasonable to expect that when the nuptial knot is tied all activities in the direction of keeping it tied could be given up.
If the world about us is in constant change, to which we are obliged to make constantly changing adaptation, it is even more strikingly a fact that the world within us is constantly changing; and that we need to control this change ourselves and could not, if we tried, find a more fascinating occupation than learning how to make our inner adaptations in the best manner.
Marriages that run down before death has ended them are those where the man has lost his psychic potence, due to initial or gradually developing anesthesia on his part.
In the courtship he has taken a man’s part, presumably; but has stopped his wooing after marriage, because he has confused egoistic-social impulses with erotic. He has thought marriage was a civil contract by which he came into possession of something. Love scorns contracts; as it evaporates in barter. Most unhappy marriages are of the “run-down” type. The thesis of this book is that the only distinctive man’s work in the world is to keep winding them up. The man that lets his marriage run down is probably a perpetual-motion crank at heart. He thinks that in marriage he has found a thing that will run by itself forever.
§ 175
A passionate desire for culmination represents well the attitude of the executive head, or man of affairs who advances business by delegating details to others. There is no detail of the behaviour of the truly mated that the husband can want to be delegated to underlings. Love is not a business and no part of it should be either left undone or delegated to another man; though there are many husbands who apparently think some of the preliminaries can be omitted. Possibly the hasty husbands have thought that only the “high spots” of love could be or should be touched by them, because their business or professional lives do not permit them to look into every detail, much less do it themselves. But the minutiæ of love are like the notes of a violin score; they all have to be played by the violinist and they are all given their due effect and proper shading by the true artist.
Possibly one may say that all men cannot be virtuosos in love, particularly as it is infinitely more complicated than even the musical art; but at any rate all can use their utmost endeavour in the performances of the duets, which constitute the most valuable works of art for the family and the nation.