Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-10-21
MARRYING SCIENTIFICALLY.
Choosing Wife on AnthropOlogical Principles
"A Reform" Full of Difficulties.

"A Reform" Full of Difficulties.
Sir George Campbelrs proposal at the
British association to supersede love-mak-
ing as preliminary to marriage and to
make marriage instead great institution
for improving the physique ana morals
of the human race, would have been some
what more scientific than it was if he had
been able to suggest any speeitic-frst,
for getting rid of the deep rooted tenden-
cy IN young people to spoil these beauti-
full plans of falling in love, without pay
ing the least regard to them, and next,
for determining the combinations of
character should be through whose union
the noblest offspring might be expected.
There is the double difficulty IN his pro-
posals-frst, that any young man or wo-
man who would avoid falling in love till
all the requisite conditions of appropri-
ateness for Sir George Campbell's ends
were fulfilled would be a prig whom no
one of any sense would ever be disposed
to marry; and next, that even if it were
not so, man however wise, could judge of
the moral suitability of one nature to an
other at all better than it is determined
now by the comparative accident either
of youthful passion or parental wishes.
Just imagine the effect on young man
or woman possessing any spirit and any
healthy instincts, of being addressed by
an anthropological papa or mamma in
the language such as perhaps as Sir
George Campbell might approve-thus
for examples:
II am bound to warn you, my dear
boy, that your physique, though excellent
on the whole is weak, if at all, in liability
to sluggish liver; and what, therefore
you must look out for in the first place
in wife is girl whose family doctor
will assure you that there has never been
any weakness of that kind in her family.
Besides this, you must be aware that,
sweet tempered as you are, you are little
disposed to levity and too fond of amuse-
ment. If, therefore, you would really i'm
prove your species, and I need not say
that 1 hope that this is your most earnest
desire, and would give to the world child
rem who could justly boast that they are
better than their father, you must look
out for wife of earnest and serious dis
position, who always postpone amusement
to duty, and who would stay away from a
dance without murmur to nurse a sick
brother. Think, my dear boy, of these
things before you permit yourself to fall
IN love. Be sure that you know what the
constitution of the family is before you
allow even admiration to stir your heart.
And next to the constitution. and espec-
tally the freedom from bilious tendency
be sure of the sense of duty in your pro-
posed wife. If, after securing these great
| requisites, you like to take sweetness, and
temper, and beauty into account, there
| can be no objection; but with your own
of 1Icrno54I0,, l. H.
former of less Importance. You might
afford to have wife of hasty temper;
you could not afford to have wife with
any element of frivolity in her, with due
| regard to your posterity."
A young man who would not be driven
by such an address as that into little
scorn for his father, and positive deter
mination to ignore all such nonsense in
satisfying his own beast, would be a poor
sort of creature. And the reason is OBJ
vious. If young people are to enter in
to the closest ties of life guided by such
considerations as these, they must first be
in condition of mind in which it would be
| certain that they would be utterly dispos
ed to enter on these closest ties at all. II
is quite true that there is always risk in
forming such ties. Few young people
| other, before marriage, sufficiently to
found so close relation as husband and
wife on mere knowledge. Nay, without q
strong attraction prior to the knowledge
the knowledge ever really comes at all
In marriage it is love which brings knowl-
| edge at least ten times as often as knowl-
| edge brings love. Conceive a man in
| fiuenced by the class of considerations to
which sir George Campbell would give
prominence, and you conceive man who
would not be in love, and who, therefore
would probably make inunitedly worse
blunders in trying to Judge Of the woman
he thought of making his wife, without
love, than he would even have made-and
doubtless he might have made many-by
falling in love first and learning the truth
about her afterward. Luckily for US
even the mistakes of love are apt to be
| more benefcent than the accurate vision
of Inore impartial criticism.
Probably, indeed in no country in
| which mutual choice has been recognized
as the highest guaranty for the happiness
of marriage could parental authority ever
again take its place; but still less could
it take its place if the parental authority
chose to ground itself avowedly IN an
thropological principles and to apply
| such quack tests of suitability as we have
described. After all, as the rebellious
youth would say, even chemical affinities
would never have been discovered by the
| chemists inspection of the separate ele-
ments. No chemist could ever have dis
covered in what proportions or under
what conditions hydrogen and oxygen
would combine, by merely inspecting
them. 1t was by their actual combina-
ton and by that alone, that the stability
or instability Of their union became a
thing that could be tested. And what is
true Of chemical affinity must be infinite
ly truer of the much deeper and more
subtle atinities in human nature. 1t may
easily happen that the attractions which
first show themselves do not turn out to
be all that was hoped, or do turn out to be
of no real stability or worth; but at least
| they open the way naturally and favor
ably for the development of much closer
! affin1ties, while the anthropologist's no
| ton that the sentiment Of love should de
dispensed with till the sanction of sober
criticism has been obtained for it would
be very apt to engender an initial mu-
| tual repulsion instead of that great wave
| of attraction which sweeps away at least
the first reticences and reserves and
makes mutual knowledge easy and poss-
hIp