On Choosing a Husband : Part 1

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 16 of 27)

Brief reference was made in a previous chapter to woman's great function of choosing the fathers of the future. Here we must discuss, at due length, her choice of a companion for life. It is repeatedly argued, by critics of any new idea, that the eugenicist, in his concern for the race, is blind to the natural interests and needs of the individual; that "we are all to be married to each other by the police," as an irresponsible jester has declared; that the sanctities of love are to be profaned or its imperatives defied.

Even serious and responsible persons assume that there is here a necessary antagonism between the interests of the race and those of the individual, - that the girl would, presumably, choose one man to be her love and companion and partner for life, but another man as the father of her children. There are those whom it always rejoices to discover what they regard as antinomies and contradictions in Nature, and they verily prefer to suppose that there is in things this inherent viciousness, which sets eternal war between one set of obligations, one set of ideals, and another. But Nature is not made according to the pattern of our misunderstandings.

We have seen that all individuals are constructed by Nature for the future. We are certainly right to regard them as also ends in themselves, but Nature conceived and fashioned them with reference to the future. In so far as marriage has a natural sanction and foundation - than which nothing is more certain - we may therefore expect to discover that the interests of the individual and of the race are indeed one. In a word, the man who is most worthy to be chosen as a father of the future is always the most worthy and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is also the most individually suitable, to be chosen as a partner and companion for life. Let the girl choose wisely and well for her own sake and in her own interests. If, indeed, she does so, the future will be almost invariably safeguarded.

Of course it is to be understood that we are here discussing general principles. Everyone knows that cases exist, and must continue to exist, where an opposition between the interests of the race and those of the individual cannot be denied. Some utterly unsuspected hereditary strain of insanity, for instance, may show itself or be discovered in the ancestry of an individual to whom a member of the opposite gender has already become devoted. I fully admit the existence of such exceptions, but it must be insisted that they are exceptions, and that they do not at all invalidate the general truth that if a girl really chooses the best man, she is choosing the best father for her children.

It is when the girl chooses for something other than natural quality that the future is liable to be betrayed. But the point to be insisted upon is that it is far more worth her while to choose for natural quality than for any other considerations. The argument of this chapter is that it will not in the long run be worth the girl's while to be beguiled by a man's money, his position or his prospects, since all of these, without the one thing needful, will ultimately fail her.

The truth is that very few girls realize how intimate and urgent and inevitable and unintermittent are the conditions of married life. It requires imagination, of course, to understand these things without experience. A girl observes a friend who has made what is called "a good marriage"; she goes to the friend's house, and sees her the triumphant mistress of a large establishment; she sees her friend at the theatre, meets her escorted by her husband at this place and that; hears of her holidays abroad, covets her jewelry, and she thinks how delightful it must be. She knows nothing at all of the realities; she sees only externals, and she is misled. Wheneve. Therefore misled she is beguiled into marrying a man for any other reason than that his personal qualities compel her love, it is her seniors who are to blame for not having enlightened her. Such a girl should be enlightened if her eyes fall on these pages.

Happiness does not consist in external things at all. This is not to deny that external things may largely contribute to happiness if its primal conditions be first satisfied. Failing those primal conditions, externals are a mockery and a burden. In the case of the vast majority of married people we see only what they choose that we should see. Almost everyone is concerned with keeping up appearances. Things may be and very often are what they appear, but very often they are not. Any woman of nice feeling is very much concerned to keep up appearances in the matter of her marriage. A few or none may guess her secret, but whatever we see, it is what we do not see - no matter how close our friendship may be - that determines the success or failure of marriage.

The moments that really count are just those which we do not witness, and such moments are many in married life, or should be. If the marriage is what it ought to be, there is a vital communion, grave and gay, which occupies every available part of life. Only the persons immediately concerned really know how much of this they have or, if they have it not, what they have in its place. But we may be well assured that, as every married person knows, it is the personal qualities that matter everything in this most intimate sphere of life, and naught else matters at all. When the girl marries so as to become possessed of any and every kind of external advantage, but there is that in the man which is unlovely or which she, at any rate, cannot love, her marriage will assuredly be a failure. As we have occasion to observe every day, she will be glad to jump at any chance of sacrificing all externals, where essential. Therefore fail her.

This is only to preach once again the simple doctrine that a girl is to marry a man not for what he has but for what he is. If, as a eugenicist, I am thinking at this time as much of the future as of the present, the advice is none the less trustworthy. It is certain that this advice is no less necessary than it ever was. Everyone knows how the standard of luxury has risen during the last few decades, both in England and in the United States. All history lies if this be not an evil omen for any civilization.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.