Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    responsibilities it entails, were to maintain that men and women should enter into it soberly and rather sadly, under a grave sense of responsibility, as upon an uncertain voyage, and should reserve their rejoicings for the journey's end, when, having acted well their parts, they might fairly claim a nunc plauclite. But this would be contrary to the way of nature, in which a similar exaltation is displayed when the time of marriage arrives. There is then a transport throughout the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which put forth all the beauty of their colours and all the harmony of their sounds ; for the flowers are the dress of love, and the spring melodies of birds are love songs. The temperature of the plant is then increased, and it is arrayed in a floral glory such that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these ; the birds put on a gayer plumage, and their exaltation bursts forth in raptures of varied melody; everywhere the functions reach a transport or ecstasy of love. Man displays his harmony with nature by a similar exaltation. In face of this instinct it would be a hard and unwel- come thing to lay down rules for the prevention and regulation of marriages in accordance with what might seem to be the sober dictates of reason, even if, which is not the case, science had arrived at such a degree of development as to he able to do so with exactness and authority. Moreover, we are not sure how great may be the compensating advantages of seemingly unwise marriages. It will be easier and more agreeable to -idmit that for the present men must go on marrying and