Pitfalls of marriage / Walter M. Gallichan.

Walter M. Gallichan

Date:: [1926]

Credit: Pitfalls of marriage / Walter M. Gallichan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$speculating in this manner, it is more profitable to attempt to discover the primary source and contri¬ buting causes of disappointment with life and love. If we accept Byron’s pessimistic view that “ love and marriage rarely can combine,” as an absolutely incontrovertible fact, we have settled the question and there is no more to be said. But if we admit, as we have grounds for doing, that there have been, and are, numerous instances of ideal conjugal love, we are encouraged to undertake a study of the factors that have brought success in these instances. And we may hope quite reasonably to increase the general sum of happiness through intelligent inquiry into the funda¬ mental principles of love between the sexes. The pitfalls of marriage are made by ourselves. There is no sinister scheme of Nature for making wedlock 11 the tomb of love.” On the contrary, in the natural order, mating is one of the primary springs of joy, pleasure and well-being. The hymn of love begins with the song-birds and is exalted by the poets. Courtship before actual pairing is not the beginning and the end of love among animals, but a continual exercise of skill until the final rearing of the young. ‘‘Passion in a lover’s glorious,” writes Byron; but he foretells that the passion is inevitably transient, because 11 men grow ashamed of being so very fond.” I bis common opinion requires cautious examination. The e\ anesccnce of passionate love is only inevitable in wedlock when the pai Lners are unversed in the intri¬ cate art of love. The first pitfall dug in marriage is$

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