by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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Human happiness, as we have noted in the introduction to this volume, is attained only through doing what the organism was built to do, in an environment that is favorable. Marriage is only the attempt of two people to attain these two ends individually, mutually and simultaneously.
¶ Now, since it is almost impossible for one to achieve happiness when untrammeled and free, is it to be wondered at that so few achieve it in double harness? For the difficulties to be surmounted are doubled and the helps are halved by the presence of a running mate.
¶ That "two can live on less than one" is not true?but it is nearer the truth than that two can find ultimate happiness together easier than either can find an approximation of happiness alone.
This is not saying that any one who is unmated can have happiness as complete as that which comes to the rightly mated?for nothing else in life can compare with that?but they must be RIGHTLY MATED, not merely married.
No one who has observed or thought on this subject will deny that it is a thousand times better not to be married at all than to be married to the wrong person.
¶ Surveys of the causes for divorce during the past ten years in the United States have revealed some startling facts?facts which only prove again that Human Analysis shows us the truth about ourselves as no science has ever shown it to us before.
One of the most illuminating facts these surveys have revealed is that only those men and women can be happy together whose natures automatically encourage each other in the doing of the things each likes to do, in the way each likes to do them.
Inborn inclination determines the things every human being prefers to do, concerning all the fundamental activities of his life, and also the manner in which he prefers to do them. These inborn inclinations, as we have previously pointed out, are written all over us in the unmistakable language of type.
When we know a man's type we know what things he prefers to do in life's main experiences and how he prefers to do them. And we know that unless he is permitted to do approximately what he wants to do in approximately the way he prefers, he becomes unhappy and unsuccessful.
¶ These biological bents are so deeply embedded in every individual that no amount of affection, admiration, or respect, or passion for any other individual suffices to enable any one to go through long years doing what he dislikes and still be happy. Only in the first flush of infatuation can he sacrifice his own preferences for those of another.
After a while passion and infatuation ooze away. Nature sees to that, just as she sees to their coming in the first place. Then there return the old leanings, preferences, tendencies and cravings inherent in the type of each.
¶ Under this urge of his type each reverts gradually but irresistibly to his old habits, doing largely what he prefers to do in the ways that are to his liking. When that day comes the real test of their marriage begins. If the distance between them is too great they can not cross that chasm, and thereafter each lives a life inwardly removed from the other.
They make attempts to cross the barrier and some of these are successful for a short while. They talk to and fro across the void sometimes; but their communings become less frequent, their voices less distinct, until at last each withdraws into himself. There he lives, in the world of his own nature?as completely separated from his mate as though they dwelt on different planets.
¶ "But how is one to know the right person?" you ask. By recognizing science's recent discovery to the effect that certain types can travel helpfully, happily and harmoniously together and that certain others never can.
¶ Every individual owes it to himself to find the right work and the right mate, because these are fundamental needs of every human being.
Lacking them, life is a failure; possessing but one of them, life is half a failure.
To obtain and apply the very fullest knowledge toward the attainment of these two great requisites should be the aim of every person.
