Читать книгу A Plea for Monogamy - Wilfrid Lay - Страница 5

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This is no more clearly evident in any other sphere of life than in marriage. With all the intellectual progress made by humanity up to the first quarter of the twentieth century marriage is still looked upon by many men merely as an opportunity for either legitimized procreation or unlimited sensual self-gratification. A man puts as much intellect into his vocation as he is capable of. Into his marriage he puts not intellect, but the emotions of the ancestral ape. Even in his sublimated war of business he knows that a consideration of the other fellow is in the end a winning card, and the word “service” has come into prominence as advertising material. But in his marriage he uses the same crassly selfish methods he has used for thousands, perhaps millions of years.

The sheer blind, isolating selfishness of the average husband and the misery it causes him are the reason for my writing this book. If a man used one-tenth the intellect in his marital relations that he does in his corporation finance and in his inventions and scientific research, the latter would not be half as necessary as they seem to be, and he would himself be infinitely happier.