LIFE’S PASSENGERS

Evening Star, Issue 22228, 4 January 1936, Page 16

LIFE’S PASSENGERS

MARRIAGE PARASITES The parasite is familiar in the natural orders of botany and zoology, In the more developed phases of animal life there is a parasitism which is not so much automatic, as deliberate. The cuckoo’s egg is .parasitically deposited in the alien nest; the progeny perpetuates the tradition by usurping the nest in which it was, out - of charity, reared. The jackal is parasitical in that it at least indirectly lives by means of the lion’s courage and strength. On what are nominally higher levels the parasite continues visible. There is a human species, and the guises it can assume are infinite. The sub-human forms are obeying a'natural law; the human species are indulging an ignoble impulse. Some people seem resolved to get through life as passengers, no matter at what sacrifice of self-respect. Tepid tentative forms of parasitsm are occasionally discernible even in the most affectionate family circle. It is a parental responsibility to note any subtle form of the tendency in a loved child and to keep it in check by constant reproach. For it is familiar experience that relations in _the communal, social, and personal spheres of life are frequently embittered by the claims and irapertness of the human species of parasite,' l says the Melbourne ‘ Age ’ in a leading article'. Mankind is capable of almost countless classification. But two of the principal groups consist of those who on , ah occasions are willing to pay and those who are willing, to let them. It is one of the most crude forms of parasitism. Borrowing is a further phase widely practised. • With respect to it, even Scripture teaches a lesson of grave reproof in the parable of the five foolish virgins who were quite blatant in their attempts to borrow from those who had taken due precautions to ensure their own supplies. Micawber has legions f of imitators, few of whom have his redeeming quality of geniality. _ The schoolboy who is known to be in possession of sixpence for immediate spending can rely on an intense, if short-lived playground popularity. Among those who make passing appeal to the charitable on our city’s streets there is probably the occasional deserving case. Mostly the evidence 15 that it is simply a low-grade social parasite at work. The species existed at the courts of ancient kings in the hordes of hangers-on. Indeed, some courts, not so long since vanished, were brought into discredit by gilded narasites who were often more arrogant than were the actual potentates. Wherever men or women are associated for social service or social 1 fellowship, in clubs, in societies, and even in churches, they are certain to encounter the individual who is ever on the look-out for some personal advantage. Kven intellectual and aesthetic movements have their - sycophants'. Some persons of leisure and of means hang on to the fringe of such movements without having any true sympathy with them or knowledge of them. It is

simply that their parisitism takes the form of a spurious intellectualism and csstheticism. RIGOROUS TREATMENT, The general body of parasites can, if urgently necessary, be rigorously treated. There are, however, intimate forms of parasitism to which many people are subjected and from which escape is not alwas’s easy. The parasite that finds access into the life of others by means of the new_ ramifications created by is usually particularly obnoxious and incorrigible. In many biographies of the great there are frequent revelations of the exasperations they had to suffer and of the exactions to which they, had to submit because of the activities of outsiders who made outrageous parasitical claims on the basis of some marriage relationship. .Such claims are not always financial, they can be far more subtle and objectionable. ' Their parasitical relatives frequently display , positive genius in making use of freshly-formed connections to enhance their own importance and to minister to their own conscience. Although they are the merest conjugal adjuncts they strive to penetrate into the new and happy menage. Young wedded people are fortunate if some aggressive individual with a tenuous claim to be a new relative does not show signs of socially settling in before they have themselves domestically settled down. It is a familiar enough fact that marriage sometimes means for the young bride a form of social uplift, a place in, circles where life is less subiect 'to economic strain than those she has, previously known. REAL TRAGEDIES, But although she herself is given cordial entrance it. is an embarrassment that sundry relatives, usually of remote degree, should ; also seek their way iii. The number of other supremely happy marriages thafhave been spoiled by these parasitical influences will I never be known. But one does not require to be specially observant in order to note many such ■ seemingly minor but very real tragedies. Their existence raises acutely the intensely practical question as to whether when a man marries a wife he should be expected to take over a whole bevy of her relatives, and whether a woman is expected to do the same when she marries a husband. There appears to be need for a revision of the canons of social conduct with respect to the inter-rela-tions of those who find themselves relations by marriage. Certainly it is most unjust that many good people who are sincerely desirous of being helpful and amiable shohld find themselves being palpably exploited by those marriage parasites who insist on pushing their claims to an extent that is sometimes domestically disruptive and always socially insufferable.: