A HAPPY MARRIED VOYAGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20187, 26 August 1927, Page 15

A HAPPY MARRIED VOYAGE.

Books which tell us how to be well and how to be happy appear in almoat bewildering numbers, but the views of Professor J. A. Thomson, _ who has written “ Towards Health ” will attract special attention. The book is described as ‘‘an unconventional endeavour to apply the principle® of biology to the problems of health.” Surroundings, food, occupations, heredity are all considered m a most interesting and illuminating manner, and the reader is conscious of the scholarly mind which is leading the way across now familiar ground. Here is a part of the author’s contribution to the modern controversy on marriage. “The three sails of a happy marriage voyage are organic fondness rising to’ (esthetic attraction, some measure of intellectual sympathy (which does not necessarily include belonging to the same political party), and some capacity for working together at something—-if not the business of life. This companionship is a great source of happiness, and it is oftoncst enjoyed by those who have considerable struggle for well-being. But while these three sails make for success, the voyage is sometimes made with two or with one.. Those who make it with none can hardly be said to be more than legally married. " The tree of love has its roots ip our animal nature, ana though they are nob roots to bo ashamed of they will usually stand,« good deal of root-pruning. But the tree is very incomplete if it does not raise branches high into the sunlight where they may_ bear the flowers and fruits of the spirit.' It is a great pity when love does not rise off the ground.’’ Genuine falling in love, Professor Thomson thinks, is not a passing fancy. “It is a reaching-out o! the whole being, impulsively rather than deliberately, intuitively rather than rationally. . . . Without being too severe one should avold_ profane jocularities on the subject; falling in love . . . is one of our great chances of being noble. "If we study certain birds we find an elaborate courtship _ ceremonial, which establishes an ‘ emotional companionship.’ The import of this is that it afterwardshelps to keep the birds joyously together in work and play. This sublimation of fondness into love is perhaps the /chief reason of the study of the evolution of sex.”