How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
318/400
- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
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The image contains the following text:
ready-made were a magic device designed for the quick
acquisition of the goals they had failed to attain.
The love relation can never be more than an
opportunity for mutual service and encouragement. Far
from being a magical panacea, the marriage relation is a
task to be fulfilled during the course of years, a task not
to be accomplished by any magical flourishes of an
invisible wand, but by work and sympathetic coopera¬
tion. Men and women would be far happier if it were
harder to get married, and easier to get divorced. We
wish there were some test of social courage and coopera¬
tion which could indicate the willingness and ability of
each partner to merge his ego for the common good of
the marriage. Happy marriages result most frequently
where both partners look at their love life as an
opportunity for fulfilling a social contract, which, despite
difficulties inherent in its very nature, it is possible in the
majority of instances to carry out effectively and well,
and to the mutual benefit of the contracting parties.
All too often, men and women who would be careful
and discriminating, nay, hard and matter of fact about
the purchase of a car or the choice of a week-end excur¬
sion, marry for thoroughly inconsequential and childish
reasons. There is hardly a reader of this page who does
not know a woman who, while willing to spend an entire
day in the choice of the material for a dress that may last
a season, is perfectly willing to marry a man because he
“ dances divinely and mixes such good cocktails ”. We
have seen men who would stalk a business adversary for
weeks and lie awake night after night planning to make
a profit of a single halfpenny, marrying a girl because
of her well-turned ankle or her good complexion. It is
not at all uncommon for a girl to marry a man out of
spite, because she has failed to wrest a proposal from the
first man of her choice, while otherwise intelligent and
rational men have married their typists or chambermaids
for no better reasons than those of convenience or
contiguity.
The natives of Thuringia in the Black Forest of