A PROFESSOR ON MARRIAGE.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 223, 9 February 1928, Page 2

A PROFESSOR ON MARRIAGE.

“THE IDEAL STATE.” Professor McDougall’s new book on “ Character and the Conduct of Life ” is not the severe treatise that we might expect from the pen of a Fellow of the Royal Society and a former Professor in the Universities of Oxford and Harvard. He is now Professor of Psychology in the fabulously wealthy Duke University of _Durham, North Carolina, which recently received an endowment of eighteen million dollars from a millionaire.

The author is distinctly unconventional in some of his opinions and in

certain of his advice to girls and to young men. He is, he explains, not a contemner of youth. “ The only serious charge I bring against the young people of to-day is that they are allowing themselves to fall victims to the sterilising influences of universal mechanisation. In the old days it was always possible to hope that a boy might run away to sea and spend ‘ two years before the mast.’ But nowadays if a boy should go to sea, he could hardly get beyond the reach of his mother’s anxious inquiries about his underwear.” Addressing the girls of the present day, he writes:— “ When I was a youth a clever and beautiful woman asserted to me that the influence of feminine beauty is on the whole degrading. I did not believe it then, and I do not believe it now. The beauty of woman is a tremendously powerful influence, and, like all great forces, it may serve base or noble purposes. The mischief is. that this great influence is given to the young females of the species at an age when they cannot understand its power and the gravity of the responsibility that goes with it.” Writing on marriage, he says:— “ Do not believe the foolish people who tell you that marriage is a bondage imposed by man on woman for his own selfish purposes. Its raison d’etre is the protection of women and children. Monogamous marriage is the best device that the wit of man (or of woman) has conceived for this purpose, for not only does it protect women against men and against themselves, but it also secures for them a much higher level in social life than any other system ' hitherto tried or imagined.” He next turns to the dress of girls:— “ Woman in general will always expose as much of Herself as the taste of men will permit her to do. There is no harm in this. But beware lest you make yourself a martyr in the sacred cause of woman’s freedom. Immodesty consists in going a little beyond the custom. If it is customary to expose three inches do not expose six. If it is customary to .expose your shoulder blades, do not expose the small of your back also.” Professor McDougall thinks that a great many people would do better not to marry. In his “ ideal state,” he says:— “ Parenthood would be regarded as a privilege permitted only to those who were well qualified in every way by personal qualities and family history. I imagine that about one-half the adults of any modern state would be regarded as disqualified if the matter were regarded by a wise regard for the happiness and welfare of the future citizens instead of by the caprice of individuals and passing gusts of emotion. Nor should the unhealthy marry:— “ A girl has the right to be assured of the health and general fitness of her bethrothed as far as medical science can provide such assurance. When we have become a little more civilised certificates of good health will be legal requirements for all marriages. Pending that time it should be the invariable practice of the betrothed couple to exchange such certificates.”