How to Become Rich, William Windsor [readera ebook reader txt] 📗

that she admires him. If this were true, the little emasculated dudes, who cannot  raise moustaches, would be more in demand. It is not because a woman is like a man that he loves her. If this were true, the bearded lady in the Dime Museum would be at a premium on the matrimonial market. It is because each is unlike the other, and because each recognizes in the other something, without which nature is incomplete, that love exists, and each is attracted to the other by a force as irresistible as gravitation itself.

But another fellow comes along and proposes to remedy the whole matter with another theory. And he tells you to marry somebody who is your opposite in everything; somebody who, under every combination of circumstances, will think, feel and act differently from your own impulses. And he hopes, by the fact that you will pull one way and your companion another, to establish some sort of an equilibrium that will keep you on your feet. If we follow this theory, like the other, to its legitimate conclusion, we will find the old problem repeating itself, “When an immovable body meets an irresistible body, what is the result?” According to this theory, I should step into this audience and select the most delicate, refined and accomplished lady among you and marry her to a South African cannibal, and I would produce correct results.

The Mormon and the Mohammedan advocate polygamy. The Koran says a man must have four  wives in order to always be able to find one in a good humor. There is one answer to polygamy which forever settles the question. The highest orders of animals and men are gifted by nature with an instinct prompting the union, in pairs, for life of the male and female. This instinct is located in the occipital region of the brain, and is called, in Phrenological language, Conjugality. It is large in the lion and the eagle, and in all mating birds and animals. Those animals which associate promiscuously are devoid of this sense. There is no grander example of conjugal fidelity than the eagle, the monarch of birds, building, with his consort, their rugged home on the breast of some beetling crag, and there rearing their offspring and remaining true to each other for a lifetime, and at last, when disabled by age, nourished and fed by the young birds, no doubt impelled to the filial task by respect for their magnificent virtues.

If the sense of conjugality is omitted from the organization of a man or woman, they cannot be held responsible if they fail to conform to its impulses. But let every man or woman, in the possession of a complete brain, conform to the instincts of nature and emulate the virtue of the eagle. Those who practice polygamy, or who associate promiscuously, or are guilty of conjugal infidelity, are, in plain scientific language, deficient in sense—the sense of conjugality.

It being, therefore, the law of nature that man  and woman should unite in matrimony, what rule of selection may we establish which, in all cases, shall be productive of agreeable association, financial success and such physiological conditions as will result in the improvement of offspring?

It has been stated that Order is Heaven’s first law. With equal force it might be added that Harmony is the first law of nature. The law of Harmony pervades all nature, and men and women have long since learned to recognize it in many departments of study, inferior in dignity and importance to the topic of this lecture. As you have long studied harmony in its application to music, and colors, I introduce the study of harmony to you to-night, but it is harmony in its relation to Humanity in the law of matrimonial selection. There is harmony and discord in music; there is harmony and discord in the science of colors; and in the grand symphony of Humanity, the law is just as applicable; its obedience results in the beauty and accord of domestic felicity, its disobedience furnishes the deformity and discord of society.

All ladies recognize the law of harmony in colors; and in the selection of a dress or bonnet, they try to secure colors that will harmonize with their complexions. They do not all understand the law sufficiently to always conform to it, as I frequently see ladies in my audience who have blundered in this respect, and who wear articles hideously unbecoming. But they  all try, and you cannot inflict a greater punishment upon a woman than to compel her to appear in church, or at a lecture, in a costume in which she knows she has violated this law. But, ladies, just think for a moment, if it is a misfortune to have to wear for a season a dress or bonnet which is not becoming to you, what a calamity it is to be compelled to wear a husband who does not harmonize with you, and that for life. And the worst of it is, they never wear out.

Every musician in my audience understands that, in music, if I strike two notes, of the same pitch and quality, I have produced no harmony, I have only intensified the volume of the tone. If I strike a first and third, or a first and fifth, I produce harmony, because the vibrations of those notes, in combination, are such as produce an agreeable sound. If I strike certain other notes, I produce a discord, and the sound is unpleasant. We cannot have harmony without a difference in pitch and quality, but we can have difference in pitch and quality without harmony. To produce perfect music, we must have soprano, alto, tenor and bass to carry all the parts. The tenor and soprano would furnish us a very poor concert, and the alto and bass alone would produce rather monotonous music. But we have studied harmony in music until we have evoked divine results, and our achievements in harmony of colors has beautified the world with transcendent art.

  In the Science of Humanity there are certain combinations of constitution which, in matrimonial association, are harmonious. There are certain other combinations which are discordant. The union of harmonious natures results in agreeable association, financial success and perfection of offspring. The attempted union of discordant natures results in domestic misery, divorces by wholesale, pauperism, disease and crime, and worst of all, the perpetuation of all these evils in a deformed, diseased and vicious posterity.

In stating the law of harmonious selection, the general rule is, that the parties should bear a complementary relation to each other. That is to say, there should be such a combination of temperaments, dispositions and appearances, that any departure from the correct ideal of perfect humanity in the one should be supplied by the development of the other, in order that the two organizations, when added together, should constitute a perfect type of Humanity.

The reasonableness of this rule is apparent the moment that its effects upon offspring are comprehended. The child inherits the joint organization of the parents. It can never be better than the sum total of the parental organizations. It may be better or worse than either of these, according to circumstances. It can never be better than both, except as education may develop possibilities as inherited from both. If,  therefore, the father is capable of transmitting to the child certain vigorous elements of constitution, which were weak in the mother, and on the other hand the mother endows the child with certain graces of intellect which were deficient in the father, the result is perfection of offspring through complementary association.

The same rule holds good in the matter of amiable association. When each contributes to the other, elements of character necessary to convenience and happiness, the mutual esteem and respect generated by the knowledge of the indispensableness of each to the other’s interest, is the surest guard to amiability.

Likewise as to financial affairs. It is easy to understand that the individual will be most successful in the affairs of life, who unites in himself all the elements of a perfect organization. Therefore, in the consummation of all partnerships, matrimonial or purely commercial, the application of this rule unites in the organization every element essential to success.

In the application of this rule, it is necessary to consider, First, the character of the individual under examination; Second, the type of humanity we desire to form; Third, the ideal character necessary to the accomplishment of the end in view.

The error committed by most physiologists, who have experimented with this question, lies in the fact that they have had in mind only one ideal as a perfect  type of humanity, and they have tried to grade all their subjects up to this solitary ideal. Humanity, however, presents as many phases as the various climates, occupations, stages of culture, and conditions of life might be expected to produce, in various combination, and we may have a perfect type of humanity, adapted to every climate, to every occupation, to every grade of society, but differing in each. Every individual, under every condition of life, may find his proper complementary associate, adapted to the same conditions of life, but possessing a different character, harmonious with his own.

Nature has not left us in the dark with reference to this question. She surrounds us with every incentive to obey her laws, rewards her obedient children with every pleasure the senses can afford, and punishes the disobedient with pains and penalties too numerous and severe to catalogue. Observation is all that is necessary to teach us the law of harmony. We know that the bright red of the rose is heightened in effect by the dark green of the leaf behind it. We observe that chords in music are agreeable to the ear. And we have only to use the same observation, in respect to matrimony, to distinguish certain combinations that produce all that is rich and grand and beautiful in domestic life, and to know others in which the effect is altogether wrong.

Society has long since learned the distinction between  the Brunette and Blonde the Electric and the Magnetic Temperaments. And the fact is also known that it is natural for those of light complexion to admire those of dark, and vice versa. The novelist and the actor recognize this principle, and if the story is well told, and the drama well made up, the hero and the heroine are made to conform to these complexions. The society belle who gives a party, if she be a blonde, invites some dark-eyed lady friend as a foil to her beauty; and the dark-complexioned friend responds cheerfully to the invitation, conscious that her own beauty will be heightened by the contrast. The blonde and brunette are complementary to each other, as far as the temperament is concerned. The Magnetic Temperament is distinguished for its rich arterial circulation and versatility of character, which is deficient in the Electric. The Electric on the other hand, is noted for its strength of bone and muscle and concentrativeness of character, traits deficient in the Magnetic. United, the combination possesses the warmth and versatility of the Blonde with the endurance and power of the Brunette. In the union of the Blonde and Brunette, the law of color is also conformed to, and both appear better than either would apart, or than either would, combined with a person of the same temperament.

To illustrate this principle more completely, I will give a few examples.

  I will take first the case of any man who is a complete type of the extreme brunette or Electric Temperament, and marry him to a lady of the same type. At once we see that the law of harmony has been violated.