Pair bonding

“ How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg— a cosy, loving pair. ”

“ Newton’s Law of Motion is a law of maya: “To every action there is always an equal and contrary reaction; the mutual actions of any two bodies are always equal and oppositely directed.” Action and reaction are thus exactly equal. “To have a single force is impossible. There must be, and always is, a pair of forces equal and opposite.” ”

“ They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick to previous ones. Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair, and by this time every couple had been suitably matched. It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin. ”

“ We were an ill-matched pair, my husband and I, from the very outset; he, with very high ideas of a husband's authority and a wife's submission, holding strongly to the "master-in-my-own-house theory," thinking much of the details of home arrangements, precise, methodical, easily angered and with difficulty appeased. ”

“ I have no doubt that the males are the most attentive parents, but in the case of isolated nests the second bird makes its appearance before you have been there long, and I have repeatedly seen both with the young. In fact, I should have said that of all the birds I know the present species is the most connubial, and the mutual devotion of a pair is a most charming thing to see—in fact, quite touching. When not actively employed they treat themselves, and one another, to all manner of pretty and playful endearments. ”

“ A Couple consists of a moving particle, raised to the degree M.A., and combined with what is technically called a 'better half.' The following are the principal characteristics of a Couple: (1) It may be easily transferred from point to point. (2) Whatever force of translation was possessed by the uncombined particle, (and this is often considerable,) is wholly lost when the Couple is formed. ”

“ There is the great richness of the relationship system in terms expressive of connections by marriage. There are definite terms for many relationships by marriage and further there is a community in which marriage was a definite institution. There is also the equal certainty about male and female parentage to which I have already referred. Further, I obtained an account of an incident from an old man which is difficult top reconcile with any other state of society than one in which there was a definite union between a man and a woman. ”

“ Let us glance for a moment at some of the grand features of monogamy; and we shall thereby see the distinction between the two systems of marriage. Take, for instance, the design of marriage, as originally established by the Almighty in the garden of Eden, in the time of man's innocency. That design was three-fold: companionship, procreation and prevention. Companionship is first: the soul is more than the body. The union of two loving hearts is more than the union of two bodies. ”

“ The Couple.—If two equal parallel forces act upon a body along different lines in opposite directions, as in Fig. 68, they have no single resultant or there is no one force that will have the same effect as the two components acting together. A combination of forces of this kind is called a couple. Its tendency is to produce change of rotation in a body. An example is the action upon a compass needle which is rotated by a force which urges one end toward the north and by an equal force which urges the other end toward the south. ”

“ They no sooner perceived the same feelings in each other, than there arose in their hearts a gnawing jealousy, the bond of union was broken, and as, in general, three happy people can with difficulty reside under one roof, since union is the daughter of mutual necessity, so it fell out with the partnership, the three united inheritors for life separated, only promising to each other not to betray the secret. ”

“ But when once we part from the idea of such a rigid and eternal marriage bond—and the law of every civilised country and the general thought and sentiment everywhere have long since done so—then the whole question changes. If marriage is not so absolutely sacred a bond, if it is not an eternal bond, but a bond we may break on this account or that, then at once we put the question on a different footing. ”

“ Definition—When any given bodies of the same or different magnitude are compelled by other bodies to remain in contact, or if they be moved at the same or different rates of speed, so that their mutual movements should preserve among themselves a certain fixed relation, we say that such bodies are 'in union,' and that together they compose one body or individual, which is distinguished from other bodies by the fact of this union. ”

“ I do not know how many married men there are in England, but I do know that the number is the same as the number of married women. The reason I know this is that the relation of husband and wife relates one man to one woman and one woman to one man. A relation of this sort is called a one-one relation. The relation of father to son is called a one-many relation, because a man can have only one father but may have many sons; conversely, the relation of son to father is called a many-one relation. ”

“ The closing paragraph becomes significant, when we reflect upon the danger which the initiates feared would accrue to those still in the heyday of manhood's passions, if they proved unworthy of the Great Secret. The expression "The secret of the combination by twos and threes" has probably a double meaning here the esoteric meaning turning upon the two kinds of marital partnership; known to the initiates; husband and wife being the "combination by two" (in the second degree) ”

“ A writer of some note, whose work on this and kindred subjects has had quite an extensive circulation, advocates with great emphasis the theory that parties contemplating marriage should in all cases select for partners individuals as nearly like themselves as possible. Exact duplicates would, in his opinion, make the most perfect union attainable. To make his theory practicable, he is obliged to fall back upon phrenology; and directs that a man seeking a wife, or a woman seeking a husband, should obtain a phrenological chart of his head and then send it around until a counterpart is found. ”

“ Collateral consanguinity is the connection which exists between persons who are descended from common ancestors, but not from each other. Marriage relationships exist by custom.
Not to enter too specially into the subject, it may be stated generally that in every system of consanguinity, where marriage between single pairs exists, there must be a lineal and several collateral lines, the latter diverging from the former. Each person is the centre of a group of kindred, the Ego from whom the degree of relationship of each person is reckoned, and to whom the relationship returns. ”

“ Now, all these relationships, which combined three men into one, would have embraced nine persons had each relationship been held by one individual, so that a man had one person for his sister, another his wife, another his cousin, another his father, another his uncle, another his father-in-law, another his mother, another his aunt, another his mother-in-law; and thus the social bond would not have been tightened to bind a few, but loosened to embrace a larger number of relations. ”

“ Peculiarly is it true, that wherever we find the idea of an absolute merging of two natures into one, or of an inter-union or an inter-changing of two personalities in loving relation, there is reason for suspecting a connection with the primitive rite of inter-union through a common blood flow. ”

“ We come, then, to the end of our exposition. It seems to me that it has been shown that the different forms of marriage are in the last instance determined by the respective modes of production. Hence the origin of monogamy, the most recent form of marriage, is not to be found in the innate desire of the man and the woman to be united [307] for the whole of their lives, a desire which the law is supposed to sanction. Quite on the contrary men are not all monogamous, and still less monogamous during the whole of their life ”

“ The mutually best regulation of intercourse in marriage is to have three or four days of repeated unions, followed by about ten days without any unions at all, unless some strong external stimulus has stirred a mutual desire. ”

“ Likewise do they enjoy strong and lasting ties in the physical world as well, for if the marriage is based both on the spirit and the body, that union is a true one, hence it will endure. If, however, the bond is physical and nothing more, it is sure to be only temporary, and must inexorably end in separation. ”

“ This union is according to a bond of affection, and is likened to substantial union, inasmuch as the lover stands to the object of his love, as to himself, if it be love of friendship; as to something belonging to himself, if it be love of concupiscence. Again there is a union, which is the effect of love. This is real union, which the lover seeks with the object of his love. ”

“ It is not an union merely between two creatures, it is an union between two spirits; and the intention of that bond is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their deficiencies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex those excellencies in which it is naturally deficient ”

“ We will take the case of a union when both parties are in love when they start, and really desire that their marriage should remain happy. Each ought to decide that he or she will do his or her uttermost to continue to put forth those charms which enchanted the mate before the ceremony. ”

“ Wherever husband and wife enter into partnership, they shall declare it before many men. Now if they have lived together twenty winters or more, they are partners according to the laws, if they were not before. ”

“ We are generally perfectly satisfied when we have an agreement drawn out between man and man,—one promise on one scrap of paper is enough, but here we have at least five, and I could produce you plenty of others, yet, because it is a bond signed by God, you mistrust it, O ye of little faith. You will take a bond signed by a Jew, but not one signed by God. ”

“ In the psychosomatic union of two individuals there is the same possibility of infinite variety in the physical and mental reactions, only if the union between them is, like the fusion of the two single cells, a complete total and exclusive union each with the other. ”

“ Young couples frequently change partners several times in the first year or two, till both are suited, when the union is practically permanent, except for temporary periods during which an exchange may be effected with another man, or the wife loaned to a friend. ”

“ In marriage, obviously, the body had its share. If the body’s share were regarded as separate from the rest, as an unfortunate but not unpleasant necessity, then, being separate, how could it be anything but a clog upon the full and true union? ”

“ The study of physiology has made one decided step in advance towards acknowledging the reality of union of bloods in marriage. It says now that, only when offspring commences, consanguinity, which is a union of two bloods, occurs.
Man and wife are only one flesh, then, by offspring, we may say. ”

“ In the whole of the arguments put forward in the above pages there is not one word which is aimed at real marriage, at the faithful and durable union of two individuals of opposite sexes—a union originated in and maintained by love alone. ”

“ Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. ”

“ Marriage, like the family itself, is variable, and an indefinite number of forms may be found among various peoples. We shall notice, however, only the three leading forms,—polyandry, polygyny, and monogamy,—and attempt to show the natural conditions which favor each. It is evident that if we assume that the primitive form of the family was that of a simple pairing monogamy, the burden is laid upon us to show how such different types as polyandry and polygyny arose. ”

“ There would be nothing but mere chance to secure that the advantageously varied bridegroom at one end of the wood should meet the bride, who by a happy contingency had been advantageously varied in the same direction at the same time at the other end of the wood. It would be a mere chance if they ever knew of each other’s existence—a still more unlikely chance that they should resist on both sides all temptations to a less advantageous alliance. ”

“ It is understood, of course, that the couples have no components (in the generalized sense) except of the types indicated; for instance, they may consist in each case of a force applied to the top at a point of the axis, and of the accompanying reaction at the pivot. ”

“ For every now and then two individuals, to all appearances identical, meet and promptly begin to merge the one into the other till they twain become one flesh in very truth. Here is the most primitive form of marriage in Nature. And here, in this union, or fusion, of separate entities of Germ-plasm, we have the beginning of sex. Such unions are common among these primeval forms of life. ”

“ But there are other circumstances which aid the will in its struggle with t polygamous instinct. When the union of two persons, who gave evidence of their natures being harmoniously attuned Leach other to a certain degree, by loving for a brief period, has lasted a while it becomes a habit, which sustains fidelity most wonderfully. They perhaps, after time, cease to experience the slightest love or even friendship for each other, but their companionship is still kept up, and kept up as a matter of course. ”