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good health is better than bad. To argue such a matter seems strange. But there is much loose talk about on the other side of the case, crying up the non-monogamous program practiced by a few and publicized by more. The adherents of this group are so vocal that their ideas are constantly being aired. Knowing themselves a small minority, with the burden of proof against them, they excitedly attack the existing order. Their arguments are likely to interest the average person, however, only when he or she is momentarily thrown off balance by an emotional upheaval of one sort or another. And right there is the danger. It is hard for anyone--particularly a young person--to make a rational decision when his thinking is colored by his emotions; his tendency is to use his intellectual processes merely to justify what he wants to do at the moment, and not to search out the truth. If he is unprepared for the anti-monogamy arguments ready and waiting for him, he is likely to accept them without question. Before we have occasion to doubt it, therefore, those of us who take monogamy as a matter of course should understand why we do, and what its significance is to us. Then, if ever the occasion does arise, we shall be better able to let our minds, not our passions, decide the issue for our greater happiness. The question is shall I, having given myself to one man or one woman, abide by the till-death-do-us-part vow, or shall I be free to change partners at will? The natural mood of most men and women entering marriage is deeply monogamous. The one thing husband and wife crave is to depend only on each other forever. Yet later on some of them will suddenly desert the standards of monogamy without giving themselves time to think, and others will pass through a period of turmoil before making up their minds to go or to stay. What has happened in the marriage experience to change these individuals who were strong for monogamy into men and women either dead set against it or very doubtful about it? The answer lies both in the particular temperament of the persons concerned and in certain characteristic features of the early, middle, and later stages in married life. Sometimes a young man or woman bolts from the tenets of monogamy in a late-adolescent panic when marriage responsibilities begin to be irksome. Sometimes it is the older man or woman who married in good faith only to lose sight of the values of monogamy. Not having
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