Love and Unlove. By Harold Child. (Duckworth. Os. net.) —Mr.
Harold Child's Love and Unlove is, as we might expect from this writer, a little sentimental. It is another book by " the general public " upon how to make married life a success. Here and there a hazy way of dealing with an insecurely grasped idea may make us regret the clear-cut conceptions of the trained psychologist, but, on the other hand, this slightly amateurish tentativeness may make the book more useful to some types of mind. Mr. Child has one thoroughly good point to make. It is briefly as follows, but we must refer the reader to the book if he doubts the conclusion. Mr. Child makes the point con- vincing: A man alone on a desert island with no recollection of other people would have no means of self-knowledge. Our friends and, above all, our intimates are our standards of measurement. We can only truly know ourselves by comparing our own individuality with that of somebody else. Now, in marriage we often get the absurd pcsition that one partner desires that the other partner resemble him or her in all things ; any little difference in taste or in views he may tend to regard, if not as an affront, at least as a regrettable circumstance. But if each partner is truly to realize himself, ho should endeavour to let the other partner realize his or her own individuality to the full, retain all those little divergences, or, as he may choose to call them, oddities of taste and opinion which first made the other partner so piquant a companion.
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