Sex and Character/Part 1/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE LAWS OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION
Carmen:
"L'amour est un oiseau rebelle,
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser:
Et c'est bien en vain qu'on Pappelle
S'il lui convient de refuser.
Rien n'y fait; menace ou priere:
L'un parle, l'autre se tait;
Et c'est l'autre que je prefere;
II n'a rien dit, mais il me plait.
. . . . .
L'amour est enfant de Bohême
II n'a jamais connu de loi."
It has been recognised from time immemorial that, in all forms of sexually differentiated life, there exists an attraction between males and females, between the male and the female, the object of which is procreation. But as the male and the female are merely abstract conceptions which never appear in the real world, we cannot speak of sexual attraction as a simple attempt of the masculine and the feminine to come together. The theory which I am developing must take into account all the facts of sexual relations if it is to be complete; indeed, if it is to be accepted instead of the older views, it must give a better interpretation of all these sexual phenomena. My recognition of the fact that M and F (maleness and femaleness) are distributed in the living world in every possible proportion has led me to the discovery of an unknown natural law, of a law not yet suspected by any philosopher, a law of sexual attraction. As observations on human beings first led me to my results, I shall begin with this side of the subject.
Everyone possesses a definite, individual taste of his own with regard to the other sex. If we compare the portrait of the women which some famous man has been known to love, we shall nearly always find that they are all closely alike, the similarity being most obvious in the contour (more precisely in the "figure") or in the face, but on closer examination being found to extend to the minutest details, ad unguem, to the finger-tips. It is precisely the same with every one else. So, also, every girl who strongly attracts a man recalls to him the other girls he has loved before. We see another side of the same phenomenon when we recall how often we have said of some acquaintance or another, "I can't imagine how that type of woman pleases him." Darwin, in the "Descent of Man," collected many instances of the existence of this individuality of the sexual taste amongst animals, and I shall be able to show that there are analogous phenomena even amongst plants.
Sexual attraction is nearly always, as in the case of gravitation, reciprocal. Where there appear to be exceptions to this rule, there is nearly always evidence of the presence of special influences which have been capable of preventing the direct action of the special taste, which is almost always reciprocal, or which have left an unsatisfied craving, if the direct taste were not allowed its play.
The common saying, "Waiting for Mr. Right," or statements such as that "So-and-so are quite unsuitable for one another," show the existence of an obscure presentiment of the fact that every man or woman possesses certain individual peculiarities which qualify or disqualify him or her for marriage with any particular member of the opposite sex; and that this man cannot be substituted for that, or this woman for the other without creating a disharmony.
It is a common personal experience that certain individuals of the opposite sex are distasteful to us, that others leave us cold; whilst others again may stimulate us until, at last, some one appears who seems so desirable that everything in the world is worthless and empty compared with union with such a one. What are the qualifications of that person? What are his or her peculiarities? If it really be the case—and I think it is—that every male type has its female counterpart with regard to sexual affinity, it looks as if there were some definite law. What is this law? How does it act? "Like poles repel, unlike attract," was what I was told when, already armed with my own answer, I resolutely importuned different kinds of men for a statement, and submitted instances to their power of generalisation. The formula, no doubt, is true in a limited sense and for a certain number of cases. But it is at once too general and too vague; it would be applied differently by different persons, and it is incapable of being stated in mathematical terms.
This book does not claim to state all the laws of sexual affinity, for there are many; nor does it pretend to be able to tell every one exactly which individual of the opposite sex will best suit his taste, for that would imply a complete knowledge of all the laws in question. In this chapter only one of these laws will be considered—the law which stands in organic relation to the rest of the book. I am working at a number of other laws, but the following is that to which I have given most investigation, and which is most elaborated. In criticising this work, allowance must be made for the incomplete nature of the material consequent on the novelty and difficulty of the subject.
Fortunately it is not necessary for me to cite at length either the facts from which I originally derived this law of sexual affinity or to set out in detail the evidence I obtained from personal statements. I asked each of those who helped me, to make out his own case first, and then to carry out observations in his circle of acquaintances. I have paid special attention to those cases which have been notice and remembered, in which the taste of a friend has not been understood, or appeared not to be present, or was different from that of the observer. The minute degree of knowledge of the external form of the human body which is necessary for the investigation is possessed by every one.
I have come to the law which I shall now formulate by a method the validity of which I shall now have to prove. The law runs as follows: "For true sexual union it is necessary that there come together a complete male (M) and a complete female (F), even although in different cases the M and F are distributed between the two individuals in different proportions."
The law may be expressed otherwise as follows:
If we take μ, any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a male, and denote his real sexual constitution as Mμ, so many parts really male, plus Wμ, so many parts really female; if we also take ω, any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a female, and denote her real sexual constitution as Wω, so many parts really female, plus Mω, so many parts really male; then, if there be complete sexual affinity, the greatest possible sexual attraction between the two individuals, μ and ω,
(1) Mμ (the truly male part in the "male") + Mω (the truly male part in the "female") will equal a constant quantity, M, the ideal male; and
(2) Wμ + Wω (the ideal female parts in respectively the "male" and the "female") will equal a second constant quantity, W, the ideal female.
This statement must not be misunderstood. Both formulas refer to one case, to a single sexual relation, the second following directly from the first and adding nothing to it, as I set out from the point of view of an individual possessing just as much femaleness as he lacks of maleness. Were he completely male, his requisite complement would be a complete female, and vice versa. If, however, he is composed of a definite inheritance of maleness, and also an inheritance of femaleness (which must not be neglected), then, to complete the individual, his maleness must be completed to make a unit; but so also must his femaleness be completed.
If, for instance, an individual be composed thus:
then the best sexual complement of that individual will be another compound as follows:
It can be seen at once that this view is wider in its reach than the common statement of the case. That male and female, as sexual types, attract each other is only one instance of my general law, an instance in which an imaginary individual,
finds its complement in an equally imaginary individual,
There can be no hesitation in admitting the existence of definite, individual sexual preferences, and such an admission carries with it approval of the necessity of investigating the laws of the preference, and its relation to the rest of the bodily and mental characters of an individual. The law, as I have stated it, can encounter no initial sense of impossibility, and is contrary neither to scientific nor common experience. But it is not self-evident. It might be that the law, which cannot yet be regarded as fully worked out, might run as follows:
that is to say, it may be the difference between the degrees of masculinity and not the sum of the degrees of masculinity that is a constant quality, so that the most masculine man would stand just as far removed from his complement (who in this case would lie nearly midway between masculinity and femininity) as the most feminine man would be removed from his complement who would be near the extreme of femininity. Although, as I have said, this is conceivable, it is not borne out by experience. Recognising that we have to do here with an empirical law, and trying to observe a wise scientific restraint, we shall do well to avoid speaking as if there were any "force" pulling the two individuals together as if they were puppets; the law is no more than the statement that an identical relation can be made out in each case of maximum sexual attraction. We are dealing, in fact, with what Ostwald termed an "invariant" and Avenarius a "multiponible"; and this is the constant sum formed by the total masculinity and the total femininity in all cases where a pair of living beings come together with the maximum sexual attraction.
In this matter we may neglect altogether the so-called aesthetic factor, the stimulus of beauty. For does it not frequently happen that one man is completely captivated by a particular woman and raves about her beauty, whilst another, who is not the sexual complement of the woman in question, cannot imagine what his friend sees in her to admire. Without discussing the laws of aesthetics or attempting to gather together examples of relative values, it may readily be admitted that a man may consider a woman beautiful who, from the aesthetic standpoint, is not merely indifferent but actually ugly, that in fact pure aesthetics deal not with absolute beauty, but merely with conceptions of beauty from which the sexual factor has been eliminated.
I have myself worked out the law in, at the lowest, many hundred cases, and I have found that the exceptions were only apparent. Almost every couple one meets in the street furnishes a new proof. The exceptions were specially instructive, as they not only suggested but led to the investigation of other laws of sexuality. I myself made special investigations in the following way. I obtained a set of photographs of aesthetically beautiful women of blameless character, each of which was a good example of some definite proportion of femininity, and I asked a number of my friends to inspect these and select the most beautiful. The selection made was invariably that which I had predicted. With other male friends, who knew on what I was engaged, I set about in another fashion. They provided me with photographs from amongst which I was to choose the one I should expect them to think most beautiful. Here, too, I was uniformly successful. With others, I was able to describe most accurately their ideal of the opposite sex, independently of any suggestions unconsciously given by them, often in minuter detail than they had realised. Sometimes, too, I was able to point out to them, for the first time, the qualities that repelled them in individuals of the opposite sex, although for the most part men realise more readily the characters that repel them than the characters that attract them.
I believe that with a little practice any one could readily acquire and exercise this art on any circle of friends. A knowledge of other laws of sexual affinity would be of great importance. A number of special constants might be taken as tests of the existence of complementary individuals. For instance, the law might be caricatured so as to require that the sum of the length of the hairs of any two perfect lovers should always be the same. But, as I have already shown in chapter ii., this result is not to be expected, because all the organs of the same body do not necessarily possess the same degree of maleness or femaleness. Such heuristic rales would soon multiply and bring the whole subject into ridicule, and I shall therefore abstain from further suggestions of the kind.
I do not deny that my exposition of the law is somewhat dogmatical and lacks confirmation by exact detail. But I am not so anxious to claim finished results as to incite others to the study, the more so as the means for scientific investigations are lacking in my own case. But even if much remains theoretical, I hope that I shall have firmly riveted the chief beams in my edifice of theory by showing how it explains much that hitherto has found no explanation, and so shall have, in a fashion, proved it retrospectively by showing how much it would explain if it were true.
A most remarkable confirmation of my law may be found in the vegetable kingdom, in a group of facts hitherto regarded as isolated and to be so strange as to have no parallel. Every botanist must have guessed already that I have in mind the phenomena of heterostylism, first discovered by Persoon, then described by Darwin and named by Hilde brand. Many Dicotyledons, and a few Monocotyledons, for instance, species of Primulaceæ and Geraneaceæ and many Rubiaceæ, phanerogams in the flowers of which both the pollen and the stigma are functional, although only in cross-fertilisation, so that the flowers are hermaphrodite in structure ture but unisexual physiologically, display the peculiarity that in different individuals the stamens and the stigma have different lengths. The individuals, all the flowers of which have long styles and therefore high stigmas and short anthers, are, in my judgment, the more female, whilst the individuals with short styles and long anthers are more male. In addition to such dimorphic plants, there are also trimorphic plants, such as Lythrum salicaria, in which the sexual organs display three forms differing in length. There are not only long-styled and short-styled forms, but flowers with styles of a medium length.
Although only dimorphism and trimorphism have been recognised in the books, these conditions do not exhaust the actual complexities of structure. Darwin himself pointed out that if small differences were taken into account, no less than five different situations of the anthers could be distinguished. Alongside such plain cases of discontinuity, of the separation of the different degrees of maleness and femaleness in plainly distinct individuals, there are also cases in which the different degrees grade into each other without breaks in the series. There are analogous cases of discontinuity in the animal kingdom, although they have always been thought of as unique and isolated phenomena, as the parallel with heterostylism had not been suggested. In several genera of insects, as, for instance, some Earwigs (Forficulæ) and Lamellicorn Beetles (Lucanus cervus), the Stag-beetle (Dynastes hercules), and Xylotrupes gideon, there are some males in which the antennæ, the secondary sexual characters by which they differ most markedly from the females, are extremely long, and others in which they are very short. Bateson, who has written most on this subject, distinguishes the two forms as "high males" and "low males." It is true that a continuous series of intermediate forms links the extreme types, but, none the less, the vast majority of the individuals are at one extreme or the other. Unfortunately, Bateson did not investigate the relations between these different types of males and the females, and so it is not known if there be female types with special sexual affinity for these male types. Thus these observa- tions can be taken only as a morphological parallel to heterostylism and not as cases of the law of complementary sexual attraction.
Heterostylous plants may possibly be the means of establishing my view that the law of sexual complements holds good for every kind of living thing. Darwin first, and after him many other investigators have proved that in heterostylous plants fertilisation has the best results, or, indeed, may be possible only when the pollen from a macrostylous flower (a flower with the shortest form of anthers and longest pistil) falls on the stigma of a microstylous blossom (one where the pistil is the shortest possible and the stamens at their greatest length), or vice versa. In other words, if the best result is to be attained by the cross-fertilisation of a pair of flowers, one flower with a long pistil, and therefore high degree of femaleness, and short stamens must be mated with another possessing a correspondingly short pistil, and so, with the amount of femaleness complementary to the first flower, and with long stamens complementary to the short stamens of the first flower. In the case of flowers where there are three pistil lengths, the best results may be expected when the pollen of one blossom is transmitted to another blossom in which the stigma is the nearest ment of the stigma of the flower from which the pollen came; if another combination is made, either naturally or by artificial fertilisation, then, if a result follows at all, the seedlings are scanty, dwarfed and sometimes infertile, much as when hybrids between species are formed.
It is to be noticed that the authors who have discussed heterostylism are not satisfied with the usual explanation, which is that the insects which visit the flowers carry the pollen at different relative positions on their bodies corresponding to the different lengths of the sexual organs and so produce the wonderful result. Darwin, moreover, admits that bees carry all sorts of pollen on every part of their bodies; so that it has still to be made clear how the female organs dusted with two or three kinds of pollen make their choice of the most suitable. The supposition of a power of choice, however interesting and wonderful it is, does not account for the bad results which follow artificial dusting with the wrong kind of pollen (so-called "illegitimate fertilisation"). The theory that the stigmas can only make use of, or are capable of receiving only "legitimate pollen" has been proved by Darwin to be erroneous, inasmuch as the insects which act as fertilisers certainly sometimes start various cross-breedings.
The hypothesis that the reason for this selective retention on the part of individuals is a special quality, deep-seated in the flowers themselves, seems more probable. We have probably here to do with the presence, just as in human beings, of a maximum degree of sexual attraction between individuals, one of which possesses just as much femaleness as the other possesses maleness, and this is merely another mode of stating my sexual law. The probability of this interpretation is increased by the fact that in the short-styled, long-anthered, more male flowers, the pollen grains are larger and the papillae on the stigmas are smaller than the corresponding parts of the long-styled, short-anthered, more female flowers. Here we have certainly to do with different degrees of maleness and femaleness. These circumstances supply a strong corroboration of my law of sexual affinity, that in the vegetable kingdom as well as in the animal kingdom (I shall return later to this point) fertilisation has the best results when it occurs between parents with maximum sexual affinity.[1]
Consideration of sexual aversion affords the readiest proof that the law holds good throughout the animal kingdom. I should like to suggest here that it would be extremely interesting to make observations as to whether the larger, heavier and less active egg-cells exert a special attraction on the smaller and more active spermatozoa, whilst those egg-cells with less food-yolk attract more strongly the larger and less active spermatozoa. It may be the case, as L. Weill has already suggested in a speculation as to the factors that determine sex, that there is a correlation between the rates of motion or kinetic energies of conjugating sexual cells. It has not yet been determined, although indeed it would be difficult to determine, if the sexual cells, apart from the streams and eddies of their fluid medium, approach each other with equal velocities or sometimes display special activity. There is a wide field for investigation here.
As I have repeatedly remarked, my law is not the only law of sexual affinity, otherwise, no doubt, it would have been discovered long ago. Just because so many other actors are bound up with it,[2] because another, perhaps many other laws sometimes overshadow it, cases of undisturbed action of sexual affinity are rare. As the necessary investigations have not yet been finished, I will not speak at length of such laws, but rather by way of illustration I shall refer to a few factors which as yet cannot be demonstrated mathematically.
I shall begin with some phenomena which are pretty generally recognised. Men when quite young, say under twenty, are attracted by much older women (say those of thirty-five and so on), whilst men of thirty-five are attracted by women much younger than themselves. So also, on the other hand, quite young girls (sweet seventeen) generally prefer much older men, but, later in life, may marry striplings. The whole subject deserves close attention and is both popular and easily noticed.
In spite of the necessary limitation of this work to the consideration of a single law, it will make for exactness if I try to state the formula in a more definite fashion, without the deceptive element of simplicity. Even without being able to state in definite quantities the other factors and the co-operating laws, we may reach a satisfactory exactness by the use of a variable factor.
The first formula was only an abstract general statement of what is common to all cases of maximum sexual attraction so far as the sexual relation is governed by the law. I must now try to find an expression for the strength of the sexual affinity in any conceivable case, an expression which on account of its general form, can be used to describe the relationship between any two living beings, even if these belong to different species or to the same sex.
If
(where α, α′, β, and β′ are each greater than o and less than unity) define the sexual constitutions of any two living beings between which there is an attraction, then the strength of the attraction may be expressed thus:
where is an empirical or analytical function of the period during which it is possible for the individuals to act upon one another, what may be called the "reaction-time"; whilst K is the variable factor in which we place all the known and unknown laws of sexual affinity, and which also varies with the degree of specific, racial and family relationship, and with the health and absence of deformity in the two individuals, and which, finally, will become smaller as the actual spacial distance between the two is greater, and which can be determined in any individual case.
When in this formula A must be infinity; this is the extreme case; it is sexual attraction as an elemental force, as it has been described with a weird mastercraft by Lynkeus in the novel "Im Postwangen." Such sexual attraction is as much a natural law as the downward growth of a rootlet towards the earth, or the migration of bacteria to the oxygen at the edge of a microscopic cover-glass. But it takes some time to grow accustomed to such a view. I shall refer to this point again.
If has its maximum value, which is when it equals unity, then .
This would be the extreme case of the action of all the sympathetic and antipathetic relations between human beings (leaving out of account social relations in their narrowest sense, which are merely the safeguards of communities) which are not included in the law of sexual affinity. As K generally increases with the strength of congenital relationship, A has a greater value when the individuals are of the same nationality than when they belong to different nationalities. The value of f' is great in this case, and one can investigate its fluctuations, as, for instance, when two domestic animals of different species are in association; at first it usually stands for violent enmity, or fear of each other (and A has a negative value), whilst later on a friendship may come about.
When K = o in the formula
then A = o, which means that between two living beings of origin too remote there may be no trace of sexual attraction.
The provisions of the criminal statute-books, however, in reference to sodomy and bestiality show plainly that even in the case of very remote species K has a value greater than nothing. The formula may apply to two individuals not only not of the same species, but even not of the same order.
It is a new theory that the union of male and female organisms is no mere matter of chance, but is guided by a definite law; and the actual complexities which I have merely suggested show the need for complete investigation into the mysterious nature of sexual attraction.
The experiments of Wilhelm Pfeffer have shown that the male cells of many cryptogams are naturally attracted not merely by the female cells, but also by substances which they have come in contact with under natural conditions, or which have been introduced to them experimentally, in the latter case the substances being sometimes of a kind with which they could not possibly have come in contact, except under the conditions of experiment. Thus the male cells of ferns are attracted not only by the malic acid secreted naturally by the archegonia, but by synthetically prepared malic acid, whilst the male cells of mosses are attracted either by the natural acid of the female cells or by acid prepared from cane sugar. A male cell, which, we know not how, is influenced by the degree of concentration of a solution, moves towards the most concentrated part of the fluid. Pfeffer named such movements "chemotactic" and coined the word "chemotropism" to include these and many other asexual cases of motion stimulated by chemical bodies. There is much to support the view that the attraction exercised by females on males which perceive them at a distance by sense organs is to be regarded as analogous in certain respects with chemotropism.
It seems highly probable that chemotropism is also the explanation of the restless and persistent energy with which for days together the mammalian spermatozoa seek the entrance to the uterus, although the natural current pro- duced from the mucous membrane of the uterus is from within outwards. The spermatozoon, in spite of all mechanical and other hindrances, makes for the egg-cell with an almost incredible certainty. In this connection we may call to mind the prodigious journeys made by many fish; salmon travel for months together, practically without taking any food, from the open sea to the sources of the Rhine, against the current of the river, in order to spawn in localities that are safe and well provided with food.
I have recently been looking at the beautiful sketches which P. Falkenberg has made of the processes of fertilisation in some of the Mediterranean seaweeds. When we speak of the lines of force between the opposite poles of magnets we are dealing with a force no more natural than that which irresistibly attracts the spermatozoon and the egg-cell. The chief difference seems to be that in the case of the attraction between the inorganic substances, strains are set up in the media between the two poles, whilst in the living matter the forces seem confined to the organisms themselves. According to Falkenberg's observations, the spermatozoa, in moving towards the egg-cells, are able to overcome the force which otherwise would be exercised upon them by a source of light. The sexual attraction, the chemotactic force, is stronger than the phototactic force.
When a union has taken place between two individuals who, according to my formula, are not adapted to each other, if later, the natural complement of either appears the inclination to desert the makeshift at once asserts itself in accordance with an inevitable law of nature. A divorce takes place, as much constitutional, depending on the nature of things, as when, if iron sulphate and caustic potash are brought together, the SO4 ions leave the iron to unite with the potassium. When in nature an adjustment of such differences of potential is about to take place, he who would approve or disapprove of the process from the moral point of view would appear to most to play a ridiculous part.
This is the fundamental idea in Goethe's "Wahlverwandtschaften" (Elective Affinities), and in the fourth chapter of the first part of that work he makes it the subject of a playful introduction which was full of undreamed of future significance, and the full force of which he was fated himself to experience in later life. I must confess to being proud that this book is the first work to take up his ideas. None the less, it is as little my intention as it was the intention of Goethe to advocate divorce; I hope only to explain it. There are human motives which indispose man to divorce and enable him to withstand it. This I shall discuss later on. The physical side of sex in man is less completely ruled by natural law than is the case with lower animals. We get an indication of this in the fact that man is sexual throughout the year, and that in him there is less trace than even in domestic animals of the existence of a special spring breeding-season.
The law of sexual affinity is analogous in another respect to a well-known law of theoretical chemistry, although, indeed, there are marked differences. The violence of a chemical reaction is proportionate to the mass of the substances involved, as, for instance, a stronger acid solution unites with a stronger basic solution with greater avidity, just as in the case of the union of a pair of living beings with strong maleness and femaleness. But there is an essential difference between the living process and the reaction of the lifeless chemical substances. The living organism is not homogeneous and isotropic in its composition; it is not divisible into a number of small parts of identical properties. The difference depends on the principle of individuality, on the fact that every living thing is an individual, and that its individuality is essentially structural. And so in the vital process it is not as in inorganic chemistry; there is no possibility of a larger proportion forming one compound, a smaller proportion forming another. The organic chemotropism, moreover, may be negative. In certain cases the value of A may result in a negative quantity, that is to say, the sexual attraction may appear in the form of sexual repulsion. It is true that in purely chemical processes the same reaction may take place at different rates. Taking, however, the total failure of some reaction by catalytic interference as the equivalent of a sexual repulsion, it never happens, according to the latest investigations at least, that the interference merely induces the reaction after a longer or shorter interval. On the other hand, it happens frequently that a compound which is formed at one temperature breaks up at another temperature. Here the "direction" of the reaction is a function of the temperature, as, in the vital process, it may be a function of time.
In the value of the factor "t," the time of reaction, a final analogy of sexual attraction with chemical processes may be found, if we are willing to trace the comparison without laying too much stress upon it. Consider the formula for the rapidity of the reaction, the different degrees of rapidity with which a sexual attraction between two individuals is established, and reflect how the value of "A" varies with the value of "t" However, what Kant termed mathematical vanity must not tempt us to read into our equations complicated and difficult processes, the validity of which is uncertain. All that can be implied is simple enough; sensual desire increases with the time during which two individuals are in propinquity; if they were shut up together, it would develop if there were no repulsion, or practically no repulsion between them, in the fashion of some slow chemical process which takes much time before its result is visible. Such a case is the confidence with which it is said of a marriage arranged without love, "Love will come later; time will bring it."
It is plain that too much stress must not be laid on the analogy between sexual affinity and purely chemical pro cesses. None the less, I thought it illuminating to make the comparison. It is not yet quite clear if the sexual attraction is to be ranked with the "tropisms," and the matter cannot be settled without going beyond mere sexuality to discuss the general problem of erotics. The phenomena of love require a different treatment, and I shall return to them in the second part of this book. None the less, there are analogies that cannot be denied when human attractions and chemotropism are compared. I may refer as an instance to the relation between Edward and Ottilie in Goethe's "Wahlverwandtschaften."
Mention of Goethe's romance leads naturally to a discussion of the marriage problem, and I may here give a few of the practical inferences which would seem to follow from the theoretical considerations of this chapter. It is clear that a natural law, not dissimilar to other natural laws, exists with regard to sexual attraction; this law shows that, whilst innumerable gradations of sexuality exist, there always may be found pairs of beings the members of which are almost perfectly adapted to one another. So far, marriage has its justification, and, from the standpoint of biology, free love is condemned. Monogamy, however, is a more difficult problem, the solution of which involves other considerations, such as periodicity, to which I shall refer later, and the change of the sexual taste with advancing years.
A second conclusion may be derived from heterostylism, especially with reference to the fact that "illegitimate fertilisation" almost invariably produces less fertile offspring. This leads to the consideration that amongst other forms of life the strongest and healthiest offspring will result from unions in which there is the maximum of sexual suitability. As the old saying has it, "love-children" turn out to be the finest, strongest, and most vigorous of human beings. Those who are interested in the improvement of mankind must therefore, on purely hygienic grounds, oppose the ordinary mercenary marriages of convenience.
It is more than probable that the law of sexual attraction may yield useful results when applied to the breeding of animals. More attention will have to be given to the secondary sexual characters of the animals which it is proposed to mate. The artificial methods made use of to secure the serving of mares by stallions unattractive to them do not always fail, but are followed by indifferent results. Probably an obvious result of the use of a substituted stallion in impregnating a mare is the extreme nervousness of the progeny, which must be treated with bromide and other drugs. So, also, the degeneration of modern Jews may be traced in part to the fact that amongst them marriages for other reasons than love are specially common.
Amongst the many fundamental principles established by the careful observations and experiments of Darwin, and since confirmed by other investigators, is the fact that both very closely related individuals, and those whose specific characters are too unlike, have little sexual attraction for each other, and that if in spite of this sexual union occurs, the offspring usually die at an early stage or are very feeble, or are practically infertile. So also, in heterostylous plants "legitimate fertilisation" brings about more numerous and vigorous seeds than come from other unions.
It may be said in general that the offspring of those parents which showed the greatest sexual attraction succeed best.
This rule, which is certainly universal, implies the correctness of a conclusion which might be drawn from the earlier part of this book. When a marriage has taken place and children have been produced, these have gained nothing from the conquest of sexual repulsion by the parents, for such a conquest could not take place without damage to the mental and bodily characters of the children that would come of it. It is certain, however, that many childless marriages have been loveless marriages. The old idea that the chance of conception is increased where there is a mutual participation in the sexual act is closely connected with what we have been considering as to the greater intensity of the sexual attraction between two complementary individuals.
- ↑ For special purposes the breeder, whose object frequently is to modify natural tendencies, will often disregard this law.
- ↑ In speaking of the sexual taste in men and women, one thinks at once of the usual but not invariable preference individuals show for a particular colour of hair. It would certainly seem as if the reason for so strongly marked a preference must lie deep in human nature.