pring from the necessary correction or
neutralisation of the one-sided qualities and abnormities of the two
individuals by each other. Let us look at these considerations
separately.

The first consideration that influences our choice and feelings is
_age_....

The second consideration is that of _health_: a severe illness may alarm
us for the time being, but an illness of a chronic nature or even
cachexy frightens us away, because it would be transmitted.

The third consideration is the _skeleton_, since it is the foundation of
the type of the _species_. Next to old age and disease, nothing disgusts
us so much as a deformed shape; even the most beautiful face cannot make
amends for it--in fact, the ugliest face combined with a well-grown
shape is infinitely preferable. Moreover, we are most keenly sensible of
every malformation of the _skeleton_; as, for instance, a stunted,
short-legged form, and the like, or a limping gait when it is not the
result of some extraneous accident: while a conspicuously beautiful
figure compensates for every defect. It delights us. Further, the great
importance which is attached to small feet! This is because the size of
the foot is an essential characteristic of the species, for no animal
has the tarsus and metatarsus combined so small as man; hence the
uprightness of his gait: he is a plantigrade. And Jesus Sirach has
said[17] (according to the improved translation by Kraus), "A woman that
is well grown and has beautiful feet is like pillars of gold in sockets
of silver." The teeth, too, are important, because they are essential
for nourishment, and quite peculiarly hereditary.

The fourth consideration is a certain _plumpness_, in other words, a
superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity.... Hence
excessive thinness strikingly repels us.... The last consideration that
influences us is a _beautiful face_. Here, too, the bone parts are taken
into account before everything else. So that almost everything depends
on a beautiful nose, while a short _retrousse_ one will mar all. A
slight upward or downward turn of the nose has often determined the
life's happiness of a great many maidens; and justly so, for the type of
the species is at stake.

A small mouth, by means of small maxillae, is very essential, as it is
the specific characteristic of the human face as distinguished from the
muzzle of the brutes. A receding, as it were, a cut-away chin is
particularly repellent, be