unted and short figure. Considerations of
temperament also influence a man's choice. Each prefers a temperament
the reverse of his own; but only in so far as his is a decided one.

A man who is quite perfect in some respect himself does not, it is true,
desire and love imperfection in this particular respect, yet he can be
more easily reconciled to it than another man, because he himself saves
the children from being very imperfect in this particular. For instance,
a man who has a very white skin himself will not dislike a yellowish
complexion, while a man who has a yellowish complexion will consider a
dazzlingly white skin divinely beautiful. It is rare for a man to fall
in love with a positively ugly woman, but when he does, it is because
exact harmony in the degree of sex exists between them, and all her
abnormities are precisely the opposite to, that is to say, the
corrective of his. Love in these circumstances is wont to attain a high
degree.

The profoundly earnest way in which we criticise and narrowly consider
every part of a woman, while she on her part considers us; the
scrupulously careful way we scrutinise, a woman who is beginning to
please us; the fickleness of our choice; the strained attention with
which a man watches his _fiancee_; the care he takes not to be deceived
in any trait; and the great importance he attaches to every more or less
essential trait,--all this is quite in keeping with the importance of
the end. For the child that is to be born will have to bear a similar
trait through its whole life; for instance, if a woman stoops but a
little, it is possible for her son to be inflicted with a hunchback; and
so in every other respect. We are not conscious of all this, naturally.
On the contrary, each man imagines that his choice is made in the
interest of his own pleasure (which, in reality, cannot be interested in
it at all); his choice, which we must take for granted is in keeping
with his own individuality, is made precisely in the interest of the
species, to maintain the type of which as pure as possible is the secret
task. In this case the individual unconsciously acts in the interest of
something higher, that is, the species. This is why he attaches so much
importance to things to which he might, nay, would be otherwise
indifferent. There is something quite singular in the unconsciously
serious and critical way two young people of different sex look at each
other on meeting for the first t