ing page.

Although the cases are few, the results are, in two main
respects, sufficiently clear without multiplication of data. In
the first place, those who seek parity, whether men or women, are
in a majority over those who seek disparity. In the second place,
the existence of any disparity at all is due only to the
universal desire to find a tall person. Not one man or woman sets
down shortness as his or her ideal. The very fact that no man in
these initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short
(although a considerable proportion describe themselves as tall)
indicates a consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also
does the fact that the women very frequently describe themselves
as tall.

The same charm of disparity which has been supposed to rule in selective
attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards
pigmentation. The fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to
the fair. Again, it must be said that this common assumption is not
confirmed either by introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a
statistical basis.[174]

WOMEN. MEN. TOTALS.

Tall women seek tall men.. 8 Tall men seek tall women.. 6 14
Short women seek short men 0 Short men seek short women 0 0
Medium-sized women seek Medium-sized men seek
medium-sized men ....... 0 medium-sized women .... 3 3

Seek parity........... 8 Seek parity........... 9 17

Tall women seek short men. 0 Tall men seek short women. 0 0
Short women seek tall men. 4 Short men seek tall women. 0 4
Medium-sized woman seeks Medium-sized men seek tall
tall man................ 1 women .................. 8 9

Seek disparity........ 5 Seek disparity........ 8 13

Men of unknown height seek
tall women.............. 5 5

Most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in
this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the
opposite sex who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary
characters. Even when the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person
is endowed with certain pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or
darkness,--either of which is liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to
the imagination,--it is usually found, on testing the feeling for
particular p