larly when it is remembered that beauty, especially as determined
by good complexion, good teeth and medium weight, is correlated with
good health in some degree, and likewise with intelligence.
Nevertheless, we are strongly of the opinion that beauty of face is now
too highly valued, as a standard of sexual selection.[101]

Good health in a mate is a qualification which any sensible man or woman
will require, and for which a "marriage certificate" is in most cases
quite unnecessary.[102] What other physical standard is there that
should be given weight?

Alexander Graham Bell has lately been emphasizing the importance of
longevity in this connection, and in our judgment he has thereby opened
up a very fruitful field for education. It goes without saying that
anyone would prefer to marry a partner with a good constitution. "How
can we find a test of a good, sound constitution?" Dr. Bell asked in a
recent lecture. "I think we could find it in the duration of life in a
family. Take a family in which a large proportion live to old age with
unimpaired faculties. There you know is a good constitution in an
inheritable form. On the other hand, you will find a family in which a
large proportion die at birth and in which there are relatively few
people who live to extreme old age. There has developed an hereditary
weakness of constitution. Longevity is a guide to constitution." Not
only does it show that one's vital organs are in good running order, but
it is probably the only means now available of indicating strains which
are resistant to zymotic disease. Early death is not necessarily an
evidence of physical weakness; but long life is a pretty good proof of
constitutional strength.

Dr. Bell has elsewhere called attention to the fact that, longevity
being a characteristic which is universally considered creditable in a
family, there is no tendency on the part of families to conceal its
existence, as there is in the case of unfavorable characters--cancer,
tuberculosis, insanity, and the like. This gives it a great advantage as
a criterion for sexual selection, since there will be little difficulty
in finding whether or not the ancestors of a young man or woman were
long-lived.[103]

Karl Pearson and his associates have shown that there is a tendency to
assortative mating for longevity: that people from long-lived stocks
actually do marry people from similar stocks, more frequently than would
be the case if the matings wer