but ready made; all the more reason when the bargain is for one's son,
not one's self. So the Far East, which looks at the thing from a

strictly paternalstandpoint and ignores such trifles as personal
preferences, takes its boy to the broker's and fits him out.

That the object of such parental care does not end by murdering his
unfortunatespouse or making way with himself suggests how dead

already is that individuality which we deem to be of the very essence
of the thing.

Marriage is thus a species of investmentcontracted by the existing
family for the sake of the prospective one, the actual participants

being only lay figures in the affair. Sometimes the father decides
the matter himself; sometimes he or the relative who stands in loco

parentis calls for a plebiscit on the subject; for such an extension
of the suffrage has gradually crept even into patriarchal

institutions. The family then assemble, sit in solemn conclave on
the question, and decide it by vote. Of course the interested

parties are not asked their opinion, as it might be prejudiced.
The result of the conference must be highly gratifying. To have

one's wife chosen for one by vote of one's relatives cannot but be
satisfactory--to the electors. The outcome of this ballot, like

that of universalsuffrageelsewhere, is at the best unobjectionable
mediocrity. Somehow such a result does not seem quite to fulfil

one's ideal of a wife. It is true that the upper classes of
impersonal France practise this method of marital selection, their

conseils de famille furnishing in some sort a parallel. But, as is
well known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form

devoid of substance. It begins impressively with a dual ceremony,
the civil contract, which amounts to a contract of civility between

the parties, and a religious rite to render the same perpetual,
and there it is too apt to end.

So much for the immediate influence on the man; the eventual effect
on the race remains to be considered. Now, if the first result be

anything, the second must in the end be everything. For however
trifling it be in the individual instance, it goes on accumulating

with each successivegeneration, like compound interest.
The choosing of a wife by family suffrage is not simply an exponent

of the impersonal state of things, it is a power toward bringing
such a state of things about. A hermit seldom develops to his full

possibilities, and the domesticvariety is no exception to the rule.
A man who is linked to some one that toward him remains a cipher

lacks surroundings inciting to psychological growth, nor is he more
favorably circumstanced because all his ancestors have been

similarly circumscribed.
As if to make assurancedoubly sure, natural selection here steps in

to further the process. To prove this with all the rigidity of
demonstration desirable is in the present state of erotics beyond

our power. Until our family trees give us something more than mere
skeletons of dead branches, we must perforce continue ignorant of

the science of grafts. For the nonce we must be content to
generalize from our own premises, only rising above them

sufficiently to get a bird's-eye view of our neighbor's estates.
Such a survey has at least one advantage: the whole field of view

appears perfectly plain.
Surveying the subject, then, from this ego-altruistic position,

we can perceive why matrimony, as we practise it, should result in
increasing the personality of our race: for the reason namely that

psychical similarity determines the selection. At first sight,
indeed, such a natural affinity would seem to have little or nothing

to do with marriage. As far as outsiders are capable of judging,
unlikes appear to fancy one another quite as gratuitously as do

likes. Connubial couples are often anything but twin souls. Yet our
own dual use of the word "like" bears historicwitness to the

contrary. For in this expression we have a record from early Gothic
times that men liked others for being like themselves. Since then,

our feelings have not changed materially, although our mode of
showing them is slightly less intense. In those simple days

stranger and enemy were synonymous terms, and their objects were
received in a corresponding spirit. In our present refined

civilization we hurl epithets instead of spears, and content
ourselves with branding as heterodox the opinions of another which

do not happen to coincide with our own. The instinct of
self-development naturally begets this self-sided view. We

insensibly find those persons congenial whose ideas resemble ours,
and gravitate to them, as leaves on a pond do to one another, nearer

and nearer till they touch. Is it likely, then, that in the most
important case of all the rule should suddenly cease to hold? Is it

to be presumed that even Socrates chose Xantippe for her remarkable
contrariety to himself?

Mere physicalattraction is another matter. Corporeally considered,
men not infrequently fall in love with their opposites, the

phenomenally tall with the painfully short, the unnecessarily stout
with the distressingly slender. But even such inartistic

juxtapositions are much less common than we are apt at times to
think. For it must never be forgotten that the exceptional

character of the phenomena renders them conspicuous, the customary
more consorted combinations failing to excite attention.

Besides, there exists a reason for physical incongruity which does
not hold psychically. Nature sanctions the one while she

discountenances the other. Instead of the forethought she once
bestowed upon the body, it receives at her hands now but the

scantiest attention. Its development has ceased to be an object
with her. For some time past almost all her care has been devoted

to the evolution of the soul. The consequence is that physically
man is much less specialized than many other animals. In other

words, he is bodily less advanced in the race for competitive
extermination. He belongs to an antiquated, inefficient type of

mammal. His organism is still of the jack-of-all-trades pattern,
such as prevailed generally in the more youthful stages of organic

life--one not specially suited to any particular pursuit. Were it
not for his cerebral convolutions he could not compete for an

instant in the struggle for existence, and even the monkey would
reign in his stead. But brain is more effective than biceps, and a

being who can kill his opponent farther off than he can see him
evidently needs no great excellence of body to survive his foe.

The field of competition has thus been transferred from matter to
mind, but the fight has lost none of its keenness in consequence.

With the same zeal with which advantageous anatomical variations
were seized upon and perpetuated, psychical ones are now grasped and

rendered hereditary. Now if opposites were to fancy and wed one
another, such fortunate improvements would soon be lost. They would

be scattered over the community at large even it they escaped entire
neutralization. To prevent so disastrous a result nature implants a

desire for resemblance, which desire man instinctively acts upon.
Complete compatibility of temperament is of course a thing not to be

expected nor indeed to be desired, since it would defeat its own end
by allowing no room for variation. A fairly broad basis of agreement,

however, exists even when least suspected. This common ground of
content consists of those qualities held to be most essential by the

individuals concerned, although not necessarily so appearing to
other people. Sometimes, indeed, these qualities are still in the

larvae state of desires. They are none the less potent upon the
man's personality on that account, for the wish is always father to

its own fulfilment.
The want of conjugal resemblance not only works mediately on the

child, it works mutually on the parents; for companionship, as is
well recognized, tends to similarity. Now companionship is the last

thing to be looked for in a far-eastern couple. Where custom
requires a wife to follow dutifully in the wake of her husband,

whenever the two go out together, there is small opportunity for
intercourse by the way, even were there the slightest inclination to

it, which there is not. The appearance of the pair on an excursion
is a walking satire on sociability, for the comicality of the

connection is quite unperceived by the performers. In the privacy
of the domesticcircle the separation, if less humorous, is no less

complete. Each lives in a world of his own, largely separate in
fact in China and Korea, and none the less in fancy in Japan.

On the continent a friend of the husband would see little or nothing
of the wife, and even in Japan he would meet her much as we meet an

upper servant in a friend's house. Such a semi-attached
relationship does not conduce to much mutual understanding.

The remainder of our hero's uneventful existence calls for no
particular comment. As soon as he has children borne him he is

raised ipso facto from the position of a common soldier to that of
a subordinate officer in the family ranks. But his opportunities

for the expression of individuality are not one whit increased.
He has simply advanced a peg in a regular hierarchy of subjection.

From being looked after himself he proceeds to look after others.
Such is the extent of the change. Even should he chance to be the

eldest son of the eldest son, and thus eventually end by becoming