Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/482

478 pertaining to human mating has been the subject of wide speculation and assertion since the time of da Vinci.

Schopenhauer states that every person requires from the individual of the opposite sex a one-sidedness which is the opposite of his or her own. The most manly man will seek the most womanly woman, and conversely. Weak or little men have a decided inclination for strong or big women, and strong or big women for weak or little men. Blondes prefer dark persons or brunettes; snub-nosed, hook-nosed; persons with excessively thin long bodies and limbs those who are stumpy and short, and so on! Analogous superstitions are wide spread, though differing in form. Westermarck, in summarizing the views of various writers adds, "If contrasts instinctively seek each other, this may partly account for the readiness with which love awakens love."

Some have even ventured the opinion that where the husband and wife are unlike, the offspring are more numerous, or stronger! Again there is the popular superstition that after a long life together husband and wife come to resemble each other physically.

Of course conclusions the opposite of all of these are not wanting.

Such is the state of knowledge to which the unaided observation of a complex phenomenon can lead us—a snarl of contradictions. As far as we know, the only method of disentangling it and arriving at some certainty is the analysis of large bodies of observations by means of refined statistical methods.