He may, and
sometimes does, find that in these other demands, which prove to be more
important and insistent than the desire for stature, the tall women he
meets are less likely to suit him than the medium or short women.[176] It
may thus happen that a man whose ideal of woman has always been as tall
may yet throughout life never be in intimate relationship with a tall
woman because he finds that practically he has more marked affinities in
the case of shorter women. His abstract ideals are modified or negatived
by more imperative sympathies or antipathies.
In one field such sympathies have long been recognized, especially by
alienists, as leading to sexual unions of parity, notwithstanding the
belief in the generally superior attraction of disparity. It has often
been pointed out that the neuropathic, the insane and criminal,
"degenerates" of all kinds, show a notable tendency to marry each other.
This tendency has not, however, been investigated with any precision.[177]
The first attempt on a statistical basis to ascertain what degree of
parity or disparity is actually attained by sexual selection was made by
Alphonse de Candolle.[178] Obtaining his facts from Switzerland, North
Germany, and Belgium, he came to the conclusion that marriages are most
commonly contracted between persons with different eye-colors, except in
the case of brown-eyed women, who (as Schopenhauer stated, and as is seen
in the English data of the sexual ideal I have brought forward) are found
more attractive than others.
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