Undoubtedly they count for much, and the man or the woman who, from
whatever causes, has constituted a sexual ideal with certain characters
may in the actual contacts of life find that individuals with other and
even opposed characters most adequately respond to his or her psychic
demands. There are, however, other causes in play here which at first
sight may seem to be not of a purely psychic character. One unquestionable
cause of this kind comes into action in regard to pigmentary selection.
Fair people, possibly as a matter of race more than from absence of
pigment, are more energetic than dark people. They possess a sanguine
vigor and impetuosity which, in most, though not in all, fields and
especially in the competition of practical life, tend to give them some
superiority over their darker brethren. The greater fairness of husbands
in comparison with men in general, as found by Karl Pearson, is thus
accounted for; fair men are most likely to obtain wives. Husbands are
fairer than men in general for the same reason that, as I have shown
elsewhere,[183] created peers are fairer than either hereditary peers or
even most groups of intellectual persons; they have possessed in higher
measure the qualities that insure success.
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