The fourth consideration is a certain plumpness, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity....  Hence excessive thinness strikingly repels us....  The last consideration that influences us is a beautiful face.  Here, too, the bone parts are taken into account before everything else.  So that almost everything depends on a beautiful nose, while a short retrousse one will mar all.  A slight upward or downward turn of the nose has often determined the life’s happiness of a great many maidens; and justly so, for the type of the species is at stake.

A small mouth, by means of small maxillae, is very essential, as it is the specific characteristic of the human face as distinguished from the muzzle of the brutes.  A receding, as it were, a cut-away chin is particularly repellent, because mentum prominulum is a characteristic belonging exclusively to our species.

Finally, we come to the consideration of beautiful eyes and a beautiful forehead; they depend upon the psychical qualities, and in particular, the intellectual, which are inherited from the mother.  The unconscious considerations which, on the other hand, influence women in their choice naturally cannot be so accurately specified.  In general, we may say the following:—­That the age they prefer is from thirty to thirty-five.  For instance, they prefer men of this age to youths, who in reality possess the highest form of human beauty.  The reason for this is that they are not guided by taste but by instinct, which recognises in this particular age the acme of generative power.  In general, women pay little attention to beauty, that is, to beauty of face; they seem to take it upon themselves alone to endow the child with beauty.  It is chiefly the strength of a man and the courage that goes with it that attract them, for both of these promise the generation of robust children and at the same time a brave protector for them.  Every physical defect in a man, any deviation from the type, a woman may, with regard to the child, eradicate if she is faultless in these parts herself or excels in a contrary direction.  The only exceptions are those qualities which are peculiar to the man, and which, in consequence, a mother cannot bestow on her child; these include the masculine build of the skeleton, breadth of shoulder, small hips, straight legs, strength of muscle, courage, beard, and so on.  And so it happens that a woman frequently loves an ugly man, albeit she never loves an unmanly man, because she cannot neutralise his defects.

The second class of considerations that are the source of love are those depending on the psychical qualities.  Here we shall find that a woman universally is attracted by the qualities of a man’s heart or character, both of which are inherited from the father.  It is mainly firmness of will, determination and courage, and may be honesty and goodness of heart too, that win a woman over; while intellectual qualifications