Nevertheless, if a big woman choose a big husband, in order, perhaps, to present a better appearance in society, the children, as a rule, suffer for her folly.  Again, another very decided consideration is complexion.  Blonde people fancy either absolutely dark complexions or brown; but it is rarely the case vice versa.  The reason for it is this:  that fair hair and blue eyes are a deviation from the type and almost constitute an abnormity, analogous to white mice, or at any rate white horses.  They are not indigenous to any other part of the world but Europe,—­not even to the polar regions,—­and are obviously of Scandinavian origin. En passant, it is my conviction that a white skin is not natural to man, and that by nature he has either a black or brown skin like our forefathers, the Hindoos, and that the white man was never originally created by nature; and that, therefore, there is no race of white people, much as it is talked about, but every white man is a bleached one.  Driven up into the north, where he was a stranger, and where he existed only like an exotic plant, in need of a hothouse in winter, man in the course of centuries became white.  The gipsies, an Indian tribe which emigrated only about four centuries ago, show the transition of the Hindoo’s complexion to ours.  In love, therefore, nature strives to return to dark hair and brown eyes, because they are the original type; still, a white skin has become second nature, although not to such an extent as to make the dark skin of the Hindoo repellent to us.

Finally, every man tries to find the corrective of his own defects and aberrations in the particular parts of his body, and the more conspicuous the defect is the greater is his determination to correct it.  This is why snub-nosed persons find an aquiline nose or a parrot-like face so indescribably pleasing; and the same thing applies to every other part of the body.  Men of immoderately long and attenuated build delight in a stunted and short figure.  Considerations of temperament also influence a man’s choice.  Each prefers a temperament the reverse of his own; but only in so far as his is a decided one.

A man who is quite perfect in some respect himself does not, it is true, desire and love imperfection in this particular respect, yet he can be more easily reconciled to it than another man, because he himself saves the children from being very imperfect in this particular.  For instance, a man who has a very white skin himself will not dislike a yellowish complexion, while a man who has a yellowish complexion will consider a dazzlingly white skin divinely beautiful.  It is rare for a man to fall in love with a positively ugly woman, but when he does, it is because exact harmony in the degree of sex exists between them, and all her abnormities are precisely the opposite to, that is to say, the corrective of his.  Love in these circumstances is wont to attain a high degree.