A correspondent writes:  “Men are generally attracted in the first instance by a woman’s beauty, either of face or figure.  Frequently this is the highest form of love they are capable of.  Personally, my own love is always prompted by this.  In the case of my wife there was certainly a leaven of friendship and moral sympathies but these alone would never have been translated into love had she not been young and good-looking.  Moreover, I have felt intense passion for other women, in my relations with whom the elements of moral or mental sympathy have not entered.  And always, as youth and beauty went, I believe I should transfer my love to some one else.

“Now, in woman I fancy this element of beauty and youth does not enter so much.  I have questioned a large number of women—­some married, some unmarried, young and old ladies, shopgirls, servants, prostitutes, women whom I have known only as friends, others with whom I have had sexual relations—­and I cannot recollect one instance when a woman said she had fallen in love with a man for his looks.  The nearest approach to any sign of this was in the instance of one, who noticed a handsome man sitting near us in a hotel, and said to me:  ’I should like him to kiss me.’

“I have also noticed that women do not like looking at my body, when naked, as I like looking at theirs.  My wife has, on a few occasions, put her hand over my body, and expressed pleasure at the feeling of my skin. (I have very fair, soft skin.) But I have never seen women exhibit the excitement that is caused in me by the sight of their bodies, which I love to look at, to stroke, to kiss all over.”

It is interesting to point out, in this connection, that the admiration of strength is not confined to the human female.  It is by the spectacle of his force that the male among many of the lower animals sexually affects the female.  Darwin duly allows for this fact, while some evolutionists, and notably Wallace, consider that it covers the whole field of sexual selection.  When choice exists, Wallace states, “all the facts appear to be consistent with the choice depending on a variety of male characteristics, with some of which color is often correlated.  Thus, it is the opinion of some of the best observers that vigor and liveliness are most attractive, and these are, no doubt, usually associated with some intensity of color, ...  There is reason to believe that it is his [the male bird’s] persistency and energy rather than his beauty which wins the day.” (A.R.  Wallace, Tropical Nature, 1898, p. 199.) In his later book, Darwinism (p. 295), Wallace reaffirms his position that sexual selection means that in the rivalry of males for the female the most vigorous secures the advantage; “ornament,” he adds, “is the natural product and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor.”  As regards woman’s love of strength, see Westermarck, History