496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wealth are usually most at their ease in intercourse with the 

 well-to-do. Who has not witnessed how quickly two abnormally 

 stout men enter into confiding relations with one another; or 

 how easily, between persons afflicted with a like disease or de- 

 formity, friendship is set up ? Caste, group, and race preju- 

 dices of every kind, together with such distinctions as those 

 implied in the names of aristocrat, commoner, bourgeois, official, 

 proletariat, all imply and involve the coming together of likes 

 and the separation of unlikes. In most countries there is still 

 a strong though diminishing prejudice against alliances with 

 foreigners; even among natives, marrying "below one's station" 

 or " out of one's religion " meets with a certain amount of social 

 as well as with much family resistance. Most people usually fall 

 in love with those about their own age. Deaf-mutes almost 

 invariably marry deaf-mutes. 



Highly temporary likenesses are equally potent in promoting 

 association. Their influence is seen in the pleasure we feel at 

 the discovery in others of some character like to our own, even 

 if that character be no more than a gleam of intelligence in the 

 lower animals. We note it constantly in the unifying effect 

 which the wearing of a common badge or uniform has upon 

 large bodies of men brought together for special ends. So in 

 moments of exaltation or depression, as in the excitement of con- 

 flict or intoxication ; under the influence of music or during re- 

 ligious worship ; the ordinary differences belonging to more per- 

 manent states lose their separative power, and men come into 

 unwonted facility, even pleasure of relation with each other. It 

 is supposed that even between deadly enemies chancing to meet 

 at the dinner table there passes a flash of momentary reconcili- 

 ation. It is certain that shipwrecked men do not quarrel over 

 politics ; that the starving are usually free from religious bigot- 

 ry ; and that in the presence of a general bereavement, the clam- 

 ors of faction and the prejudices of class are silent. The power 

 of a war and of the comradeship of battle to annihilate distinc- 

 tions usually recognized in time of peace is notorious. In all 

 these cases, and in all the cases which they represent, we see 

 great importance suddenly given to one side of men's natures to 

 some all-a,bsorbing feeling or experience in the presence of which 

 the ease of association with likes becomes extended for the mo- 

 ment to each of the human beings by whom the same experience 

 is shared, whether they be few or many ; in other words, the un- 

 likenesses which normally separate men into more or less narrow 

 classes lose their importance in proportion as some suddenly de- 

 veloped feeling gives prominence to resemblances either wider in 

 character or more strongly felt. 



Observe next how unlikes tend to be separated from the hu- 



