354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE LAWS OF SOCIAL ATTKACTION 



By Peofessoe SIMON N. PATTEN 



tJNIVEESITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



SCIENCE is a powerful transformer of human thought and yet it 

 is remarkable how little direct influence it has on the affairs of 

 life. We live from day to day under the guidance of the same feelings 

 and motives that our ancestors had long before the sway of science was 

 felt. A new discovery attracts our attention and evokes anticipation of 

 great changes, only to drop out of view when the novelty is worn off. 

 Much of this lack of interest is due to the fact that the adjustments 

 that scientific laws demand were long since made in an unconscious 

 way so that we already do what science prescribes. A cat that, falling, 

 lands on its feet does all that a full knowledge of gravitation demands. 

 Law thus has a reflective use in explaining what has happened, but 

 seldom is a force in shaping action. 



There is, however, one field to which science is being applied where 

 this conclusion does not hold. Marriage is a subject of deep personal 

 interest and it is also one of the few fields where real choice is increas- 

 ing. From generation to generation the number of those grow who 

 settle their marriage relations for themselves. Likes and dislikes play 

 an ever-increasing role, while outside pressure — be it economic, social 

 or moral — ceases to dominate choices to the degree it did. We are 

 forced into subordination to environing conditions to an ever-increasing 

 degree, but we get even, so to speak, by asserting our wills more freely 

 in the choice of mates. The economic determination of daily life is 

 thwarted by the impulses that determine love affairs. The one free 

 epoch of a lifetime is often the days of courtship. Can laws be formu- 

 lated that cover this epoch or is the mating of men and women a 

 matter of chance? 



A notable book has recently appeared which does much to put this 

 problem on the new basis. In his " Sex and Character " Weininger 

 assumes that the two sexes differ so fundamentally that every organ 

 and even every cell reflects the peculiarities of the male and female 

 plasms from which they arise, each representing the normal results 

 that follow from the original differences in the sex cell. He holds, 

 however, that there are few, if any, pure males or females, but that 

 most men inherit some female characters while in women male char- 

 acters are equally common. The ordinary woman is dominantly 

 female, not purely so. The ordinary man in turn is dominantly male 



