170 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



But there is a moral as well as a physical side to 

 heredity. Physical excelleuce we can see. How 

 can we distinguish in a person of the opposite sex 

 the moral qualities best fitted to make an advan- 

 tageous blend with our own? The answer to this 

 question, we imagine, is to be found in those mani- 

 festations of sympathy to which Goethe has given 

 the name of Wahlverwandtschaften. It is customary 

 to throw a little ridicule upon the term elective 

 affinities, and to treat the sentiments so described as 

 fanciful or unworthy of serious attention. The study 

 of the subject has been left almost entirely to the 

 poets and the novelists, who have acknowledged its 

 importance without trying to explain it. Yet we 

 have good reason to believe that the instinctive 

 aversion or attraction felt by certain individuals for 

 others is a fact of some importance in Nature's 

 scheme. Let us see, first, what place the elective 

 affinities have taken in literature. The most strik- 

 ing exposition of them is given by Goethe in his 

 Wahlverwandtschaften, which is known to have been 

 founded upon his own experience. Eduard and 

 Charlotte had loved each other as boy and girl, but 

 circumstances had parted them, and each had made 

 a mariage de convenance. Released from this by the 



