178 WHAT MAKES MAN A MAN. 



exquisitely susceptible, fine-grained, delicate and pure 

 minded woman. One would think her delicacy would 

 revolt at his coarseness, and his strength despise her exquis- 

 itness. 



What draws tk,m together? 



By presupposition her delicate organism has about 

 exhausted her sparse fund of vitality. She is perishing for 

 want of this first requisite of life and naturally gravitates to 

 one possessed of a superabundance, so that she literally 

 lives on his surplus animal magnetism he being all the 

 better for the draft while she pays him back by refining 

 and elevating him ; and their children inherit, with his pow- 

 erful animal organization, her exquisite refinement, and are 

 far better specimens of humanity than if their parents had 

 married similars rather than opposites. 



Nature will not rest content when great inequality 

 occurs in the manifestation of life and strives to bring back 

 to equilibrium whatever is seriously disproportionate, both 

 by inheritance and by subsequently strengthening the weakest 

 organs the most. 



If one who is constitutionally so very excitable that 

 his surplus excitement renders him unhappy, marries one 

 whose equal excitability perpetually re-increases his own, 

 and thereby constantly renders him still more unhappy, she 

 makes him dislike her, while his excitability, by perpetually 

 re-increasing hers, also re-increases her unhappiness, and 

 therefore engenders mutual hatred, besides transmitting this 

 double excitability to their children, which thereby predis- 

 poses them to precocity ; whereas, instead, by marrying one 

 whose natural calmness quiets his painful excitability and 

 soothes instead of irritates him, her calmness would render 

 him happy in her, while his excitability, by quickening her 

 lameness, would render her happier in him than in one 

 equally composed, besides striking the balance in their off- 

 spring, thereby also obviating the faults of both parents in 

 ruture generations which marry ing similars would aggravate. 



