8 FALLING IN LOVE 



societies they happen to be cast among. A man at Ashby- 

 de-la-Zouch does not hunt the world over to find his pre- 

 established harmony at Paray-le-Monial or at Denver, 

 Colorado. But among the women he actually meets, a 

 vast number are purely indifferent to him ; only one or two, 

 here and there, strike him hi the light of possible wives, 

 and only one in the last resort (outside Salt Lake City) 

 approves herself to his inmost nature as the actual wife of 

 his final selection. 



Now this very indifference to the vast mass of our fellow- 

 countrymen or fellow- country women, this extreme pitch 

 of selective preference in the human species, is just one 

 mark of our extraordinary specialisation, one stamp and 

 token of our high supremacy. The brutes do not so pick 

 and choose, though even there, as Darwin has shown, selec- 

 tion plays a large part (for the very butterflies are coy, and 

 must be wooed and won). It is only in the human race itself 

 that selection descends into such minute, such subtle, such 

 indefinable discriminations. Why should a universal and 

 common impulse have in our case these special limits ? 

 Why should we be by nature so fastidious and so diversely 

 affected ? Surely for some good and sufficien t purpose. 

 No deep-seated want of our complex life would be so 

 narrowly restricted without a law and a meaning. Some- 

 times we can in part explain its conditions. Here, we see 

 that beauty plays a great rdle ; there, we recognise the 

 importance of strength, of manner, of grace, of moral 

 qualities. Vivacity, as Mr. Galton justly remarks, is one 

 of the most powerful among human attractions, and often 

 accounts for what might otherwise seem unaccountable 

 preferences. But after all is said and done, there remains 

 a vast mass of instinctive and inexplicable elements : a 

 power deeper and more marvellous in its inscrutable rami- 

 fications than human consciousness. ' What on earth,' we 



