ssing desire of the individual.
The regard, however, for this satisfaction, which is so zealously
pursued, as well as the careful selection it entails, has obviously
nothing to do with the chooser himself, although he fancies that it has.
Its real aim is the child to be born, in whom the type of the species is
to be preserved in as pure and perfect a form as possible. For instance,
different phases of degeneration of the human form are the consequences
of a thousand physical accidents and moral delinquencies; and yet the
genuine type of the human form is, in all its parts, always restored;
further, this is accomplished under the guidance of the sense of beauty,
which universally directs the instinct of sex, and without which the
satisfaction of the latter would deteriorate to a repulsive necessity.

Accordingly, every one in the first place will infinitely prefer and
ardently desire those who are most beautiful--in other words, those in
whom the character of the species is most purely defined; and in the
second, every one will desire in the other individual those perfections
which he himself lacks, and he will consider imperfections, which are
the reverse of his own, beautiful. This is why little men prefer big
women, and fair people like dark, and so on. The ecstasy with which a
man is filled at the sight of a beautiful woman, making him imagine that
union with her will be the greatest happiness, is simply the _sense of
the species_. The preservation of the type of the species rests on this
distinct preference for beauty, and this is why beauty has such power.

We will later on more fully state the considerations which this
involves. It is really instinct aiming at what is best in the species
which induces a man to choose a beautiful woman, although the man
himself imagines that by so doing he is only seeking to increase his own
pleasure. As a matter of fact, we have here an instructive solution of
the secret nature of all instinct which almost always, as in this case,
prompts the individual to look after the welfare of the species. The
care with which an insect selects a certain flower or fruit, or piece of
flesh, or the way in which the ichneumon seeks the larva of a strange
insect so that it may lay its eggs in _that particular place only_, and
to secure which it fears neither labour nor danger, is obviously very
analogous to the care with which a man chooses a woman of a definite
nature individually suited to him.