llel. But, as is well
known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form devoid
of substance. It begins impressively with a dual ceremony, the civil
contract, which amounts to a contract of civility between the parties,
and a religious rite to render the same perpetual, and there it is too
apt to end.

So much for the immediate influence on the man; the eventual effect on
the race remains to be considered. Now, if the first result be anything,
the second must in the end be everything. For however trifling it be in
the individual instance, it goes on accumulating with each successive
generation, like compound interest. The choosing of a wife by family
suffrage is not simply an exponent of the impersonal state of things, it
is a power toward bringing such a state of things about. A hermit seldom
develops to his full possibilities, and the domestic variety is no
exception to the rule. A man who is linked to some one that toward him
remains a cipher lacks surroundings inciting to psychological growth,
nor is he more favorably circumstanced because all his ancestors have
been similarly circumscribed.

As if to make assurance doubly sure, natural selection here steps in
to further the process. To prove this with all the rigidity of
demonstration desirable is in the present state of erotics beyond our
power. Until our family trees give us something more than mere skeletons
of dead branches, we must perforce continue ignorant of the science
of grafts. For the nonce we must be content to generalize from our own
premises, only rising above them sufficiently to get a bird's-eye view
of our neighbor's estates. Such a survey has at least one advantage: the
whole field of view appears perfectly plain.

Surveying the subject, then, from this ego-altruistic position, we can
perceive why matrimony, as we practise it, should result in increasing
the personality of our race: for the reason namely that psychical
similarity determines the selection. At first sight, indeed, such
a natural affinity would seem to have little or nothing to do with
marriage. As far as outsiders are capable of judging, unlikes appear to
fancy one another quite as gratuitously as do likes. Connubial couples
are often anything but twin souls. Yet our own dual use of the word
"like" bears historic witness to the contrary. For in this expression
we have a record from early Gothic times that men liked others for being
like themselves. Since then, our f