eelings have not changed materially,
although our mode of showing them is slightly less intense. In those
simple days stranger and enemy were synonymous terms, and their
objects were received in a corresponding spirit. In our present refined
civilization we hurl epithets instead of spears, and content ourselves
with branding as heterodox the opinions of another which do not happen
to coincide with our own. The instinct of self-development naturally
begets this self-sided view. We insensibly find those persons congenial
whose ideas resemble ours, and gravitate to them, as leaves on a pond do
to one another, nearer and nearer till they touch. Is it likely, then,
that in the most important case of all the rule should suddenly cease
to hold? Is it to be presumed that even Socrates chose Xantippe for her
remarkable contrariety to himself?

Mere physical attraction is another matter. Corporeally considered, men
not infrequently fall in love with their opposites, the phenomenally
tall with the painfully short, the unnecessarily stout with the
distressingly slender. But even such inartistic juxtapositions are much
less common than we are apt at times to think. For it must never be
forgotten that the exceptional character of the phenomena renders them
conspicuous, the customary more consorted combinations failing to excite
attention.

Besides, there exists a reason for physical incongruity which does not
hold psychically. Nature sanctions the one while she discountenances the
other. Instead of the forethought she once bestowed upon the body, it
receives at her hands now but the scantiest attention. Its development
has ceased to be an object with her. For some time past almost all her
care has been devoted to the evolution of the soul. The consequence is
that physically man is much less specialized than many other animals.
In other words, he is bodily less advanced in the race for competitive
extermination. He belongs to an antiquated, inefficient type of mammal.
His organism is still of the jack-of-all-trades pattern, such as
prevailed generally in the more youthful stages of organic life--one not
specially suited to any particular pursuit. Were it not for his cerebral
convolutions he could not compete for an instant in the struggle for
existence, and even the monkey would reign in his stead. But brain
is more effective than biceps, and a being who can kill his opponent
farther off than he can see him evidently needs no great e