The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    43/546 (page 13)
    ILLUSIONS OF LOVE of the same locality, 1 or street, 1 2 proves not that such people, in our modern world at least, possess the greatest affinity, but simply that, ceteris paribus, all that healthy, vigorous beings require is a suitable stimulus to release their latent desire for attachment, irrespective of the power of attraction. Thus marked satisfaction over having been fallen in love with is almost always exaggerated except in a person of obviously inferior parts. A man beneath a waterfall might as well flatter himself that he is attracting the downpour, or Victoria Station might as well fancy that it is attracting the trains from Brighton. Gross exaggeration of the attractive power of the sexual object is equally unsound. A train from Brighton might as well rhapsodize about the irresistible attraction of Victoria Station. Of course, this applies chiefly to people of normal health and appearance. If, however, a decline in genetic power overtakes a people, a more critical choice becomes customary, because coldness requires unusual stimulation. From the outset, therefore, it is as well to be clear about the fact that, even where free choice is exercised, in the best or worst circumstances, the critical or discriminating faculty exer cises a much smaller influence than both parties fondly imagine. 3 And this should be made known to healthy young people. For by discounting the native impulse to the sexual object, and the latter’s native impulse to oneself, the precise degree of its attraction, and of one’s own attractiveness can be more calmly estimated. The consent which Roman and Jewish legislators insisted on from both parties in a match arranged by parents was merely a means of allowing either party (in the case presumably of a bad biological specimen, selected by the parents for perhaps venal motives) to say whether he or she could release the latent native longing for attachment upon the particular object presented. Thus, although it is unlikely that no freedom of choice, even where no standardization of type prevails, necessarily leads to 1 The evidence is overwhelming. But the following was taken by chance from the French Annuaire Statistique for 1928 : in 1926, of 345,415 marriages, 193,952 were between people of the same commune, and 157,463 between people of different communes. To suppose that the larger figure was due to a greater incidence of objective factors of attraction in the local lovers would, nowadays, be fantastic. 2 All who, like myself, have been among the poor of a great city, have noticed this. 3 This explains why one so often sees an attractive girl of ardent sensibilities throwing herself away on an obviously biologically inferior male and vice versd.