CHAPTER III

THE LAWS OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION

CARMEN:

“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle, Que nul ne peut apprivoiser: Et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle S’il lui convient de refuser. Rien n’y fait; menace ou prière: L’un parle, l’autre se tait; Et c’est l’autre que je préfère; Il n’a rien dit, mais il me plaît.

* * * * *

L’amour est enfant de Bohême Il n’a jamais connu de loi.”

It has been recognised from time immemorial that, in all forms of sexually differentiated life, there exists an attraction between males and females, between the male and the female, the object of which is procreation. But as the male and the female are merely abstract conceptions which never appear in the real world, we cannot speak of sexual attraction as a simple attempt of the masculine and the feminine to come together. The theory which I am developing must take into account all the facts of sexual relations if it is to be complete; indeed, if it is to be accepted instead of the older views, it must give a better interpretation of all these sexual phenomena. My recognition of the fact that M and F (maleness and femaleness) are distributed in the living world in every possible proportion has led me to the discovery of an unknown natural law, of a law not yet suspected by any philosopher, a law of sexual attraction. As observations on human beings first led me to my results, I shall begin with this side of the subject.

Every one possesses a definite, individual taste of his own with regard to the other sex. If we compare the portrait of the women which some famous man has been known to love, we shall nearly always find that they are all closely alike, the similarity being most obvious in the contour (more precisely in the “figure”) or in the face, but on closer examination being found to extend to the minutest details, _ad unguem_, to the finger-tips. It is precisely the same with every one else. So, also, every girl who strongly attracts a man recalls to him the other girls he has loved before. We see another side of the same phenomenon when we recall how often we have said of some acquaintance or another, “I can’t imagine how that type of woman pleases him.” Darwin, in the “Descent of Man,” collected many instances of the existence of this individuality of the sexual taste amongst animals, and I shall be able to show that there are analogous phenomena even amongst plants.

Sexual attraction is nearly always, as in the case of gravitation, reciprocal. Where there appear to be exceptions to this rule, there is nearly always evidence of the presence of special influences which have been capable of preventing the direct action of the special taste, which is almost always reciprocal, or which have left an unsatisfied craving, if the direct taste were not allowed its play.

The common saying, “Waiting for Mr. Right,” or statements such as that “So-and-so are quite unsuitable for one another,” show the existence of an obscure presentiment of the fact that every man or woman possesses certain individual peculiarities which qualify or disqualify him or her for marriage with any particular member of the opposite sex; and that this man cannot be substituted for that, or this woman for the other without creating a disharmony.

It is a common personal experience that certain individuals of the opposite sex are distasteful to us, that others leave us cold; whilst others again may stimulate us until, at last, some one appears who seems so desirable that everything in the world is worthless and empty compared with union with such a one. What are the qualifications of that person? What are his or her peculiarities? If it really be the case--and I think it is--that every male type has its female counterpart with regard to sexual affinity, it looks as if there were some definite law. What is this law? How does it act? “Like poles repel, unlike attract,” was what I was told when, already armed with my own answer, I resolutely importuned different kinds of men for a statement, and submitted instances to their power of generalisation. The formula, no doubt, is true in a limited sense and for a certain number of cases. But it is at once too general and too vague; it would be applied differently by different persons, and it is incapable of being stated in mathematical terms.

This book does not claim to state all the laws of sexual affinity, for there are many; nor does it pretend to be able to tell every one exactly which individual of the opposite sex will best suit his taste, for that would imply a complete knowledge of all the laws in question. In this chapter only one of these laws will be considered--the law which stands in organic relation to the rest of the book. I am working at a number of other laws, but the following is that to which I have given most investigation, and which is most elaborated. In criticising this work, allowance must be made for the incomplete nature of the material consequent on the novelty and difficulty of the subject.

Fortunately it is not necessary for me to cite at length either the facts from which I originally derived this law of sexual affinity or to set out in detail the evidence I obtained from personal statements. I asked each of those who helped me, to make out his own case first, and then to carry out observations in his circle of acquaintances. I have paid special attention to those cases which have been noticed and remembered, in which the taste of a friend has not been understood, or appeared not to be present, or was different from that of the observer. The minute degree of knowledge of the external form of the human body which is necessary for the investigation is possessed by every one.

I have come to the law which I shall now formulate by a method the validity of which I shall now have to prove.

The law runs as follows: “For true sexual union it is necessary that there come together a complete male (M) and a complete female (F), even although in different cases the M and F are distributed between the two individuals in different proportions.”

The law may be expressed otherwise as follows:

If we take μ, any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a male, and denote his real sexual constitution as Mμ, so many parts really male, plus Wμ, so many parts really female; if we also take ω, any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a female, and denote _her_ real sexual constitution as Wω, so many parts really female, plus Mω, so many parts really male; then, if there be complete sexual affinity, the greatest possible sexual attraction between the two individuals, μ and ω,

(1) Mμ (the truly male part in the “male”) + Mω (the truly male part in the “female”) will equal a constant quantity, M, the ideal male; and

(2) Wμ + Wω (the ideal female parts in respectively the “male” and the “female”) will equal a second constant quantity, W, the ideal female.

This statement must not be misunderstood. Both formulas refer to one case, to a single sexual relation, the second following directly from the first and adding nothing to it, as I set out from the point of view of an individual possessing just as much femaleness as he lacks of maleness. Were he completely male, his requisite complement would be a complete female, and _vice versâ_. If, however, he is composed of a definite inheritance of maleness, and also an inheritance of femaleness (which must not be neglected), then, to complete the individual, his maleness must be completed to make a unit; but so also must his femaleness be completed.

If, for instance, an individual be composed thus:

{ ³⁄₄ M μ { and { ¹⁄₄ W,

then the best sexual complement of that individual will be another compound as follows:

{ ¹⁄₄ M ω { and { ³⁄₄ W.

It can be seen at once that this view is wider in its reach than the common statement of the case. That male and female, as sexual types, attract each other is only one instance of my general law, an instance in which an imaginary individual,

{ 1 M χ { { 0 W,

finds its complement in an equally imaginary individual,

{ 0 M γ { { 1 W.

There can be no hesitation in admitting the existence of definite, individual sexual preferences, and such an admission carries with it approval of the necessity of investigating the laws of the preference, and its relation to the rest of the bodily and mental characters of an individual. The law, as I have stated it, can encounter no initial sense of impossibility, and is contrary neither to scientific nor common experience. But it is not self-evident. It might be that the law, which cannot yet be regarded as fully worked out, might run as follows:

Mμ - Mω = a constant;

that is to say, it may be the difference between the degrees of masculinity and not the sum of the degrees of masculinity that is a constant quality, so that the most masculine man would stand just as far removed from his complement (who in this case would lie nearly midway between masculinity and femininity) as the most feminine man would be removed from his complement who would be near the extreme of femininity. Although, as I have said, this is conceivable, it is not borne out by experience. Recognising that we have to do here with an empirical law, and trying to observe a wise scientific restraint, we shall do well to avoid speaking as if there were any “force” pulling the two individuals together as if they were puppets; the law is no more than the statement that an identical relation can be made out in each case of maximum sexual attraction. We are dealing, in fact, with what Ostwald termed an “invariant” and Avenarius a “multiponible”; and this is the constant sum formed by the total masculinity and the total femininity in all cases where a pair of living beings come together with the maximum sexual attraction.

In this matter we may neglect altogether the so-called æsthetic factor, the stimulus of beauty. For does it not frequently happen that one man is completely captivated by a particular woman and raves about her beauty, whilst another, who is not the sexual complement of the woman in question, cannot imagine what his friend sees in her to admire. Without discussing the laws of æsthetics or attempting to gather together examples of relative values, it may readily be admitted that a man may consider a woman beautiful who, from the æsthetic standpoint, is not merely indifferent but actually ugly, that in fact pure æsthetics deal not with absolute beauty, but merely with conceptions of beauty from which the sexual factor has been eliminated.

I have myself worked out the law in, at the lowest, many hundred cases, and I have found that the exceptions were only apparent. Almost every couple one meets in the street furnishes a new proof. The exceptions were specially instructive, as they not only suggested but led to the investigation of other laws of sexuality. I myself made special investigations in the following way. I obtained a set of photographs of æsthetically beautiful women of blameless character, each of which was a good example of some definite proportion of femininity, and I asked a number of my friends to inspect these and select the most beautiful. The selection made was invariably that which I had predicted. With other male friends, who knew on what I was engaged, I set about in another fashion. They provided me with photographs from amongst which I was to choose the one I should expect them to think most beautiful. Here, too, I was uniformly successful. With others, I was able to describe most accurately their ideal of the opposite sex, independently of any suggestions unconsciously given by them, often in minuter detail than they had realised. Sometimes, too, I was able to point out to them, for the first time, the qualities that repelled them in individuals of the opposite sex, although for the most part men realise more readily the characters that repel them than the characters that attract them.

I believe that with a little practice any one could readily acquire and exercise this art on any circle of friends. A knowledge of other laws of sexual affinity would be of great importance. A number of special constants might be taken as tests of the existence of complementary individuals. For instance, the law might be caricatured so as to require that the sum of the length of the hairs of any two perfect lovers should always be the same. But, as I have already shown in