I assume that, from the point of view of the present inquiry, he is much on the same footing as the man who seeks a wife.  In the series of entries which I have examined 35 men and women state approximately the height of the man or woman they seek to know; 30 state in addition their own height.  The results are expressed in the table on the following page.

Although the cases are few, the results are, in two main respects, sufficiently clear without multiplication of data.  In the first place, those who seek parity, whether men or women, are in a majority over those who seek disparity.  In the second place, the existence of any disparity at all is due only to the universal desire to find a tall person.  Not one man or woman sets down shortness as his or her ideal.  The very fact that no man in these initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short (although a considerable proportion describe themselves as tall) indicates a consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also does the fact that the women very frequently describe themselves as tall.

The same charm of disparity which has been supposed to rule in selective attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards pigmentation.  The fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to the fair.  Again, it must be said that this common assumption is not confirmed either by introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a statistical basis.[174]

        WOMEN.  MEN.  TOTALS.

Tall women seek tall men.. 8 Tall men seek tall women.. 6 14
Short women seek short men 0 Short men seek short women 0 0
Medium-sized women seek Medium-sized men seek
  medium-sized men ....... 0 medium-sized women .... 3 3

Seek parity........... 8      Seek parity........... 9  17

Tall women seek short men. 0 Tall men seek short women. 0 0
Short women seek tall men. 4 Short men seek tall women. 0 4
Medium-sized woman seeks Medium-sized men seek tall
  tall man................ 1 women .................. 8 9

Seek disparity........ 5      Seek disparity........ 8  13

Men of unknown height seek
tall women.............. 5   5

Most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the opposite sex who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary characters.  Even when the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person is endowed with certain pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or darkness,—­either of which is liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to the imagination,—­it is usually found, on testing the feeling for particular persons, that the variation from the personal type of the subject is usually only agreeable within narrow limits, and that there is a very common tendency for persons of totally opposed pigmentary types, even though they may sometimes be considered to possess a certain aesthetic beauty, to be regarded as sexually unattractive or even repulsive.  With this feeling may perhaps be associated the feeling, certainly very widely felt, that one would not like to marry a person of foreign, even though closely allied, race.