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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.