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A = Kα - β f t

where ft is an empirical or analytical function of the period during which it is possible for the individuals to act upon one another, what may be called the “reaction-time”; whilst K is the variable factor in which we place all the known and unknown laws of sexual affinity, and which also varies with the degree of specific, racial and family relationship, and with the health and absence of deformity in the two individuals, and which, finally, will become smaller as the actual spacial distance between the two is greater, and which can be determined in any individual case.

When in this formula α = β A must be infinity; this is the extreme case; it is sexual attraction as an elemental force, as it has been described with a weird mastercraft by Lynkeus in the novel “Im Postwagen.” Such sexual attraction is as much a natural law as the downward growth of a rootlet towards the earth, or the migration of bacteria to the oxygen at the edge of a microscopic cover-glass. But it takes some time to grow accustomed to such a view. I shall refer to this point again.