neutralization. To prevent so disastrous a result nature implants a
desire for resemblance, which desire man instinctively acts upon.

Complete compatibility of temperament is of course a thing not to be
expected nor indeed to be desired, since it would defeat its own end
by allowing no room for variation. A fairly broad basis of agreement,
however, exists even when least suspected. This common ground of
content consists of those qualities held to be most essential by the
individuals concerned, although not necessarily so appearing to
other people. Sometimes, indeed, these qualities are still in the
larvae state of desires. They are none the less potent upon the
man's personality on that account, for the wish is always father to
its own fulfilment.

The want of conjugal resemblance not only works mediately on the
child, it works mutually on the parents; for companionship, as is
well recognized, tends to similarity. Now companionship is the last
thing to be looked for in a far-eastern couple. Where custom
requires a wife to follow dutifully in the wake of her husband,
whenever the two go out together, there is small opportunity for
intercourse by the way, even were there the slightest inclination to
it, which there is not. The appearance of the pair on an excursion
is a walking satire on sociability, for the comicality of the
connection is quite unperceived by the performers. In the privacy
of the domestic circle the separation, if less humorous, is no less
complete. Each lives in a world of his own, largely separate in
fact in China and Korea, and none the less in fancy in Japan.
On the continent a friend of the husband would see little or nothing
of the wife, and even in Japan he would meet her much as we meet an
upper servant in a friend's house. Such a semi-attached