Anthony Ludovici

Ludovici in CoaM wrote:

The consent which Roman and Jewish legislators insisted on from both parties in a match arranged by parents was merely a means of allowing either party (in the case presumably of a bad biological specimen, selected by the parents for perhaps venal motives) to say whether he or she could release the latent native longing for attachment upon the particular object presented.
Thus, although it is unlikely that no freedom of choice, even where no standardization of type prevails, necessarily leads to more matrimonial failures than freedom of choice, there is a difference between —
        (1) Withholding freedom of choice in a standardized human environment.
        (2) Withholding it in an unstandardized human environment.
        (3) And withholding it in a human environment such as exists in this country to-day, which is not only highly differentiated and presents strange and aberrant types almost to infinity, but also hardly offers any standard of normality whatsoever, and in which the chooser, in addition to lacking sound primary instincts (reflexes naturally-conditioned) for mating, and subjected to no education in sound prejudice (reflexes artificially-conditioned), is moreover confronted by possible mates in whom ill-health is also a differentiating factor, is himself or herself presumably unsound in some respect, and moreover probably suffers, together with those round about, from a minus of genetic power.

(1) In the first, the mutual attraction necessary to happy and fruitful mating may be relied upon to arise, if not spontaneously by mere confrontation, at least in due course, when attraction has warmed to sympathy and devotion; because a racial, psycho-physical and æsthetic affinity exists between the parties before they meet.
(2) In the second, mutual attraction follows confrontation, provided the consent of the parties is an essential condition of parental choice. Then, as with the Jews, the Romans, the Japanese and the English of the Middle Ages, though differentiation may be so far-reaching that little biological affinity exists between the parties, health and genetic power may be assumed to be good enough to release in each party that lust of attachment which, as we have seen, is not over critical, and tends to explain the mutual attraction, as the result of a number of qualities which really play but a minor part. The importance of consent in such an environment of highly differentiated human individuals lies in the fact that only the parties concerned can tell whether the individual chosen by the parent is an object on which he or she can unload the pent-up force within.
(3) In the third, the situation is more complicated. Not only is consent an essential prerequisite, but, owing to (a) the intricate and baffling confusion of shapes, sizes, types and features, (b) the factor of disease, with the resulting different degrees of abnormality both in the chooser and the chosen, and (c) the comparative weakness of the genetic instincts which may accompany lowered vitality — an optimum of conditions is needed for the genetic power to act at all.

…makes me think that to enhance chances of procreation, the standards had to be lowered - and they have been lowered, the instinctive ones. They have become more crude via selective pressures. The individual with a less refined, less specific, taste is roaming the fields.

Ludovici wrote:

What are these most favourable conditions?
Absolute freedom of choice, so that many may be reviewed and their least significant as well as their more important features weighed. For, owing to the comparative feebleness of the genetic instincts, the natural movement towards the sexual object is less violent, consequently its alleged attractions are more narrowly scrutinized. This does not mean that there is necessarily greater wisdom in assessing the value of these attractions, because even rigorous criticism may be conducted along false lines. It simply means that a cooler estimate is possible, a more fastidious taste displayed in regard to possibly quite unsound desiderata and consequently it is less than ever likely that consent will be given to any choice except that exerted by the parties themselves.

…yet who makes this choice for us? Those conscious choices are often heavily informed by ideals, values, which in turn are very much influenced by communal, mimetic standards.

On Consanguinity.

Marrying ones' opposite?

Ludovici in CoaM wrote:

What is the innermost conviction of a man or a girl who says that one must choose one's opposite?
If the statement is deliberate, and not said for a joke, or by way of thoughtlessly repeating a popular tag, does it not indicate a desire for correction? I mean for the correction of one's stock or individual qualities, whether physical or psychological? And when there is a desire for correction may there not be self-contempt, inferiority-feelings — in fact, doubts as to one's general desirability?
A creature proud of his stock's desirable acquired characteristics does not seek an opposite, a correction, which, in his children, would nullify or adulterate the object of his pride. Why should he? In fact, as we shall soon see, there appears to be an instinct implanted in all sound animals and races of men to segregate and hold themselves aloof the moment they have distinguished themselves from the rest by any acquisition.
Only the unsound, the self-despising, have the instinct to seek correction or modification in marriage. Hence, possibly, the popularity of the idea of dissimilars mating in degenerate times. Those people, too, who feel that they are much removed from the mean of their stock, or their nation, and are conscious of being odd, will tend to look for means of modifying their eccentricities in their children by the choice of a mate who displays characteristics unlike their own.
The sound, average person, however, tends to seek his like, and to shun his opposite, not merely out of instinct, but consciously, out of a desire to preserve his stock's achievements in quality. He seeks his like, moreover, because if he is an intelligent observer of his fellows, he knows that there are reasons enough for discord in marriage, without multiplying them unduly by the selection of a mate who, by morphology and temperament (which means, by insuperable and unmodifiable fundamentals), must disagree with him in hundreds of things.
Those who, in this connexion, argue that life is made interesting by disagreements, are romantics without any knowledge of the fierce light which intimacy sheds on the smallest divergence from the life-partner, and of the exasperation that such divergences are wont to cause.
Married life is not parliamentary life. It is not an institution for diverting the nation with its quarrels. Debates and differences of opinion, especially those based on psycho-physical differences, do not, as a rule, lead to much entertainment or jollity in married life.

...

Ludovici wrote:

Aristotle seems to have argued in favour of this view, because his only objection to incestuous marriages appears to have been that in them the love between the partners is likely to be excessive. He apparently thought that similarity, which is, of course, more easily found between partners who are closely related, is conducive to greater love than dissimilarity.

Anfang wrote:

On Consanguinity.

Marrying ones' opposite?

Ludovici in CoaM wrote:

What is the innermost conviction of a man or a girl who says that one must choose one's opposite?
If the statement is deliberate, and not said for a joke, or by way of thoughtlessly repeating a popular tag, does it not indicate a desire for correction? I mean for the correction of one's stock or individual qualities, whether physical or psychological? And when there is a desire for correction may there not be self-contempt, inferiority-feelings — in fact, doubts as to one's general desirability?
A creature proud of his stock's desirable acquired characteristics does not seek an opposite, a correction, which, in his children, would nullify or adulterate the object of his pride. Why should he? In fact, as we shall soon see, there appears to be an instinct implanted in all sound animals and races of men to segregate and hold themselves aloof the moment they have distinguished themselves from the rest by any acquisition.
Only the unsound, the self-despising, have the instinct to seek correction or modification in marriage. Hence, possibly, the popularity of the idea of dissimilars mating in degenerate times. Those people, too, who feel that they are much removed from the mean of their stock, or their nation, and are conscious of being odd, will tend to look for means of modifying their eccentricities in their children by the choice of a mate who displays characteristics unlike their own.
The sound, average person, however, tends to seek his like, and to shun his opposite, not merely out of instinct, but consciously, out of a desire to preserve his stock's achievements in quality. He seeks his like, moreover, because if he is an intelligent observer of his fellows, he knows that there are reasons enough for discord in marriage, without multiplying them unduly by the selection of a mate who, by morphology and temperament (which means, by insuperable and unmodifiable fundamentals), must disagree with him in hundreds of things.
Those who, in this connexion, argue that life is made interesting by disagreements, are romantics without any knowledge of the fierce light which intimacy sheds on the smallest divergence from the life-partner, and of the exasperation that such divergences are wont to cause.
Married life is not parliamentary life. It is not an institution for diverting the nation with its quarrels. Debates and differences of opinion, especially those based on psycho-physical differences, do not, as a rule, lead to much entertainment or jollity in married life.

Maybe because of my European bloodlines which hasn't so much Dutch through it, that I cannot imagine myself to settle, if I ever will settle, with a Dutch woman. So much vulgar expression and shamelessness; not just because of Modernity, but they were already portrayed by neighbouring peoples as such - centuries ago.

But what qualities are there to be preserved is hard to know these days when all are suppressed to be economic slaves, mediocre Middle men - and adjusting (censoring) your standards to not do any harm to lesser quality minds / bodies.
The times that the environment moulded the people, having specific qualities in correlation with the environment, which were needed to survive as a people - and later became sexual selective traits as (outstanding) recognition (tribe) - are gone.
We are moulded by propagated indiscriminate / opposite taste and an artificial environment only putting its pressure through unnatural ideals.



[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Socrates the magician...

Ludovici in Choice of a Mate, Ch.2 wrote:

Turning now to the more difficult, but cognate, question, whether, from the deeper standpoints of biology, anthropology and eugenics, it is better for mates to be similar or dissimilar, we are confronted with the problems of heredity and consanguinity and cannot circumvent them.
Seeing that biologically the mate most likely to resemble a man or a woman is one from the same family — either sister or brother, aunt or uncle, niece or nephew, mother or father, or, at least, first cousin, it behoves us to investigate the whole problem of consanguinity, and from our findings determine the precise genetic importance, if any, of likeness in mating. Incidentally, the investigation may provide us with a deeper warrant for our thesis that the mating of the similar is preferable to the mating of the dissimilar.
I have made it sufficiently plain in the previous chapter that I see neither help nor any relation to reality in the arbitrary elevation of mind above body, or in the separation of the two. I have shown that this arbitrary differentiation popularized chiefly by that monster magician, Socrates, to save his own self-esteem, besides being worthless as a contribution to knowledge is actually an obstacle in the way of a clear understanding of man.
Unfortunately, however, it still governs the lay world. And, although one or two scientific men, like Dr. Draper, of America, and Sir Charles Sherrington over here, seem to be shaking themselves free from it, it still also governs science to a very great extent.
At all events I have found it helpful and more wholesome, to abandon this Socratic magic altogether, and when, therefore, I contemplate any great work of man, I regard it as the product of the man as a whole, not merely of his invisible side. If, therefore, he happens to be botched or bundled, I expect to find his botchedness reflected in his work, as it always is. If I see conflict and disorder in his creation, I look for conflict and disorder in his whole being, not only in his so-called "mind".
Contemplating the problems of health and culture on this non-magic basis, I find, a priori, that culture, in so far as it is social harmony and order, healthy and enduring, must be the product of an ordered, harmonious, healthy man.
And if I turn my eyes from the social chaos of to-day, back to the origins of the most harmonious and healthiest cultures, I suspect without inquiry that the people who created these cultures must have been unlike us at least in this that they were harmoniously constituted and vigorously healthy.

Where love thy neighbour claptrap was unknown…

Ludovici wrote:

Turning now from these a priori conclusions to facts, what do we find?
We find not only that these early cultures were actually very harmonious, but also that their vigour and power must have been very great; for our culture owes what little beauty, harmony and health it possesses entirely to them.
A further interesting fact is that all these cultures arose in naturally or artificially confined areas, where broadmindedness, the universal brotherhood of mankind, internationalism, the love of one's neighbour, and other forms of claptrap were quite unknown.
We find these cultures originally in islands like Crete and Japan, peninsulas like India, Greece and Italy, naturally enclosed areas like Peru, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and artificially enclosed areas like China and ancient Palestine.
Furthermore, we know that where intercourse with the outside world, with the neighbour, is checked, the secluded people are condemned to inbreeding and very often close inbreeding, that is to say, at any rate, to a form of mating which brings like to like.
In the only cultures that have left a permanent mark on the world, we find, however, not merely inbreeding but also a strong conscious tendency to keep apart, to segregate. And this caused, in addition to a frontier of prejudice and suspicion between the secluded nation and the world outside, a series of frontiers within the nation itself, dividing off classes and castes. So that within the inbred mass smaller inbred classes were formed.

This was so among the Egyptians, the Jews, the Hindus and the Peruvians. In all these cases it was an unconscious instinct to separate, or a conscious pride of race and caste, that caused the segregation. 1
The same seems to have been true of the ancient inhabitants of these islands and their Germanic invaders. Thus, speaking of the fact that the Saxon invaders of Britain brought their wives and families over with them, Stubbs says: "The wives and families were necessary to the comfort and continued existence of the settlements. It was not only that the attitude of the Britons forbade intermarriages; the Saxons, as all testimony has shown, declined the connubium of foreign races."
It would seem as if men who have acquired a set of peculiar qualities possess an instinct to keep aloof from anyone who can adulterate these qualities.

…so the Anglo-Saxons were once healthy and proud, a long time ago… and it seems even a good looking kind as he remarks in another passage, as unbelievable as this is going to sound today.

Ludovici in CoaM wrote:

Darwin tells us that "the alco dog of Mexico dislikes dogs of other breeds; and the hairless dog of Paraguay mixes less readily with the European races than the latter do with each other. . . . In Paraguay the horses have much freedom and . . . the native horses of the same colour and size prefer associating with each other, and . . . the horses imported from Entre Rios and Banda Oriental into Paraguay likewise prefer associating together. In Circassia . . . horses of three sub-races whilst living a free life, almost always refuse to mingle and cross, and will even attack one another.
[…]
Darwin gives numerous similar facts about geese, cattle, monkeys and other animals.
In healthy cultivated man, this instinct is so pronounced as to be a matter of almost common knowledge. Even among primitive peoples it has been noticed by scores of observers.
Lotsy and Goddiju, for instance, say of the Bushmen of Kalahari: "Their women were not at all nattered by the attentions of their Bechuana lords. Instead of an honour, they looked upon intercourse with anyone not of their tribe, no matter how superior, as a degradation."
Pastor Mojola Agbebi, Director of the Niger Delta Mission, says: "No un-Europeanized native of tropical Africa seeks intermarriage with white people. Commercial intercourse and other unavoidable contact with white people may lead to a progeny of mixed blood, but no Tropical African pure and simple is inclined to marry a European or appreciates mixed marriages. . . . The unsophisticated African entertains aversion to white people."
F. L. Hoffman also refers to the reluctance of different peoples to intermarry, and says: "An interesting instance is presented in the case of the Ainos of Japan, who are a distinct race from the Japanese, and who, after centuries of close association, are as distinct in their character and habits of life as if they had never come in contact with the superior race of Japanese."
Dr. H. Berkusky, referring to the laws against mixed breeding among savages, says that formerly a Zulu girl who had intercourse with a white man was killed by her own people, together with her child. The cross-bred child was also killed among the Pilagoi and Mahave Indians, while among the Orang-Laût of the Malacca Peninsula, all half-breeds are segregated, and a woman who mixes her blood is ostracized. Among the Inois of Annam, and the Karagasses of Southern Siberia, all girls who mix their blood are punished.
Hrdlicka tells us that when infanticide does occur among the Indians, the child "is of mixed blood."
Professor Nieuwenhuis tells us that intermarriage between the tribes of Central Borneo, although not prohibited, "occurs so rarely that the Taman-Dajak and Kajan-Dajak have lived over a hundred years close to one another without mixing." Among other instances, Darwin says that even among the degraded Australian blacks, half-castes were killed, which indicates that there was a strong bias against mixing.
Among the peoples principally responsible for our civilization, the Egyptians, the Jews, the Greeks and the Saxons, the abhorrence of the stranger was so great that in some cases their very word for stranger was a term of opprobrium. And each of these peoples was not only inbred, but also incestuous.

Darwin the man of science ™...

Ludovici wrote:

Darwin, the greatest biologist of what will probably be known as the darkest age of English history, the nineteenth century, succumbed to the influence of his democratic and magic-ridden environment. One can see his great intellect battling with his emotional bias in favour of the sloppy errors of his day, and the fact that in the end it was defeated has left a blemish on the one great thing the nineteenth century attempted.
For, although he collected a mass of evidence pointing to the good results of inbreeding, and knew much of the historical and anthropological evidence I shall lay before you, yet he concluded his careful investigation with a verdict against inbreeding and incest.

The random-bred stocks of modernity.

Ludovici wrote:

Breeding is the process of producing a new individual by the conjunction of two germ cells, male and female.
In random-bred human stocks, like the stocks forming the populations of modern civilized countries, among which anybody may marry anybody except a close relative, and among which even cousin matings are comparatively rare, the hereditary equipment (germ-plasm) of each party to every mating is different. Each contains factors, genes, or developmental determiners of a kind not contained in the other. Each, therefore, has psycho-physical potentialities of a different type, with different qualities and accomplishments from the other. Each also has different morbidity-determining factors or genes. But it should be noted that in random-bred stocks, morbidity-determining factors tend to be spread so widely over the population that it is quite possible for each party to the mating, although quite unrelated, to possess one, two or more morbidity-determining factors in common. That is to say, that although, as a rule, the Miss Smith who marries the Mr. Brown brings him a tendency to a number of diseases with which he may not be tainted — say, diabetes, Bright's disease, and myopia, while he brings her a tendency to say, pthisis, hepatic insufficiency and gout — so that their offspring have only 50 per cent of all six diseases, it may happen nowadays, with disease as widespread as it is, that Miss Smith, though quite unrelated to Mr. Brown, brings him urticaria, gall-bladder disease and varicose veins, while he brings her hypothyroidism, varicose veins and myopia. So that although they hand on to their offspring only 50 per cent of the four diseases not common to both of them, they hand on 100 per cent of varicose veins.

A man and a woman walk into a wool-shop.

Ludovici wrote:

When a male and a female from different families in such random-bred stocks are joined together in marriage, we may picture the process of the conjunction of their two germ-cells as an intermingling of portions of the supplies of wools from two different wool-shops, each supply containing the wools of different colours, qualities and strength. And, as in random-bred stocks there is always latent in the germ-plasm of both parties much that is deleterious, we must imagine some of the wools from each shop as being diseased, infected and unsound.

Keeping to the analogy, which seems to be helpful, the reader will see that, although the probability is that the wools parcelled together at haphazard from each shop will be different in colour quality, strength and morbidity, there is a possible chance that the shops may contain several similar wools, and that some of these similar wools may come together in the same parcel.
If six parcels are made up from wools taken at haphazard from Shop I and Shop II, the chances are that most of the parcels will be inharmonious and discordant in themselves, and also disparate from one another, because we have seen that the supplies of wool in each shop are similar only in regard to a few wools. But it is also possible that one or perhaps two out of the parcels may by chance contain wools which are common to both shops. In which case, despite the haphazard blending, and the different supplies in each shop, a parcel will be produced which will be oddly harmonious, and more attractive than the other parcels. If, however, the similar wools which come together in a parcel happen to be the diseased, infected, or unsound wools in each shop, the parcel will be unlike the other parcels in view of its extreme morbidity.
As the coming together of similar wools from each shop in haphazard parcelling (random-breeding) is much less common than the joining of dissimilar wools, we must regard the production of a harmonious or of an extremely morbid parcel as less frequent in haphazard parcelling, than the production of a discordant or inharmonious parcel. For what usually happens is that when morbid wools from each shop come together they are morbid in a different way, so that not 100 per cent of one kind, but 50 per cent of two or more kinds of morbidity appears in each parcel.

It should, however, be remembered that when hundreds of thousands of such parcels with only 50 per cent of various kinds of morbidity are annually sent out into the world, the world gradually gets stocked with parcels containing latent morbidity, and that if these parcels are combined to produce fresh parcels, the 50 per cent may easily be made up to 100 per cent.

…this has interesting consequences in the long run…

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Ludovici wrote:

If we imagine the six parcels as children of the same parents, we can now understand how, in the same family, in a random-bred stock, one child will be extremely harmonious and better looking than its brothers and sisters, or even than either of its parents, another child quite unattractive, and another child, or two, delicate or actually diseased.
There is no space to enter into the question of dominants and recessives, except to say that, if in some section of each of the six parcels of wool, some colour, or other quality, dominates over others so as to supersede without destroying them, the reader will perceive what happens when a dominant — say, brown — occurs. In that case the parcel, in one of its sections, will appear all brown. But the blue and red in that section are not destroyed. They are merely recessive. And if the parcel containing dominant brown is used for a further series of parcels, the blue and red will reappear in the section concerned.
Thus a child in a family of six, both parents of which have brown eyes, may have blue eyes. On enquiry, however, it will be found that blue was a recessive factor in each or one of the parents, each or one of them having had parents or grandparents with blue eyes.
In this way recessive morbid factors also pass from one generation to another, unobserved, unmanifested; but they suddenly turn up and cause consternation to those concerned.

...

Ludovici wrote:

Thus mixed breeding in random-bred stocks such as those composing the populations of modern civilized countries, has three principal results:—
(1) It may, by a stroke of pure luck, produce a new individual who is harmonious and symmetrical, with bodily parts proportionately correlated, and who is free from morbid factors, or possesses them only in innocuous, fractional proportions, or as recessives.
(2) It may, and usually does, produce an individual who is inharmonious and discordant, that is to say, who presents an asymmetrical whole, with bodily parts disproportionately correlated, and who has some morbid traits sufficiently pronounced to be displayed.
(3) And, by the same chance conjunction which produced (1) it may produce an unlucky individual, with a grave state of disharmony, showing itself in ugliness, mal-co-ordination and dysfunction, and with an acutely grave correlation of morbid factors.
Even the lucky individual, however, who looks healthy, sound, and handsome in a random-bred stock, bears in his hereditary equipment the deleterious elements common to his parental stocks, which produced his less fortunate brothers. This explains why, in a random-bred stock, children are often so unaccountably inferior, and sometimes so unaccountably superior to their parents. In fact it explains all the anomalies which the opponents of the hereditary principle habitually advance as arguments against it, and which are thus seen to be no arguments against it at all.
There is, therefore, no certainty of reckoning with random-bred stocks, and it is all-important to remember that in such stocks, in which the germ-plasm (i.e. the hereditary equipment of the stock) is not stabilized, it is not safe to judge by appearances, especially in the case of an individual who is an exception, as regards vigour, beauty, or intelligence, in his stock or family.
This is, of course, also true of the so-called geniuses that sometimes arise in mixed random-bred stocks. They too are just lucky strokes which it would be ridiculous to hope to see repeated, for how could they breed true? The fact that Marcus Aurelius and Napoleon had no geniuses as sons is thus seen to be (quite apart from the mate in each case, who may have been unsuitable) no argument against, but rather in favour of, the hereditary principle.

...appearance become deceiving, better check your lovers whole family out...

To sum up Inbreeding vs. Outbreeding

Ludovici in CoaM, Ch. 2 wrote:

As a free-lance scientist of long standing in this matter, I therefore suggest the following provisional description of the effects of inbreeding and out- or cross-breeding respectively:—
Inbreeding canalizes and isolates health and other desirable qualities, just as it canalizes and isolates ill-health and other undesirable qualities. It stabilizes the germ-plasm, and this causes hereditary factors to be calculable. It therefore makes appearance a guide to the individual's hereditary equipment. That it acts as a purifier of a stock or family is implicit in the opening sentence. Out- or cross-breeding conceals and therefore spreads ill-health and all qualities, desirable or undesirable, diluting and mixing them. It thus contaminates desirable stocks, but also tends to improve poor and degenerate stocks at the expense of sound stocks. As it renders the germ-plasm unstable it makes all calculations of hereditary factors impossible, and turns appearance simply into a snare and a mask.

The Ptolemies...

Ludovici in CoaM wrote:

The Ptolemies, however, are the object of the most passionate charges usually made on the score of incest. And if we do not remember that moral indignation is here the chief motive power, we too are apt to become passionate in rebutting them. One of the principal claims of the modern middle-class historian or student is that the incestuous practices of the Ptolemies must have led to degeneration, otherwise how can we account for their terrible immorality?
There is so much error and latter-day ignorance and prejudice in this kind of claim that it is difficult to deal with it.

…and their immorality…

Ludovici wrote:

In the first place, it is essential to banish from one's mind all idea of any necessary connexion between immorality and degeneracy. Even the most enlightened members of the Eugenic Society are much too prone to assume this "necessary" connexion, and much erratic and dangerous eugenism is talked on that account.
Immorality may or may not be connected with degeneracy, and usually is not. In any case, immorality associated with degeneracy is usually of the least formidable and least dangerous kind and may generally be ignored.
It is not every burglar who is a degenerate, and those who are, are easily disposed of. The most dangerous kind of burglar, as the Rev. Thomas Holmes has clearly shown, is not the man who breaks into a house because he must have food for his starving wife and children, whom he is too degenerate to support; it is the man who, having no taste for the effeminate callings open to a full-grown and able-bodied man in our grossly over-urbanized and safe civilization, insists on pursuing a calling in which he can find danger, risks and the vicissitudes of the chase or of war. But he is not a degenerate!
And yet the middle-class legislator or eugenist, from the safety-first environment of his or her drawing-room, is inclined to ascribe all crime to degeneracy. This savours rather of moral indignation masquerading as science.
Henry VIII was not a degenerate. Charles II was not a degenerate. The Borgias were not degenerates. Horatio Bottomley was not a degenerate. If immorality were always a proof of degeneracy, there is hardly a character in the whole of the magnificent Italian Renaissance who would have escaped the charge Mr. Poole makes against the Ptolemies.
That is why it may be dangerous to have Puritans on the Council of the Eugenics Society — people who are all too ready to advocate "the sterilization of criminals". This would too often mean getting rid of some of our best stocks.
When, therefore, the average middle-class male or female writes as Mr. Poole writes in the ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, or rises in the body of a lecture hall, to point out to me and my audience that the Ptolemies were immoral because they were degenerate, and that they were degenerate because they were incestuous, my heart always sinks before the task of exposing the mass of error involved in such a statement.

The family tree of the Ptolemies

Ludovici wrote:

Of the Ptolemies, Ptolemy II was the first to marry his sister, but the marriage was without issue. It was by his wife Arsinoë II that he had Ptolemy III Euergetes. Ptolemy III married his sister and cousin, Berenice, and their son, Ptolemy IV, was thus the first fruit of incest in the line. Ptolemy IV married his sister, Arsinoë III, by whom he had Ptolemy V, who was thus the second monarch to be the issue of incest. Ptolemy V married Cleopatra I, with whom he was hardly connected, and had Ptolemy VI. The latter married his sister, Cleopatra II. He was succeeded by his brother, Ptolemy VII, who married his sister, Ptolemy VI's widow, by whom he had a son who ultimately murdered him. But it was by his second marriage to his niece, Cleopatra IV, the daughter of his brother and sister, that he had Ptolemy VIII and IX. Thus both Ptolemy VIII and IX, in addition to coming from closely inbred stock, were themselves the fruit of incest. By his second wife, Selene, his sister, Ptolemy VIII had two children, but they never came to the throne. Ptolemy IX, on the other hand, by his first wife, had Ptolemy X. With him the direct male line of the Ptolemies became extinct, and the throne fell to Ptolemy XI, Auletes, who was an illegitimate son of Ptolemy VIII, and it was he who became the father of the famous Cleopatra, the last reigning member of the family.
It is neither desirable nor possible to deny that the majority of these rulers were debauchees. But that they were degenerates, in the sense of being physiologically and morphologically below normal, is, I believe, false. We must remember that if they were connected with Egypt in her decline, this was inevitable from the nature of the case. They were a race of foreign rulers imposed on Egypt by conquest. They would hardly have been there had Egypt not started decaying before the inception of their dynasty. She had endured over four thousand years, and, through the increasing miscegenation of her people, her institutions were tottering. Her people were as debauched as the Ptolemies themselves, who only followed the general trend. But: from this to argue that they were degenerates is a far cry, and one that no record of history anywhere justifies. Indeed, Cleopatra, who captured the affections of the greatest man of her time, and then succeeded in capturing one of his three distinguished successors, was a degenerate neither in looks nor wits. This daughter of a brother and sister, great-granddaughter of another brother and sister, and a great-great-granddaughter of Berenice, who was both cousin and sister to her husband might, as Mr. Huth remarks, "with advantage compare in astuteness to Catherine of France."

"The Ptolemies born from consanguineous unions were neither better nor worse," says Sir Armand Ruffer, "than the first four kings of the same family issued from non-consanguineous marriages, and had the same general characteristics. Their conduct of foreign affairs and of internal administration, was in every way remarkable and energetic. They were not unpopular in their capital, and the Alexandrians rallied round their rulers when the Romans entered Egypt and resisted the foreigner. . . . Their standard of morality was certainly not lower than that of their fellow townsmen. . . . The children from these incestuous marriages displayed no lack of mental energy. Both men and women were equally strong, capable, intelligent and wicked."
Prejudiced people, incapable of imagining the marvellous health that can be secured by four thousand years of the closest inbreeding, have said that after this long period Egypt came to an unhappy end through her incestuous practices. But the truth is that she declined only when her endogamic fences broke down and when the world about her had so far changed that she was confronted by forces, like Alexander, for instance, with which she was not equipped to cope.

Romance in the desert city...

Ludovici in CoaM wrote:

Thus the Jews, also an endogamic people, were from the earliest times surrounded by races all mating consanguineously, for the sake of purity. It is highly probable, therefore, that at least the aristocrats among them also practised incest in spite of the table of prohibited degrees.
Abraham certainly married his half-sister, Sarah. Nahor married his niece, Milcah. Lot, the sire of the Moabites and Ammonites, mated with his two daughters. And when, in later years, incest was condemned and dropped, the editors of the Scriptures, evidently shocked by the fact that this sinful stock produced their great King David, but unable to deny it, because the traditional story was too firmly rooted in the memories of the people, probably invented the details about Lot's daughters having made him drunk before lying with him, thus removing from the story its implied sanction of incest.
But the favour shown by Jehovah to the two tribes, which resulted from this double incest, is hardly consistent with the view that at that time the practice was condemned.
Nor did it cease with Lot and his daughters. It lasted far beyond the days of Moses and Aaron, who were both the fruit of incest, down to David's own time. For we find Amnon, the son of David, lying with his sister Tamar. Nor when Amnon tries to force her to the act does Tamar protest that it is unthinkable, impossible; but, strangely enough, says: "I pray thee speak unto the King, for he will not withhold me from thee." This seems to indicate that, within the aristocracy, dispensation from the prohibited degrees could be secured from the ruler even at that comparatively late period in Jewish history.

…doing it by the book….and….no shekels no love.



Captain Cook

Ludovici wrote:

Thus we have seen that man, like the animals, seems to have an instinct impelling him to canalize qualities acquired with pain; and the natural law appears to be, not as Darwin thought, to have crosses, but to avoid them. We have also seen that it is a mistake to suppose that man suffers any more than the animals do from the closest consanguineous matings, but that, on the contrary, when the original parent stock is healthy, or where all pathological elements have been mendelized out by close and even incestuous inbreeding, no harm but only good arises from the practice.
Hence the great genealogist, O. Lorenz, speaks of an instinct in man to lop his family tree and to reduce his ancestors. Why?
Because by out-breeding or mixed breeding, both animals and man risk the loss of something conquered, some victory achieved by a particular group.
In proud peoples, irrespective of their degree of civilization, we therefore find a tendency to endogamy, and within the confines of such endogamous peoples, a select group or class who practise incest.
Even in those tribes and races where incest is condemned by the laws or traditions, we frequently find the rulers or chiefs infringing the prohibited degrees in order to keep their stock pure.
Nor are the people addicted to these practices said to have been found in a state of degeneration or disease. On the contrary, most travellers comment on their great vigour and beauty. Captain Cook, who first discovered many of the Polynesian peoples, among whom the closest consanguineous matings were practised, constantly praises their fine physique.

So why is it that we think that incest is a bad thing - Where did this idea come from?

Ludovici, Choice of a Mate, Ch. 3 wrote:

If all the above is true, why do we now find incest, close consanguineous matings, and sometimes even first cousin marriages generally forbidden?
The Victorian's glib answer to this question was that mankind had a natural horror of doing what is forbidden by Christian law, and that as transgression of this law led to degeneration its divine wisdom was demonstrated.
As a matter of fact the case is just the reverse.
When a race or stock has attained to purity, health, beauty and vigour, it is exogamy and miscegenation that produce degeneration. And when there is impurity, exogamy merely spreads it, and ultimately, after a brief spell of merely apparent improvement, which I shall deal with in a moment, aggravates it.

Some tribal wisdom…

Ludovici wrote:

Among the first startling facts that careful investigation brought to light was that, until comparatively recent times, except for a few exceptions revealing no serious biological experience, no tribe or civilization which has forbidden incest, or close consanguineous mating, has ever done so for sound biological reasons, that is to say, out of the genuine knowledge of degeneracy caused by it.
This pointed to the suspicion that no connexion had been observed, either by primitive main, or by past civilized peoples, between the two phenomena, and that, therefore, if primitive and more highly civilized peoples of the past forbade incest and close consanguineous unions, it must have been for other than biological reasons.
Among primitive peoples, the reasons chiefly advanced for prohibiting incest (when it is prohibited) are that it causes epidemics, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, sterility in animals and women, the failure of crops, floods, death by lightning or in childbed, or through wild beasts. When they believe incest will affect offspring adversely, in a biological sense, they often believe also that it will affect the parents adversely too, a sign that the real grounds of objection cannot be fundamentally biological, based on an experience of cases.
A very typical case of the irrational prohibition of incest is given by Malinowski. If a Trobriand Islander, he says, be asked what happens to a couple caught in a breach of exogamy, the native replies: "It entails by itself an unpleasant though not necessarily fatal disease. A swelling of the belly heralds the oncoming of this retributive ailment. Soon the skin becomes white, and then breaks out into small sores which grow gradually bigger, while the man falls away in a wasting sickness. A little insect, somewhat like a small spider or a fly, is to be found in such a diseased organism. This insect is spontaneously generated by the actual breach of exogamy."

Very often, among primitive people, and, as we have seen, even among civilized people, the prohibition between certain relatives is allowed, while it is disallowed and fiercely reprehended between others. Thus Spencer tells us that whereas the custom of the Veddahs "sanctions the marriage of a man with his younger sister, to marry an elder sister or aunt would, in their estimation, be incestuous, a connexion in every respect as revolting to them as it would be to us."
The Rev. L. Chalmers too reports that, although among the natives of Kiwai Island, in British New Guinea, the marriages of first cousins or of brothers and sisters are forbidden, a father may marry his daughter.
Among the Makusai Indians, on the other hand, while the marriage of a niece with her paternal uncle is strictly forbidden, her marriage with her maternal uncle is allowed.
Professor A. W. Nieuwenhuis tells us that among the Batak of Northern Sumatra, men may marry the daughter of their mother's brother, "whereas to marry the daughter of their father's brother is to commit incest."

These facts — and they represent only a select few — suggest that something other than a supposed dread of degeneracy based upon countless observations of the harmful effects of incest must have been the cause of the various prohibitions we find existing against consanguineous matings.

Soci and Plato...

Ludovici wrote:

Socrates certainly alleged that incest produced defective children, but the dialogue in which this is said shows how much more of a conjecture than a certainty the imputation is, particularly as he restricts the supposed evil results to incest in the direct ascending and descending line.
Hippias and Socrates are discussing marriage between parents and their children, and the question is put by Socrates whether those at the height of maturity have not better seed than those far past it. Hippias agrees they have. Socrates then suggests that those who are not at full maturity have not seed sufficiently energetic, and they ought not to have children.
Thus the objection raised by Socrates against incest seems to be only that it involves a disparity of ages.

Plato's mature and only objection to incest appears to have been that it was uncustomary. Arguing with Megillus about relations between parents and children and between brothers and sisters, the Athenian stranger says that the reason why such pleasures are extinguished is "the declaration that they are unholy, hated of God, and most infamous." And," he continues, "is not the reason of this that no one has ever said the opposite, but everyone from his earliest childhood has heard men speaking in the same manner about them always and everywhere, whether in comedy, or in the graver language of tragedy?" And Megillus agrees.

Romans...

Ludovici wrote:

Ovid, a cultivated and aristocratic Roman (born 45 B.C.), au fait with every subject relating to Roman life, and with the authoritative accounts of life elsewhere, shared, with the rest of Rome, a horror of incest; but he is utterly at a loss to account for it. Had the practice been known, either in Rome or elsewhere, to be associated with bad biological effects, Ovid would most certainly have heard of them. Yet, in recounting the story of the incestuous love of Myrrha and her father, Cinyras, which he does very beautifully, he can think of no better reason for the horrible nature of the "crime" than "spiteful laws" made by "human civilization" against "what nature allows".
"Other animals mate as they will," Ovid declares, "nor is it thought base for a heifer to endure her sire, nor for his own offspring to be a horse's mate; the goat goes among the flocks which he has fathered, and the very birds conceive from where they were conceived."
Thus does Ovid reveal his sense of the quite arbitrary nature of his people's and his ancestors' "horror" of incest. While a few lines later on he even suggests, as Aristotle does, that incestuous love is fiercer than the love between members of different families, because "natural love is increased by the double bond."

If there would have been born a lot of unfit children, you would think that that's the reason they'd name for prohibiting incest.

About the inbred aristocracy...

Ludovici wrote:

Those who claim that the ruling families and aristocracies of Europe have degenerated through inbreeding, can find an exhaustive reply to their claims in my DEFENCE OF ARISTOCRACY. But briefly the position is this. While I make no endeavour to vindicate the Bourbons, the Spanish Habsburgs, the Braganzas, the House of Osman, or the later Stuarts, I nevertheless can regard no reference to them as relevant as an argument against inbreeding, unless those who advance them to this end can show that these royal houses did not fail to observe any of the rules which are essential to the preservation of a character or type.
As Dr. Rice points out, "certain of the royal families are very much inbred, and since there are definitely defective strains in them, the effect is bad."
Now no amount of inbreeding with defective strains can possibly produce any desirable result, unless it is attended by the most rigorous selection both of mates and offspring. But when has there been any such attempt at selection? The ancient Israelites certainly practised selection more than once in their aristocracy, but no European royal family has ever done so to my knowledge.
Nor is it possible in royal families to exercise any choice of mates along eugenic as opposed to political lines. When, for instance, Henry IV of France married into the Medici family, he did not even do so out of any love for Marie, and certainly never considered her suitability as a dam for his royal line. He happened to be largely indebted to the Florentine magnates, and it was thought politically and financially expedient for him to marry into the family. There was no other motive or interest. It was thus a sordid question of French embarrassment that was responsible for ultimately introducing the strain of a usurious and upstart family into the English royal line.
And such reasons have always prevailed over eugenic reasons in the marriages of royalty.
But although there always has been and still is some excuse for royalty if they do not mate eugenically — because they are bound to consider political reasons — there can be no such excuse for the aristocracy and the people.
Take, for instance, the marriage of Louis XIV of France! For reasons of state, he sacrificed his first deep and romantic love for Marie Mancini, who appears to have been both healthy and brilliant, in order to suit the diplomatic schemes of Cardinal Mazarin by marrying an ugly, rather stupid and unhealthy Spanish woman, the Infanta Maria Theresa. Her two brothers were so puny and sickly that nobody expected them to live, while she herself was undersized, anything but robust, and so nearly incapable of ensuring the royal line that five out of the six children she bore Louis XIV died in their infancy. Louis XIV, who is described as a "healthy young fellow", and as "tall and strong and masculine in stature" could hardly have been responsible for this lack of stamina in his offspring, but he was prevented from choosing a better mate.
Nor was Louis XV's marriage any more eugenic. There were ninety-nine candidates for the king's hand. Ultimately this number was reduced to five, two of whom were daughters of the Prince of Wales. But the matter was decided neither by Louis XV's taste, nor any knowledge of sound genetics. It was decided by a chapter of accidents, among which the Protestant faith of the English princesses, George I's dislike of a possible union between one of them and Louis, and a violent quarrel between Madame de Prie and Mademoiselle de Vermandois (one of the candidates) played a prominent part. At all events the motives which ultimately led Louis XV's advisers to select Marie Leszcynska of Poland, were certainly not eugenic.
To argue of a class like royalty, therefore, that they often show signs of degeneracy because they are inbred, as if inbreeding per se were the cause of the mischief, may reveal a certain skill in appealing to the democratic emotions of a public audience; but it assuredly makes no serious contribution to the science of biology, or of human genetics.

About the independent inheritance of body parts from both parents -

Ludovici in Choice of a Mate, Ch.3 wrote:

Modern science tells us definitely and emphatically that, since the relative size of the different parts of the body in different people varies to an appreciable extent, and since parts of the body can be and are inherited from each parent independently, so that a man can get his teeth from one parent and his jaw from another, and so on, marked differences of type or race, or build, or looks, between parents must lead to disharmony in their offspring, often of a serious nature.
"The fact that there are inherent differences in the size of organs and parts is of profound significance," says Dr. Crew, "when it is remembered that it involves the inevitable sequel that racial and other crossings can lead to serious disharmony."
"It follows from Mendel's laws," says Lundborg, "that in the crossing of races, it is not the whole combination of characters (genotype), whether of the father or the mother, that is inherited, but rather, that every character, more or less, is inherited independently."
Exactly eighty years ago Herbert Spencer wrote as follows on this very point: "An unmixed constitution is one in which all the organs are exactly fitted to each other — are perfectly balanced: the system as a whole is in stable equilibrium. A mixed constitution, on the contrary, being made up of organs belonging to separate sets, cannot have them in exact fitness — cannot have them perfectly balanced; and a system in comparatively unstable equilibrium results . . . the offspring of two organisms not identical in constitution is a heterogeneous mixture of the two, and not a homogeneous mean between them."
This has been the subject of comment among the field ethnologists. Dr. Eugen Fischer noticed the phenomenon in his. Bastards of Reheboth, and declared he could find no correlation of the racial characters inherited."
Dr. Rodenwaldt, though he found some correlation, noticed the same phenomenon in his Hybrids of Kisar, of which more anon.
Miss Fleming found that in mixed crosses between negro men and white women in England, there were cases of negro skin combined with flaxen hair, or negro colouring with black woolly hair and very white scalp. In other cases the eyes and lips were English, the hair dark, scalp very light, and the skin colour a rich brownish red. Thus she found characters of eye, skin, hair and lips inherited with some degree of independence.
Lundborg tells us that the chin is probably inherited independently of the parts constituting the angle of the jaw. He also assures us that there are at least four different parts of the nose which can be inherited independently.
Speaking of the crossing of races, Ruggles Gates says: "Physical disharmonies result, such as the fitting of large teeth into small jaws, or serious malocclusion of the upper and lower jaw; or, as Davenport points out, large men with small internal organs or inadequate circulatory systems, or other disharmonies which tax the adjustability of the organism and may lead to early death.

It is questionable even if marriage between north and south-eastern European races are always wholly desirable in their results."
Thus, breeding from parents who are dissimilar in other respects besides sex, is like making up a machine with spare parts derived at random from different-patterned machines. So that when parents display marked disparities in build, size, constitution, habits and general appearance, all kinds of disharmonies may occur in their offspring — too small or too large a heart for the size of the body, too small or too large a liver for the size of the other abdominal viscera, too small or too large a stomach, and so on ad infinitum.

Ludovici wrote:

A third reason why mixed and cross-breeding must be deleterious, and therefore unfavourable to the health of a nation, is that they disseminate and conceal taints. They do not rid a stock of deleterious factors, they merely hand them on in the dark. Darbishire's experiments have clearly shown that a recessive gene, although it may be associated with its dominant allelomorph for generations and made inactive, is not influenced by this long association, and loses none of its effectiveness.
So that random and mixed breeding merely cover up morbid tracks. And, in a biological proletariat like the population of modern England, in which most stocks possess the utmost variety of morbid factors, mixed breeding merely hides and disguises taints until the cumulative effect of concealment produces total degeneracy or lethal disease.
All the trumpery advantages secured by a healthy man's being forced by law to avoid a close consanguineous union, and to strike a fifty-fifty bargain with a contaminated girl, giving her children the chance of 50 per cent of his health, against the chance of 50 per cent of her diabetes, myopia and hepatic insufficiency, are thus seen to be merely illusory, and the principle by which such a union is enforced is one of universal discord and pollution.
As Professor Castle says: "Continued crossing only tends to hide inherent defects, not to exterminate them, and inbreeding only tends to bring them to the surface, not to create them."

The choice of a woman is rendered increasingly meaningless in heavily randomized stocks when it comes to offspring. Bang an apparently healthy individual and have children which don't look like either one of the parents, including overall health or lack thereof.

Beauty and Ugliness

Ludovici in CoaM, Ch.4 wrote:

That no argument can be derived from either history, anthropology, or biology, in favour of the marriage of dissimilar or unlike mates; consequently that all the popular tags and superstitions recommending this practice are due to modern degenerate notions and the democratic bias against blood, tradition and family pride.
All people should, therefore, try as far as possible to select their like in mating. This is an instinctive impulse in both normal men and animals, but in modern man it has become corrupted through sickness and false doctrine.
Strictly speaking, my book might and should end here. For the precept, "Marry your like!" seems all-sufficient, and there can be nothing to add.
The precept, as it stands, however, is not clear or fool-proof. In the first place, because in the highly differentiated stocks of modern Europe and America, "like" must remain an elastic term capable of only approximate application even among members of the same family (where, owing to heterozygosity, great morphological divergence occurs between brothers and sisters); secondly, because "like" in mating may and should mean a general likeness of type, class, traditions, and race, without, however, precluding the pursuit of an ideal within those limitations; and, thirdly, because so much ignorance prevails even among enlightened people (particularly the young) concerning human morphology and psychology, that a careful summary of what is known about these matters (which alas! is all too little), cannot fail to be of service to those who, while convinced of the soundness of my first precept, may be ill-informed regarding human points.

Who is willing to lower themselves enough as to gain an advantage through self-sacrifice? The will sacrificing itself, its body.
The soul devouring its own flesh.

Some guidelines about man's appearance...

Ludovici wrote:

We have seen regarding human appearance:—
(a) That it is most important and reveals a good deal about the individual and his value, both physically and mentally. As this is contrary to the notions now popular in Europe and America, which are derived from Socratic sophistry, to the effect that "appearances are deceptive", and "handsome is as handsome does", and "beauty is only skin deep", etc., it is a most important conclusion, which will be elaborated in a moment.
(b) That ugliness or disharmony and asymmetry is a bad sign, and is to be considered as a warning against mating. It is so frequently the result of constitutional disharmony or degeneration, as to make it unsafe to believe, even when evidence to this effect is to hand, that the ugly person is really an exception to the rule. Even the ugly or asymmetrical member of a stock, otherwise consisting of good-looking people, is likely to be the result of disharmony of inherited characters, and as this disharmony is not necessarily confined to the features of the face, such ugly or asymmetrical people are to be regarded as disharmonious throughout, and therefore discarded.
No argument about their possessing beautiful souls, or about their ugliness or asymmetry not being their fault, should prevail against this rule.
(c) That beauty, apart from the reason to be adduced in the elaboration of this section below, must, in any case, be sought and pursued in the choice of a mate, because as we have seen, harmony, both physical and psychical, is impossible without it. But, to escape the danger mentioned under (d) an individual's beauty should be checked and, as it were, verified, by a reference to that individual's stock. It is essential, therefore, even when dealing with a beautiful person as a possible mate, to find out about his or her family, and to see as many of his or her relatives as are accessible.
(d) That looks, however beautiful, are not in themselves a sufficient guarantee of desirability — the reason being that, in the permutations and combinations of the developmental factors, a good-looking person may be just a "lucky stroke" in an undesirable stock; that is to say, despite his or her prepossessing exterior, he or she may come from undesirable stock, and therefore bear in his or her germ-plasm undesirable recessive genes. Hence the wise Norwegian proverb: "Never marry a girl who is the only beauty in her family."
Having found a beautiful person as a likely mate, it is therefore essential to know the stock of that good-looking person before choosing the latter as a mate.

Ludovici wrote:

The Jews of the past, apparently anxious to secure a proper attitude of reverence in their wives, believed in going down a social step to choose a wife; and the Talmudic passage to this effect has been put into rhyme by the Rev. I. Myers as follows:—

        "Step down in life
        To take a wife;
        One step ascend
        To choose a friend."


….


With the inferiority feelings that have spread over civilized mankind through biological unsoundness, it will be difficult for vast numbers to-day to control or check the humble impulse they feel "to get away from themselves", or "to correct themselves" by seeking an opposite in mating. These inclinations, which probably arise from faint semi-conscious nausea over self in the comparatively sound, and from pronounced disgust with self in the very unsound, must, however, be checked. Among the former (the sound) they should be regarded as a menace to their soundness, and among the latter (the unsound) as a menace to the sound.

The first part of the advice is in effect hypergamy for women.
Hypergamy is not about selecting in terms of sound biology but about social selection.
The second part is also about social selection.
Both man and woman don't select in terms of sound biology, that would be looking for the complementary - instead they fall for a compliment, the seduction of the mind.

On physiognomy...

Ludovici wrote:

History has recorded one or two instances of the instinctive and learned use of physiognomical science by people of note. The means employed by Joan of Arc in discovering Charles VII among his courtiers at Chinon, and by Galeazzo Visconti's son (the future first Duke of Milan) in selecting Petrarch from among a number of other visitors and leading him up to his father, were doubtless instinctively physiognomical. But when Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had great judgment in painting and possessed a valuable collection of portraits, used his skill in reading men's faces in order to advise his sovereign, James I, concerning the characters and dispositions of new ambassadors arriving at Court, he probably acted more or less scientifically, although his natural sagacity appears to have been great. The great Prince of Condé and even Louis XIV might also be mentioned in this connexion, as also the Emperor Hadrian, of whom it is said that he was so proficient a physiognomist that he was able to discern by the countenance whether a witness, summoned to give his testimony upon any doubtful matter, spoke the truth or lied.
But when once we have recognized the soundness of Aristotle's position, as stated above, and appreciated the inevitable interdependence of body and mind and the consequent oneness of the invisible and the visible man — i.e. when once we have called the ingenious bluff of Socrates, we must conclude with Schopenhauer that, if we go wrong in reading character and personality from externals, it is not that the externals lie, but that we ourselves are inefficient or untutored in the reading of the signs.

Ludovici wrote:

One of the first to oppose the Socratic doctrine of the negligible character of the visible man was Aristotle, who says: "An animal is never so generated as to have the form of one animal and the soul of another; but it has always the body and soul of the same animal; so that a particular disposition must necessarily follow a particular body. Further still, those who are skilled in the nature of other animals are able from the form [of the body] to survey in each [the passions of the soul]. In this way, he who is skilled in horses, surveys horses, and hunters dogs. But if these things are true (and they are always true), there will be an art of physiognomy."

About Roses among Thorns and Black Sheep
and under which circumstances physiognomy, the apparent,
proves to be a more certain guide;

Ludovici wrote:

In the choice of a mate, therefore, we must act on the assumption that appearance counts for a very great deal, that it is a language that can be read with a certain amount of accuracy, and yields reliable information concerning the invisible qualities behind the visible facade.
But it is of the utmost importance in applying this conclusion in our daily lives, always to bear in mind the consequences of the two rules laid down on pages 60, 71, 72 supra, which may now be paraphrased as follows:—
(1) That in an individual who is like the other members of his or her stock, whose stock does not show much variation, and who is therefore not improbably the outcome of inbreeding, appearance is a very certain guide to character and disposition.
(2) That in an individual who is unlike the other members of his or her stock, whose stock shows marked variation, and who is therefore not improbably grossly cross-bred, appearance is not such a very certain and reliable guide to character and disposition.
The latter rule holds good more particularly when the individual in question is either above or below his stock in appearance.
For example, if in a stock consisting or variously ugly or repulsive people one member is very attractive (a setting we can sum up briefly and graphically by the idea of a Rose among Thorns) a good appearance, because it may conceal all the undesirable qualities of the rest of the stock in a latent form, is not to be trusted. Ergo, all Roses among Thorns should be classed rather below the plane which their beauty and character appear to suggest. And since this situation appears in numberless modern novels, it is important to maintain the knowledgeable and critical attitude to the type, because the whole Rose-among-Thorns situation is one which can be misunderstood only in an atmosphere saturated with Socratic and Christian values.
On the other hand, in a stock of good-looking and desirable people, if one member is exceptionally unattractive (which is the case of the Black Sheep), his or her unattractive appearance in this situation may obviously conceal, in a latent form, all the desirable qualities visible in the rest of the stock. Ergo, all Black Sheep should be classed rather above the plane their appearance and character seem to suggest.

Anfang wrote:

Some guidelines about man's appearance...

Ludovici wrote:

We have seen regarding human appearance:—
(a) That it is most important and reveals a good deal about the individual and his value, both physically and mentally. .

A video on Ludovici attacking Socrates further. He seems to be correct, though its the very first time I hear someone have a take like that on Socrates and his ideas.
I wish I could find a thread on this forum discussing Socrates, Plato and their relation to the pre-socratics.

That video is based on Chapter 1 of the book 'Enemies of Women - The Origins in Outline of Anglo-Saxon Feminism'.

"From the bottom of our hearts we, who wish woman well, warn her to be on her guard against the Feminists; for she has no deadlier foe than they." — Dr. Fritz Wittels

Socrates is for the self-proclaimed soulful.

Ludovici wrote:

Whatever insincere highbrows like Socrates and some of the Christian Fathers may have had to say in defence of human ugliness, the people, the common folk, in their instinctive wisdom, have everywhere regarded it as ominous, and observed the invariable habit of depicting their bad men and evil spirits as ugly, and their good men and benign spirits as beautiful. Even now, after two thousand years of Christianity, it is only in middle-class drawing-rooms, saturated with Christian and Puritanical sophistry, that beauty is suspected as a mask for wickedness, and ugliness as a mask for divinity. The people still think that wicked and dangerous people must be ugly and that good and desirable people must be good-looking.
The very fact that the ugly have, until Socratic and Christian times, been at a disadvantage, is perhaps best proved by the Socratic and Christian transvaluations themselves. For there would have been no need of the Socratic bluff about man's invisible side being his most valuable side, had not ugly Socrates and all those like him wished to save their self-esteem.

…I think by now people suspect the opposite, the ugly one must be good on the inside while the beautiful is ugly within. ('Privileged' by nature and inversions like that).


Hoaxes...

Ludovici wrote:

Naturally, therefore, the plain, the ugly and the deformed, must, almost from the beginning of human consciousness, have found themselves at a disadvantage; and it is not surprising that, at some time or other, an ugly man's insurrection or revolt should have occurred, with the object of changing the situation to the advantage of the ugly. Socrates, with his hoax about the superiority of the invisible side of man, performed the revolutionary feat, and Christianity, by interpreting Socratic values to the mob, made the revolt popular.
The uglification of humanity then began in all earnestness, owing to the fact that the rapid elimination of the ugly, hitherto effected by the difficulty they found in mating, to all intents and purposes ceased; and we have now reached a stage of development when plainness, or actual ugliness, is so common that a beautiful woman and a handsome man are phenomena sufficiently rare to be talked about.
It is not, however, only the Christian and Socratic hoax about the superiority of the soul that has promoted ugliness, but also the very definite hostility to life which is implicit in Socratic and Christian values. As I have shown above (pp. 31–32 ante), the Christian regards beauty as dangerous because it is a lure to life and the pleasures of life. A beautiful woman, like a fine man, stimulates the instincts of procreation. Now this is, of course, very wicked, according to Christian notions, seeing that sexual intercourse was the original sin of mankind. The consequence is that, wherever Christianity has prevailed, ugly people have been favoured and regarded as particularly safe and holy, because in them there was no emphatic lure to sin, to life, to procreation. Inevitably, therefore, Christianity was bound to imagine its own highest man, Christ, as ugly, and, as we shall see, it did not scruple to do this.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Ludovici wrote:

For the sake of the reader who is fresh to the study of the æsthetic values "ugly" and "beautiful," as they relate to humanity, particularly in mating, it ought, however, to be pointed out that when used inter-racially these words have not only no necessarily aesthetic significance, but also no necessarily morbid or other implication. When a fair young Parisian lady, confronted by a negro waiter, exclaims: "Dieu qu'il est laid!" or when a fair Cockney girl, meeting with a Chinaman, mutters under her breath, "Christ! what a clock!" it is surely obvious that the word "ugly" (implied in the second remark) can have no æsthetic or morbid implication. It is merely the instinctive reaction of one race to the ideal of another, a reaction by which that ideal is rejected.
It is only when races grow unhealthy, sophisticated, lose their taste, and allow their sound instincts to be corrupted, that the word "ugly" can be used inter-racially (from the mating standpoint) to imply a recognition of morbidity. Otherwise the word used inter-racially means in extenso merely this: "You may be sound and all right as a negro or a Chinaman; but to me you are repulsive and therefore to be rejected."
As we shall see in a moment, every race postulates its own highest examples as the standard of absolute beauty. A race, uncorrupted and sound must, therefore, pronounce the word "ugly" in regard to all other racial standards of beauty (and this it does and always has done), otherwise its mating judgments would amount, in practice, to bringing about the evanescence of its own race — an end which, as we have seen, no healthy race desires.

Ploughboy….

Ludovici wrote:

Consequently, it is only within the same race that "ugly" should have implications of psycho-physical abnormality and morbidity. Though this too requires some explanation; because "ugly" even within the same race, often acquires peculiar connotations unconnected with morbidity.
For instance, in a mild, urban and rather effeminate culture, the word "ugly" is often carelessly used to reject a person whose only stigma is that his or her face is more severe, more stern, more ferocious, or more sensual than the average face in the community, without, however, manifesting any signs of that congenital disproportion, disharmony or asymmetry which indicates biological inferiority, and from which ill-health or a faulty constitution, combined with mental instability, may be inferred.
I have come across so many examples of this that it seems to be worth while to dwell on the matter a moment. "Ugly" used in this way cannot have any implications of morbidity. It is simply an offensive comment on someone unlike the person making it, and is a further indication of the instinctive tendency of like to mate with like.
Ferocity, severity, sternness, or sensuality, are no more necessarily "ugly" than lack of these qualities in a face, provided they are not accompanied by the disproportion and disharmony above described. Evidences of great passion in a person's features also often provoke the comment "ugly" in smug, middle-class folk, whose passions have all been bred out. I have actually come across a mother who, confronted with a picture of unusual passion in the features of one of her daughters (possibly the only one to have collected up in her person all the passion of the rather passionless stock), described this one daughter as "ugly" and the rest as pretty.

Here again, "ugly" can have no necessarily morbid connotation. It is simply an ignorant manner of commenting on a personal appearance, which promises to reintroduce into a smug, safety-first home the disturbing element of a great passion.
In the same manner, the inter-class and inter-caste use of the word "ugly" need not necessarily have any morbid implication. When an aristocratic woman calls a coarse ploughboy or a blowsy dairy-maid "ugly," and the latter gazing at the aristocrat and her children, pronounces the same word, it need not have any condemnatory value from the æsthetic or health point of view. What happens is this — the aristocrat, thinking subjectively, says "that ploughboy and that dairy-maid do not comply with my standard of beauty, therefore they are ugly." And the other class thinks the same.

and blowsy… hehe
hahaha….

...

Ludovici wrote:

and we have now reached a stage of development when plainness, or actual ugliness, is so common that a beautiful woman and a handsome man are phenomena sufficiently rare to be talked about.

I can only imagine, or perceive from an old painting, the beautiful expression of the many faces as just ‘being beautiful’, healthy. When I think back to Moscow, a big city, a concept which in the West stands for ‘a mass gathering of vile degenerates’ (ugly), I remember a lot of healthy faces and bodies passing by; I am aware that once their economic-comfort and the same amount of propaganda we endure, strikes them as well, that a lot will take the path of least resistance eventually. But still, the contrast, the only fat women were those older grumpy ones behind a pay desk who I can forgive for such. A half-breed negro (the product of a Ghanaian father who left them and a Dutch mother) who owns a dance-shop in Rotterdam has a woman from Ural who he hires, he told me after he talked about her and Russian women in general participating in ballet, that they are such ‘’disciplined women because they are a very pure race’’ and that the West has sunken into racial degeneracy reflected by our women’s impulsiveness.
His words still echo in me the more I think about the contrast in Moscow; when I see a Western woman I cannot help but think (and see) that her skin is as greasy as the food she swallows regularly, those I observed in Moscow were very strict with their eating manners (thus they might eat a little more not in public), what they ate (healthy), when and how much. Here they swallow and eat shamelessly like a sea gull on a garbage dump, impulsively, but so do the men; then I am at the gym and listen to what others are saying to each other, a reasonable muscular man is planning with his buddy to go the KFC afterwards… How hypocritical. And each time when I am in a public transportation vehicle and hear the opening sound of ‘’’ktsshhh’’, I hope that it is anything but Energy Drink, but my hope is hopeless, such an all devouring sweet smell, it spreads throughout the bus and they drink it as if it were water. The ugly people here are as the food and drinks they shamelessly consume; how you consume the food and in what way you have consideration with the people next to you (table manners), reflects overall societal standards and inter-action - about which I have to think a little more.

OhFortunae wrote:

Ludovici wrote:

and we have now reached a stage of development when plainness, or actual ugliness, is so common that a beautiful woman and a handsome man are phenomena sufficiently rare to be talked about.

I can only imagine, or perceive from an old painting, the beautiful expression of the many faces as just ‘being beautiful’, healthy. When I think back to Moscow, a big city, a concept which in the West stands for ‘a mass gathering of vile degenerates’ (ugly), I remember a lot of healthy faces and bodies passing by; I am aware that once their economic-comfort and the same amount of propaganda we endure, strikes them as well, that a lot will take the path of least resistance eventually. But still, the contrast, the only fat women were those older grumpy ones behind a pay desk who I can forgive for such. A half-breed negro (the product of a Ghanaian father who left them and a Dutch mother) who owns a dance-shop in Rotterdam has a woman from Ural who he hires, he told me after he talked about her and Russian women in general participating in ballet, that they are such ‘’disciplined women because they are a very pure race’’ and that the West has sunken into racial degeneracy reflected by our women’s impulsiveness.
His words still echo in me the more I think about the contrast in Moscow; when I see a Western woman I cannot help but think (and see) that her skin is as greasy as the food she swallows regularly, those I observed in Moscow were very strict with their eating manners (thus they might eat a little more not in public), what they ate (healthy), when and how much. Here they swallow and eat shamelessly like a sea gull on a garbage dump, impulsively, but so do the men; then I am at the gym and listen to what others are saying to each other, a reasonable muscular man is planning with his buddy to go the KFC afterwards… How hypocritical. And each time when I am in a public transportation vehicle and hear the opening sound of ‘’’ktsshhh’’, I hope that it is anything but Energy Drink, but my hope is hopeless, such an all devouring sweet smell, it spreads throughout the bus and they drink it as if it were water. The ugly people here are as the food and drinks they shamelessly consume; how you consume the food and in what way you have consideration with the people next to you (table manners), reflects overall societal standards and inter-action - about which I have to think a little more.

What contrast? What a contrast; nothing stark.
A "pure race" with generations upon generations of Asiatic admixing and migration.
There's this escapist mentality/fantasy, which is recurrently assayed among westerners, partially because of a one-sided displeasure with the West, but with their own lives at the crux: that there is hope elsewhere, where there is none. "The White Savior - Russia."
Offer opprobrium of Russia and you're a Russophobe and western imperialist; condone them and you're a Russophile commie.

I'll let you in on a secret: modernity is universal: the women in EE and Russia are influenced by the same factors as those in the West, to what degree and in what manner is variable, with it often emerging worse or less than the West (this being a critical topic on its own stage - environmental determinism versus heredity).

For every Russian individual you profess to be upright, I'll present you a hundred alcoholic, druggie teenagers and twenty-year-olds who spend every waking hour on social media and costly dedication to keeping up with their virtual personae and the group fashion.
They are also not exempt from social ineptitude. For instance, if it weren't for the necessity of procession in surviving Russian Winter, then they would have little cultural bonds. What they adhere to in terms of relationships is just as cursory as elsewhere.

Finally, are these effete men with some undefined fetish not men? They must go to EE to find a woman, implicating that 1) the latter are easy or easier 2) they will be succored with something fundamentally different?
Are these westerners not desperate suckers, and appear as suckers, and thereby attract the women from which they are running?
How about those cucks who pack shop and marry some Russian woman with children and an abusive loser ex-husband. Now there's a contrast.

What are the differences? They are paltry in number, but are they significant enough to delineate a prospective schism out of which to build anew?

I understand all of your points very well (the Russian women are sexually straight forward); but the Russian races (not just White Slavonic but also Finnish and Baltic tribes) have in general no mongoloid admixture at all, as is proven by researches presented in the book Raciology by Avdeyev.

Those cucks are nothing in comparison with those old White farts going to Thailand and get themselves a Thai prostitute with an kid included not even resembling their outer appearance; or those cucks who have their woman fucked by nignogs - but that would be another subject.

Russian women eat very little, calorie wise, and since the food in Russia is usually quite fatty, they eat very small volumes. It's a social norm in many parts of the country, similar to how they tell men in western countries to 'man-up', they tell their girls to stay thin, so that they have a better chance of attracting the right kind of man.
That's literally what they will say, not any other kind of pretense.