It is true that the upper classes of impersonal France practise this method of marital selection, their conseils de famille furnishing in some sort a parallel.

But, as is well known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form devoid of substance.

It begins impressively with a dual ceremony, the civil contract, which amounts to a contract of civility between the parties, and a religious rite to render the same perpetual, and there it is too apt to end.
So much for the immediate influence on the man; the eventual effect on the race remains to be considered.

Now, if the first result be anything, the second must in the end be everything.

For however trifling it be in the individual instance, it goes on accumulating with each successive generation, like compound interest.