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What Is Romantic Love?, a non-fiction book by Henry Theophilus Finck

14. Admiration Of Personal Beauty

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_ XIV. ADMIRATION OF PERSONAL BEAUTY

"When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind," exclaimed Dryden; and Romeo asks:


Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.


In full-fledged romantic love of the masculine type the admiration of a girl's personal beauty is no doubt the most entrancing ingredient. But such love is rare even to-day, while in ordinary love-affairs the sense of beauty does not play nearly so important a role as is commonly supposed. In woman's love, as everybody knows, the regard for masculine beauty usually forms an unimportant ingredient; and a man's love, provided sympathy, adoration, gallantry, self-sacrifice, affection, and purity enter into it, may be of the genuine romantic type, even though he has no sense of beauty at all. And this is lucky for the prospects of love, since, even among the most civilized races to-day, the number of men and women who, while otherwise refined and estimable, have no real appreciation of beauty, personal or otherwise, is astonishingly large.

 

DARWIN'S UNFORTUNATE MISTAKE

This being true of the average man and woman among the most cultured races, we ought to be able to conclude, as a matter of course and without the necessity of argumentation, that the admiration of personal beauty has still less to do with the motives that lead a savage to marry this or that girl, or a savage girl to prefer this or that suitor. Strange to say, this simple corollary of the doctrine of evolution has been greatly obscured by Darwin himself, by his theory of sexual selection, which goes so far as to attribute the beauty of the male _animals_ to the continued preference by the females of the more showy males, and the consequent hereditary transmission of their colors and other ornaments. When we bear in mind how unimportant a role the regard for personal beauty plays even among the females of the most advanced human beings, the idea that the females of the lower animals are guided in their pairing by minute subtle differences in the beauty of masculine animals seems positively comic. It is an idea such as could have emanated only from a mind as unesthetic as Darwin's was.

So far as animals are concerned, Alfred Russell Wallace completely demolished the theory of sexual selection,[46] after it had created a great deal of confusion in scientific literature. In regard to the lower races of man this confusion still continues, and I therefore wish to demonstrate here, more conclusively than I did in my first book (60, 61, 327-30), that among primitive men and women, too, the sense of beauty does not play the important role attributed to it in their love-affairs. "The Influence of Beauty in determining the Marriages of Mankind" is one of the topics discussed in the _Descent of Man_. Darwin tries to show that, "especially" during the earlier period of our long history, the races of mankind were modified by the continued selection of men by women and women by men in accordance with their peculiar standards of beauty. He gives some of the numerous instances showing how savages "ornament" or mutilate their bodies; adding:


"The motives are various; the men paint their bodies to
make themselves appear terrible in battle; certain
mutilations are connected with religious rites, or they
mark the age of puberty, or the rank of the man, or
they serve to distinguish the tribes. Among savages the
same fashions prevail for long periods, and thus
mutilations, from whatever cause first made, soon come
to be valued as distinctive marks. _But self-adornment,
vanity, and the admiration of others seem to be the
commonest motives_."


[FOOTNOTE 46: In his _Tropical Nature, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_, and _Darwinism_. In _R.L.P.B._, 42-50, where I gave a summary of this question, I suggested that the "typical colors" (the numerous cases where both sexes are brilliantly colored) for which Wallace could "assign no function or use," owe their existence to the need of a means of recognition by the sexes; thus indicating how the love-affairs of animals may modify their appearance in a way quite different from that suggested by Darwin, and dispensing with his postulates of unproved female choice and problematic variations in esthetic taste.]


Among those who were led astray by these views of Darwin is Westermarck, who declares that "in every country, in every race, beauty stimulates passion," and that


"it seems to be beyond doubt that men and women began to ornament, mutilate, paint, and tattoo themselves chiefly in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex--that they might court successfully, or be courted"


--an opinion in which Grosse follows him, in his interesting treatise on the _Beginnings of Art_ (111, etc.), thereby marring his chapter on "Personal Decoration." In the following pages I shall show, on the contrary, that when we subject these primitive customs of "ornamentation" and mutilation to a critical examination we find in nearly every case that they are either not at all or only indirectly (not esthetically), connected with the relations of the sexes; and that neither does personal beauty exist as a rule among savages, nor have they the esthetic sense to appreciate its exceptional occurrence. They nearly always paint, tattoo, decorate, or mutilate themselves without the least reference to courtship or the desire to please the other sex. It is the easiest thing in the world to fill page after page--as Darwin, Westermarck, Grosse, and others have done--with the remarks of travellers regarding the addiction of savages to personal "ornamentation"; but this testimony rests, as we shall see, on the unwarranted assumptions of superficial observers, who, ignorant of the real reasons why the lower races paint, tattoo, and otherwise "adorn" themselves, recklessly inferred that they did it to "make themselves beautiful." The more carefully the customs and traditions of these races are studied, the more obvious becomes the non-esthetic and non-erotic origin of their personal "decorations." In my extensive researches, for every single fact that seemed to favor the sexual selection theory I have found a hundred against it; and I have become more and more amazed at the extraordinary _sang froid_ with which its advocates have ignored the countless facts that speak against it while boosting into prominence the very few that at first sight appear to support it. In the following pages I shall attempt to demolish the theory of sexual selection in reference to the lower races of man as Wallace demolished it in reference to animals; premising that the mass of cumulative evidence here presented is only a very small part of what might be adduced on my side. Let us consider the different motives for personal "decoration" in succession.

 

"DECORATION" FOR PROTECTION

Many of the alleged personal "decorations" of inferior races are merely measures to protect themselves against climate, insects, etc. The Maoris of New Zealand besmear themselves with grease and red ochre as a defence against the sand-flies.[47] The Andaman islanders plaster themselves with a mixture of lard and colored earth to protect their skins from heat and mosquitoes.[48] Canadian Indians painted their faces in winter as a protection against frost-bite. In Patagonia


"both sexes smear their faces, and occasionally their bodies with paint, the Indians alleging as the reasons for using this cosmetic that it is a protection against the effects of the wind; and I found from personal experience that it proved a complete preservative from excoriation or chapped skin."[49]


[FOOTNOTE 47: Angas, II., 65.]

[FOOTNOTE 48: Tylor, _Anthr._, 237.]

[FOOTNOTE 49: Musters, 171; cf. Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, 89, where we read that woman's coating of lampblack and castor-oil--her only dress--serves to prevent excessive perspiration in the day-time and ward off chills at night.]


C. Bock notes that in Sumatra rice powder is lavishly employed by many of the women, but "not with the object of preserving the complexion or reducing the color, but to prevent perspiration by closing the pores of the skin."[50] Baumann says of the African Bakongo that many of their peculiar ways of arranging the hair "seem to be intended less as ornamental head-dresses than as a bolster for the burdens they carry on their heads;"[51] and Squier says that the reason given by the Nicaraguans for flattening the heads of their children is that they may be better fitted in adult life to bear burdens.[52]


[FOOTNOTE 50: C. Bock, 273.]

[FOOTNOTE 51: O. Baumann, _Mitth. Anthr. Ges._, Wien, 1887, 161.]

[FOOTNOTE 52: Nicaragua, II., 345.]


WAR "DECORATIONS"

Equally remote as the foregoing from all ideas of personal beauty or of courtship and the desire to inspire sexual passion is the custom so widely prevalent of painting and otherwise "adorning" the body for war. The Australians diversely made use of red and yellow ochre, or of white pigment for war paint.[53] Caesar relates that the ancient Britons stained themselves blue with woad to give themselves a more horrid aspect in war. "Among ourselves," as Tylor remarks, "the guise which was so terrific in the Red Indian warrior has comedown to make the circus clown a pattern of folly,"[54] Regarding Canadian Indians we read that


"some may be seen with blue noses, but with cheeks and eyebrows black; others mark forehead, nose, and cheeks with lines of various colors; one would think he beheld so many hobgoblins. They believe that in colors of this description they are dreadful to their enemies, and that otherwise their own line of battle will be concealed as by a veil; finally, that it hardens the skin of the body, so that the cold of the winter is easily borne."[55]


[FOOTNOTE 53: Sturt, II., 103.]

[FOOTNOTE 54: Tylor, 237.]

[FOOTNOTE 55: _Jesuit Relations_, I., 279.]


The Sioux Indians blackened their faces when they went on the warpath. They

"highly prize personal bravery, and therefore constantly wear the marks of distinction which they received for their exploits; among these are, especially, tufts of human hair attached to the arms and legs, and feathers on their heads."[56]

[FOOTNOTE 56: Prince Wied, 149.]


When Sioux warriors return from the warpath with scalps "the squaws as well as the men paint with vermilion a semicircle in front of each ear."[57] North Carolina Indians when going to war painted their faces all over red, while those of South Carolina, according to DeBrahm, "painted their faces red in token of friendship and black in expression of warlike intentions." "Before charging the foe," says Dorsey, "the Osage warriors paint themselves anew. This is called the death paint." The Algonquins, on the day of departure for war, dressed in their best, coloring the hair red and painting their faces and bodies red and black. The Cherokees when going to war dyed their hair red and adorned it with feathers of various colors.[58] Bancroft says (I., 105) that when a Thlinkit arms himself for war he paints his face and powders his hair a brilliant red. "He then ornaments his head with a white eagle feather as a token of stern, vindictive determination."


[FOOTNOTE 57: Belden, 145.]

[FOOTNOTE 58: Mallery, 1888-89, 631-33.]


John Adair wrote of the Chickasaws, in 1720, that they "readily know achievements in war by the blue marks over their breasts and arms, they being as legible as our alphabetical characters are to us"--which calls attention to a very frequent use of what are supposed to be ornaments as merely part of a language of signs. Irving remarks in _Astoria,_ regarding the Arikara warriors, that "some had the stamp of a red hand across their mouths, a sign that they had drunk the life-blood of an enemy." In Schoolcraft we read (II., 58) that among the Dakotas on St. Peter's River a red hand means that the wearer has been wounded by an enemy, while a black hand indicates "I have slain an enemy." The Hidatsa Indians wore eagle feathers "to denote acts of courage or success in war"; and the Dakotas and others indicated by means of special spots or colored bars in their feathers or cuts in them, that the wearer had killed an enemy, or wounded one, or taken a scalp, or killed a woman, etc. A black feather denoted that an Ojibwa woman was killed. The marks on their blankets had similar meanings.[59] Peter Carder, an Englishman captive among the Brazilians, wrote:


"This is to be noted, that how many men these savages doe kill, so many holes they will have in their visage, beginning first in the nether lippe, then in the cheekes, thirdly, in both their eye-browes, and lastly in their eares."[60]


Of the Abipones we read that,


"distrusting their courage, strength, and arms, they think that paint of various colors, feathers, shouting, trumpets, and other instruments of terror will forward their success."[61]

[FOOTNOTE 59: Mallery, 1882-83, 183.]

[FOOTNOTE 60: Bourke, 497.]

[FOOTNOTE 61: Dobrizhoffer, II., 390.]


Fancourt says of the natives of Yucatan that "in their wars, and when they went to their sacrificial dances and festivals, they had their faces, arms, thighs, and legs painted and naked." In Fiji the men bore a hole through the nose and put in a couple of feathers, nine to twelve inches long, which spread out over each side of the face like immense mustaches. They do this "to give themselves a fiercer appearance."[62] Waitz notes that in Tahiti mothers compressed the heads of their infant boys "to make their aspect more terrible and thus turn them into more formidable warriors." The Tahitians, as Ellis informs us, "went to battle in their best clothes, sometimes perfumed with fragrant oil, and adorned with flowers."[63] Of the wild tribes in Kondhistan, too, we read that "it is only, however, when they go out to battle ... that they adorn themselves with all their finery."[64]


[FOOTNOTE 62: Mariner, Chapter X.]

[FOOTNOTE 63: Ellis, P.R., I., 243.]

[FOOTNOTE 64: J. Campbell, _Wild Tribes of Khondistan_.]

 

AMULETS, CHARMS, MEDICINES.

The African tribes along the Congo wear on their bodies


"the horn, the hoof, the hair, the teeth, and the bones of all manner of quadrupeds; the feathers, beaks, claws, skulls, and bones of birds; the heads and skins of snakes; the shells and fins of fishes, pieces of old iron, copper, wood, seeds of plants, and sometimes a mixture of all, or most of them, strung together."


Unsophisticated travellers speak of these things as "ornaments" indicating the strange "sense of beauty" of these natives. In reality, they have nothing to do with the sense of beauty, but are merely a manifestation of savage superstition. In Tuckey's _Zaire_, from which the above citation is made, they are properly classed as fetiches, and the information is added that in the choice of them the natives consult the fetich men. A picture is given in the book of one appendage to the dress "which the weaver considered an infallible charm against poison." Others are "considered as protection against the effects of thunder and lightning, against the attacks of the alligator, the hippopotamus, snakes, lions, tigers," etc., etc. Winstanley relates (II., 68) that in Abyssinia


"the Mateb, or baptismal cord, is _de rigueur_,
and worn when nothing else is. It formed the only
clothing of the young at Seramba, but was frequently
added to with amulets, sure safeguards against sorcery."

Concerning the Bushmen, Mackenzie says:

"Certain marks on the face, or bits of wood on
his hair, or tied around his neck, are medicines
or charms to be taken in sickness, or proximity
to lions, or in other circumstances of danger."[65]


[FOOTNOTE 65: Mackenzie, _Day Dawn_, 67.]


Bastian relates that in many parts of Africa every infant is tattooed on the belly, to dedicate it thereby to a certain fetich.[66] The inland negroes mark all sorts of patterns on their skins, partly "to expel evil influences."[67] The Nicaraguans punctured and scarified their tongues because, as they explained to Oviedo, it would bring them luck in bargains. The Peruvians, says Cieza, pulled out three teeth of each jaw in children of very tender age because that would be acceptable to the gods; and Garcilassa notes that the Peruvians pulled out a hair of an eyebrow when making an offering. Jos. d'Acosta also describes how the Peruvians pulled out eyelashes and eyebrows and offered them to the deities. The natives of Yucatan, according to Fancourt, wore their hair long as "a sign of idolatry."[68] When Franklin relates that Chippewayan Indians "prize pictures very highly and esteem any they can get," we seem to have come across a genuine esthetic sense, till we read that it makes no difference how badly they are executed, and that they are valued "as efficient charms."[69] All Abipones of both sexes


"pluck up the hair from the forehead to the crown of the head, so that the forepart of the head is bald almost for the space of two inches; this baldness they ... account a religious mark of their nation."[70]


[FOOTNOTE 66: Bastian, _Af.R_., 76.]

[FOOTNOTE 67: Burton, _Abcok_. I., 106.]

[FOOTNOTE 68: Spencer, _D. Soc._, 27.]

[FOOTNOTE 69: J. Franklin, _P.S._, 132.]

[FOOTNOTE 70: Dobrizhoffer, II., 17.]


The Point Barrow Eskimos believe that clipping their hair on the back of the head in a certain way "prevents snow-blindness in the spring." These Eskimos painted their faces when they went whaling, and the Kadiaks did so before any important undertaking, such as crossing a wide strait, chasing the sea-otter, etc.[71] In regard to the amulets or charms worn by Eskimos, Crantz says:

"These powerful preventives consist in a bit of old wood hung around their necks, or a stone, or a bone, or a beak or claw of a bird, or else a leather strap tied round their forehead, breast, or arm."[72]


[FOOTNOTE 71: Murdoch, 140.]

[FOOTNOTE 72: Crantz, I., 216.]

Marcano says that "the Indians of French Guiana paint themselves in order to drive away the devil when they start on a journey or for war."[73] In his treatise on the religion of the Dakotas, Lynd remarks:


"Scarlet or red is the religious color for sacrifices.... The use of paint, the Dakotas aver, was taught them by the gods. Unkteh taught the first medicine men how to paint themselves when they worshipped him and what colors to use. Takushkanshkan (the moving god) whispers to his favorites what colors to use. Heyoka hovers over them in dreams, and informs them how many streaks to employ upon their bodies and the tinge they must have. No ceremony of worship is complete without the wakan, or sacred application of paint."[74]


[FOOTNOTE 73: Mallery, 1888-89, 621.]

[FOOTNOTE 74: Lynd, II., 68.]


By the Tasmanians "the bones of relatives were worn around the neck, less, perhaps, as ornaments than as charms."[75] The Ainos of Japan and the Fijians held that tattooing was a custom introduced by the gods. Fijian women believed "that to be tattooed is a passport to the other world, where it prevents them from being persecuted by their own sex."[76] An Australian custom ordained that every person must have the septum of the nose pierced and must wear in it a piece of bone, a reed, or the stalks of some grass. This was not done, however, with the object of adorning the person, but for superstitious reasons: "the old men used to predict to those who were averse to this mutilation all kinds of evil." The sinner, they said, would suffer in the next world by having to eat filth. "To avoid a punishment so horrible, each one gladly submitted, and his or her nose was pierced accordingly." (Brough Smyth, 274.) Wilhelmi says that in the Northwest the men place in the head-band behind the ears pieces of wood decorated with very thin shavings and looking like plumes of white feathers. They do this "on occasions of rejoicings and when engaged in their mystic ceremonies." Nicaraguans trace the custom of flattening the heads of children to instructions from the gods, and Pelew Islanders believed that to win eternal bliss the septum of the nose must be perforated, while Eskimo girls were induced to submit to having long stitches made with a needle and black thread on several parts of the face by the superstitious fear that if they refused they would, after death, be turned into train tubs and placed under the lamps in heaven.[77] In order that the ghost of a Sioux Indian may travel the ghost road in safety, it is necessary for each Dakota during his life to be tattooed in the middle of the forehead or on the wrists. If found without these, he is pushed from a cloud or cliff and falls back to this world.[78] In Australia, the Kurnai medicine men were supposed to be able to communicate with ghosts only when they had certain bones thrust through the nose.[79] The _American Anthropologist_ contains (July, 1889) a description of the various kinds of face-coloring to indicate degrees in the Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwa. These Indians frequently tattooed temples, forehead, or cheeks of sufferers from headache or toothache, in the belief that this would expel the demons who cause the pain. In Congo, scarifications are made on the back for therapeutic reasons; and in Timor-Laut (Malay Archipelago), both sexes tattooed themselves "in imitation of immense smallpox marks, in order to ward off that disease."[80]


[FOOTNOTE 75: Bonwick, 27.]

[FOOTNOTE 76: Wilkes, III., 355.]

[FOOTNOTE 77: Westermarck opines (170) that "such tales are not of much importance, as any usage practised from time immemorial may easily he ascribed to the command of a god." On the contrary, such legends are of very great importance, since they show how utterly foreign to the thought of these races was the purpose of "decorating" themselves in these various ways "in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex."]

[FOOTNOTE 78: Dorsey, 486.]

[FOOTNOTE 79: Fison and Howitt, 253; Frazer, 28.]

[FOOTNOTE 80: Mallery, 1888-89, 395, 412, 417.]

 

MOURNING LANGUAGE

Australian women of the Port Lincoln tribes paint a ring around each eye and a streak over the stomach, and men mark their breasts with stripes and paints in different patterns. An ignorant observer, or an advocate of the sexual selection theory, would infer that these "decorations" are resorted to for the purpose of ornamentation, to please individuals of the opposite sex. But Wilhelmi, who understood the customs of these tribes, explains that these divers stripes and paints have a practical object, being used to "indicate the different degrees of relationship between a dead person and the mourners."[81] In South Australia widows in mourning "shave their heads, cover them with a netting, and plaster them with pipe-clay"[82]. A white band around the brow is also used as a badge of mourning[83]. Taplin says that the Narrinyeri adorn the bodies of the dead with bright-red ochre, and that this is a wide-spread custom in Australia. A Dyeri, on being asked why he painted red and white spots on his skin, answered: "Suppose me no make-im, me tumble down too; that one [the corpse] growl along-a-me." A further "ornament" of the women on these occasions consists in two white streaks on the arm to indicate that they have eaten some of the fat of the dead, according to their custom. (Smyth, I., 120.) In some districts the mourners paint themselves white on the death of a blood relation, and black when a relative by marriage dies. The corpse is often painted red. Red is used too when boys are initiated into manhood, and with most tribes it is also the war-color. Hence it is not strange that they should undertake long journeys to secure fresh supplies of ochre: for war, mourning, and superstition are three of the strongest motives of savage activity. African Bushmen anoint the heads of the dead with a red powder mixed with melted fat. Hottentots, when mourning, shave their heads in furrows. Damaras wear a dark-colored skin-cap: a piece of leather round the neck, to which is attached a piece of ostrich egg-shell. Coast negroes bury the head of a family in his best clothes and ornaments, and Dahomans do the same[84]. Schweinfurth says that "according to the custom, which seems to belong to all Africa, as a sign of grief the Dinka wear a cord round the neck."[85] Mourning New Zealanders tie a red cloth round the head or wear headdresses of dark feathers. New Caledonians cut off their hair and blacken and oil their faces[85]. Hawaiians cut their hair in various forms, knock out a front tooth, cut the ears and tattoo a spot on the tongue[86]. The Mineopies use three coloring substances for painting their bodies; and by the way they apply them they let it be known whether a person is ill or in mourning, or going to a festival.[87] In California the Yokaia widows make an unguent with which they smear a white band two inches wide all around the edge of the hair[88]. Of the Yukon Indians of Alaska "some wore hoops of birch wood around the neck and waists, with various patterns of figures cut on them. These were said to be emblems of mourning for the dead."[89] Among the Snanaimuq "the face of the deceased is painted with red and black paint... After the death of husband or wife the survivor must paint his legs and his blanket red."[90] Numerous other instances may be found in Mallery, who remarks that "many objective modes of showing mourning by styles of paint and markings are known, the significance of which are apparent when discovered in pictographs."[91]

[FOOTNOTE 81: Wilhelmi, in Woods.]

[FOOTNOTE 82: Angas, I., 86.]

[FOOTNOTE 83: Mitchell, I., 171.]

[FOOTNOTE 84: Spencer, _D.S._, 21, 22; 18, 19.]

[FOOTNOTE 85: Schweinfurth, _H.A_., I., 154.]

[FOOTNOTE 86: Ellis, _Haw_., 146.]

[FOOTNOTE 87: Man, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst_., XII.]

[FOOTNOTE 88: Powers, 166.]

[FOOTNOTE 89: Dall, 95.]

[FOOTNOTE 90: Boas, cited by Mallery, 534.]

[FOOTNOTE 91: Mallery, 1888-89, 197, 623-629.]

 

INDICATIONS OF TRIBE OR RANK

Among the customs which, in Darwin's opinion, show "how widely the different races of man differ in their taste for the beautiful," is that of moulding the skull of infants into various unnatural shapes, in some cases making the head "appear to us idiotic." One would think that before accepting such a monstrous custom as evidence of any kind of a sense of beauty, Darwin, and those who expressed the same opinion before and after him, would have inquired whether there is not some more rational way of accounting for the admiration of deformed heads by these races than by assuming that they approved of them for _esthetic_ reasons. There is no difficulty in finding several non-esthetic reasons why peculiarly moulded skulls were approved of. The Nicaraguans, as I have already stated, believed that heads were moulded in order to make it easier to bear burdens, and the Peruvians also said they pressed the heads of children to make them healthier and able to do more work. But vanity--individual or tribal--and fashion were the principal motives. According to Torquemada, the kings were the first who had their heads shaped, and afterward permission to follow their example was granted to others as a special favor. In their classical work on Peruvian antiquities (31-32) Eivero and Tschudi describe the skulls they examined., including many varieties "artificially produced, and differing according to their respective localities."


"These irregularities were undoubtedly produced by mechanical causes, and were considered as the _distinctive marks of families_; for in one Huaca [cemetery] will always be found the same form of crania; while in another, near by, the forms are entirely different from those in the first."


The custom of flattening the head was practised by various Indian tribes, especially in the Pacific States, and Bancroft (I., 180) says that, "all seem to admire a flattened forehead as _a sign of noble birth_;" and on p. 228, he remarks:


"Failure properly to mould the cranium of her offspring gives the Chinook matron the reputation of a lazy and un-dutiful mother, and subjects the neglected children to the ridicule of their companions; so despotic is fashion."


The Arab races of Africa alter the shapes of their children's heads because they are jealous of their noble descent. (Bastian, _D.M_., II., 229.)

"The genuine Turkish skull," says Tylor _(Anth.,_ 240),


"is of the broad Tatar form, while the natives of Greece and Asia Minor have oval skulls, which gives the reason why at Constantinople it became the fashion to mould the babies' skulls round, so that they grew up with the broad head of the conquering race. Relics of such barbarism linger on in the midst of civilization, and not long ago a French physician surprised the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap, while in Brittany they preferred to press it round."


Knocking out some of the teeth, or filing them into certain shapes, is another widely prevalent custom, for which it is inadmissible to invoke a monstrous and problematic esthetic taste as long as it can be accounted for on simpler and less disputable grounds, such as vanity, the desire for tribal distinction, or superstition. Holub found (II., 259), that in one of the Makololo tribes it was customary to break out the top incisor teeth, for the reason that it is "only horses that eat with all their teeth, and that men ought not to eat like horses." In other cases it is not contempt for animals but respect for them that accounts for the knocking out of teeth. Thus Livingstone relates _(L. Tr_., II., 120), in speaking of a boy from Lomaine, that "the

upper teeth extracted seemed to say that the tribe have cattle. The knocking out of the teeth is in imitation of the animals they almost worship." The Batokas also give as their reason for knocking out their upper front teeth that they wish to be like oxen. Livingstone tells us _(Zamb.,_ 115), that the Manganja chip their teeth to resemble those of the cat or crocodile: which suggests totemism, or superstitious respect for an animal chosen as an emblem of a tribe. That the Australian custom of knocking out the upper front teeth at puberty is part of a religious ceremonial, and not the outcome of a desire to make the boys attractive to the girls, as Westermarck naively assumes (174, 172), is made certain by the details given in Mallery (1888-89, 513-514), including an excerpt from a manuscript by A.W. Howitt, in which it is pointed out that the humming instrument kuamas, the bull-roarer, "has a sacred character with all the Australian tribes;" and that there are marked on it "two notches, one at each end, representing the gap left in the upper jaw of the novice after his teeth have been knocked out during the rites."[92] But perhaps the commonest motive for altering the teeth is the desire to indicate tribal connections. "Various tribes," says Tylor _(Anthr._ 240), "grind their front teeth to points, or cut them away in angular patterns, so that in Africa and elsewhere a man's tribe is often known by the cut of his teeth."


[FOOTNOTE 92: See also the remarks in Prazer's _Totemism_, 26.]


Peculiar arrangements of the hair also have misled unwary observers into fancying that they were made for beauty's sake and to attract the opposite sex, when in reality they were tribal marks or had other utilitarian purposes, serving as elements in a language of signs, etc. Frazer, _e.g._, notes that the turtle clan of the Omaha Indians cuts off all the hair from a boy's head except six locks which hang down in imitation of the legs, head, and tail of a turtle; while the Buffalo clan arranges two locks of hair in imitation of horns. "Nearly all the Indian tribes," writes Mallery, "have peculiarities of the arrangement of the hair and of some article of apparel or accoutrement by which they can always be distinguished." Heriot relates that among the Indians


"the fashion of trimming the hair varies in a great degree, and an enemy may by this means be discovered at a considerable distance." "The Pueblos generally, when accurate and particular in delineation [pictographs], designate the women of that tribe by a huge coil of hair over either ear. This custom prevails also among the Coyotero Apaches, the woman wearing the hair in coil to denote a virgin or an unmarried person, while the coil is absent in the case of a married woman."


By the Mokis, maidenhood is indicated by wearing the hair as a disk on each side of the head. (Mallery, 231-32.) Similar usages on other continents might be cited.

Besides these arbitrary modifications of the skull and the teeth, and the divers arrangements of the hair, there are various other ways in which the lower races indicate tribal connection, rank, or other conditions. Writing about negroes Burton says _(Abeok.,_ I., 106), that lines, welts, and all sorts of skin patterns are used, partly for superstitious reasons, partly to mark the different tribes and families. "A volume would not suffice to explain all the marks in detail." Of the Dahomans, Forbes says (I., 28), "that _according to rank and wealth_ anklets and armlets of all metals, and necklaces of glass, coral, and Popae beads, are worn by both sexes." Livingstone relates _(Mis. Trav_., 276) that the copper rings worn on their ankles by the chiefs of Londa were so large and heavy that they seriously inconvenienced them in walking. That this custom was entirely an outcome of vanity and emulation, and not a manifestation of the esthetic sense, is made clear by the further observations of Livingstone. Men who could not afford so many of these copper rings would still, he found, strut along as if they had them. "That is the way," he was informed, "in which they show off their lordship in these parts." Among the Mojave Indians "nose-jewels designate a man of wealth and rank," and elaborate headdresses of feathers are the insignia of the chiefs[93]. Champlain says that among the Iroquois those who wore three large plumes were chiefs. In Thurn says that each of the Guiana tribes makes its feather head-dresses of special colors; and Martins has the following regarding the Brazilian Indians: "Commonly all the members of a tribe, or a horde, or a family, agree to wear certain ornaments or signs as characteristic marks." Among these are various ornaments of feathers on the head, pieces of wood, stones, or shells, in the ears, the nose, and lips, and especially tattoo marks.


[FOOTNOTE 93: _Explor. and Surv. Mississippi River to Pacific Ocean_. Senate Reports, Washington, 1856, III., 33.]

 

VAIN DESIRE TO ATTRACT ATTENTION

Thus we see that an immense number of mutilations of the body and alleged "decorations" of it are not intended by these races as things of beauty, but have special meanings or uses in connection with protection, war, superstition, mourning, or the desire to mark distinctions between the tribes, or degrees of rank within one tribe or horde. Usually the "ornamentations" are prescribed for all members of a tribe of the same sex, and their acceptance is rigidly enforced. At the same time there is scope for variety in the form of deviations or exaggerations, and these are resorted to by ambitious individuals to attract attention to their important selves, and thus to gratify vanity, which, in the realm of fashion, is a thing entirely apart from--and usually antagonistic to--the sense of beauty[94]. At Australian dances various colors are used with the object of attracting attention. Especially fantastic are their "decorations" at the corroborees, when the bodies of the men are painted with white streaks that make them look like skeletons. Bulmer believed that their object was to "make themselves as terrible as possible to the beholders and not beautiful or attractive," while Grosse thinks that as these dances usually take place by moonlight, the object of the stripes is to make the dancers more conspicuous--two explanations which are not inconsistent with each other.


[FOOTNOTE 94: See the pages on the "Fashion Fetish" in my _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_.]


Fry relates[95] that the Khonds adorn their hair till they may be seen "intoxicated with vanity on its due decoration." Hearne (306) saw Indians who had a single lock of hair that "when let down would trail on the ground as they walked." Anderson expresses himself with scientific precision when he writes that in Fiji the men "who like to _attract the attention_ of the opposite sex, don their best plumage." The attention may be attracted by anything that is conspicuous, entirely apart from the question whether it be regarded as a thing of beauty or not. Bourne makes the very suggestive statement that in Patagonia the beautiful plumage of the ostrich was not appreciated, but allowed to blow all over the country, while the natives adorned themselves with beads and cheap brass and copper trinkets. We may therefore assume that in those cases where feathers are used for "adornment" it is not because their beauty is appreciated but because custom has given them a special significance. In many cases they indicate that the wearer is a person of rank--chief or medicine man--as we saw in the preceding pages. We also saw that special marks in feathers among Dakotas indicated that the wearer had taken a human life, which, more than anything else, excites the admiration of savage women; so that what fascinates them in such a case is not the feather itself but the deed it stands for. Panlitzschke informs us (_E.N.O.Afr.,_ chap. ii.), that among the African Somali and Gallas every man who had killed someone, boastfully wore an ostrich feather on his head to call attention to his deed. The Danakil wore these feathers for the same purpose, adding ivory rods in their ear-lobes and fastening a bunch of white horsehair to their shield. A strip of red silk round the forehead served the same purpose. Lumholtz, describing a festival dance in Australia (237), says that some of the men hold in their mouths tufts of talegalla feathers "for the purpose of giving themselves a savage look." By some Australians bunches of hawk's or eagle's feathers are worn "either when fighting or dancing, and also used as a fan" (Brough Smyth, I., 281-282), which suggests the thought that the fantastic head-dresses of feathers, etc., often seen in warm countries, may be worn as protection against the sun[96].


[FOOTNOTE 95: _Jour. Roy. As. Soc_., 1860, 13.]

[FOOTNOTE 96: Feathers also serve various other useful purposes to Australians. An apron of emu feathers distinguishes females who are not yet matrons. (Smyth, I., xl.) Howitt says that in Central Australia messengers sent to avenge a death are painted yellow and wear feathers on their head and in the girdle at the spine. (Mallery, 1888-89, 483.)]


I doubt, too, whether the lower races are able to appreciate flowers esthetically as we do, apart from their fragrance, which endears them to some barbarians of the higher grades. Concerning Australian women we find it recorded by Brough Smyth (I., 270) that they seem to have no love of flowers, and do not use them to adorn their persons. A New Zealander explained his indifference to flowers by declaring that they were "not good to eat."[97] Other Polynesians were much given to wearing flowers on the head and body; but whether this was for _esthetic_ reasons seems to me doubtful on account of the revelations made by various missionaries and others. In Ellis, _e.g._ (_P.R._, I., 114), we read that in Tahiti the use of flowers in the hair, and fragrant oil, has been in a great degree discontinued, "partly from the connection of these ornaments with the evil practices to which they were formerly addicted."


[FOOTNOTE 97: Related by Dieffenbach. Heriot even declares of the northern Indians that "they assert that they find no odor agreeable but that of food."]

 

OBJECTS OF TATTOOING

So far tattooing has been mentioned only incidentally; but as it is one of the most widely prevalent methods of primitive personal "decoration" a few pages must be devoted to it in order to ascertain whether it is true that it is one of those ornamentations which, as Darwin would have us believe, help to determine the marriages of mankind, or, as Westermarck puts it, "men and women began to... tattoo themselves chiefly in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex--that they might court successfully, or be courted." We shall find that, on the contrary, tattooing has had from the earliest recorded times more than a dozen practical purposes, and that its use as a stimulant of the passion of the opposite sex probably never occurred to a savage until it was suggested to him by a philosophizing visitor.

Twenty-four centuries ago Herodotus not only noted that the Thracians had punctures on their skins, but indicated the reason for them: they are, he said, "a mark of nobility: to be without them is a testimony of mean descent."[98] This use of skin disfigurements prevails among the lower races to the present day, and it is only one of many utilitarian and non-esthetic functions subserved by them. In his beautifully illustrated volume on Maori tattooing, Major-General Robley writes:


"Native tradition has it that their first settlers used to mark their faces for battle with charcoal, and that the lines on the face thus made were the beginnings of the tattoo. To save the trouble of this constantly painting their warlike decorations on the face, the lines were made permanent. Hence arose the practice of carving the face and the body with dyed incisions. The Rev. Mr. Taylor ... assumes that the chiefs being of a lighter race, and having to fight side by side with slaves of darker hues, darkened their faces in order to appear of the same race."


[FOOTNOTE 98: For other references to ancient nations, see Joest in _Zeitschr. fuer Ethnologie._ 1888, 415.]

 

TATTOOING ON PACIFIC ISLANDS

When Captain Cook visited New Zealand (1769) he was much interested in the tattooing of the Maoris, and noted that each tribe seemed to have a different custom in regard to it; thus calling attention to one of its main functions as a means to distinguish the tribes from each other. He described the different patterns on divers parts of the body used by various tribes, and made the further important observation that "by adding to the tattooing they grow old and honorable at the same time." The old French navigator d'Urville found in the Maori tattooing an analogy to European heraldry, with this difference: that whereas the coat-of-arms attests the merits of ancestors, the Maori moko illustrates the merits of the persons decorated with it. It makes them, as Robley wittily says, "men of mark." One chief explained that a certain mark just over his nose was his name; it served the purposes of a seal in signing documents. It has been suggested that the body of a warrior may have been tattooed for the sake of identification in case the head was separated from it; for the Maoris carried on a regular trade in heads. Rutherford, who was held for a long time as a captive, said that only the great ones of the tribe were allowed to decorate the forehead, upper lip, and chin. Naturally such marks were "a source of pride" (a sign of rank), and "the chiefs were very pleased to show the tattooing on their bodies." To have an untattooed face was to be "a poor nobody." Ellis (_P.R._, III., 263) puts the matter graphically by saying the New Zealander's tattooing answers the purpose of the particular stripe or color of the Highlander's plaid, marking the clan or tribe to which they belong, and is also said to be employed as "a means of enabling them to distinguish their enemies in battle."

In his great work on Borneo (II., 83), Roth cites Brooke Low, who said that tattooing was a custom of recent introduction: "I have seen a few women with small patterns on their breasts, but they were the exception to the rule and were not regarded with favor." Burns says that the Kayan men do not tattoo, but


"many of the higher classes have small figures
of stars, beasts, or birds on various parts of
their body, chiefly the arms, distinctive of rank.
The highest mark is that of having the back of
the hands colored or tattooed, which is only
conferred on the brave in battle."


St. John says that "a man is supposed to tattoo one finger only, if he has been present when an enemy has been killed, but tattoos hand and fingers if he has taken an enemy's head." Among the Ida'an a man makes a mark on his arm for each enemy slain. One man was seen with thirty-seven such stripes on the arm. A successful head-hunter is also allowed to "decorate" his ears with the canine teeth of a Bornean leopard. "In some cases tatu marks appear to be used as a means of communicating a fact," writes Roth (II., 291). Among the Kayan it indicates rank. Slaughter of an enemy, or mere murder of a slave, are other reasons for tattooing. "A Murut, having run away from the enemy, was tatued on his back. So that we may justly conclude that tatuing among the natives of Borneo is one method of writing." Among the Dusun the men that took heads generally had a tattoo mark for each one on the arm, and were looked upon as very brave, though their victim might have been only a woman or a child (159).

In the fifth volume of Waitz-Gerland's _Anthropologie_ (Pt. II., 64-67), a number of authors are cited testifying that in the Micronesian Archipelago the natives of each island had special kinds of tattoo marks on different parts of the body, to distinguish them from others. These marks were named after the islands. The Micronesians themselves attached also a religious significance to these marks. The natives of Tobi believed that their island would be destroyed if the English visitors who came among them were not at once tattooed. Only those completely marked could enter the temple. The men were more tattooed than the women, who were regarded as inferiors.

In the sixth volume of Waitz-Gerland is gathered a large mass of evidence, all of which shows that on the Polynesian islands, too, tattooing was indulged in, not for aesthetic and amorous but for religious and practical reasons. In Tonga it was a mark of rank, not permitted to common people or to slaves. Not to be tattooed was considered improper. In the Marquesas the older and more distinguished a man, the more he was tattooed. Married women were distinguished by having marks on the right hand and left foot. In some cases tattoo marks were used as signs to call to mind certain battles or festivals. A woman in Ponape had marks for all her successive husbands made on her arm--everything and anything, in fact, except the purpose of decorating for the sake of attracting the other sex. Gerland (33-40) makes out a very strong case for the religions origin of tattooing, which he aptly compares to our confirmation.

In Samoa the principal motive of tattooing seems to have been licentiousness. It was prohibited by the chiefs on account of the obscene practices always connected with it, and there is a legend of the incestuous designs of two divine brothers on their sister which was successful.

"Tattooing thus originated among the gods and was
first practised by the children of Taaroa, their
principal deity. In imitation of their example,
and for the accomplishment of the same purpose,
it was practised among men." (Ellis, _P.R._, I., 262.)

 

TATTOOING IN AMERICA

On the American continent we find tattooing practised from north to south, from east to west, for the most diverse reasons, among which the desire to facilitate courtship is never even hinted at. The Eskimos, about the age of puberty, apply paint and tattooing to their faces, cut holes and insert plugs or labrets. The object of these disfigurements is indicated by Bancroft (I., 48): "Different tribes, and different ranks of the same tribe, have each their peculiar form of tattooing." Moreover, "these operations are supposed to possess some significance other than that of mere ornament. Upon the occasion of piercing the lip, for instance, a religious feast is given." John Murdoch relates (Mallery, 396) that the wife of an Eskimo chief had "a little mark tattooed in each corner of her mouth, which she said were 'whale marks,' indicating that she was the wife of a successful whaleman." Of the Kadiaks Bancroft says: "The more the female chin is riddled with holes, the greater the respectability." Among the Chippewayan Indians Mackenzie found (85) that both sexes had "blue or black bars, or from one to four straight lines, on their cheeks or foreheads to distinguish the tribe to which they belong." Swan writes (Mallery, 1882-83, 67) that


"the tattoo marks of the Haidas are heraldic designs
or the family totem, or crests of the wearers, and
are similar to the carvings depicted in the pillars
and monuments around the homes of the chiefs."


A Haida Indian remarked to Swan: "If you were tattooed with the design of a swan, the Indians would know your family name." It is at festivals and masquerade performances, says the same writer, that "the tatoo marks show with the best effect, and the rank and family connection [are] known by the variety of design," Lafitan reports (II., 43) regarding the Iroquois and Algonquins that the designs which they have tattooed on their faces and bodies are employed as hieroglyphics, writing, and records, to indicate victories, etc. The designs tattooed on an Indian's face or body distinguish him, he adds, as we do a family by its armorial bearings.


"In James's Long it is reported that the Omahas
are often neatly tattooed.... The daughters of
chiefs and those of wealthy Indians generally
are denoted by a small round spot tattooed on
the forehead."


(Mallery, 1888-89, 395.) Bossu says regarding the practice of tattooing by the Osages (in 1756): "It is a kind of knighthood to which they are only entitled by great actions." Blue marks tattooed upon the chin of a Mojave woman indicate that she is married. The Serrano Indians near Los Angeles had, as late as 1843, a custom of having special tattoo marks on themselves which were also made on trees to indicate the corner boundaries of patches of land. (Mallery, 1882-83, 64, 182.) In his book on the California Indians, Powers declares (109) that in the Mattoal tribe the men tattoo themselves; in the others the women alone tattoo. The theory that the women are thus marked in order that the men may be able to recognize them and redeem them from captivity seems plausible for the reasons that these Indians are rent into a great number of divisions and that "the squaws almost never attempt any ornamental tattooing, but adhere closely to the plain regulation mark of the tribe." The Hupa Indians have discovered another practical use for body-marks. Nearly every man has ten lines tattooed across the inside of his left arm, and these lines serve as a measurement of shell-money.

The same non-esthetic motives for tattooing prevail in South and Central America. In Agassiz's book on Brazil we read concerning the Mundurucu Indians:


"Major Coutinho tells us that the tattooing _has
nothing to do with individual taste_, but that the
pattern is appointed for both sexes, and is
_invariable throughout the tribe_. It is connected
with their caste, the limits of which are very
precise, and with their religion."


The tattooing "is also an indication of aristocracy; a man who neglected this distinction would not be respected in his tribe." Concerning the Indians of Guiana we read in Im Thurn that they have small distinctive tribal marks tattooed at the corners of the mouth or on the arms. Nearly all have "indelibly excised lines" which are


"scars originally made for _surgical_, not
ornamental purposes." "Some women specially
affect certain little figures, like Chinese
characters, which looks as if some meaning
were attached to them, but which the Indians are
either unable or unwilling to explain."


In Nicaragua, as Squire informs us (III., 341), the natives tattooed themselves to designate by special marks the tribes to which they belonged; and as regards Yucatan, Landa writes (Sec. XXI.) that as tattooing was accompanied by much pain, they thought themselves the more gallant and strong the more they indulged in it; and that those who omitted it were sneered at--which gives us still another motive for tattooing--the fear of being despised and ridiculed for not being in fashion.

 

TATTOOING IN JAPAN

Many more similar details might be given regarding the races of various parts of the world, but the limits of space forbid. But I cannot resist the temptation to add a citation from Professor Chamberlain's article on tattooing in his _Things Japanese_, because it admirably illustrates the diversity of the motives that led to the practice. A Chinese trader, "early in the Christian era," Chamberlain tells us, "wrote that the men all tattoo their faces and ornament their bodies with designs, differences of rank being indicated by the position and size of the patterns." "But from the dawn of regular history," Chamberlain adds,


"far down into the middle ages, tattooing seems to have been confined to criminals. It was used as branding was formerly in Europe, whence probably the contempt still felt for tattooing by the Japanese upper classes. From condemned desperadoes to bravoes at large is but a step. The swashbucklers of feudal times took to tattooing, apparently because some blood and thunder scene of adventure, engraven on their chest and limbs, helped to give them a terrific air when stripped for any reason of their clothes. Other classes whose avocations led them to baring their bodies in public followed--the carpenters, for instance, and running grooms; and the tradition remained of ornamenting almost the entire body and limbs with a hunting, theatrical, or other showy scene."


Shortly after 1808 "the government made tattooing a penal offence."

It will be noticed that in this account the fantastic notion that the custom was ever indulged in for the purpose of beautifying the body in order to attract the other sex is, as in all the other citations I have made, not even hinted at. The same is true in the summary made by Mallery of the seventeen purposes of tattooing he found. No. 13 is, indeed, "to charm the other sex;" but it is "magically," which is a very different thing from esthetically. I append the summary:


"1, to distinguish between free and slave, without reference to the tribe of the latter; 2, to distinguish between a high and low status in the same tribe; 3, as a certificate of bravery exhibited by supporting the ordeal of pain; 4, as marks of personal prowess, particularly; 5, as a record of achievements in war; 6, to show religious symbols; 7, as a therapeutic remedy for disease; 8, as a prophylactic against disease; 9, as a brand of disgrace; 10, as a token of a woman's marriage, or, sometimes, 11, of her marriageable condition; 12, identification of the person, not as a tribesman, but as an individual; 13, to charm the other sex magically; 14, to inspire fear in the enemy; 15, to magically render the skin impenetrable to weakness; 16, to bring good fortune, and, 17, as the device of a secret society."

 

SCARIFICATION.

Dark races, like the Africans and Australians, do not practise tattooing, because the marks would not show conspicuously on their black skins. They therefore resort to the process of raising scars by cutting the skin with flint or a shell and then rubbing in earth, or the juice of certain plants, etc. The result is a permanent scar, and these scars are arranged by the different tribes in different patterns, on divers parts of the body. In Queensland the lines, according to Lumholtz,


"always denote a certain order of rank, and here it depends upon age. Boys under a certain age are not decorated; but in time they receive a few cross-stripes upon their chests and stomachs. The number of stripes is gradually increased, and when the subjects have grown up, a half-moon-shaped line is cut around each nipple."


The necessity for such distinctive marks on the body is particularly great among the Australians, because they are subdivided in the most complicated ways and have an elaborate code of sexual permissions and prohibitions. Therefore, as Frazer suggests,


"a chief object of these initiation ceremonies was to teach the youths with whom they might or might not have connection, and to put them in possession of a visible language, ... by means of which they might be able to communicate their totems to, and to ascertain the totems of, strangers whose language they did not understand."

In Africa, too, as we have seen, the scars are used as tribal names, and for other practical purposes. Holub found that the Koranna of Central South Africa has three cuts on the chest. They confessed to him that they indicated a kind of free-masonry, insuring their being well received by Koranna everywhere. On the Congo, scarifications are made on the back for therapeutic reasons, and on the face as tribal marks. (Mallery, 417; H. Ward, 136.) Bechuana priests make long scars on a warrior's thigh to indicate that he has slain an enemy in battle. (Lichtenstein, II., 331.) According to d'Albertis the people of New Guinea use some scars as a sign that they have travelled (I., 213). And so on, _ad infinitum_.

 

ALLEGED TESTIMONY OF NATIVES

In face of this imposing array of facts revealing the non-esthetic character of primitive personal "decorations," what have the advocates of the sexual selection theory to say? Taking Westermarck as their most erudite and persuasive spokesman, we find him placing his reliance on four things: (1) the practical ignoring of the vast multitude of facts contradicting his theory; (2) the alleged testimony of a few savages; (3) the testimony of some of their visitors; (4) the alleged fact that "the desire for self-decoration is strongest at the beginning of the age of puberty," the customs of ornamenting, mutilating, painting, and tattooing being "practised most zealously at that period of life." Concerning (1) nothing more need be said, as the large number of decisive facts I have collected exposes and neutralizes that stratagem. The other three arguments must be briefly considered.

A native of Lukunor being asked by Mertens what was the meaning of tattooing, answered: "It has the same object as your clothes; that is, to please the women," In reply to the question why he wore his ornaments, an Australian answered Bulmer: "In order to look well and make himself agreeable to the women," (Brough Smyth, I., 275.) To one who has studied savages not only anthropologically but psychologically, these stories have an obvious cock-and-bull aspect. A native of the Caroline Islands would have been as incapable of originating that philosophical comparison between the object of our clothes and of his tattooing as he would have been of writing Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_. Human beings in his stage of evolution never consciously reflect on the reasons of things, and considerations of comparative psychology or esthetics are as much beyond his mental powers as problems in algebra or trigonometry. That such a sailor's yarn could be accepted seriously in an anthropologic treatise shows that anthropology is still in its cradle. The same is true of that Australian's alleged answer. The Australian is unequal to the mental effort of counting up to ten, and, like other savages, is easily fatigued by the simplest questions[99]. It is quite likely that Bulmer asked that native whether he ornamented himself "in order to look well and make himself agreeable to the women," and that the native answered "yes" merely to gratify him or to get rid of the troublesome question.


[FOOTNOTE 99: See, for instance, Spix and Martius, 384.]


The books of missionaries are full of such cases, and no end of confusion has been created in science by such false "facts." The answer given by that native is, moreover, utterly opposed to all the well-attested details I have given in the preceding pages regarding the real motives of Australians in "decorating" themselves; and to those facts I may now add this crushing testimony from Brough Smyth (_I.,_ 270):


"The proper arrangement of their apparel, the ornamentation of their persons by painting, and attention to deportment, were important only when death struck down a warrior, when war was made, and when they assembled for a corroboree. In ordinary life little attention was given to the ornamenting of the person."

 

MISLEADING TESTIMONY OF VISITORS

"The Australians throughout the continent scar their persons, as Mr. Curr assures us, only as a means of decoration," writes Westermarck, and in the pages preceding and following he cites other evidence of the same sort, such as Carver's assertion that the Naudowessies paint their faces red and black, "which they esteem as greatly ornamental;" Tuckey's assumption that the natives of the Congo file their teeth and raise scars on the skin for purposes of ornament and principally "with the idea of rendering themselves agreeable to the women;" Kiedel's assertion, that in the Tenimber group the lads decorate their locks with leaves, flowers, and feathers, "only in order to please the women;" Taylor's statement that in New Zealand it was the great ambition of the young to have fine tattooed faces, "both to render themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicuous in war," etc.

Beginning with Curr, it must be conceded that he is one of the leading authorities on Australia, the author of a four-volume treatise on that country and its natives. Yet his testimony on the point in question happens to be as worthless as that of the most hasty globe-trotter, partly because he had evidently paid little attention to it, and partly also, I fancy, because of the fatal tendency of men of science to blunder as soon as they touch the domain of esthetics. What he really wrote (II., 275) is that Chatfield had informed him that scars were made by the natives on the right thigh "for the purpose of denoting the particular class to which they belong." This Curr doubts, "without further evidence," because it would conflict with the custom prevalent throughout the continent, "as far as known, which is to make these marks for ornament only." Now this is a pure assumption of Curr's, based on a preconceived notion, and contradicted by the specific evidence of a number of explorers who, as even Grosse is obliged to admit (75), "unanimously account for a part at least of the scars as tribal marks."[100]


[FOOTNOTE 100: See _e.g_. Eyre, II. 333-335; Brough Smith, L, XLI, 68, 295, II., 313; Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, 140; _Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S.W_., 1882, 201; and the old authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 740; cf Frazer, 29. If Westermarck had been more anxious to ascertain the truth than to prove a theory, would he have found it necessary to ignore all this evidence, neglecting to refer even to Chatfield in speaking of Curr?]


If so eminent an authority as Curr can err so grievously, it is obvious that the testimony of other writers and casual observers must be accepted with extreme caution. Europeans and Americans are so accustomed to regard personal decorations as attempts to beautify the appearance that when they see them in savages there is a natural disposition to attribute them to the same motive. They do not realize that they are dealing with a most subtle psychological question. The chief source of confusion lies in their failure to distinguish between what is admired as a thing of beauty as such and what pleases them for other reasons. As Professor Sully has pointed out in his _Handbook of Psychology_ :


"At the beginning of life there is no clear separation of what is beautiful from what is simply pleasing to the individual. As in the history of the race, so in that of the individual, the sense of beauty slowly extricates itself from pleasurable consciousness in general, and differentiates itself from the sense of what _is personally useful and agreeable_."


Bearing in mind this very important distinction between what is beautiful and what is merely pleasing because of its being useful and agreeable, we see at once that the words "decorative," "ornamental," "attractive," "handsome," etc., are constantly used by writers on this subject in a misleading and question-begging way. We can hardly blame a man like Barrington for writing that among the natives of Botany Bay "scars are, by both sexes, deemed highly ornamental"; but a scientific author who quotes such a sentence ought to be aware that the evidence did not justify Barrington in using any word but _pleasing_ in place of "ornamental," because the latter implies and takes for granted the esthetic sense, the existence of which is the very thing to be proved. This remark applies generally to the evidence of this kind which Westermarck has so industriously collected, and which, on account of this undiscriminating, question-begging character, is entirely worthless. In all these cases the fact is overlooked that the "decorations" of one sex may be agreeable to the other for reasons that have nothing to do with the sense of beauty.

Briefly summed up, Westermarck's theory is that in painting, tattooing, and otherwise decorating his person, primitive man's original and conscious object was to beautify himself for the sake of gaining an advantage in courtship; whereas my theory is that all these decorations originally subserved useful purposes alone, and that even where they subsequently may have served in some instances as means to please the women, this was not as things of beauty but indirectly and unintentionally through their association with rank, wealth, distinction in war, prowess, and manly qualities in general. When Dobrizhoffer says (II., 12) that the Abipones, "more ambitious to be dreaded by their enemies than to be loved, to terrify than attract beholders, think the more they are scarred and sunburnt, the _handsomer_ they are," he illustrates glaringly the slovenly and question-begging use of terms to which I have just referred; for, as his own reference to being loved and to attracting beholders shows, he does not use the word "handsome" in an esthetic sense, but as a synonyme for what is pleasing or worthy of approval on other grounds. If the scars of these Indians do please the women it is not because they are considered beautiful, but because they are tokens of martial prowess. To a savage woman nothing is so useful as manly valor, and therefore nothing so agreeable as the signs of it. In that respect the average woman's nature has not changed. The German high-school girl admires the scars in the face of a "corps-student," not, certainly, because she considers them beautiful, but because they stand for a daredevil, masculine spirit which pleases her.

When the Rev. R. Taylor wrote (321) that among the New Zealanders "to have fine tattooed faces was the great ambition of the young, both to render themselves attractive to the ladies and conspicuous in war," he would have shown himself a better philosopher if he had written that by making themselves conspicuous in war with their tattooing they also make themselves attractive to the "ladies." That the sense of beauty is not concerned here becomes obvious when we include Robley's testimony (28, 15) that a Maori chief's great object was to excite fear among enemies, for which purpose in the older days he "rendered his countenance as terrible as possible with charcoal and red ochre"; while in more recent times,


"not only to become more terrible in war, when
fighting was carried on at close quarters, but
to appear more distinguished and attractive to
the opposite sex, must certainly be included"


among the objects of tattooing. It is hardly necessary to point out that if we accept the sexual selection theory this expert testimony lands us in insuperable difficulty; for it is clearly impossible that on the same island, and in the same race, the painting and tattooing of the face should have the effect of terrifying the men and of appearing beautiful to the women. But if we discard the beauty theory and follow my suggestion, we have no difficulty whatever. Then we may grant that the facial daubs or skin mutilations may seem terrible or hideous to an enemy and yet please the women, because the women do not regard them as things of beauty, but as distinguishing marks of valiant warriors.

By way of illustrating his maxim that "in every country, in every race, beauty stimulates passion," Westermarck cites (257) part of a sentence by Lumholtz (213) to the effect that Australian women take much notice of a man's face, particularly of the part about the eyes. He does not cite the rest of the sentence--"and they like to see a frank and open, _or perhaps, more correctly, a wild expression of countenance,_" which makes it clear to the reader that what stimulates the passion of these women is not the lines of beauty in the [never-washed] faces of these men, but the unbeautiful aspect peculiar to a wild hunter, ferocious warrior, and intrepid defender of his home. Their admiration, in other words, is not esthetic, but instinctively utilitarian.

 

"DECORATION" AT THE AGE OF PUBERTY

We come now to the principal argument of Westermarck--the alleged fact that in all parts of the world the desire for self-decoration is strongest at the beginning of the age of puberty, the customs of ornamenting, painting, mutilating, and tattooing the person being practised most zealously at that period. This argument is as futile as the others, for several reasons. In the first place, it is not true that in all parts of the world self-decoration is practised most zealously at that period. More frequently, perhaps, it is begun some years earlier, before any idea of courtship can have entered the heads of these children. The Congo cannibals begin the process of scarring the face at the age of four.[101] Dyak girls are tattooed at five.[102] The Botocudos begin the mutilating of children's lips at the age of seven.[103] Eskimo girls are tattooed in their eighth year,[104] and on the Andaman Islands few children are allowed to pass their eighth year without scarification.[105] The Damaras chip the teeth with a flint "when the children are young."[106] The female Oraons are "all tattooed in childhood."[107] The Tahitians began tattooing at eight.[108] The Chukchis of Siberia tattoo girls at nine;[109] and so on in various parts of the world. In the second place, of the divers personal "decorations" indulged in by the lower races it is only those that are intended to be of a permanent character (tattooing, scarring, mutilating) that are made chiefly, though by no means exclusively[110] about or before the age of puberty.

[FOOTNOTE 101: H. Ward, 136.]

[FOOTNOTE 102: Roth, II, 83.]

[FOOTNOTE 103: Martius, I., 321.]

[FOOTNOTE 104: Boas, _Bur. Ethnol._, 1884-88, 561.]

[FOOTNOTE 105: Mann, _Journ. Anthr. Soc._, XII, 333.]

[FOOTNOTE 106: Galton, 148.]

[FOOTNOTE 107: Dalton, 251.]

[FOOTNOTE 108: Waitz-Gerland, VI., 30.]

[FOOTNOTE 109: Mallery, 1888-89, 414.]

[FOOTNOTE 110: To take three cases in place of many Carl Bock relates that among some Borneans tattooing is one of the privileges of matrimony and is _not allowed to unmarried girls_. D'Urville describes the tattooing of the wife of chief Tuao, who seemed to glory in the "_new honor_ his wife was securing by these decorations." (Robley, 41.) Among the Papuans of New Guinea tattooing the chest of females denotes that they _are married_. (Mallery, 411.)]


All the other methods of "decorating" described in the preceding pages as being connected with the rites of war, superstition, mourning, etc., are practised throughout life; and that they constitute by far the greater proportion of "ornamentations" is evidenced by the citation I have already made, from Brough Smyth, that the ornamentation of their persons was considered important by Australians only in connection with such ceremonies, and that "in ordinary life little attention was given to the ornamenting of the person"; to which much similar testimony might be added regarding other races; such as Kane's (184), regarding the Chinooks: "Painting the face is not much practised among them, except on extraordinary occasions, such as the death of a relative, some solemn feast, or going on a war-party;" or Morgan's (263), that the feather and war dances were "the chief occasions" when the Iroquois warrior "was desirous to appear in his best attire," etc.

Again, even if it were true that "the desire for self-decoration is strongest at the beginning of the age of puberty," it does not by any means follow that this must be due to the desire to make one's self attractive to the opposite sex. Whatever their desire may be, the children have no choice in the matter. As Curr remarks regarding Australians (11., 51),


"The male must commonly submit, _without hope of escape_, to have one or more of his teeth knocked out, to have the septum of his nose pierced, to have certain painful cuttings made in his skin, ...before he is allowed the rights of manhood."


There are, however, plenty of reasons why he should desire to be initiated. What Turner writes regarding the Samoans has a general application:


"Until a young man was tattooed, he was considered in his minority. He could not think of marriage, and he was constantly exposed to taunts and ridicule, as being poor and of low birth, and as having no right to speak in the society of men. But as soon as he was tattooed he passed into his majority, and considered himself entitled to the respect and privileges of mature years. When a youth, therefore, reached the age of sixteen, he and his friends were all anxiety that he should be tattooed."[111]


[FOOTNOTE 111: It is significant that Westermarck though he refers to page 90 of Turner, ignores the passage I have just cited, though it occurs on the same page.]


No one can read the accounts of the initiatory ceremonies of Australian and Indian boys (convenient summaries of which may be found in the sixth volume of Waitz-Gerland and in Southey's _Brazil_ III., 387-88) without becoming convinced that with them, as with the Samoans, etc., there was no thought of women or courtship. Indeed the very idea of such a thing involves an absurdity, for, since all the boys in each tribe were tattooed alike, what advantage could their marks have secured them? If all men were equally rich, would any woman ever marry for money? Westermarck accepts seriously the assertion of one writer that the reason why Australians knock out some of the teeth of the boys at puberty is because they know "that otherwise they would run the risk of being refused on account of ugliness." Now, apart from the childish supposition that Australian women could allow their amorous inclinations to depend on the presence or absence of two front teeth, this assertion involves the assumption that these females can exercise the liberty of choice in the selection of a mate--an assumption which is contrary to the truth, since all the authorities on Australia agree on at least one point, which is that women have absolutely no choice in the selection of a husband, but have to submit in all cases to the dispositions made by their male relatives. These Australian women, moreover, perversely act in a manner utterly inconsistent with the theory of sexual selection. Since they do not choose, but are chosen, one would naturally expect, in accordance with that theory, that they would decorate themselves in order to "stimulate the passion" of the _desirable_ men; but they do no such thing.

While the men are apt to dress their hair carefully, the women "let their black locks grow as irregular and tangled as do the Fuegians" (Grosse, 87); and Buhner says they "did little to improve their appearance;" while such ornaments as they had "were not much regarded by the men." (Brough Smyth, I, 275.)[112]


[FOOTNOTE 112: Australia is by no means the only country where the women are less decorated than the men. Various explanations have been offered, but none of them covers all the facts. The real reason becomes obvious if my view is accepted that the alleged ornaments of savages are not esthetic, but practical or utilitarian. The women are usually allowed to share such things as badges of mourning, amulets, and various devices that attract attention to wealth or rank; but the religious rites, and the manifold decorations associated with military life--the chief occupation of these peoples--they are not allowed to share, and these, with the tribal marks, furnish, as we have seen, the occasion for the most diverse and persistent "decorative" practices.]

 

"DECORATION" AS A TEST OF COURAGE

One of the most important reasons why young savages approaching puberty are eager to receive their "decorations" remains to be considered. Tattooing, scarring, and mutilating are usually very painful processes. Now, as all who are familiar with the life of savages know, there is nothing they admire so much as courage in enduring torture of any kind. By showing fortitude in bearing the pain connected with tattooing, etc., these young folks are thus able to win admiration, gratify their vanity, and show that they are worthy to be received in the ranks of adults. The Sea Dyaks are proud of their scars, writes Brooke Low.


"The women often prove the courage and endurance of the youngsters by placing a lighted ball of tinder in the arm and letting it burn into the skin. The marks ... are much valued by the young men as so many proofs of their power of endurance."


(Roth, II., 80.) Here we have an illustration which explains in the most simple way why scars _please_ both the men and the women, without making necessary the grotesque assumption that either sex admires them as things of beauty. To take another case, equally eloquent: Bossu says of the Osage Indians that they suffer the pain of tattooing with pleasure in order to pass for men of courage. If one of them should have himself marked without having previously distinguished himself in battle, he would be degraded and looked upon as a coward, unworthy of such an honor. (Mallery, 1889-90, 394.)

Grosse is inclined to think (78) that it is in the male only that courage is expected and admired, but he is mistaken, as we may see, _e.g._, in the account given by Dobrizhoffer (II., 21) of the tattooing customs of the Abipones, whom he studied so carefully. The women, he says,


"have their face, breast, and arms covered with
black figures of various shapes, so that they
present the appearance of a Turkish carpet."
"This savage ornament is purchased with blood
and many groans."


The thorns used to puncture the skin are poisonous, and after the operation the girl has her eyes, cheeks, and lips so horribly swelled that she "looks like a Stygian fury." If she groans while undergoing the torture, or shows signs of pain in her face, the old woman who operates on her exclaims, in a rage: "You will die single, be assured. Which of our heroes would think _so cowardly a girl_ worthy to be his wife?" Such courage, Dobrizhoffer explains further, is admired in a girl because it makes her "prepared to bear the pains of parturition in time." In some cases vanity supplies an additional motive why the girls should submit to the painful operation with fortitude; for those of them who "are most pricked and painted you may know to be of high rank."

Here again we see clearly that the tattooing is admired for other than esthetic reasons, and we realize how foolish it is to philosophize about the peculiar "taste" of these Indians in admiring a girl who looks like "a Turkish carpet" or "a Stygian fury." If they had even the rudiments of a sense of beauty they would not indulge in such disgusting disfigurements.

 

MUTILATION, FASHION, AND EMULATION

Grosse declares that "we know definitely at least, that tattooing is regarded by the Eskimo as an embellishment." He bases this inference on Cranz's assertion that Eskimo mothers tattoo their daughters in early youth "for fear that otherwise they would not get a husband." Had Grosse allowed his imagination to paint a particular instance, he would have seen how grotesque his inference is. A favorite way among the Eskimo of securing a bride is, we are told, to drag her from her tent by the hair. This young woman, moreover, has never washed her face, nor does any man object to her filth. Yet we are asked to believe that an Eskimo could be so enamoured of the _beauty_ of a few simple lines tattooed on a girl's dirty face that he would refuse to marry her unless she had them! Like other champions of the sexual selection theory, Grosse searches in the clouds for a comically impossible motive when the real reason lies right before his eyes. That reason is fashion. The tattoo marks are tribal signs (Bancroft, I., 48) which _every_ girl _must_ submit to have in obedience to inexorable custom, unless she is prepared to be an object of scorn and ridicule all her life.

The tyranny of fashion in prescribing disfigurements and mutilations is not confined to savages. The most amazing illustration of it is to be found in China, where the girls of the upper classes are obliged to this day to submit to the most agonizing process of crippling their feet, which finally, as Professor Flower remarks in his book on _Fashion and Deformity_, assume "the appearance of the hoof of some animal rather than a human foot." There is a popular delusion that the Chinese approve of such deformed small feet because they consider them beautiful--a delusion which Westermarck shares (200). Since the Chinese consider small feet "the chief charm of women," it might be supposed, he says, that the women would at least have the pleasure of fascinating men by a "beauty" to acquire which they have to undergo such horrible torture;


"but Dr. Strieker assures us that in China a woman
is considered immodest if she shows her
artificially distorted feet to a man. It is even
improper to speak of a woman's foot, and in
decent pictures this part is always concealed
under the dress."


To explain this apparent anomaly Westermarck assumes that the object of the concealment "is to excite through the unknown!" To such fantastic nonsense does the doctrine of sexual selection lead. In reality there is no reason for supposing that the Chinese consider crippled feet--looking like "the hoof of an animal"--beautiful any more than mutilations of other parts of the body. In all probability the origin of the custom of crippling women's feet must be traced to the jealousy of the men, who devised this procedure as an effective way of preventing their wives from leaving their homes and indulging in amorous intrigues; other practices with the same purpose being common in Oriental countries. In course of time the foot-binding became an inexorable fashion which the foolishly conservative women were more eager to continue than the men. All accounts agree that the anti-foot-binding movement finds its most violent and stubborn opponents in the women themselves. The _Missionary Review_ for July, 1899, contains an article summing up a report of the _Tien Tsu Hui,_ or "Natural Foot Society," which throws a bright light on the whole question and from which I quote as follows:


"The male members of a family may be opposed to the maiming of their female relatives by the senseless custom, but the women will support it. One Chinese even promised his daughter a dollar a day to keep her natural feet, and another, having failed with his older girls, arranged that his youngest should be under his personal supervision night and day. The one natural-footed girl was sought in marriage for the dollars that had been faithfully laid by for her. But at her new home she was so _ridiculed_ by the hundreds who came to see her--and her feet--that she lost her reason. The other girl also became insane as a result of the _persecutions_ which she had to endure."


Thus we see that what keeps up this hideous custom is not the women's desire to arouse the esthetic admiration and amorous passion of the _men_ by a hoof of beauty, but the fear of ridicule and persecution by the other women, slaves of fashion all. These same motives are the source of most of the ugly fashions prevalent even in civilized Europe and America. Theophile Gautier believed that most women had no sense of beauty, but only a sense of fashion; and if explorers and missionaries had borne in mind the fundamental difference between fashion and esthetics, anthropological literature would be the poorer by hundreds of "false facts" and ludicrous inferences.[113]


[FOOTNOTE 113: The advocates of the sexual selection theory might have avoided many grotesque blunders had they possessed a sense of humor to counterbalance and control their erudition. The violent opposition of Madagascar women to King Radama's order that the men should have their hair cut, to which Westermarck refers, surely finds in the proverbial stupid conservatism of barbarous customs a simpler and more rational explanation than in his assumption that this riot illustrated "the important part played by the hair of the head as a stimulant of sexual passion" (to these coarse, masculine women, who had to be speared before they could be quieted). An argument which attributes to unwashed, vermin-covered savages a fanatic zeal for what they consider as beautiful, such as no civilized devotee of beauty would ever dream of, involves its own _reductio ad absurdum_ by proving too much. Westermarck also cites (177) from a book on Brazil the story that if a young maiden of the Tapoyers "be marriageable, and yet not courted by any, the mother paints her with some red color about the eyes," and in accordance with his theory we are soberly expected to accept this red paint about the eyes as an effective "stimulant of sexual passion," in case of a girl whose appearance otherwise did not tempt men to court her! The obvious object of the paint was to indicate that the girl was in the market. In other words, it was part of that language of signs which had such a remarkable development among some of the uncivilized races (see Mallery's admirable treatises on Indian Pictographs, taking up hundreds of pages in two volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington). Belden relates of the Plains Indians that a warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow or blue, and the squaw paints hers red. He even knew squaws, go through the painful operation of reddening the eyeballs, which he interprets as resulting from a desire to fascinate the men; but it is much more likely that it had some special significance in the language of courtship, probably as a mark of courage in enduring pain, than that the inflamed eye itself was considered beautiful. Belden himself further points out that "a red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other, means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment," and on p. 144 he explains that "when a warrior smears his face with lampblack and then draws zigzags with his nails, it is a sign that he desires to be left alone, or is trapping, or melancholy, or in love." I had intended to give a special paragraph to Decorations as Parts of the Language of Signs, but desisted on reflecting that most of the foregoing facts relating to war, mourning, tribal, etc., decorations, really came under that head.]

The ravages of fashion are aggravated by emulation, which has its sources in vanity and envy. This accounts for the extremes to which mutilations and fashions often go among both, civilized and uncivilized races, and of which a startling instance will be described in detail in the next paragraph. Few of our rich women wear their jewels because of their intrinsic beauty. They wear them for the same reason that Polynesian or African belles wear all the beads they can get. In Mariner's book on the Tongans (Chap. XV.) there is an amusing story of a chiefs daughter who was very anxious to go to Europe. Being asked why, she replied that her great desire was to amass a large quantity of beads and then return to Tonga, "because in England beads are so common that no one would admire me for wearing them, and _I should not have the pleasure of being envied."_ Bancroft (I., 128) says of the Kutchin Indians: "_Beads are their wealth,_ used in the place of money, and the rich among them literally load themselves with necklaces and strings of various patterns." Referring to the tin ornaments worn by Dyaks, Carl Bock says he has "counted as many as sixteen rings in a single ear, each of them the size of a dollar"; while of the Ghonds Forsyth tells us (148) that they "deck themselves with an inordinate amount of what they consider ornaments. _Quantity rather than quality is aimed at."_

 

PERSONAL BEAUTY VERSUS PERSONAL DECORATION

Must we then, in view of the vast number of opposing facts advanced so far in this long chapter, assume that savages and barbarians have no esthetic sense at all, not even a germ of it? Not necessarily. I believe that the germ of a sense of visible beauty _may_ exist even among savages as well as the germ of a musical sense; but that it is little more than a childish pleasure in bright and lustrous shells and other objects of various colors, especially red and yellow, everything beyond that being usually found to belong to the region of utility (language of signs, desire to attract attention, etc.) and not to _esthetics_--that is, _the love of beauty for its own sake._ Such a germ of esthetic pleasure we find in our infants _years before they have the faintest conception of what is meant by personal beauty;_ and this brings me to the pith of my argument. Had the facts warranted it, I might have freely conceded that savages decorate themselves for the sake of gaining an advantage in courtship without thereby in the least yielding the main thesis of this chapter, which is that the admiration of personal beauty is not one of the motives which induce a savage to marry a particular girl or man; for most of the "decorations" described in the preceding pages are not elements of _personal_ beauty at all, but are either external appendages to that beauty, or mutilations of it. I have shown by a superabundance of facts that these "decorations" do not serve the purpose of exciting the amorous passion and preference of the opposite sex, except non-esthetically and indirectly, in some cases, through their standing as marks of rank, wealth, distinction in war, etc. I shall now proceed to show, much more briefly, that still less does personal beauty proper serve among the lower races as a stimulant of sexual passion. This we should expect naturally, since in the race as in the child the pleasure in bright baubles must long precede the pleasure in beautiful faces or figures. Every one who has been among Indians or other savages knows that nature produces among them fine figures and sometimes even pretty faces; but these are not appreciated. Galton told Darwin that he saw in one South African tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls, but they were not attractive to the natives. Zoeller saw at least one beautiful negress; Wallace describes the superb figures of some of the Brazilian Indians and the Aru Islanders in the Malay Archipelago (354); and Barrow says that some of the Hottentot girls have beautiful figures when young--every joint and limb well turned. But as we shall see presently, the criterion of personal charm among Hottentots, as among savages in general, is fat, not what we call beauty. Ugliness, whether natural or inflicted by fashion, does not among these races act as a bar to marriage. "Beauty is of no estimation in either sex," we read regarding the Creeks in Schoolcraft (V., 272): "It is strength or agility that recommends the young man to his mistress; and to be a skilful or swift hunter is the highest merit with the woman he may choose for a wife." Belden found that the squaws were valued "only for their strength and ability to work, and no account whatever is taken of their personal beauty," etc., etc. Nor can the fact that savages kill deformed children be taken as an indication of a regard for personal beauty. Such children are put out of the way for the simple reason that they may not become a burden to the family or the tribe.

Advocates of the sexual selection theory make much ado over the fact that in all countries the natives prefer their own peculiar color and features--black, red, or yellow, flat noses, high cheek bones, thick lips, etc.--and dislike what we consider beautiful. But the likes of these races regarding personal appearance have no more to do with a sense of beauty than their dislikes. It is merely a question of habit. They like their own faces because they are used to them, and dislike ours because they are strange. In their aversion to our faces they are actuated by the same motive that makes a European child cry out and run away in terror at sight of a negro--not because he is ugly, for he may be good-looking, but because he is strange.

Far from admiring such beauty as nature may have given them, the lower races exercise an almost diabolical ingenuity in obliterating or mutilating it. Hundreds of their visitors have written of certain tribes that they would not be bad looking if they would only leave nature alone. Not a single feature, from the feet to the eyeballs, has escaped the uglifying process. "Nothing is too absurd or hideous to please them," writes Cameron. The Eskimos afford a striking illustration of the fact that a germ of taste for ornamentation in general is an earlier manifestation of the esthetic faculty than the appreciation of personal beauty; for while displaying considerable skill and ingenuity in the decorations of their clothes, canoes, and weapons, they mutilate their persons in various ways and allow them to be foul and malodorous with the filth of years. One of the most disgusting mutilations on record is that practised by the Indians of British Columbia, who insert a piece of bone in the lower lip, which, gradually enlarged, makes it at last project three inches. Bancroft (I., 98) devotes three pages to the lip mutilation indulged in by the Thlinkeet females. When the operation is completed and the block is withdrawn "the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather, displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle." The lower teeth and gum, says one witness, are left quite naked; another says that the plug "distorts every feature in the lower part of the face"; a third that an old woman, the wife of a chief, had a lip "ornament" so large "that by a peculiar motion of her under-lip she could almost conceal her whole face with it"; and a fourth gives a description of this "abominably revolting spectacle," which is too nauseating to quote.

 

DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM (?)

"Abominably revolting," "hideous," "filthy," "disgusting," "atrocious"--such are usually the words of observers in describing these shocking mutilations. Nevertheless they always apply the word "ornamentation" to them, with the implication that the savages look upon them as beautiful, although all that the observers had a right to say was that they pleased the savages and were approved by fashion. What is worse, the philosophers fell into the pitfall thus dug for them. Darwin thinks that the mutilations indulged in by savages show "how different is the standard of _taste_"; Humboldt (III., 236) reflects on the strange fact that nations "attach the idea of beauty" to whatever configuration nature has given them; and Ploss (I., 48) declares bluntly that there is no such thing as an absolute standard of beauty and that savages have "just as much right" to their ideas on the subject as we have to admire a madonna of Raphael. This view, indeed, is generally held; it is expressed in the old saw, _De gustibus non est disputandum_. Now it is true that it is _unwise_ to dispute about tastes _conversationally_; but scientifically speaking, that old saw has not a sound tooth in it.

If a peasant who has never had an opportunity to cultivate his musical sense insisted that a certain piano was exquisitely in tune and had as beautiful a tone as any other piano, whereas an expert musician declared that it had a shrill tone and was terribly out of tune, would anybody be so foolish as to say that the peasant had as much right to his opinion as the musician? Or if an Irish toper declared that a bottle of Chambertin, over which French epicures smacked their lips, was insipid and not half as fine as the fusel-oil on which he daily got drunk, would not everybody agree that the Irishman was no judge of liquors, and that the reason why he preferred his cheap whiskey to the Burgundy was that his nerves of taste were too coarse to detect the subtle and exquisite bouquet of the French wine? In both these examples we are concerned only with simple questions of sense perception; yet in the matter of personal beauty, which involves not only the senses, but the imagination, the intellect, and the subtlest feelings, we are asked to believe that any savage who has never seen a woman but those of his own race has as much right to his opinion as a Ruskin or a Titian, who have given their whole life to the study of beauty!

If an astronomer--to take another illustration--were told that _de astronomia non est disputandum_, and that the Namaquas, who believe that the moon is made of bacon, or the Brazilian tribes who think that an eclipse consists in an attempt on the part of a monstrous jaguar to swallow the sun--have as much right to their opinion as he has, he would consider the person who advanced such an argument either a wag or a fool. Only a wag or a fool, again, would argue that a Fijian has just as much right as we have to his opinions on medical matters, or on the morality of polygamy, infanticide, and cannibalism. Yet when we come across a dirty, malodorous savage, so stupid that he cannot count ten, who mutilates every part of his body till he has lost nearly all semblance to a human being, we are soberly asked to look upon this as merely a "difference in the standard of esthetic taste," and to admit that the savage has "as much right to his taste," as we have. The more I think of it, the more I am amazed at this unjust and idiotic discrimination against the esthetic faculty--a discrimination for which I can find no other explanation than the fact already referred to, that most men of science know so much less about matters of beauty than about everything else in the world. They labor under the delusion that the sense of beauty is one of the earliest products of mental evolution, whereas their own attitude in the matter affords painful proof that it is one of the latest. They will understand some day that a steatopygous "Hottentot Venus" is no more beautiful because an African finds her attractive, than an ugly, bloated, blear-eyed harlot is beautiful because she pleases a drunken libertine.

What makes the traditional attitude of scientific men in this matter the less pardonable is that--as we have seen--there is always a simple, practical explanation for the predilections of these savages, so that there is no necessity whatever for assuming the existence of so paradoxical and impossible a thing as an esthetic admiration of these hideous deformities. Thus, in regard to the nauseating lip "ornaments" of the Thlinkeets just referred to, the testimony collected by Bancroft indicates unmistakably that they are approved of, perpetuated, and aggravated for two reasons--both non-esthetic--namely, as indications of rank, and from the necessity of conforming to fashion. Ladies of distinction, we read, increase the size of their lip plug. Langsdorff even saw women "of very high rank" with this "ornament" full five inches long and three broad; Dixon says the mutilation is always in proportion to the person's wealth; and Mayne relates, in his book on the British Columbia Indians, that "a woman's rank among women is settled according to the size of her wooden lip."

 

INDIFFERENCE TO DIRT

That savages can have no sense of personal beauty is further proved by their habitual indifference to personal cleanliness, the most elementary and imperative of esthetic requirements. When we read in McLean (II., 153) that some Eskimo girls "might pass as pretty if divested of their filth;" or in Cranz (I., 134) that "it is almost sickening to view their hands and faces smeared with grease ... and their filthy clothes swarming with vermin;" and when we further read in Kotzebue (II., 56) regarding the Kalush that his "filthy countrywomen with their lip-trough ... often awaken in him the most vehement passion," we realize vividly that that passion is a coarse appetite which exists quite apart from, and independently of, anything that might be considered beautiful or ugly.

The subject is not a pleasant one; but as it is one of my strongest arguments, I must be pardoned for giving some more unsavory details. Among some of the British Columbia Indians "pretty women may be seen; nearly all have good eyes and hair, but the state of filth in which they live generally neutralizes any natural charms they may possess." (Mayne, 277.) Lewis and Clarke write regarding the Chinook Indians:


"Their broad, flat foreheads, their falling breasts, their ill-shaped limbs, the awkwardness of their positions, and _the filth which intrudes through their finery_--all these render a Chinook or Clatsop beauty in full attire one of the most disgusting objects in nature."


Muir says of the Mono Indians of the California Mountains: "The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified, and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might also possess a geological significance." Navajo girls "usually evince a catlike aversion to water." (Schoolcraft, IV., 214.) Cozzens relates how, among the Apaches, "the sight of a man washing his face and hands almost convulsed them with laughter." He adds that their personal appearance explained their surprise. Burton found among the Sioux a dislike to cleanliness "which nothing but the fear of the rod will subdue." "In an Indian village," writes Neill, "all is filth and litter.... Water, except in very warm weather, seldom touches their bodies."

The Comanches are "disgustingly filthy in their persons." (Schoolcraft, I., 235.) The South American Waraus "are exceedingly dirty and disgusting in their habits, and their children are so much neglected that their fingers and toes are frequently destroyed by vermin." (Bernau, 35.) The Patagonians "are excessively filthy in their personal habits." (Bourne, 56.) The Mundrukus "are very dirty" (Markham, 172), etc.

Of the Damara negroes, Anderson says (_N._, 50): "Dirt often accumulates to such a degree on their persons as to make the color of their skins totally undistinguishable;" and Galton (92) "could find no pleasure in associating or trying to chat with these Damaras, they were so filthy and disgusting in every way." Thunberg writes of the Hottentots that they "find a peculiar pleasure in filth and stench;" wherein they resemble Africans in general. Griffith declares that the hill tribes of India are "the dirtier the farther we advance;" elsewhere[114] we read:

"Both males and females, as a class, are very dirty and filthy in both person and habits. They appear to have an antipathy to bathing, and to make matters worse, they have a habit of anointing their bodies with _ghee_ (melted butter);"

and of another of these tribes:

"The Karens are a dirty people. They never use soap, and their skins are enamelled with dirt. When water is thrown on them, it rolls off their backs like globules of quicksilver on a marble slab. To them bathing has a cooling, but no cleansing effect."

The Mishinis are "disgustingly dirty." By the Kirgliez "uncleanliness is elevated into a virtue hallowed by tradition." The Kalmucks are described as filthy, the Kamtschadales as exceedingly so, etc.


[FOOTNOTE 114: _Trans. Eth. Soc.,_ London, N.S., VII., 238; _Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal,_ XXXV., Pt. II., 25. Spencer, _D.S._]

 

REASONS FOR BATHING.

Among the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific we meet with apparent exceptions. These natives are practically amphibious, spending half their time in the ocean, and are therefore of necessity clean. So are certain coast negroes and Indian tribes living along river-banks. But Ellis _(Pol. Res._, I., 110) was shrewd enough to see that the habit of frequent bathing indulged in by the South Sea Islanders was a luxury--a result of the hot climate--and not an indication of the virtue of cleanliness. In this respect Captain Cook showed less acumen, for he remarks (II., 148) that "nothing appears to give them greater pleasure than personal cleanliness, to produce which they frequently bathe in ponds." His confusion of ideas is made apparent in the very next sentence, where he adds that the water in most of these ponds "stinks intolerably." That it is merely the desire for comfort and sport that induces the Polynesians to bathe so much is proved further by the attitude of the New Zealanders. Hawksworth declares (III., 451) that they "stink like Hottentots;" and the reason lies in the colder climate which makes bathing less of a luxury to them. The Micronesians also spend much of their time in the water, for comfort, not for cleanliness. Gerland cites grewsome details of their nastiness. (Waitz, V., Pt. II., 81, 188.) The Kaffirs, says Gardiner (101), "although far from cleanly," are fond of bathing. In some other cases the water is sought for its warmth instead of its coolness. In Brazil the morning air is much colder than the water, wherefore the natives take to the river for comfort, as the Japanese do in winter to their hot tubs. All Indians, says Bancroft (I., 83), "attach great importance to their sweatbaths," not for cleanliness--for they are "extremely filthy in their persons and habits"--but "as a remedial measure."

Unless they happen to indulge in bathing for comfort, the lowest of savages are also the dirtiest. Leigh writes (147) that in South Australia many of the women, including the wives of chiefs, had "sore eyes from the smoke, the filth, and their abominable want of cleanliness." Sturt (II., 53) refers to the Australian women as "disgusting objects." At funerals, "the women besmear themselves with the most disgusting filth." The naked boys in Taplin's school "had no notion of cleanliness." The youths from the age of ten to sixteen or seventeen were compelled by custom to let their hair grow, the result being "a revolting mass of tangled locks and filth." (Woods, 20, 85.) Sturt sums up his impressions by declaring (II., 126): "Really, the loathsome condition and hideous countenances of the women would, I should imagine, have been a complete antidote to the sexual passion."

 

CORPULENCE VERSUS BEAUTY

An instructive instance of the loose reasoning which prevails in the esthetic sphere is provided by the Rev. H.N. Hutchinson, in his _Marriage Customs in Many Lands_. After describing some of the customs of the Australians, he goes on to say:


"One would think that such degraded creatures as these men are would be quite incapable of appreciating female beauty, but that is not the case. Good-looking girls are much admired and consequently frequently stolen away."


As a matter of fact, beauty has nothing to do with the stealing of the women. The real motive is revealed in the following passage from Brough Smyth:


"_A very fat woman_ presents such an attractive appearance to the eyes of the blacks that she is always liable to be stolen. _However old and ugly she way be_, she will be courted and petted and sought for by the warriors, who seldom hesitate to risk their lives if there is a chance for obtaining so great a prize."


An Australian Shakspere obviously would have written "Fat provoketh thieves sooner than gold," instead of "beauty provoketh thieves." And the amended maxim applies to savages in general, as well as to barbarians and Orientals. In his _Savage Life in Polynesia_, the Rev. W.W. Gill remarks:


"The great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the guardian would whip the culprit for not eating more."[115]


[FOOTNOTE 115: In Fiji fatness is also "a mark of high rank, for these people can only imagine one reason for any person being thin and spare, namely, not having enough to eat." (W.J. Smythe, 166.)]


American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and Polynesians. The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand how anyone could marry such fat abominations. Concerning the South American tribes, Humboldt says (_Trav.,_ I., 301): "In several languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead."

 

FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET

The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief criterion of a woman's charms. The hideous deformity known as steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the buttocks, occurs among South African Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women. Darwin says that Sir Andrew Smith


"once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to Burton, the Somal men, 'are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects farthest _a tergo_. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form.'"[116]


[FOOTNOTE 116: Yet Westermarck has the audacity to remark, that natural deformity and the unsymmetrical shape of the body are "regarded by every race as unfavorable to personal appearance"!]


The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist, according to Lander, in "the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the object."

Among the Karague, women were exempted from hard labor because the men were anxious to have them as fat as possible. To please the men, they ate enormous quantities of bananas and drank milk by the gallon. Three of Rumanika's wives were so fat that they could not go through an ordinary door, and when they walked they needed two men each to support them.

Speke measured one of the much-admired African wonders of obesity, who was unable to stand except on all fours. Result: around the arms, 1 foot 11 inches; chest, 4 feet 4 inches; thigh, 2 feet 7 inches; calf, 1 foot 8 inches; height, 5 feet 8 inches.


"Meanwhile, the daughter, a lass of sixteen, sat
stark-naked before us, sucking at a milk-pot, on
which her father kept her at work by holding a rod
in his hand; for as fattening is the first duty
of fashionable female life, it must be duly
enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of
flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and
shake hands with me. Her features were lovely, but
her body was round as a ball."


Speke also tells of a girl who, a mere child when the king died, was such a favorite of his, that he left her twenty cows, in order that she might fatten upon milk after her native fashion.

 

ORIENTAL IDEALS

Mungo Park declared that the Moorish women

"seem to be brought up for no other purpose than that of ministering to the sensual pleasures of their imperious masters. Voluptuousness is therefore considered as their chief accomplishment.... The Moors have singular ideas of feminine perfection. The gracefulness of figure and motion, and a countenance enlivened by expression, are by no means essential points in their standard: With them _corpulence and beauty seem to be terms nearly synonymous_: A woman of even moderate pretensions must be one who cannot walk without a slave under each arm, to support her; and a perfect beauty is a load for a camel.... Many of the young girls are compelled, by their mothers, to devour a great quantity of kouskous, and drink a large bowl of camel's milk every morning.... I have seen a poor girl sit crying, with the bowl at her lips, for more than an hour; and her mother, with a stick in her hand watching her all the while, and using the stick without mercy, whenever she observed that her daughter was not swallowing."


A Somali love-song says: "You are beautiful and your limbs are fat; but if you would drink camel's milk you would be still more beautiful." Nubian girls are especially fattened for their marriage by rubbing grease over them and stuffing them with polenta and goat milk. When the process is completed they are poetically likened to a hippopotamus. In Egypt and India, where the climate naturally tends to make women thin, the fat ones are, as in Australia, the ideals of beauty, as their poets would make plain to us if it were not known otherwise. A Sanscrit poet declares proudly that his beloved is so borne down by the weight of her thighs and breasts that she cannot walk fast; and in the songs of Hala there are numerous "sentiments" like that. The Arabian poet Amru declares rapturously that his favorite beauty has thighs so delightfully exuberant that she can scarcely enter the tent door. Another Arabian poet apostrophizes "the maid of Okaib, who has haunches like sand-hills, whence her body rises like a palm-tree." And regarding the references to personal appearance in the writings of the ancient Hebrews, Rossbach remarks:


"In all these descriptions human beauty is recognized in the luxurious fulness of parts, not in their harmony and proportion. Spiritual expression in the sensual form is not adverted to".


Thus, from the Australian and the Indian to the Hebrew, the Arab, and the Hindoo, what pleases the men in women is not their beauty, but their voluptuous rotundity; they care only for those sensual aspects which emphasize the difference between the sexes. The object of the modern wasp waist (in the minds of the class of females who, strange to say, are allowed by respectable women to set the fashion for them) is to grossly exaggerate the bust and the hips, and it is for the same reason that barbarian and Oriental girls are fattened for the marriage market. The appeal is to the appetite, not to the esthetic sense.

 

THE CONCUPISCENCE THEORY OF BEAUTY

In writing this I do not ignore the fact that many authors have held that personal beauty and sensuality are practically identical or indissolubly associated. The sober philosopher, Bain, gravely advances the opinion that, on the whole, personal beauty turns, 1, upon qualities and appearances that heighten the expression of favor or good-will; and, 2, upon qualities and appearances that suggest the endearing embrace. Eckstein expresses the same idea more coarsely by saying that "finding a thing beautiful is simply another way of expressing the manifestation of the sexual appetite." But it remained for Mantegazza to give this view the most cynical expression:


"We look at woman through the prism of desire, and
she looks at us in the same way; her beauty appears
to us the more perfect the more it arouses our
sexual desires--that is, the more voluptuous
enjoyment the possession of her promises us."


He adds that for this reason a man of twenty finds nearly all women beautiful.

Thus the beauty of a woman, in the opinion of these writers, consists in those physical qualities which arouse a man's concupiscence. I admit that this theory applies to savages and to Orientals; the details given in the preceding pages prove that. It applies also, I must confess, to the majority of Europeans and Americans. I have paid special attention to this point in various countries and have noticed that a girl with a voluptuous though coarse figure and a plain face will attract much more masculine attention than a girl whose figure and face are artistically beautiful without being voluptuous. But this only helps to prove my main thesis--that the sense of personal beauty is one of the latest products of civilization, rare even at the present day. What I deny most emphatically is that the theory advocated by Bain, Eckstein, and Mantegazza applies to those persons who are so lucky as to have a sense of beauty. These fortunate individuals can admire the charms of a living beauty without any more concupiscence or thought of an endearing embrace than accompanies their contemplation of the Venus de Milo or a Madonna painted by Murillo; and if they are in love with a particular girl their admiration of her beauty is superlatively free from carnal ingredients, as we saw in the section on Mental Purity. Since in such a question personal evidence is of importance, I will add that, fortunately, I have been deeply in love several times in my life and can therefore testify that each time my admiration of the girl's beauty was as purely esthetic as if she had been a flower. In each case the mischief was begun by a pair of brown eyes.

Eyes, it is true, can be as wanton and as voluptuous as a plump figure. Powers notes that some California Indian girls are pretty and have "large, voluptuous eyes." Such eyes are common among the lower races and Orientals; but they are not the eyes which inspire romantic love. Lips, too, it might be said, invite kisses; but a lover would consider it sacrilege to touch his idol's lips unchastely. Savages are strangers to kissing for the exactly opposite reason--that it is too refined a detail of sensuality to appeal to their coarse nerves. How far they are from being able to appreciate lips esthetically appears from the way in which they so often deform them. The mouth is peculiarly the index of mental and moral refinement, and a refined pair of lips can inspire as pure a love as the celestial beauty of innocent eyes. As for the other features, what is there to suggest lascivious thoughts in a clear complexion, an oval chin, ivory teeth, rosy cheeks, or in curved eyebrows, long, dark lashes, or flowing tresses? Our admiration of these, and of a graceful gait, is as pure and esthetic--as purely esthetic--as our admiration of a sunset, a flower, a humming-bird, a lovely child. It has been truly said that a girl's marriage chances have been made or marred by the size or shape of her nose. What has the size or shape of a girl's nose to do with the "endearing embrace?" This question alone reduces the concupiscence theory _ad absurdum_.

 

UTILITY IS NOT BEAUTY

Almost as repulsive as the view which identifies the sense of personal beauty with concupiscence is that which would reduce it to a matter of coarse utility. Thus Eckstein, misled by Schopenhauer, holds that healthy teeth are beautiful for the reason that they guarantee the proper mastication of the food; while small breasts are ugly because they do not promise sufficient nourishment to the child that is to be born.

This argument is refuted by the simple statement that our teeth, if they looked like rusty nails, might be even more useful than now, but could no longer be beautiful. As for women's breasts, if utility were the criterion, the most beautiful would be those of the African mothers who can throw them over their shoulders to suckle the infants on their backs without impeding their work. As a matter of fact, the loveliest breast is the virginal, which serves no use while it remains so. A dray horse is infinitely more useful to us than an Arab racer, but is he as beautiful? Tigers and snakes are anything but useful to the human race, but we consider their skins beautiful.

 

A NEW SENSE EASILY LOST AGAIN

No, the sense of personal beauty is neither a synonyme for libidinous desires nor is it based on utilitarian considerations. It is practically a new sense, born of mental refinement and imagination. It by no means scorns a slight touch of the voluptuous, so far as it does not exceed the limits of artistic taste and moral refinement--a well-rounded figure and "a face voluptuous, yet pure"--but it is an entirely different thing from the predilection for fat and other coarse exaggerations of sexuality which inspire lust instead of love. This new sense is still, as I have said, rare everywhere; and, like the other results of high and recent culture, it is easily obliterated. In his treatise on insanity Professor Krafft-Ebing shows that in degeneration of the brain the esthetic and moral qualities are among the first to disappear. It is the same with normal man when he descends into a lower sphere. Zoller relates (III., 68) that when Europeans arrive in Africa they find the women so ugly they can hardly look at them without a feeling of repulsion. Gradually they become habituated to their sight, and finally they are glad to accept them as companions. Stanley has an eloquent passage on the same topic (_II. I. F.L_., 265):


"The eye that at first despised the unclassic face of the black woman of Africa soon loses its regard for fine lines and mellow pale color; it finds itself ere long lingering _wantonly_ over the inharmonious and heavy curves of a negroid form, and looking lovingly on the broad, unintellectual face, and into jet eyes that never flash with the dazzling love-light that makes poor humanity beautiful."


The word I have italicized explains it all. The sense of personal beauty is displaced again by the concupiscence which had held its place in the early history of mankind.

 

MORAL UGLINESS

To realize fully what such a relapse may mean, read what Galton says of the Hottentots. They have

"that peculiar set of features which is so characteristic of bad characters in England, and so general among prisoners that it is usually, I believe, known by the name of the 'felon-face;' I mean that they have prominent cheek-bones, bullet-shaped head, cowering but restless eyes, and heavy sensual lips, and added to this a shackling dress and manner."

Of the Damaras Galton says (99) that "their features are often beautifully chiselled, though the expression in them is always coarse and disagreeable." And to quote Mungo Park on the Moors once more:

"I fancied that I discovered in the features of most of them a disposition toward cruelty and low cunning.... From the staring wildness of their eyes, a stranger would immediately set them down as a nation of lunatics. The treachery and malevolence of their character are manifested in their plundering excursions against the negro villages."

 

BEAUTIFYING INTELLIGENCE

Galton's reference to the Damaras illustrates the well-known fact that, even where nature makes an effort at chiselling beautiful features the result is a failure if there is no moral and intellectual culture to inspire them, and this puts the grave-stone on the Concupiscence Theory--for what have moral and intellectual culture to do with carnal desires? A noble soul even possesses the magic power of transforming a plain face into a radiant vision of beauty, the emotion changing not only the expression but the lines of the face. Goethe (Eckermann, 1824) and others have indeed maintained that intellect in a woman does not help a man to fall in love with her. This is true in so far as brains in a woman will not make a man fall in love with her if she is otherwise unattractive or unfeminine. But Goethe forgot that there is such a thing as _hereditary intellectual culture incarnated in the face_. This, I maintain, makes up more than half of the personal beauty which makes a man fall in love. A girl with good features is twice as beautiful if she is morally pure and has a bright mind. Sometimes a face is accidentally moulded, into such a regular beauty of form that it seems to mirror mental beauty too. A man may fall in love with such a face, but as soon as he finds out that it is inhabited by a stupid or coarse mind he will make haste to fall out again, unless his love was predominantly sensual. I remember once falling in love with a country girl at first sight; her face and figure seemed to me extremely beautiful, except that hard work had enlarged and hardened her hands. But when I found that her intellect was as coarse as her hands, my ardor cooled at once.

If intellect, as revealed in the face, in words, and in actions, did not assist in inspiring the amorous sentiment, it would be as easy to fall in love with a doll-faced, silly girl as with a woman of culture; it would even be possible to fall in love with a statue or with a demented person. Let us imagine a belle who is thrown from a horse and has become insane from the shock. For a time her features will remain as regular, her figure as plump, as before; but the mind will be gone, and with it everything that could make a man fall in love with her. Who has ever heard of a beautiful idiot, of anyone falling in love with an imbecile? The vacant stare, the absence of intellect, make beauty and love alike impossible in such a case.

 

THE STRANGE GREEK ATTITUDE

The important corollary follows, from all this, that in countries where women receive no education sensual love is the only kind men can feel toward them. Oriental women are of that kind, and so were the ancient Greeks. The Greeks are indeed renowned for their statuary, yet their attitude toward personal beauty was of a very peculiar kind. Their highest ideal was not the feminine but the masculine type, and accordingly we find that it was toward men only that they professed to feel a noble passion. The beauty of the women was regarded merely from a sensual point of view. Their respectable women were deliberately left without education, wherefore their charms can have been at best of a bodily kind and capable of inspiring love of body only. There is a prevalent superstition that the Greeks of the day of Perikles had a class of intelligent women known as hetairai, who were capable of being true companions and inspirers of men; but I shall show, in a later chapter, that the mentality of these women has been ludicrously exaggerated; they were coarse and obscene in their wit and conversation, and their morals were such that no man could have respected them, much less loved them with a pure affection; while the men whom they are supposed to have inspired were in most cases voluptuaries of the most dissolute sort. _

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