In this and the following four chapters we shall deal with the instinctive feelings by which the sexes are guided in the act of selection. We have already observed that the sexual instinct is excited by artificial means, such as ornaments, mutilations, &c. Now we have to consider the intrinsic characters of a human being which affect the passions of a person of the opposite sex.
Mr. Darwin has shown that, among the lower Vertebrata, the female commonly gives the preference to “the most vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome male,”—a taste the origin of which is easily accounted for by the theory of natural selection. A similar instinctive appreciation of manly strength and courage is found in women, especially in the women of savage races. In a song, communicated by Mr. Schoolcraft, an Indian girl gives the following description of her ideal:— “My love is tall and graceful as the young pine waving on the hill—And as swift in his course as the noble stately deer—His hair is flowing, and dark as the blackbird that floats through the air—And his eyes, like the eagle’s, both piercing and bright—His heart, it is fearless and great—And his arm, it is strong in the fight.”[1524] A tale from Madagascar tells of a princess whose beauty fascinated all men. Many princes fought to obtain possession of her; but she refused them all, and chose a lover who was young, handsome, courageous, and strong.[1525] The beautiful Atalanta gave herself to the best runner;[1526] and the hero suitors of the Finnish myths had to undergo difficult trials to prove their courage.[1527] “When a Dyak wants to marry,” says Mr. Bock, “he must show himself a hero before he can gain favour with his intended.” He has to secure a number of human heads by killing men of hostile tribes; and the more heads he cuts off, the greater the pride and admiration with which he is regarded by his bride.[1528] The demands of the Sàkalàva girls of Madagascar are less cruel. When a young man wishes to obtain a wife, his qualifications, according to Mr. Sibree, are tested thus:—“Placed at a certain distance from a clever caster of the spear, he is bidden to catch between his arm and side every spear thrown by the man opposite to him. If he displays fear or fails to catch the spear, he is ignominiously rejected; but if there be no flinching and the spears are caught, he is at once proclaimed an accepted ‘lover.’” It is said that a similar custom prevailed among the Bétsiléo, another Madagascar tribe.[1529] Among the Dongolowees, as we are informed by Dr. Felkin, if two men are suitors for a girl, and there is a difficulty in deciding between the rivals, the following method is adopted. The fair lady has a knife tied to each forearm, so fixed that the blade of the knife projects below the elbow. She then takes up a position on a log of wood, the young men sitting on either side with their legs closely pressed against hers. Raising her arms, the girl leans forward, and slowly presses the knives into the thighs of her would-be husbands. The suitor who best undergoes this trial of endurance wins the bride, whose first duty after marriage is to dress the wounds she has herself inflicted.[1530] Speaking of the natives on the River Darling, Major T. L. Mitchell says that the possession of gins, or wives, appears to be associated with all their ideas of fighting; “while, on the other hand, the gins have it in their power on such occasions to evince that universal characteristic of the fair, a partiality for the brave. Thus it is, that, after a battle, they do not always follow their fugitive husbands from the field, but frequently go over as a matter of course, to the victors.”[1531]
We may infer that women’s instinctive inclination to strong and courageous men is due to natural selection in two ways. A strong man is not only father of strong children, but he is also better able than a weak man to protect his offspring. The female instinct is especially well marked at the lower stages of civilization, because bodily vigour is then of most importance in the struggle for existence. The same principle explains the attraction which health in a woman has for men. In civilized society, infirmity and sickliness are not always a serious hindrance to love, but in a savage state, says Alexander v. Humboldt, “nothing can induce a man to unite himself to a deformed woman, or one who is very unhealthy.”[1532]
The ancient Greeks conceived Eros as an extremely handsome youth, and Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty as well as of love. So closely are these two ideas—love and beauty—connected. This connection is not peculiar to the civilized mind. In Tahiti, Cook saw several instances where women preferred personal beauty to interest.[1533] The Negroes of the West African Coast, according to Mr. Winwood Reade, often discuss the beauty of their women;[1534] and, among the cannibal savages of Northern Queensland, described by Herr Lumholtz, the women take much notice of a man’s face, especially of the part about the eyes.[1535] But, although in every country, in every race, beauty stimulates passion, the ideas of what constitutes beauty vary indefinitely. As Hume says, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”[1536]
A flat, retreating brow seems to white men to spoil what would otherwise be a pretty face; but “the Chinook ideal of facial beauty,” says Mr. Bancroft, “is a straight line from the end of the nose to the crown of the head.”[1537] A little snubnose may embitter the life of a European girl; but the Australian natives “laugh at the sharp noses of Europeans, and call them in their language ‘tomahawk noses,’ much preferring their own style of flat broad noses.”[1538] The Tahitians frequently said to Mr. Williams, “What a pity it is that English mothers pull the children’s noses so much, and make them so frightfully long!”[1539] We admire white teeth and rosy cheeks; but a servant of the king of Cochin China spoke with contempt of the wife of the English ambassador, because she had white teeth like a dog and a rosy colour like that of potato flowers.[1540] In the northern parts of the Chinese Empire, according to Pallas, those women are preferred who are of the Manchu type,—that is, who have a broad face, high cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears;[1541] and the South American Uaupés consider a swollen calf one of the chief attractions a young lady can possess, the result being that girls wear a tight garter below the knee from infancy.[1542]
Even among the Aryan peoples the standard of beauty varies. “To an honest Fleming, who has never studied design,” says M. Bombet, “the forms of Rubens’s women are the most beautiful in the world. Let not us, who admire slenderness of form above everything else, and to whom the figures even of Raphael’s women appear rather massive, be too ready to laugh at him. If we were to consider the matter closely, it would appear that each individual, and, consequently, each nation, has a separate idea of beauty.”[1543]
What human characteristics are considered beautiful, and how has beauty come to influence the sexual selection of man? In trying to answer these questions, we shall note only such characteristics as are held to be beautiful by considerable groups of men, apart from individual differences of taste; and we shall confine ourselves to physical beauty, as presenting itself in bodily forms and the colour of the skin. Mr. Spencer maintains that “mental and facial perfection are fundamentally connected,” and that “the aspects which please us are the outward correlatives of inward perfections, while the aspects which displease us are the outward correlatives of inward imperfections.”[1544] But Mr. Spencer evidently looks upon beauty, or “facial perfection,” as something real in the sense in which mental qualities are real,—an opinion with which it is difficult to agree. The lateral jutting-out of the cheek-bones, which seems to him an index of imperfection, is admired by many of the lower races.
The full development of those visible properties which are essential to the human organism is universally recognized as indispensable to perfect beauty,—natural deformity, the unsymmetrical shape of the body, apparent traces of disease, &c., being regarded by every race as unfavourable to personal appearance. We distinguish between masculine and feminine beauty, and, in spite of racial differences, the ideas of what constitute these forms of beauty are fundamentally the same throughout the world. To be really handsome a person must approach the ideal type of his or her sex. The male organism is remarkable for the development of the muscular system, the female for that of fatty elements; and conspicuous muscles are everywhere considered to improve the appearance of a man, rounded forms that of a woman. According to v. Humboldt, the natives of Guiana, to express the beauty of a woman, say that “she is fat and has a narrow forehead.” A traveller found that a Kirghiz’s estimate of female beauty was regulated by the amount of fat, “for even when dilating on the beauties of his favourite wife, he laid the greatest stress on her embonpoint.”[1545] The Kafirs and Hottentots are charmed by their women’s long and pendant breasts, which, in certain tribes, assume such monstrous dimensions, that the usual way of giving suck, when the child is carried on the back, is by throwing the breast over the shoulder.[1546] Mr. Reade tells us that, among the Mpongwé of Gaboon, even very young girls “strive to emulate the pendant beauties of their seniors.”[1547] The Makololo women, according to Dr. Livingstone, make themselves fat and pretty by drinking a peculiar drink called “boyáloa”;[1548] and, among the Trarsa, a Moorish tribe in the Western Sahara, the women take immense quantities of milk and butter to make themselves more attractive.[1549] Such exaggerations, however repugnant to a more refined taste, indicate a general tendency in men’s notions of female beauty.
Among Europeans, men are on an average two or three inches taller than women,[1550] and have a greater breadth of shoulder. A high-built and broad-shouldered figure is also regarded as an ideal of manly beauty, whereas women who are very tall or broad are apt to be rather awkward. A woman’s face is shorter, her mouth less broad, her nose less prominent, her neck longer, her pelvis wider, her waist narrower than a man’s; and her fingers are more slender and pointed, her hands and feet smaller. The halving line of a woman’s body is lower than that of a man’s, so that her steps are shorter and lighter.[1551] As a matter of fact, a long face, a broad mouth, and large hands and feet are much more objectionable in a woman than in a man. Women have a special liking for low-bodied dresses, which display the full length of the neck; and by means of a corset they make the waist narrower than it is by nature.
There is thus an ideal of beauty which, no doubt, may be said to be common to the whole human race. But this ideal is merely an abstraction which can never be realized. General similarities in taste are accompanied by specific differences. Though every one admits that a face without a nose is ugly, no particular form of the nose is universally admired; and races which regard a swelling bosom as essen— tial to feminine beauty differ widely from the Hottentots as to the charm of pendant breasts.