The point to which I chiefly desire to call attention is that this Cretan people practised compression of the waist, and so have a certain point of agreement with the prehistoric race of Lerida represented in Figs. 24 and 25 and with Boldini's modern ladies. We know from carvings and pottery that the men as well as the women of the Mycenæan people wore a tightly-compressing girdle. The form of figure thus produced—viz. relatively small, flexible waist, and large hips with protruding buttocks—seems to be a less pronounced variety of that of the small ivory figures of Aurignacian age (late Palæolithic) found in cave deposits of France and of that of the Bushmen women. It seems as though the "ideal" female figure or that admired and pictured by these races and by the modern Latin races is the same in its main features, and differs altogether from that admired in the Far East. Such deeply seated tastes may possibly (indeed, not improbably) be due to a common origin of the Mediterranean and African peoples distinct from that of the Mongoloid Asiatic races.
Plate IX.—Fresco drawing of two female acrobats from the palace of Knossos, date about 1400 b.c. The originals were discovered by Sir Arthur Evans.]
[9] A brief account of the skulls and implements of primitive man, with illustrations, is given in the first series of "Science from an Easy Chair," published in 1910 by Methuen & Co.
CHAPTER XVII
NEW YEAR'S DAY AND THE CALENDAR
I came across a discussion the other day as to whether it is right to tell children and to let them believe that Santa Claus puts Christmas presents in their stockings, and that Peter Pan really comes in at the window and teaches nice little boys and girls to float through the air. I was surprised that anyone should be so singularly ignorant of child-nature as to hold that children really believe these things. Children have a wonderful and special faculty of "make-believe," which is not the same as "belief." All the time when a child is indulging in "make-believe" (a sort of willing self-illusion or waking dream) its real, though tender, reasoning-power is merely "suspended," and is not offended or outraged. That power can on emergency be brought to the front, and the little one will say, "Of course, they're not real," or "I always knew he didn't really come down the chimney." So that I do not think anyone need be anxious as to doing harm or laying the foundations of future distrust by telling fairy-tales to the very young. If told in the right form and spirit they are received by six-year-old and older children readily and naturally as belonging to that delicious world of "make-believe" which (as one of their own orators, I believe, has said) "children of even the meanest intelligence will not be guilty of confounding with that very inferior every-day world of reality in which we find, much to our regret, that it is necessary to spend so large a part of our time." The power of make-believe is almost limitless, and makes its appearance even in the speechless infant of less than two years old, who will gather fruit from a coloured picture, generously offer you a bite, and pretend to swallow the rest itself. Make-believe must have been a very big factor in the life of the ape-like predecessors of prehistoric man.