CHAPTER XII

THE SEXUAL SELECTION OF MAN: TYPICAL BEAUTY

By the “Sexual Selection of Man” is meant the choice made by men and women as regards relations with the opposite sex. Mr. Darwin has shown that such selection takes place among the lower Vertebrata, and, judging from what we know of domesticated animals, it is much more common in the case of females than in that of males. The male, indeed, as a rule, seems to be ready to pair with any female, provided she belongs to his own species.[1516] As this probably depends upon the great strength of his sexual impulse, we may infer that in primitive times, when man had a definite pairing season, he displayed a like tendency, and that the sexual instinct, in proportion as it has become less intense, has become more discriminating.

Even now woman is more particular in her choice than man, provided that the union takes place without reference to interest. A Maori proverb says, “Let a man be ever so good-looking, he will not be much sought after; but let a woman be ever so plain, men will still eagerly seek after her.”[1517] With regard to the Negroes of Sogno, Merolla da Sorrento states, “Women would have experience of their husbands before they married them, in like manner as the men were to have of them; and in this particular I can aver that they are commonly much more obstinate or fickle than men, for I have known many instances in which the men were willing to be married, while the women held back, and either fled away or made excuses.”[1518] Among the Eastern Central Africans, according to Mr. Macdonald, many cases are known of slave wives running away from free husbands, but none of slave husbands running away from free wives.[1519] In the crossings between unequal human races, the father almost always belongs to the superior race. “In every case,” says M. de Quatrefages, “and especially in transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself; man is less delicate.”[1520] Thus, cases in which negresses form unions with the indigenous men of America are very rare;[1521] and Dr. Nott, who wrote in the middle of this century, never personally met any one who was the offspring of a negro man and a white woman, because of the extreme rarity of such half-breeds.[1522] In New Zealand it sometimes happens that a European man marries a Maori woman; but Mr. Kerry Nicholls never came across an instance where a European woman had married a Maori man.[1523] Even in civilized society men are less particular in their connections than women of corresponding education, no doubt, would be, even if the rules of everyday morality were the same for both sexes.

* * * * *

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.

Every race has, indeed, its own standard of beauty. Alexander von Humboldt long ago observed, “Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural physiognomy. Thence it results that, if nature have bestowed very little beard, a narrow forehead, or a brownish-red skin, every individual thinks himself beautiful in proportion as his body is destitute of hair, his head flattened, his skin more covered with ‘annotto,’ or ‘chica,’ or some other coppery-red colour.”[1552] This view has been adopted by several later writers,[1553] but, as it has been disputed by others,[1554] it may be well to bring together some fresh evidence, as an addition to that collected by Mr. Darwin.

The Sinhalese, says Dr. Davy, who are great connoisseurs of the charms of the sex, and have books on the subject, and rules to aid the judgment, would not allow a woman to be perfectly beautiful unless she had the following characteristics:—“Her hair should be voluminous like the tail of the peacock, long, reaching to the knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her nose should be like the bill of the hawk, and lips bright and red, like coral on the young leaf of the iron-tree. Her neck should be large and round, her chest capacious, her breasts firm and conical, like the yellow cocoa-nut, and her waist small—almost small enough to be clasped by the hand. Her lips should be wide; her limbs tapering; the soles of her feet without any hollow, and the surface of her body in general, soft, delicate, smooth, and rounded, without the asperities of projecting bones and sinews.” Dr. Davy adds, “The preceding is the most general external character that can be given of the Sinhalese.”[1555]

The women of the Indo-European race are remarkable for the length of their hair. “Dans nos contrées,” Isidore Geoffroy observes, “ces développements ajoutent à la beauté des femmes; dans d’autres pays, si on les y observait, ils passeraient presque pour de légers vices de conformation.”[1556] “A small round face,” says Castrén, “full rosy red cheeks and lips, white forehead, black tresses, and small dark eyes are marks of a Samoyede beauty. Thus in a Samoyedian song a girl is praised for her small eyes, her broad face, and its rosy colour.”[1557] These, as we know, are the typical characteristics of the Samoyedes.[1558] As to the Tartar women, who generally have far less prominent noses than we in Europe are accustomed to see, Father de Rubruquis states, “The less their noses the handsomer they are esteemed.”[1559] In Fiji, the remarkably broad occiput, peculiar to its people, is looked upon as a mark of beauty.[1560] Among the Egyptians Mr. Lane scarcely ever saw corpulent persons, and, unlike many other African peoples, they do not admire very fat women:—“In his love-songs, the Egyptian commonly describes the object of his affections as of slender figure, and small waist.”[1561] “The negroes,” says v. Humboldt, “give the preference to the thickest and most prominent lips; the Kalmucks to turned-up noses; and the Greeks, in the statues of heroes, raised the facial line from 85° to 100° beyond nature. The Aztecs, who never disfigure the heads of their children, represent their principal divinities, as their hieroglyphical manuscripts prove, with a head much more flattened than any I have ever seen among the Caribs.”[1562]

The fashion, prevalent among many peoples, of transforming parts of the body, affords a good illustration of their ideas about personal beauty. The Indians of North America, who have a low and flat forehead, often exaggerate this natural peculiarity by an artificial flattening of the forehead.[1563] In Tahiti, Samoa, and other islands of the Pacific Ocean, it has been customary from time immemorial to flatten the occiputs and to press the noses of the infants, as Professor Gerland observes, in order to increase a national characteristic which is considered beautiful.[1564] The same practice occurs in Sumatra, and Marsden could learn no other reason for it, but that it was an improvement of beauty in the estimation of the natives.[1565] Among the Ovambo of South Africa, the fashion is quite different:—“With the exception of the crown, which is always left untouched,” says Andersson, “the men often shave the head, which has the effect of magnifying the natural prominence of the hinder parts of it.”[1566] Among the Chinese, small feet are considered a woman’s chief attraction; hence the feet of girls are pressed from early childhood. Now we know from the measurements made by Scherzer and Schwarz, that Chinese women have by nature unusually small feet—a peculiarity which has always distinguished them from their Tartar neighbours. And, as a matter of fact, the Manchu Tartars, who at present rule the Chinese Empire, never press the feet of their daughters.[1567]

Each race considers its own colour preferable to every other. The North American Indians admire “a tawny hide,” and the Chinese dislike the white skin of the Europeans.[1568] Some young New Zealanders, who themselves were lightly copper-coloured, were greatly amused at the dark tint of an Australian, and laughed at him for being so ugly.[1569] Barrington tells us on the other hand, of an Australian woman, who, having had a child by a white man, smoked it and rubbed it with oil to give it a darker colour.[1570] The Hovas, who are probably, as a rule, the lightest people in Madagascar, often put a spot of dark colour on the cheeks, in order to heighten the effect of their fair complexion, of which they are very proud.[1571] Among the Malays, according to Mr. Crawfurd, “the standard of perfection in colour is virgin gold, and, as a European lover compares the bosom of his mistress to the whiteness of snow, the East Insular lover compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious metal.”[1572]

The object of the painting of the body, so commonly practised among savages, seems sometimes to be to exaggerate the natural colour of the skin. Von Humboldt believes that this is the reason why the American Indians paint themselves with red ochre and earth.[1573] The natives of Tana, who have the colour of an old copper coin, usually dye their bodies a few shades darker;[1574] whilst the Bornabi Islanders, who have a light copper-coloured complexion, “anoint their bodies with turmeric, in order to give themselves a whiter appearance.”[1575] The Javanese, when in full dress, smear themselves with a yellow cosmetic.[1576] And, speaking of the people of a place in Maabar (Coromandel Coast), Marco Polo says, “The children that are born here are black enough, but the blacker they be the more they are thought of; wherefore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesamé, so that they become as black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods black and their devils white, and the images of their saints they do paint black all over.”[1577]

The question,—What characteristics of the human form are deemed beautiful? may now be answered. Men find beauty in the full development of the visible characteristics belonging to the human organism in general; of those peculiar to the sex; of those peculiar to the race. We have next to consider the connection of love and beauty.

That this connection does not depend upon the æsthetic pleasure excited by beauty is obvious from the fact that the intrinsic character of an æsthetic feeling is disinterestedness, whereas the intrinsic character of love is the very reverse. So far as beauty implies the full development of characteristics essential to the human organism, or to either of the sexes, the preference given to it follows from the instinctive inclination to healthiness, already mentioned, and needs no further discussion. The question is to explain the stimulating influence of racial perfection.

“In barbarous nations,” says v. Humboldt, “there is a physiognomy peculiar to the tribe or horde rather than to any individual. When we compare our domestic animals with those which inhabit our forests, we make the same observation.”[1578] The accuracy of this statement has been confirmed by later writers;[1579] and we may say with M. Godron, “C’est —aujourd’hui un fait parfaitement acquis à la science, que plus un peuple se rapproche de l’état de nature, plus les hommes qui le composent se ressemblent entre eux.”[1580] This likeness does not refer to the physiognomy only, but to the body as a whole. The variations of stature, for instance, are known to be least considerable among the peoples least advanced in civilization.[1581]

It cannot be doubted that this greater similarity is due partly to the greater uniformity of the conditions of life to which uncivilized peoples are subject. According to Villermé and Quetelet, an inequality of stature is observed not only between the inhabitants of towns on the one hand and those of the country on the other, but also, in the interior of towns, between individuals of different professions.[1582] There is, however, another factor, which is, I think, of still greater importance.

The deviations from the national type, which occur sporadically, have been considered the result of disease, and can, as Professor Waitz observes, “but rarely become permanent, as the national type is always that which harmonizes with the soil and the climate, and the external relations in which the respective peoples live.”[1583] We must assume that a certain kind of constitution is best suited for certain conditions of life, and that every considerable deviation from this must perish in the struggle for existence in a state in which natural selection is constantly at work and physical qualities are of the first importance. We know from Isidore Geoffroy’s investigations that persons who deviate much, with regard to the length of body, from the common standard—they may be dwarfs or giants—are, as a rule, abnormal in other respects also, being deficient in intelligence as well as in the power of reproduction, and being especially liable to premature death.[1584] Sir W. Lawrence, too, remarks that the strength of men who have considerably exceeded the ordinary standard has by no means corresponded to their size, and that “there are very few instances of what we can deem healthy, well-made men, with all the proper attributes of the race, much below the general standard.”[1585] If, among civilized peoples, such deviations indicate some disturbance of the vital functions, and, as a consequence, are unfavourable to existence, this must be even more the case with savage tribes, all the members of which are subject to nearly the same conditions of life. Abnormal characteristics may sometimes flourish in a highly civilized society, but they are doomed to perish in communities among whom the struggle for existence is far more severe.

It may at first sight seem strange that all the characteristics, however slight, in which the various races of men differ from each other, should harmonize with particular conditions of life to the exclusion of others. But it must be remembered that, if we had fuller knowledge, characteristics which seem to us useless, or even hurtful, might be seen to be useful. We know the utility of _some_ special characteristics, and that of others may, at least provisionally, be assumed. It is certain that the physiological functions of most persons who quit their native land and settle in a wholly different region, must undergo a considerable change if the new conditions are not to have injurious effects. Moreover, many bodily structures are so intimately related, that when one part varies others vary also, though, in most instances, we are quite unable to assign any reason why this should be the case.

Savage men are generally distinguished for relatively large jaws, which, no doubt, are of use in a state of nature, where food is often hard and tough, where the jaws have to perform the functions of knife and fork, and where the teeth occasionally serve as implements. This racial peculiarity, being in fact only a mark of low civilization, is thus easily accounted for by the law of natural selection. The less man, with advancing civilization, was in want of large and strong jaws, the greater was the chance for individuals born with smaller jaws to survive; hence a race with comparatively small jaws gradually arose. Indeed, Professor Virchow has shown that the prognathous type of face is inconsistent with the full development of the brain.[1586]

Another peculiarity which characterizes the lower races of men is the lateral jutting-out of the cheek-bones. But, as Mr. Spencer observes, this excessive size of the cheek-bones is only an accompaniment of large jaws. Other peculiarities of feature—depression of the bridge of the nose, forward opening of the nostrils, wide-spread _alæ_, and a long and large mouth—constantly coexist with large and protuberant jaws and great cheek-bones, alike in uncivilized races and in the young of civilized races;[1587] hence we cannot believe that the connection is merely accidental.

Professor Schaaffhausen has noticed that many peculiarities of the skull are coincident with arrested cerebral development and correlated to each other:—“The characters observed in the skulls of the lower races, namely, a narrow and low frontal bone, a short sagittal suture, a low temporal squama, a short occipital squama, the upper margin of which forms a flat arch, are therefore to be considered as approximations to the animal form, and they stand to each other in organic connection.”[1588] It seems as if stature and muscular force were in some way connected with the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic forms of the skull, for Welcker found that short men and short races incline more to the latter, tall men and tall races to the former. Again, according to Fick, the muscles exercise a remarkable influence on the form of the bones in general, and particularly upon some cranial bones.[1589]

The process of acclimatization affords opportunities for the study of the connection between organic structures and functions on the one hand, and surrounding nature on the other. At present, however, our knowledge of the subject is exceedingly scanty. It has been asserted that the curly hair of the European becomes straight in America,—like the hair of an Indian; that in North America, as in New South Wales, children of European parents are apt to become tall and lean, whilst there is a tendency among European colonists at the Cape to grow fat,—which reminds us of the steatopygy of the native women.[1590] Almost all that we know with certainty is that, in the process of acclimatization, man has to undergo a change, and that this change is often too great to be endurable. As Dr. Felkin observes, Europeans are almost incapable of forming colonies in the tropics;[1591] and, with few exceptions, they have been unable to rear a sound progeny there in marriage with white women.[1592] Colonel Hadden, who has spent sixteen years in India, informs me that it is a prevalent opinion among British officers in that country that an English regiment of a thousand men would, within thirteen years, from climate, disease, or other casualties, almost wholly die out. This statement well agrees with Professor Sprenger’s, that a regiment consisting of eight hundred men loses within ten years more than seven hundred.[1593] It is also, according to Colonel Hadden, a common report that, of a third generation of pure Europeans in India, children only are, occasionally, met with, and that they never reach the age of puberty.[1594] English parents, as a rule, send their children to Europe when five or six years old, as otherwise they would succumb.[1595] According to Mr. Squier, it is the concurrent testimony of all intelligent and observing men in Central America that the pure whites are there not only relatively but absolutely decreasing in numbers, whilst the pure Indians are rapidly increasing, and the Ladinos more and more approximating to the aboriginal type.[1596]

The colour of the skin is justly considered one of the chief characteristics of race. Now it is quite impossible to assign any definite reason why one race is white, another black, brown, or yellow. Nobody has yet been able to prove that the colour of the skin is of any direct use to man, and it certainly is not the immediate result of long exposure to a certain climate. But we know that there exists an intimate connection between the colour of the skin and bodily constitution. “Les colorations diverses,” says M. Godron, “qui distinguent les différentes variétés de l’espèce humaine, tiennent beaucoup moins aux agents physiques, qu’aux phénomènes les plus intimes de l’organisation qui dans l’état actuel de la science, nous échappent et resteront peut-être toujours couverts d’un voile impénétrable.”[1597] Thus the alteration in the customary physiological functions called acclimatization, seems often to be connected with some change of colour not directly depending upon the influence of the sun. Dr. Mayer observed that a European at the tropics loses his rosy complexion, the difference in colour between arterial and venous blood being strikingly diminished on account of the smaller absorption of oxygen, which results from the feebler process of combustion.[1598] According to Dr. Tylor, it is asserted that the pure negro in the United States has undergone a change which has left him a shade lighter in complexion;[1599] whilst a long medical experience at New Orleans showed Dr. Visinié that the blood of the American negro has lost the excess of plasticity which it possessed in Africa.[1600] A negro boy brought to Germany by Gerhard Rohlfs, changed his colour after a residence of two years, from deep black to light brown.[1601] Klinkosch mentions the case of a negro who lost his blackness and became yellow; and Caldani declares that a negro, who was a shoemaker at Venice, was black when brought, during infancy, to that city, but became gradually lighter, and had the hue of a person suffering from a slight jaundice.[1602] In the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ there is even a record of a negro who became as white as a European.[1603] On the other hand, we are told of an English gentleman Macnaughten by name, who long lived the life of a native in the jungle of Southern India, and acquired, even on the clothed portions of his body, a skin as brown as that of a Brahman.[1604] These statements, if true, certainly refer to exceedingly exceptional cases, but their accuracy cannot be _à priori_ denied. We know that certain organisms are much better able than others to undergo the change which constitutes acclimatization, and we have no positive reason to doubt that this power may, in abnormal cases, be extraordinarily great. At any rate, it is beyond doubt that a close connection exists between the colour of the skin and the physiological functions of the body, on the one hand, and between these and the conditions of life on the other. Disease is commonly accompanied by a change of colour. Mr. Wallace observes that, in many islands of the Malay Archipelago, species of widely different genera of butterflies differ in precisely the same way as to colour or form from allied species in other islands.[1605] The same thing occurs to a less degree in other parts of the world also. And Agassiz has pointed out that, in Asia and Africa, the large apes and the human races have the same colour of the skin.[1606]

We may thus take for granted that racial peculiarities stand in some connection with the external circumstances in which the various races live. It may perhaps be objected that we meet with native tribes of various types on the same degree of latitude, and under the same climatic conditions.[1607] But we must remember that it is often impossible to decide whether the conditions of life are exactly the same; that intermixture of blood has caused a great confusion of racial types; and that all peoples have arrived at their present localities after more or less extensive migrations. We may be sure that some characters have been preserved from earlier times when the race lived in other circumstances, and that the higher its degree of civilization the less likely it would be to lose the stamp impressed upon it.[1608]

It is, however, exceedingly doubtful whether racial differences are so directly the result of external influences as anthropologists generally believe,—that is, whether they are the inherited effects of conditions of life to which previous generations have been subject. Professor Weismann, as is well known, thinks that acquired characters are not transmitted from parent to offspring. “It has never been proved,” he says, “that acquired characters are transmitted, and it has never been demonstrated that, without the aid of such transmission, the evolution of the organic world becomes unintelligible.”[1609] Man has from time immemorial mutilated his body in various ways, and there is not a single well-founded case of these mutilations having been inherited by the offspring.[1610] The children of accomplished pianists do not inherit the art of playing the piano. Facts show that children of highly civilized nations have no trace of a language, when they have grown up in a wild condition and in complete isolation.[1611] Change in colour influenced by sun and air is obviously temporary. The children of the husbandman, or of the sailor, are just as fair as those of the most delicate and pale inhabitant of a city; and, although the Moors, who have lived in Africa since the seventh century, are generally in mature life very sunburnt, their children are as white as those born in Europe, and “restent blancs toute leur vie, quand leurs travaux ne les exposent pas aux ardeurs du soleil.”[1612]

Such facts are certainly not in favour of the prevalent theory that the differences of race are due to direct adaptation. Whether Professor Weismann’s theory proves to be well founded or not, we manifestly cannot assume that the heredity of acquired characters suffices to explain the origin of the human races. It seems most probable that, at the very earliest stages of human evolution, mankind was restricted to a comparatively small area, and was then homogeneous, as every animal and vegetable species is under similar conditions. In the struggle for existence the intellectual faculties of man were developed, and before the breaking away of isolated groups he may have invented the art of making fire, and of fabricating the simplest implements and weapons. This mental superiority made it possible for man to disperse, enabling him to exist even under conditions somewhat different from those to which he was originally adapted. His organism had to undergo certain changes, but we are not aware that these modifications were transmitted to descendants. All that we know is, that the children born were not exactly like each other, and that those who happened to vary most in accordance with the new conditions of life as a rule survived, and became the ancestors of following generations. The congenital characters which enabled them to survive were of course transmitted to their offspring, and thus, through natural selection,[1613] races would gradually arise, the members of each of which would have as hereditary dispositions the same peculiarities as those which, to a certain extent, may be acquired through acclimatization, but then only for the individual himself, not for his descendants. We can thus understand how the children of a negro are black[1614]—even if they are born in Europe[1615]—as the black colour is the correlative of certain physiological processes favourable to existence in the country of their race. They survive, whilst the children of Europeans who have emigrated to the tropics are carried off in great numbers, even though their parents have succeeded in undergoing the functional modifications which accompanied the change of abode.

This explanation of racial differences seems the more acceptable, when we take into consideration the immense period which has elapsed since man began to spread over the earth, and the slow and gradual change of abodes. He was not at once moved from the tropics to the polar zones, or from the polar zones to the tropics, but had to undergo an indefinitely long chain of adaptive processes. Thus were gradually established such radical differences as those which distinguish a European from a negro, an Australian from a Red-skin.

* * * * *

We have now found an answer to our question, why man, in the choice of mate, gives the preference to the best representatives of his race. The full development of racial characters indicates health, a deviation from them indicates disease. Physical beauty is thus in every respect the outward manifestation of physical perfection, or healthiness, and the development of the instinct which prefers beauty to ugliness is evidently within the power of natural selection.

This explanation of the connection between love and beauty, as also of the origin of the races of men, is very different from that given by Mr. Darwin. “The men of each race,” he says, “prefer what they are accustomed to; they cannot endure any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic carried to a moderate extreme.... As the great anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety, and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.”[1616]

In the fashions of our own dress, says Mr. Darwin, we see exactly the same principle and the same desire to carry every point to an extreme.[1617] Man prefers, to a certain extent, what he is accustomed to see. Thus the Maoris, who are in the habit of dyeing their lips blue, consider it “a reproach to a woman to have red lips;”[1618] and we ourselves dislike, on the whole, any great deviation from the leading fashions. But, on the other hand, man wants variety. Now in one, now in another way, he changes his dress in order to attract attention, or to charm. The fashions of savages are certainly more permanent than ours;[1619] but the extreme diversity of ornaments with which many uncivilized peoples bedeck themselves, shows their emulation to make themselves attractive by means of new enticements. “Each of the Outanatas (New Guinea),” says Mr. Earl, “seemed desirous of ornamenting himself in some way different from his neighbour;”[1620] and, with regard to the Pacific Islanders, Mr. John Williams remarks that “the inhabitants of almost every group ... have their peculiar ideas as to what constitutes an addition to beauty.”[1621] But it is impossible to believe that the different races’ ideal of personal beauty are in any way connected with this capriciousness of taste. Were this the case, as Mr. Darwin suggests, the men of each race would admire variations and piquant peculiarities in the appearance of their women, and not only each _characteristic_ point “carried to a moderate extreme.”

According to Mr. Darwin, racial differences are due to the different standards of beauty, whereas, according to the theory here indicated, the different standards of beauty are due to racial differences. “Let us suppose,” says Mr. Darwin, “the members of a tribe, practising some form of marriage, to spread over an unoccupied continent, they would soon split up into distinct hordes, separated from each other by various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant wars between all barbarous nations. The hordes would thus be exposed to slightly different conditions and habits of life, and would sooner or later come to differ in some small degree. As soon as this occurred, each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of beauty; and then unconscious selection would come into action through the more powerful and leading men preferring certain women to others. Thus the differences between the tribes, at first very slight, would gradually and inevitably be more or less increased.”[1622] This theory—that racial differences are due to sexual selection—obviously presupposes either that the human organism is alike well fitted to any climate and natural conditions; or that no correlation exists between the visible parts of the body and its functions. Otherwise, of course, little effect could be produced through the preference given to certain individuals; for in a savage state, where celibacy is an exception, those men and women whose constitution was best suited to the conditions of life would, in any case, in the end, determine the racial type. It is also difficult to see how those slight variations from the original human type, which, according to Mr. Darwin, characterized the distinct hordes or tribes into which mankind was split up, could have developed into such enormous differences as we find in the colour of the skin of, for example, a negro and a European—only through the selection of the best representatives of these tribal peculiarities, these slight variations. Finally, it seems doubtful whether Mr. Darwin would have ascribed racial differences in colour to the influence of sexual selection, had he considered the important fact, already mentioned, that the larger apes have the same colour of the skin as the human races living in the same country.

Mr. Darwin also thinks that the differences in external appearance between man and the lower animals are, to a certain extent, due to sexual selection. The chief character of the human race which he proposes to account for in this way is the general hairlessness of the body. “No one supposes,” he says, “that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man; his body therefore cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.”[1623] It is curious that the hairlessness of man has puzzled so many anthropologists,[1624] as it may very easily be explained by the law of variation. When man had invented the art of making fire, and the idea of covering himself to secure protection from cold had occurred to his mind, hairlessness was no serious disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Hence natural selection ceased to operate in the matter, and a hairless race gradually arose. We find the same principle at work in various other ways. Civilized man does not need such keen vision as savages;[1625] consequently many of us are short-sighted and few Europeans could match a Red Indian in his power of detecting the symptoms of a trail. For the same reason we are generally inferior to savages in the capacity for discriminating odours, and our teeth are apt to be very much less sound and vigorous than theirs.

That sexual selection has had _some_ influence on the physical aspect of mankind is probable. Accurate observers in different parts of the world have remarked that personal deformities are very rare in savage races unaffected by European influence.[1626] This chiefly depends upon the fact that deformed individuals seldom survive the hardships of early life, but, as Sir W. Lawrence says, if they do survive, they are prevented by the kind of aversion they inspire from propagating their deformities.[1627] It is not unlikely that the selection of the best representatives of the race contributes to keep the racial type pure. Sexual selection, too, may be the cause why, among savages, the men are so often handsomer than the women—that is, better specimens of their sex and their race;[1628] whilst, in civilized society, the reverse is true. We have seen that savage women have great liberty of disposing of their own hand, and that, at lower stages of civilization, celibacy occurs almost exclusively among the men. Among us, on the contrary, the unmarried women outnumber the unmarried men, and, whilst a man’s ability to marry depends only to a small extent upon his personal appearance, the like may certainly not be said of women.