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 rôle 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_."
Among those who were led astray by these views of Darwin is
Westermarck, who declares (257, 172) 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]
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]