Chapter XXXVI). The respect with which the beard was regarded

among the ancient Hebrews is indicated in the narrative (II

Samuel, Chapter X) which tells how, when David sent his servants

to King Hanun the latter shaved off half their beards; they were

too ashamed to return in this condition, and remained at Jericho

until their beards had grown again. A passage in Ordericus

Vitalis (_Ecclesiastical History_, Book VIII, Chapter X) is

interesting both as regards the fashions of the twelfth century

in England and Normandy and the feeling that prompted Ordericus.

Speaking of the men of his time, he wrote: "The forepart of

their head is bare after the manner of thieves, while at the back

they nourish long hair like harlots. In former times penitents,

captives and pilgrims usually went unshaved and wore long beards,

as an outward mark of their penance or captivity or pilgrimage.

Now almost all the world wear crisped hair and beards, carrying

on their faces the token of their filthy lust like stinking

goats. Their locks are curled with hot irons, and instead of

wearing caps they bind their heads with fillets. A knight seldom

appears in public with his head uncovered, and properly shaved,

according to the apostolic precept (I Corinthians, Chapter XI,

verses 7 and 14)."

We have seen that there is good reason for assuming a certain fundamental

tendency whereby the most various peoples of the world, at all events in

the person of their most intelligent members, recognize and accept a

common ideal of feminine beauty, so that to a certain extent beauty may be

said to have an objectively æsthetic basis. We have further found that

this æsthetic human ideal is modified, and very variously modified in

different countries and even in the same country at different periods, by

a tendency, prompted by a sexual impulse which is not necessarily in

harmony with æsthetic cannons, to emphasize, or even to repress, one or

other of the prominent secondary sexual characters of the body. We now

come to another tendency which is apt to an even greater extent to limit

the cultivation of the purely æsthetic ideal of beauty: the influences of

national or racial type.

To the average man of every race the woman who most completely embodies

the type of his race is usually the most beautiful, and even mutilations

and deformities often have their origin, as Humboldt long since pointed

out, in the effort to accentuate the racial type.[152] Eastern women

possess by nature large and conspicuous eyes, and this characteristic

they seek still further to heighten by art. The Ainu are the hairiest of

races, and there is nothing which they consider so beautiful as hair. It

is difficult to be sexually attracted to persons who are fundamentally

unlike ourselves in racial constitution.[153]

It frequently happens that this admiration for racial characteristics

leads to the idealization of features which are far removed from æsthetic

beauty. The firm and rounded breast is certainly a feature of beauty, but

among many of the black peoples of Africa the breasts fall at a very early

period, and here we sometimes find that the hanging breast is admired as

beautiful.

The African Baganda, the Rev. J. Roscoe states (_Journal of the

Anthropological Institute_, January-June, 1902, p. 72), admire

hanging breasts to such an extent that their young women tie them

down in order to hasten the arrival of this condition.

"The most remarkable trait of beauty in the East," wrote Sonnini,

"is to have large black eyes, and nature has made this a

characteristic sign of the women of these countries. But, not

content with this, the women of Egypt wish their eyes to be still

larger and blacker. To attain this Mussulmans, Jewesses, and

Christians, rich and poor, all tint their eyelids with galena.

They also blacken the lashes (as Juvenal tells us the Roman

ladies did) and mark the angles of the eye so that the fissure

appears larger." (Sonnini, _Voyage dans la Haute et Basse

Egypte_, 1799, vol. i, p. 290.) Kohl is thus only used by the

women who have what the Arabs call "natural kohl." As Flinders

Petrie has found, the women of the so-called "New Race," between

the sixth and tenth dynasties of ancient Egypt, used galena and

malachite for painting their faces. Jewish women in the days of

the prophets painted their eyes with kohl, as do some Hindu women

to-day.

"The Ainu have a great affection for their beards. They regard

them as a sign of manhood and strength and consider them as

especially handsome. They look upon them, indeed, as a great and

highly prized treasure." (J. Batchelor, _The Ainu and their

Folklore_, p. 162.)

A great many theories have been put forward to explain the

Chinese fashion of compressing and deforming the foot. The

Chinese are great admirers of the feminine foot, and show

extreme sexual sensitiveness in regard to it. Chinese women

naturally possess very small feet, and the main reason for

binding them is probably to be found in the desire to make them

still smaller. (See, e.g., Stratz, _Die Frauenkleidung_, 1904, p.

101.)

An interesting question, which in part finds its explanation here and is

of considerable significance from the point of view of sexual selection,

concerns the relative admiration bestowed on blondes and brunettes. The

question is not, indeed, one which is entirely settled by racial

characteristics. There is something to be said on the matter from the

objective standpoint of æsthetic considerations. Stratz, in a chapter on

beauty of coloring in woman, points out that fair hair is more beautiful

because it harmonizes better with the soft outlines of woman, and, one may

add, it is more brilliantly conspicuous; a golden object looks larger than

a black object. The hair of the armpit, also, Stratz considers should be

light. On the other hand, the pubic hair should be dark in order to

emphasize the breadth of the pelvis and the obtusity of the angle between

the mons veneris and the thighs. The eyebrows and eyelashes should also be

dark in order to increase the apparent size of the orbits. Stratz adds

that among many thousand women he has only seen one who, together with an

otherwise perfect form, has also possessed these excellencies in the

highest measure. With an equable and matt complexion she had blonde, very

long, smooth hair, with sparse, blonde, and curly axillary hair; but,

although her eyes were blue, the eyebrows and eyelashes were black, as

also was the not overdeveloped pubic hair.[154]

We may accept it as fairly certain that, so far as any objective standard

of æsthetic beauty is recognizable, that standard involves the supremacy

of the fair type of woman. Such supremacy in beauty has doubtless been

further supported by the fact that in most European countries the ruling

caste, the aristocratic class, whose superior energy has brought it to the

top, is somewhat blonder than the average population.

The main cause, however, in determining the relative amount of admiration

accorded in Europe to blondes and to brunettes is the fact that the

population of Europe must be regarded as predominantly fair, and that our

conception of beauty in feminine coloring is influenced by an instinctive

desire to seek this type in its finest forms. In the north of Europe there

can, of course, be no question concerning the predominant fairness of the

population, but in portions of the centre and especially in the south it

may be considered a question. It must, however, be remembered that the

white population occupying all the shores of the Mediterranean have the

black peoples of Africa immediately to the south of them. They have been

liable to come in contact with the black peoples and in contrast with them

they have tended not only to be more impressed with their own whiteness,

but to appraise still more highly its blondest manifestations as

representing a type the farthest removed from the negro. It must be added

that the northerner who comes into the south is apt to overestimate the

darkness of the southerner because of the extreme fairness of his own

people. The differences are, however, less extreme than we are apt to

suppose; there are more dark people in the north than we commonly assume,

and more fair people in the south. Thus, if we take Italy, we find in its

fairest part, Venetia, according to Raseri, that there are 8 per cent.

communes in which fair hair predominates, 81 per cent. in which brown

predominates, and only 11 per cent. in which black predominates; as we go

farther south black hair becomes more prevalent, but there are in most

provinces a few communes in which fair hair is not only frequent, but even

predominant. It is somewhat the same with light eyes, which are also most

abundant in Venetia and decrease to a slighter extent as we go south. It

is possible that in former days the blondes prevailed to a greater degree

than to-day in the south of Europe. Among the Berbers of the Atlas

Mountains, who are probably allied to the South Europeans, there appears

to be a fairly considerable proportion of blondes,[155] while on the other

hand there is some reason to believe that blondes die out under the

influence of civilization as well as of a hot climate.

However this may be, the European admiration for blondes dates back to

early classic times. Gods and men in Homer would appear to be frequently

described as fair.[156] Venus is nearly always blonde, as was Milton's

Eve. Lucian refers to women who dye their hair. The Greek sculptors gilded

the hair of their statues, and the figurines in many cases show very fair

hair.[157] The Roman custom of dyeing the hair light, as Renier has shown,

was not due to the desire to be like the fair Germans, and when Rome fell

it would appear that the custom of dyeing the hair persisted, and never

died out; it is mentioned by Anselm, who died at the beginning of the

twelfth century.[158]

In the poetry of the people in Italy brunettes, as we should expect,

receive much commendation, though even here the blondes are preferred.

When we turn to the painters and poets of Italy, and the æsthetic writers

on beauty from the Renaissance onward, the admiration for fair hair is

unqualified, though there is no correspondingly unanimous admiration for

blue eyes. Angelico and most of the pre-Raphaelite artists usually painted

their women with flaxen and light-golden hair, which often became brown

with the artists of the Renaissance period. Firenzuola, in his admirable

dialogue on feminine beauty, says that a woman's hair should be like gold

or honey or the rays of the sun. Luigini also, in his _Libro della bella

Donna_, says that hair must be golden. So also thought Petrarch and

Ariosto. There is, however, no corresponding predilection among these

writers for blue eyes. Firenzuola said that the eyes must be dark, though

not black. Luigini said that they must be bright and black. Niphus had

previously said that the eyes should be "black like those of Venus" and

the skin ivory, even a little brown. He mentions that Avicenna had praised

the mixed, or gray eye.

In France and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair

is just as marked as in Italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of

which we have a record. "Even before the thirteenth century," remarks

Houdoy, in his very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern

France during mediæval times, "and for men as well as for women, fair hair

was an essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison

almost exclusively used."[159] He mentions that in the _Acta Sanctorum_ it

is stated that Saint Godelive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had

black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. In the

_Chanson de Roland_ and all the French mediæval poems the eyes are

invariably _vairs_. This epithet is somewhat vague. It comes from

_varius_, and signifies mixed, which Houdoy regards as showing various

irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term _iris_ to

describe the pupillary membrane.[160] _Vair_ would thus describe not so

much the color of the eye as its brilliant and sparkling quality. While

Houdoy may have been correct, it still seems probable that the eye

described as _vair_ was usually assumed to be "various" in color also, of

the kind we commonly call gray, which is usually applied to blue eyes

encircled with a ring of faintly sprinkled brown pigment. Such eyes are

fairly typical of northern France and frequently beautiful. That this was

the case seems to be clearly indicated by the fact that, as Houdoy himself

points out, a few centuries later the _vair_ eye was regarded as _vert_,

and green eyes were celebrated as the most beautiful.[161] The etymology

was false, but a false etymology will hardly suffice to change an ideal.

At the Renaissance Jehan Lemaire, when describing Venus as the type of

beauty, speaks of her green eyes, and Ronsard, a little later, sang:

"Noir je veux l'oeil et brun le teint,

Bien que l'oeil verd toute la France adore."

Early in the sixteenth century Brantôme quotes some lines current in

France, Spain, and Italy according to which a woman should have a white

skin, but black eyes and eyebrows, and adds that personally he agrees with

the Spaniard that "a brunette is sometimes equal to a blonde,"[162] but

there is also a marked admiration for green eyes in Spanish literature;

not only in the typical description of a Spanish beauty in the _Celestina_

(Act. I) are the eyes green, but Cervantes, for example, when referring to

the beautiful eyes of a woman, frequently speaks of them as green.

It would thus appear that in Continental Europe generally, from south to

north, there is a fair uniformity of opinion as regards the pigmentary

type of feminine beauty. Such variation as exists seemingly involves a

somewhat greater degree of darkness for the southern beauty in harmony

with the greater racial darkness of the southerner, but the variations

fluctuate within a narrow range; the extremely dark type is always

excluded, and so it would seem probable is the extremely fair type, for

blue eyes have not, on the whole, been considered to form part of the

admired type.

If we turn to England no serious modification of this conclusion is called

for. Beauty is still fair. Indeed, the very word "fair" in England itself

means beautiful. That in the seventeenth century it was generally held

essential that beauty should be blonde is indicated by a passage in the

_Anatomy of Melancholy_, where Burton argues that "golden hair was ever

in great account," and quotes many examples from classic and more modern

literature.[163] That this remains the case is sufficiently evidenced by

the fact that the ballet and chorus on the English stage wear yellow wigs,

and the heroine of the stage is blonde, while the female villain of

melodrama is a brunette.

While, however, this admiration of fairness as a mark of beauty

unquestionably prevails in England, I do not think it can be said--as it

probably can be said of the neighboring and closely allied country of

France--that the most beautiful women belong to the fairest group of the

community. In most parts of Europe the coarse and unbeautiful plebeian

type tends to be very dark; in England it tends to be very fair. England

is, however, somewhat fairer generally than most parts of Europe; so that,

while it may be said that a very beautiful woman in France or in Spain may

belong to the blondest section of the community, a very beautiful woman in

England, even though of the same degree of blondness as her Continental

sister, will not belong to the extremely blonde section of the English

community. It thus comes about that when we are in northern France we find

that gray eyes, a very fair but yet unfreckled complexion, brown hair,

finely molded features, and highly sensitive facial expression combine to

constitute a type which is more beautiful than any other we meet in

France, and it belongs to the fairest section of the French population.

When we cross over to England, however, unless we go to a so-called

"Celtic" district, it is hopeless to seek among the blondest section of

the community for any such beautiful and refined type. The English

beautiful woman, though she may still be fair, is by no means very fair,

and from the English standpoint she may even sometimes appear somewhat

dark:[164] In determining what I call the index of pigmentation--or degree

of darkness of the eyes and hair--of different groups in the National

Portrait Gallery I found that the "famous beauties" (my own personal

criterion of beauty not being taken into account) was somewhat nearer to

the dark than to the light end of the scale.[165] If we consider, at

random, individual instances of famous English beauties they are not

extremely fair. Lady Venetia Stanley, in the early seventeenth century,

who became the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, was somewhat dark, with brown

hair and eyebrows. Mrs. Overall, a little later in the same century, a

Lancashire woman, the wife of the Dean of St. Paul's, was, says Aubrey,

"the greatest beauty in her time in England," though very wanton, with

"the loveliest eyes that were ever seen"; if we may trust a ballad given

by Aubrey she was dark with black hair. The Gunnings, the famous beauties

of the eighteenth century, were not extremely fair, and Lady Hamilton, the

most characteristic type of English beauty, had blue, brown-flecked eyes

and dark chestnut hair. Coloration is only one of the elements of beauty,

though an important one. Other things being equal, the most blonde is most

beautiful; but it so happens that among the races of Great Britain the

other things are very frequently not equal, and that, notwithstanding a

conviction ingrained in the language, with us the fairest of women is not

always the "fairest." So magical, however, is the effect of brilliant

coloring that it serves to keep alive in popular opinion an unqualified

belief in the universal European creed of the beauty of blondness.

We have seen that underlying the conception of beauty, more especially as

it manifests itself in woman to man, are to be found at least three

fundamental elements: First there is the general beauty of the species as

it tends to culminate in the white peoples of European origin; then there

is the beauty due to the full development or even exaggeration of the

sexual and more especially the secondary sexual characters; and last there

is the beauty due to the complete embodiment of the particular racial or

national type. To make the analysis fairly complete must be added at least

one other factor: the influence of individual taste. Every individual, at

all events in civilization, within certain narrow limits, builds up a

feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own special

organization and its demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions

he has experienced. It is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this

factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration

of sexual selection in civilized man. But its variations are numerous and

in impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features

which are in reality the reverse of beautiful. It may be said of many a

man, as d'Annunzio says of the hero of his _Trionfo della Morte_ in

relation to the woman he loved, that "he felt himself bound to her by the

real qualities of her body, and not only by those which were most

beautiful, but specially by _those which were least beautiful_" (the

novelist italicizes these words), so that his attention was fixed upon her

defects, and emphasized them, thus arousing within himself an impetuous

state of desire. Without invoking defects, however, there are endless

personal variations which may all be said to come within the limits of

possible beauty or charm. "There are no two women," as Stratz remarks,

"who in exactly the same way stroke back a rebellious lock from their

brows, no two who hold the hand in greeting in exactly the same way, no

two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same

movement."[166] Among the multitude of minute differences--which yet can

be seen and felt--the beholder is variously attracted or repelled

according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual

selection are effected accordingly.

Another factor in the constitution of the ideal of beauty, but one perhaps

exclusively found under civilized conditions, is the love of the unusual,

the remote, the exotic. It is commonly stated that rarity is admired in

beauty. This is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and

characters which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally

admired type. "_Jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas_," according

to the saying of Publilius Syrus. The greater nervous restlessness and

sensibility of civilization heightens this tendency, which is not

infrequently found also among men of artistic genius. One may refer, for

instance, to Baudelaire's profound admiration for the mulatto type of

beauty.[167] In every great centre of civilization the national ideal of

beauty tends to be somewhat modified in exotic directions, and foreign

ideals, as well as foreign fashions, become preferred to those that are

native. It is significant of this tendency that when, a few years since,

an enterprising Parisian journal hung in its _salle_ the portraits of one

hundred and thirty-one actresses, etc., and invited the votes of the

public by ballot as to the most beautiful of them, not one of the three

women who came out at the head of the poll was French. A dancer of Belgian

origin (Cléo de Merode) was by far at the head with over 3000 votes,

followed by an American from San Francisco (Sybil Sanderson), and then a

Polish woman.

FOOTNOTES:

[134] Figured in Mau's _Pompeii_, p. 174.

[135] As a native of Lukunor said to the traveler Mertens, "It has the

same object as your clothes, to please the women."

[136] "The greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel," as Burton

states (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Sec. II, Mem. II, Subs. III),

illustrating this proposition with immense learning. Stanley Hall

(_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. ix, Part III, pp. 365 _et seq._)

has some interesting observations on the various psychic influences of

clothing; cf. Bloch, _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_,

Teil II, pp. 330 et seq.

[137] _History of Human Marriage_, Chapter IX, especially p, 201. We have

a striking and comparatively modern European example of an article of

clothing designed to draw attention to the sexual sphere in the codpiece

(the French _braguette_), familiar to us through fifteenth and sixteenth

century pictures and numerous allusions in Rabelais and in Elizabethan

literature. This was originally a metal box for the protection of the

sexual organs in war, but subsequently gave place to a leather case only

worn by the lower classes, and became finally an elegant article of

fashionable apparel, often made of silk and adorned with ribbons, even

with gold and jewels. (See, e.g., Bloch, _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der

Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil I, p. 159.)

[138] A correspondent in Ceylon has pointed out to me that in the Indian

statues of Buddha, Vishnu, goddesses, etc., the necklace always covers the

nipples, a sexually attractive adornment being thus at the same time the

guardian of the orifices of the body. Crawley (_The Mystic Rose_, p. 135)

regards mutilations as in the nature of permanent amulets or charms.

[139] Mantegazza, in his discussion of this point, although an ardent

admirer of feminine beauty, decides that woman's form is not, on the

whole, more beautiful than man's. See Appendix to Cap. IV of _Fisiologia

della Donna_.

[140] For a discussion of the anthropology of the feminine pelvis, see

Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, bd. 1. Sec. VI.

[141] Ploss and Bartels, loc. cit.; Deniker, _Revue d'Anthropologie_,

January 15, 1889, and _Races of Man_, p. 93.

[142] Darwin.

[143] G.F. Watts, "On Taste in Dress," _Nineteenth Century_, 1883.

[144] From mediæval times onwards there has been a tendency to treat the

gluteal region with contempt, a tendency well marked in speech and custom

among the lowest classes in Europe to-day, but not easily traceable in

classic times. Dühren (_Das Geschlechtsleben in England_, bd. II, pp. 359

et seq.) brings forward quotations from æsthetic writers and others

dealing with the beauty of this part of the body.

[145] Sonnini, _Voyage, etc._, vol. i, p. 308.

[146] Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, bd. 1, Sec. III; Mantegazza,

_Fisiologia della Donna_, Chapter III.

[147] Bloch brings together various interesting quotations concerning the

farthingale and the crinoline. (_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia

Sexualis_, Teil I, p. 156.) He states that, like most other feminine

fashions in dress, it was certainly invented by prostitutes.

[148] The racial variations in the form and character of the breasts are

great, and there are considerable variations even among Europeans. Even as

regards the latter our knowledge is, however, still very vague and

incomplete; there is here a fruitful field for the medical anthropologist.

Ploss and Bartels have brought together the existing data (_Das Weib_, bd.

I, Sec. VIII). Stratz also discusses the subject (_Die Schönheit das

Weiblichen Körpers_, Chapter X).

[149] _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v, p.

28.

[150] These devices are dealt with and illustrations given by Ploss and

Bartels, _Das Weib_ (loc. cit.).

[151] See, e.g., _Parerga und Paralipomena_, bd. I, p. 189, and bd. 2, p.

482. Moll has also discussed this point (_Untersuchungen über die Libido

Sexualis_, bd. I, pp. 384 et seq.).

[152] Speaking of some South American tribes, he remarks (_Travels_,

English translations, 1814, vol. iii. p. 236) that they "have as great an

antipathy to the beard as the Eastern nations hold it in reverence. This

antipathy is derived from the same source as the predilection for flat

foreheads, which is seen in so singular a manner in the statues of the

Aztec heroes and divinities. Nations attach the idea of beauty to

everything which particularly characterizes their own physical

conformation, their natural physiognomy." See also Westermarck, _History

of Marriage_, p. 261. Ripley (_Races of Europe_, pp. 49, 202) attaches

much importance to the sexual selection founded on a tendency of this

kind.

[153] "Differences of race are irreducible," Abel Hermant remarks

(_Confession d'un Enfant d'Hier_, p. 209), "and between two beings who

love each other they cannot fail to produce exceptional and instructive

reactions. In the first superficial ebullition of love, indeed, nothing

notable may be manifested, but in a fairly short time the two lovers,

innately hostile, in striving to approach each other strike against an

invisible partition which separates them. Their sensibilities are

divergent; everything in each shocks the other; even their anatomical

conformation, even the language of their gestures; all is foreign."

[154] C.H. Stratz, _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_, fourteenth

edition, Chapter XII.

[155] See, e.g., Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_, pp. 59-75.

[156] Sergi (_The Mediterranean Race_, Chapter 1), by an analysis of

Homer's color epithets, argues that in very few cases do they involve

fairness; but his attempt scarcely seems successful, although most of

these epithets are undoubtedly vague and involve a certain range of

possible color.

[157] Léchat's study of the numerous realistic colored statues recently

discovered in Greece (summarized in _Zentralblatt für Anthropologie_,

1904, ht. 1, p. 22) shows that with few exceptions the hair is fair.

[158] Renier, _Il Tipo Estetico_, pp. 127 et seq. In another book, _Les

Femmes Blondes selon les Peintres de l'Ecole de Venise_, par deux

Venitiens (one of these "Venetians" being Armand Baschet), is brought

together much information concerning the preference for blondes in

literature, together with a great many of the recipes anciently used for

making the hair fair.

[159] J. Houdoy, _La Beauté des Femmes dans la Littérature et dans l'Art

du XIIe au XVIe Siècle_, 1876, pp. 32 et seq.

[160] Houdoy, op. cit., pp. 41 et seq.

[161] Houdoy, op. cit., p. 83.

[162] Brantôme, _Vie des Dames Galantes_, Discours II.

[163] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Sec. II, Mem. II, Subs. II.

[164] It is significant that Burton (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, loc. cit.),

while praising golden hair, also argues that "of all eyes black are moist

amiable," quoting many examples to this effect from classic and later

literature.

[165] "Relative Abilities of the Fair and the Dark," _Monthly Review_,

August, 1901; cf. H. Ellis, _A Study of British Genius_, p. 215.

[166] Stratz, _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_, p. 217.

[167] Bloch (_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil II,

pp. 261 et seq.) brings together some facts bearing on the admiration for

negresses in Paris and elsewhere.

III.

Beauty not the Sole Element in the Sexual Appeal of Vision--Movement--The

Mirror--Narcissism--Pygmalionism--Mixoscopy--The Indifference of Women to

Male Beauty--The Significance of Woman's Admiration of Strength--The

Spectacle of Strength is a Tactile Quality made Visible.

Our discussion of the sensory element of vision in human sexual selection

has been mainly an attempt to disentangle the chief elements of beauty in

so far as beauty is a stimulus to the sexual instinct. Beauty by no means

comprehends the whole of the influences which make for sexual allurement

through vision, but it is the point at which all the most powerful and

subtle of these are focussed; it represents a fairly definite complexus,

appealing at once to the sexual and to the æsthetic impulses, to which no

other sense can furnish anything in any degree analogous. It is because

this conception of beauty has arisen upon it that vision properly occupies

the supreme position in man from the point of view which we here occupy.

Beauty is thus the chief, but it is not the sole, element in the sexual

appeal of vision. In all parts of the world this has always been well

understood, and in courtship, in the effort to arouse tumescence, the

appeals to vision have been multiplied and at the same time aided by

appeals to the other senses. Movement, especially in the form of dancing,

is the most important of the secondary appeals to vision. This is so well

recognized that it is scarcely necessary to insist upon it here; it may

suffice to refer to a single typical example. The most decent of

Polynesian dances, according to William Ellis, was the _hura_, which was

danced by the daughters of chiefs in the presence of young men of rank

with the hope of gaining a future husband. "The daughters of the chiefs,

who were the dancers on these occasions, at times amounted to five or six,

though occasionally only one exhibited her symmetry of figure and

gracefulness of action. Their dress was singular, but elegant. The head

was ornamented with a fine and beautiful braid of human hair, wound round

the head in the form of a turban. A triple wreath of scarlet, white, and

yellow flowers adorned the head-dress. A loose vest of spotted cloth

covered the lower part of the bosom. The tihi, of fine white stiffened

cloth frequently edged with a scarlet border, gathered like a large frill,

passed under the arms and reached below the waist; while a handsome fine

cloth, fastened round the waist with a band or sash, covered the feet. The

breasts were ornamented with rainbow-colored mother-of-pearl shells, and a

covering of curiously wrought network and feathers. The music of the hura

was the large and small drum and occasionally the flute. The movements

were generally slow, but always easy and natural, and no exertion on the

part of the performers was wanting to render them graceful and

attractive."[168] We see here, in this very typical example, how the

extraneous visual aids of movement, color, and brilliancy are invoked in

conjunction with music to make the appeal of beauty more convincing in the

process of sexual selection.

It may be in place here to mention, in passing, the considerable

place which vision occupies in normal and abnormal methods of

heightening tumescence under circumstances which exclude definite

selection by beauty. The action of mirrors belongs to this group

of phenomena. Mirrors are present in profusion in high-class

brothels--on the walls and also above the beds. Innocent youths

and girls are also often impelled to contemplate themselves in

mirrors and sometimes thus, produce the first traces of sexual

excitement. I have referred to the developed forms of this kind

of self-contemplation in the Study of Auto-erotism, and in this

connection have alluded to the fable of Narcissus, whence Näcke

has since devised the term Narcissism for this group of

phenomena. It is only necessary to mention the enormous

production of photographs, representing normal and abnormal

sexual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or

of gratifying sexual appetites, and the frequency with which even

normal photographs of the nude appeal to the same lust of the

eyes.

Pygmalionism, or falling in love with statues, is a rare form of

erotomania founded on the sense of vision and closely related to

the allurement of beauty. (I here use "pygmalionism" as a general

term for the sexual love of statues; it is sometimes restricted

to cases in which a man requires of a prostitute that she shall

assume the part of a statue which gradually comes to life, and

finds sexual gratification in this performance alone; Eulenburg

quotes examples, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 107.) An emotional

interest in statues is by no means uncommon among young men

during adolescence. Heine, in _Florentine Nights_, records the

experiences of a boy who conceived a sentimental love for a

statue, and, as this book appears to be largely autobiographical,

the incident may have been founded on fact. Youths have sometimes

masturbated before statues, and even before the image of the

Virgin; such cases are known to priests and mentioned in manuals

for confessors. Pygmalionism appears to have been not uncommon

among the ancient Greeks, and this has been ascribed to their

æsthetic sense; but the manifestation is due rather to the

absence than to the presence of æsthetic feeling, and we may

observe among ourselves that it is the ignorant and uncultured

who feel the indecency of statues and thus betray their sense of

the sexual appeal of such objects. We have to remember that in

Greece statues played a very prominent part in life, and also

that they were tinted, and thus more lifelike than with us.

Lucian, Athenæus, Ælian, and others refer to cases of men who

fell in love with statues. Tarnowsky (_Sexual Instinct_, English

edition, p. 85) mentions the case of a young man who was arrested

in St. Petersburg for paying moonlight visits to the statue of a

nymph on the terrace of a country house, and Krafft-Ebing quotes

from a French newspaper the case which occurred in Paris during

the spring of 1877 of a gardener who fell in love with a Venus in

one of the parks. (I. Bloch, _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der

Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil II, pp. 297-305, brings together

various facts bearing on this group of manifestations.)

Necrophily, or a sexual attraction for corpses, is sometimes

regarded as related to pygmalionism. It is, however, a more

profoundly morbid manifestation, and may perhaps he regarded as a

kind of perverted sadism.

Founded on the sense of vision also we find a phenomenon,

bordering on the abnormal, which is by Moll termed mixoscopy.

This means the sexual pleasure derived from the spectacle of

other persons engaged in natural or perverse sexual actions.

(Moll, _Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. 308. Moll

considers that in some cases mixoscopy is related to masochism.

There is, however, no necessary connection between the two

phenomena.) Brothels are prepared to accommodate visitors who

merely desire to look on, and for their convenience carefully

contrived peepholes are provided; such visitors are in Paris

termed "_voyeurs_." It is said by Coffignon that persons hide at

night in the bushes in the Champs Elysées in the hope of

witnessing such scenes between servant girls and their lovers. In

England during a country walk I have come across an elderly man

carefully ensconced behind a bush and intently watching through

his field-glass a couple of lovers reclining on a bank, though

the actions of the latter were not apparently marked by any

excess of indecorum. Such impulses are only slightly abnormal,

whatever may be said of them from the point of view of good

taste. They are not very far removed from the legitimate

curiosity of the young woman who, believing herself unobserved,

turns her glass on to a group of young men bathing naked. They

only become truly perverse when the gratification thus derived is

sought in preference to natural sexual gratification. They are

also not normal when they involve, for instance, a man desiring

to witness his wife in the act of coitus with another man. I have

been told of the case of a scientific man who encouraged his wife

to promote the advances of a young friend of his own, in his own

drawing-room, he himself remaining present and apparently taking

no notice; the younger man was astonished, but accepted the

situation. In such a case, when the motives that led up to the

episode are obscure, we must not too hastily assume that

masochism or even mixoscopy is involved. For information on some

of the points mentioned above see, e.g., I. Bloch, _Beiträge zur

Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil I, pp. 200 _et seq._;

Teil II, pp. 195 et seq.

Wide, however, as is the appeal of beauty in sexual selection, it cannot

be said to cover by any means the whole of the visual field in its sexual

relationship. Beauty in the human species is, above all, a feminine

attribute, making its appeal to men. Even for women, as has already been

noted, beauty is still a feminine quality, which they usually admire, and

in cases of inversion worship with an ardor which equals, if it does not

surpass, that experienced by normal men. But the normal woman experiences

no corresponding cult for the beauty of man. The perfection of the body of

man is not behind that of woman in beauty, but the study of it only

appeals to the artist or the æsthetician; it arouses sexual enthusiasm

almost exclusively in the male sexual invert. Whatever may be the case

among animals or even among savages, in civilization the man is most

successful with women is not the most handsome man, and may be the

reverse of handsome.[169] The maiden, according to the old saying, who has

to choose between Adonis and Hercules, will turn to Hercules.

A correspondent writes: "Men are generally attracted in the first

instance by a woman's beauty, either of face or figure.

Frequently this is the highest form of love they are capable of.

Personally, my own love is always prompted by this. In the case

of my wife there was certainly a leaven of friendship and moral

sympathies but these alone would never have been translated into

love had she not been young and good-looking. Moreover, I have

felt intense passion for other women, in my relations with whom

the elements of moral or mental sympathy have not entered. And

always, as youth and beauty went, I believe I should transfer my

love to some one else.

"Now, in woman I fancy this element of beauty and youth does not

enter so much. I have questioned a large number of women--some

married, some unmarried, young and old ladies, shopgirls,

servants, prostitutes, women whom I have known only as friends,

others with whom I have had sexual relations--and I cannot

recollect one instance when a woman said she had fallen in love

with a man for his looks. The nearest approach to any sign of

this was in the instance of one, who noticed a handsome man

sitting near us in a hotel, and said to me: 'I should like him to

kiss me.'

"I have also noticed that women do not like looking at my body,

when naked, as I like looking at theirs. My wife has, on a few

occasions, put her hand over my body, and expressed pleasure at

the feeling of my skin. (I have very fair, soft skin.) But I have

never seen women exhibit the excitement that is caused in me by

the sight of their bodies, which I love to look at, to stroke, to

kiss all over."

It is interesting to point out, in this connection, that the

admiration of strength is not confined to the human female. It is

by the spectacle of his force that the male among many of the

lower animals sexually affects the female. Darwin duly allows for

this fact, while some evolutionists, and notably Wallace,

consider that it covers the whole field of sexual selection. When

choice exists, Wallace states, "all the facts appear to be

consistent with the choice depending on a variety of male

characteristics, with some of which color is often correlated.

Thus, it is the opinion of some of the best observers that vigor

and liveliness are most attractive, and these are, no doubt,

usually associated with some intensity of color, ... There is

reason to believe that it is his [the male bird's] persistency

and energy rather than his beauty which wins the day." (A.R.

Wallace, _Tropical Nature_, 1898, p. 199.) In his later book,

_Darwinism_ (p. 295), Wallace reaffirms his position that sexual

selection means that in the rivalry of males for the female the

most vigorous secures the advantage; "ornament," he adds, "is the

natural product and direct outcome of superabundant health and

vigor." As regards woman's love of strength, see Westermarck,

_History of Marriage_, p. 255.

Women admire a man's strength rather than his beauty. This statement is

commonly made, and with truth, but, so far as I am aware, its meaning is

never analyzed. When we look into it, I think, we shall find that it leads

us into a special division of the visual sphere of sexual allurement. The

spectacle of force, while it remains strictly within the field of vision,

really brings to us, although unconsciously, impressions that are

correlated with another sense--that of touch. We instinctively and

unconsciously translate visible energy into energy of pressure. In

admiring strength we are really admiring a tactile quality which has been

made visible. It may therefore be said that, while through vision men are

sexually affected mainly by the more purely visual quality of beauty,

women are more strongly affected by visual impressions which express

qualities belonging to the more fundamentally sexual sense of touch.

The distinction between the man's view and the woman's view, here pointed

out, is not, it must be added, absolute. Even for a man, beauty, with all

these components which we have already analyzed in it, is not the sole

sexual allurement of vision. A woman is not necessarily sexually

attractive in the ratio of her beauty, and with even a high degree of

beauty may have a low degree of attraction. The addition of vivacity or

the addition of languor may each furnish a sexual allurement, and each of

these is a translated tactile quality which possesses an obscure potency

from vague sexual implications.[170] But while in the man the demand for

these translated pressure qualities in the visible attractiveness of a

woman are not usually quite clearly realized, in a woman the corresponding

craving for the visual expression of pressure energy is much more

pronounced and predominant. It is not difficult to see why this should be

so, even without falling back on the usual explanation that natural

selection implies that the female shall choose the male who will be the

most likely father of strong children and the best protector of his

family. The more energetic part in physical love belongs to the man, the

more passive part to the woman; so that, while energy in a woman is no

index to effectiveness in love, energy in a man furnishes a seeming index

to the existence of the primary quality of sexual energy which a woman

demands of a man in the sexual embrace. It may be a fallacious index, for

muscular strength is not necessarily correlated with sexual vigor, and in

its extreme degrees appears to be more correlated with its absence. But it

furnishes, in Stendhal's phrase, a probability of passion, and in any case

it still remains a symbol which cannot be without its effect. We must not,

of course, suppose that these considerations are always or often present

to the consciousness of the maiden who "blushingly turns from Adonis to

Hercules," but the emotional attitude is rooted in more or less unerring

instincts. In this way it happens that even in the field of visual

attraction sexual selection influences women on the underlying basis of

the more primitive sense of touch, the fundamentally sexual sense.

Women are very sensitive to the quality of a man's touch, and

appear to seek and enjoy contact and pressure to a greater extent

than do men, although in early adolescence this impulse seems to

be marked in both sexes. "There is something strangely winning to

most women," remarks George Eliot, in _The Mill on the Floss_,

"in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically

at that moment, but the sense of help--the presence of strength

that is outside them and yet theirs--meets a continual want of

the imagination."

Women are often very critical concerning a man's touch and his

method of shaking hands. Stanley Hall (_Adolescence_, vol. ii, p.

8) quotes a gifted lady as remarking: "I used to say that,

however much I liked a man, I could never marry him if I did not

like the touch of his hand, and I feel so yet."

Among the elements of sexual attractiveness which make a special

appeal to women, extreme personal cleanliness would appear to

take higher rank than it takes in the eyes of a man, some men,

indeed, seeming to make surprisingly small demands of a woman in

this respect. If this is so we may connect it with the fact that

beauty in a woman's eye is to a much greater extent than in a

man's a picture of energy, in other words, a translation of

pressure contracts, with which the question of physical purity is

necessarily more intimately associated than it is with the

picture of purely visual beauty. It is noteworthy that Ovid (_Ars

Amandi_, lib. I) urges men who desire to please women to leave

the arts of adornment and effeminacy to those whose loves are

homosexual, and to practice a scrupulous attention to extreme

neatness and cleanliness of body and garments in every detail, a

sun-browned skin, and the absence of all odor. Some two thousand

years later Brummell in an age when extravagance and effeminacy

often marked the fashions of men, introduced a new ideal of

unobtrusive simplicity, extreme cleanliness (with avoidance of

perfumes), and exquisite good taste; he abhorred all

eccentricity, and may be said to have constituted a tradition

which Englishmen have ever since sought, more or less

successfully to follow; he was idolized by women.

It may be added that the attentiveness of women to tactile

contacts is indicated by the frequency with which in them it

takes on morbid forms, as the _délire du contact_, the horror of

contamination, the exaggerated fear of touching dirt. (See, e.g.,

Raymond and Janet, _Les Obsessions et la Psychasthénie_.)

FOOTNOTES:

[168] William Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, second edition, 1832, vol.

1, p. 215.

[169] Stendhal (_De l'Amour_, Chapter XVIII) has some remarks on this

point, and refers to the influence over women possessed by Lekain, the

famous actor, who was singularly ugly. "It is _passion_," he remarks,

"which we demand; beauty only furnishes _probabilities_."

[170] The charm of a woman's garments to a man is often due in part to

their expressiveness in rendering impressions of energy, vivacity, or

languor. This has often been realized by the poets, and notably by

Herrick, who was singularly sensitive to these qualities in a woman's

garments.

IV.

The Alleged Charm of Disparity in Sexual Attraction--The Admiration for

High Stature--The Admiration for Dark Pigmentation--The Charm of

Parity--Conjugal Mating--The Statistical Results of Observation as Regards

General Appearance, Stature, and Pigmentation of Married

Couples--Preferential Mating and Assortative Mating--The Nature of the

Advantage Attained by the Fair in Sexual Selection--The Abhorrence of

Incest and the Theories of its Cause--The Explanation in Reality

Simple--The Abhorrence of Incest in Relation to Sexual Selection--The

Limits to the Charm of Parity in Conjugal Mating--The Charm of Disparity

in Secondary Sexual Characters.

When we are dealing with the senses of touch, smell, and hearing it is

impossible at present, and must always remain somewhat difficult, to

investigate precisely the degree and direction of their influence in

sexual selection. We can marshal in order--as has here been attempted--the

main facts and considerations which clearly indicate that there is and

must be such an influence, but we cannot even attempt to estimate its

definite direction and still less to measure it precisely. With regard to

vision, we are in a somewhat better position. It is possible to estimate

the direction of the influence which certain visible characters exert on

sexual selection, and it is even possible to attempt their actual

measurement, although there must frequently be doubt as to the

interpretation of such measurements.

Two facts render it thus possible to deal more exactly with the influence

of vision on sexual selection than with the influence of the other senses.

In the first place, men and women consciously seek for certain visible

characters in the persons to whom they are attracted; in other words,

their "ideals" of a fitting mate are visual rather than tactile,

olfactory, or auditory. In the second place, whether such "ideals" are

potent in actual mating, or whether they are modified or even inhibited by

more potent psychological or general biological influences, it is in

either case possible to measure and compare the visible characters of

mated persons.

The two visible characters which are at once most frequently sought in a

mate and most easily measurable are degree of stature and degree of

pigmentation. Every youth or maiden pictures the person he or she would

like for a lover as tall or short, fair or dark, and such characters are

measurable and have on a large scale been measured. It is of interest in

illustration of the problem of sexual selection in man to consider briefly

what results are at present obtainable regarding the influence of these

two characters.

It has long been a widespread belief that short people are sexually

attracted to tall people, and tall people to short; that in the matter of

stature men and women are affected by what Bain called the "charm of

disparity." It has not always prevailed. Many centuries ago Leonardo da

Vinci, whose insight at so many points anticipated our most modern

discoveries, affirmed clearly and repeatedly the charm of parity. After

remarking that painters tend to delineate the figures that resemble

themselves he adds that men also fall in love with and marry those who

resemble themselves; "_chi s'innamora voluntieri s'innamorano de cose a

loro simiglianti_," he elsewhere puts it.[171] But from that day to this,

it would seem Leonardo's statements have remained unknown or unnoticed.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre said that "love is the result of contrasts," and

Schopenhauer affirmed the same point very decisively; various scientific

and unscientific writers have repeated this statement.[172]

So far as stature is concerned, there appears to be very little reason to

suppose that this "charm of disparity" plays any notable part in

constituting the sexual ideals of either men or women. Indeed, it may

probably be affirmed that both men and women seek tallness in the person

to whom they are sexually attracted. Darwin quotes the opinion of Mayhew

that among dogs the females are strongly attracted to males of large

size.[173] I believe this is true, and it is probably merely a particular

instance of a general psychological tendency.

It is noteworthy as an indication of the direction of the sexual

ideal in this matter that the heroines of male novelists are

rarely short and the heroes of female novelists almost invariably

tall. A reviewer of novels addressing to lady novelists in the

_Speaker_ (July 26, 1890) "A Plea for Shorter Heroes," publishes

statistics on this point. "Heroes," he states, "are longer this

year than ever. Of the 192 of whom I have had my word to say

since October of last year, 27 were merely tall, and 11 were only

slightly above the middle height. No less than 85 stood exactly

six feet in their stocking soles, and the remainder were

considerably over the two yards. I take the average to be six

feet three."

As a slight test alike of the supposed "charm of disparity" as

well as of the general degree in which tall and short persons are

sought as mates by those of the opposite sex I have examined a

series of entries in the _Round-About_, a publication issued by a

club, of which the president is Mr. W.T. Stead, having for its

object the purpose of promoting correspondence, friendship, and

marriage between its members. There are two classes, of entries,

one inserted with a view to "intellectual friendship," the other

with a view to marriage. I have not thought it necessary to

recognize this distinction here; if a man describes his own

physical characteristics and those of the lady he would like as a

friend, I assume that, from the point of view of the present

inquiry, he is much on the same footing as the man who seeks a

wife. In the series of entries which I have examined 35 men and

women state approximately the height of the man or woman they

seek to know; 30 state in addition their own height. The results

are expressed in the table on the following page.

Although the cases are few, the results are, in two main

respects, sufficiently clear without multiplication of data. In

the first place, those who seek parity, whether men or women, are

in a majority over those who seek disparity. In the second place,

the existence of any disparity at all is due only to the

universal desire to find a tall person. Not one man or woman sets

down shortness as his or her ideal. The very fact that no man in

these initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short

(although a considerable proportion describe themselves as tall)

indicates a consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also

does the fact that the women very frequently describe themselves

as tall.

The same charm of disparity which has been supposed to rule in selective

attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards

pigmentation. The fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to

the fair. Again, it must be said that this common assumption is not

confirmed either by introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a

statistical basis.[174]

WOMEN. MEN. TOTALS.

Tall women seek tall men.. 8 Tall men seek tall women.. 6 14

Short women seek short men 0 Short men seek short women 0 0

Medium-sized women seek Medium-sized men seek

medium-sized men ....... 0 medium-sized women .... 3 3

Seek parity........... 8 Seek parity........... 9 17

Tall women seek short men. 0 Tall men seek short women. 0 0

Short women seek tall men. 4 Short men seek tall women. 0 4

Medium-sized woman seeks Medium-sized men seek tall

tall man................ 1 women .................. 8 9

Seek disparity........ 5 Seek disparity........ 8 13

Men of unknown height seek

tall women.............. 5 5

Most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in

this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the

opposite sex who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary

characters. Even when the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person

is endowed with certain pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or

darkness,--either of which is liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to

the imagination,--it is usually found, on testing the feeling for

particular persons, that the variation from the personal type of the

subject is usually only agreeable within narrow limits, and that there is

a very common tendency for persons of totally opposed pigmentary types,

even though they may sometimes be considered to possess a certain æsthetic

beauty, to be regarded as sexually unattractive or even repulsive. With

this feeling may perhaps be associated the feeling, certainly very widely

felt, that one would not like to marry a person of foreign, even though

closely allied, race.

From the same number of the _Round-About_ from which I have

extracted the data on stature, I have obtained corresponding data

on pigmentation, and have embodied them in the following table.

They are likewise very scanty, but they probably furnish as good

a general indication of the drift of ideals in this matter as we

should obtain from more extensive data of the same character.

WOMEN. MEN. TOTALS.

Fair women seek fair men. 2 Fair men seek fair women 2 4

Dark woman seeks dark man 1 Dark men seek dark women 7 8

Seek parity.......... 3 Seek parity......... 9 12

Fair women seek dark men. 4 Fair men seek dark women 3 7

Dark woman seeks fair man 1 Dark men seek fair women 4 5

Medium-colored man seeks

Seek disparity....... 5 dark woman ........... 1 1

Medium-colored man seeks

fair woman ........... 1 1

Seek disparity...... 9 14

Men of unknown color seek

dark women ........... 3 3

It will be seen that in the case of pigmentation there is not as

in the case of stature a decided charm of parity in the formation

of sexual ideals. The phenomenon, however, remains essentially

analogous. Just as in regard to stature there is without

exception an abstract admiration for tall persons, so here,

though to a less marked extent, there is a general admiration for

dark persons. As many as 6 out of 8 women and 14 out of 21 men

seek a dark partner. This tendency ranges itself with the

considerations already brought forward (p. 182), leading us to

believe that, in England at all events, the admiration of

fairness is not efficacious to promote any sexual selection, and

that if there is actually any such selection it must be put down

to other causes. No doubt, even in England the abstract æsthetic

admiration of fairness is justifiable and may influence the

artist. Probably also it influences the poet, who is affected by

a long-established convention in favor of fairness, and perhaps

also by a general tendency on the part of our poets to be

themselves fair and to yield to the charm of parity,--the

tendency to prefer the women of one's own stock,--which we have

already found to be a real force.[175] But, as a matter of fact,

our famous English beauties are not very fair; probably our

handsomest men are not very fair, and the abstract sexual ideals

of both our men and our women thus go out toward the dark.

The formation of a sexual ideal, while it furnishes a predisposition to be

attracted in a certain direction, and undoubtedly has a certain weight in

sexual choice, is not by any means the whole of sexual selection. It is

not even the whole of the psychic element in sexual selection. Let us

take, for instance, the question of stature. There would seem to be a

general tendency for both men and women, apart from and before experience,

to desire sexually large persons of the opposite sex. It may even be that

this is part of a wider zoölogical tendency. In the human species it shows

itself also on the spiritual plane, in the desire for the infinite, in the

deep and unreasoning feeling that it is impossible to have too much of a

good thing. But it not infrequently happens that a man in whose youthful

dreams of love the heroine has always been large, has not been able to

calculate what are the special nervous and other characteristics most

likely to be met in large women, nor how far these correlated

characteristics would suit his own instinctive demands. He may, and

sometimes does, find that in these other demands, which prove to be more

important and insistent than the desire for stature, the tall women he

meets are less likely to suit him than the medium or short women.[176] It

may thus happen that a man whose ideal of woman has always been as tall

may yet throughout life never be in intimate relationship with a tall

woman because he finds that practically he has more marked affinities in

the case of shorter women. His abstract ideals are modified or negatived

by more imperative sympathies or antipathies.

In one field such sympathies have long been recognized, especially by

alienists, as leading to sexual unions of parity, notwithstanding the

belief in the generally superior attraction of disparity. It has often

been pointed out that the neuropathic, the insane and criminal,

"degenerates" of all kinds, show a notable tendency to marry each other.

This tendency has not, however, been investigated with any precision.[177]

The first attempt on a statistical basis to ascertain what degree of

parity or disparity is actually attained by sexual selection was made by

Alphonse de Candolle.[178] Obtaining his facts from Switzerland, North

Germany, and Belgium, he came to the conclusion that marriages are most

commonly contracted between persons with different eye-colors, except in

the case of brown-eyed women, who (as Schopenhauer stated, and as is seen

in the English data of the sexual ideal I have brought forward) are found

more attractive than others.

The first series of serious observations tending to confirm the result

reached by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and to show that sexual

selection results in the pairing of like rather than of unlike persons was

made by Hermann Fol, the embryologist.[179] He set out with the popular

notion that married people end by resembling each other, but when at Nice,

which is visited by many young married couples on their honeymoons, he was

struck by the resemblances already existing immediately after marriage. In

order to test the matter he obtained the photographs of 251 young and old

married couples not personally known to him. The results were as follows:

RESEMBLANCES NONRESEMBLANCES

COUPLES. (PERCENTAGE). (PERCENTAGE). TOTAL.

Young.............. 132, about 66,66 66, about 33.33 198

Old ................ 38, about 71.70 15, about 28.30 53

He concluded that in the immense majority of marriages of inclination the

contracting parties are attracted by similarities, and not by

dissimilarities, and that, consequently, the resemblances between aged

married couples are not acquired during conjugal life. Although Fol's

results were not obtained by good methods, and do not cover definite

points like stature and eye-color, they represented the conclusions of a

highly skilled and acute observer and have since been amply confirmed.

Galton could not find that the average results from a fairly large number

of cases indicated that stature, eye-color, or other personal

characteristics notably influenced sexual selection, as evidenced by a

comparison of married couples.[180] Karl Pearson, however, in part making

use of a large body of data obtained by Galton, referring to stature and

eye-color, has reached the conclusion that sexual selection ultimately

results in a marked degree of parity so far as these characters are

concerned.[181] As regards stature, he is unable to find evidence of what

he terms "preferential mating"; that is to say, it does not appear that

any preconceived ideals concerning the desirability of tallness in sexual

mates leads to any perceptibly greater tallness of the chosen mate;

husbands are not taller than men in general, nor wives than women in

general. In regard to eye-color, however, there appeared to be evidence of

preferential mating. Husbands are very decidedly fairer than men in

general, and though there is no such marked difference in women, wives are

also somewhat fairer than women in general. As regards "assortative

mating" as it is termed by Pearson,--the tendency to parity or to

disparity between husbands and wives,--the result were in both cases

decisive. Tall men marry women who are somewhat above the average in

height; short men marry women who are somewhat below the average, so that

husband and wife resemble each other in stature as closely as uncle and

niece. As regards eye-color there is also a tendency for like to marry

like; the light-eyed men tend to marry light-eyed women more often than

dark-eyed women; the dark-eyed men tend to marry dark-eyed women more

often than light-eyed. There remains, however, a very considerable

difference in the eye-color of husband and wife; in the 774 couples dealt

with by Pearson there are 333 dark-eyed women to only 251 dark-eyed men,

and 523 light-eyed men to only 441 light-eyed women. The women in the

English population are darker-eyed than the men;[182] but the difference

is scarcely so great as this; so that even if wives are not so dark-eyed

as women generally it would appear that the ideal admiration for the

dark-eyed may still to some extent make itself felt in actual mating.

While we have to recognize that the modification and even total inhibition

of sexual ideals in the process of actual mating is largely due to psychic

causes, such causes do not appear to cover the whole of the phenomena.

Undoubtedly they count for much, and the man or the woman who, from

whatever causes, has constituted a sexual ideal with certain characters

may in the actual contacts of life find that individuals with other and

even opposed characters most adequately respond to his or her psychic

demands. There are, however, other causes in play here which at first

sight may seem to be not of a purely psychic character. One unquestionable

cause of this kind comes into action in regard to pigmentary selection.

Fair people, possibly as a matter of race more than from absence of

pigment, are more energetic than dark people. They possess a sanguine

vigor and impetuosity which, in most, though not in all, fields and

especially in the competition of practical life, tend to give them some

superiority over their darker brethren. The greater fairness of husbands

in comparison with men in general, as found by Karl Pearson, is thus

accounted for; fair men are most likely to obtain wives. Husbands are

fairer than men in general for the same reason that, as I have shown

elsewhere,[183] created peers are fairer than either hereditary peers or

even most groups of intellectual persons; they have possessed in higher

measure the qualities that insure success. It may be added that with the

recognition of this fact we have not really left the field of sexual

psychology, for, as has already been pointed out, that energy which thus

insures success in practical life is itself a sexual allurement to women.

Energy in a woman in courtship is less congenial to her sexual attitude

than to a man's, and is not attractive to men; thus it is not surprising,

even apart from the probably greater beauty of dark women, that the

preponderance of fairness among wives as compared to women generally,

indicated by Karl Pearson's data, is very slight. It may possibly be

accounted for altogether by homogamy--the tendency of like to marry

like--in the fair husbands.

The energy and vitality of fair people is not, however, it is probable,

merely an indirect cause of the greater tendency of fair men to become

husbands; that is to say, it is not merely the result of the generally

somewhat greater ability of the fair to attain success in temporal

affairs. In addition to this, fair men, if not fair women, would appear to

show a tendency to a greater activity in their specifically sexual

proclivities. This is a point which we shall encounter in a later _Study_

and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss it here.

In dealing with the question of sexual selection in man various writers

have been puzzled by the problem presented by that abhorrence of incest

which is usually, though not always so clearly marked among the different

races of mankind.[184] It was once commonly stated, as by Morgan and by

Maine, that this abhorrence was the result of experience; the marriages of

closely related persons were found to be injurious to offspring and were

therefore avoided. This theory, however, is baseless because the marriages

of closely related persons are not injurious to the offspring.

Consanguineous marriages, so closely as they can be investigated on a

large scale,--that is to say, marriages between cousins,--as Huth was the

first to show, develop no tendency to the production of offspring of

impaired quality provided the parents are sound; they are only injurious

in this respect in so far as they may lead to the union of couples who are

both defective in the same direction. According to another theory, that of

Westermarck, who has very fully and ably discussed the whole

question,[185] "there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between

persons living very closely together from early youth, and, as such

persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly

as a horror of intercourse between near kin." Westermarck points out very

truly that the prohibition of incest could not be founded on experience

even if (as he is himself inclined to believe) consanguineous marriages

are injurious to the offspring; incest is prevented "neither by laws, nor

by customs, nor by education, but by an _instinct_ which under normal

circumstances makes sexual love between the nearest kin a psychic

impossibility." There is, however, a very radical objection to this

theory. It assumes the existence of a kind of instinct which can with

difficulty be accepted. An instinct is fundamentally a more or less

complicated series of reflexes set in action by a definite stimulus. An

innate tendency at once so specific and so merely negative, involving at

the same time deliberate intellectual processes, can only with a certain

force be introduced into the accepted class of instincts. It is as awkward

and artificial an instinct as would be, let us say, an instinct to avoid

eating the apples that grew in one's own yard.[186]

The explanation of the abhorrence to incest is really, however,

exceedingly simple. Any reader who has followed the discussion of sexual

selection in the present volume and is also familiar with the "Analysis of

the Sexual Impulse" set forth in the previous volume of these _Studies_

will quickly perceive that the normal failure of the pairing instinct to

manifest itself in the case of brothers and sisters, or of boys and girls

brought up together from infancy, is a merely negative phenomenon due to

the inevitable absence under those circumstances of the conditions which

evoke the pairing impulse. Courtship is the process by which powerful

sensory stimuli proceeding from a person of the opposite sex gradually

produce the physiological state of tumescence, with its psychic

concomitant of love and desire, more or less necessary for mating to be

effected. But between those who have been brought up together from

childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision, hearing, and touch have been

dulled by use, trained to the calm level of affection, and deprived of

their potency to arouse the erethistic excitement which produces sexual

tumescence.[187] Brothers and sisters in relation to each other have at

puberty already reached that state to which old married couples by the

exhaustion of youthful passion and the slow usage of daily life gradually

approximate. Passion between brother and sister is, indeed, by no means so

rare as is sometimes supposed, and it may be very strong, but it is

usually aroused by the aid of those conditions which are normally required

for the appearance of passion, more especially by the unfamiliarity caused

by a long separation. In reality, therefore, the usual absence of sexual

attraction between brothers and sisters requires no special explanation;

it is merely due to the normal absence under these circumstances of the

conditions that tend to produce sexual tumescence and the play of those

sensory allurements which lead to sexual selection.[188] It is a purely

negative phenomenon and it is quite unnecessary, even if it were

legitimate, to invoke any instinct for its explanation. It is probable

that the same tendency also operates among animals to some extent, tending

to produce a stronger sexual attraction toward those of their species to

whom they have not become habituated.[189] In animals, and in man also

when living under primitive conditions, sexual attraction is not a

constant phenomenon[190]; it is an occasional manifestation only called

out by the powerful stimulation. It is not its absence which we need to

explain; it is its presence which needs explanation, and such an

explanation we find in the analysis of the phenomena of courtship.

The abhorrence of incest is an interesting and significant phenomenon from

our present point of view, because it instructively points out to us the

limits to that charm of parity which apparently makes itself felt to some

considerable extent in the constitution of the sexual ideal and still more

in the actual homogamy which seems to predominate over heterogamy. This

homogamy is, it will be observed, a _racial_ homogamy; it relates to

anthropological characters which mark stocks. Even in this racial field,

it is unnecessary to remark, the homogamy attained is not, and could not

be, absolute; nor would it appear that such absolute racial homogamy is

even desired. A tall man who seeks a tall woman can seldom wish her to be

as tall as himself; a dark man who seeks a dark woman, certainly will not

be displeased at the inevitably greater or less degree of pigment which he

finds in her eyes as compared to his own.

But when we go outside the racial field this tendency to homogamy

disappears at once. A man marries a woman who, with slight, but agreeable,

variations, belongs to a like stock to himself. The abhorrence of incest

indicates that even the sexual attraction to people of the same stock has

its limits, for it is not strong enough to overcome the sexual

indifference between persons of near kin. The desire for novelty shown in

this sexual indifference to near kin and to those who have been housemates

from childhood, together with the notable sexual attractiveness often

possessed by a strange youth or maiden who arrives in a small town or

village, indicates that slight differences in stock, if not, indeed, a

positive advantage from this point of view, are certainly not a

disadvantage. When we leave the consideration of racial differences to

consider sexual differences, not only do we no longer find any charm of

parity, but we find that there is an actual charm of disparity. At this

point it is necessary to remember all that has been brought forward in

earlier pages[191] concerning the emphasis of the secondary sexual

characters in the ideal of beauty. All those qualities which the woman

desires to see emphasized in the man are the precise opposite of the

qualities which the man desires to see emphasized in the woman. The man

must be strong, vigorous, energetic, hairy, even rough, to stir the

primitive instincts of the woman's nature; the woman who satisfies this

man must be smooth, rounded, and gentle. It would be hopeless to seek for

any homogamy between the manly man and the virile woman, between the

feminine woman and the effeminate man. It is not impossible that this

tendency to seek disparity in sexual characters may exert some disturbing

influences on the tendency to seek parity in anthropological racial

characters, for the sexual difference to some extent makes itself felt in

racial characters. A somewhat greater darkness of women is a secondary

(or, more precisely, tertiary) sexual character, and on this account

alone, it is possible, somewhat attractive to men[192]. A difference in

size and stature is a very marked secondary sexual character. In the

considerable body of data concerning the stature of married couples

reproduced by Pearson from Galton's tables, although the tall on the

average tend to marry the tall, and the short the short, it is yet

noteworthy that, while the men of 5 ft. 4 ins. have more wives at 5 ft. 2

ins. than at any other height, men of 6 ft. show, in an exactly similar

manner, more wives at 5 ft. 2 ins. than at any other height, although for

many intermediate heights the most numerous groups of wives are

taller[193].

In matters of carriage, habit, and especially clothing the love of sexual

disparity is instinctive, everywhere well marked, and often carried to

very great lengths. To some extent such differences are due to the

opposing demands of more fundamental differences in custom and occupation.

But this cause by no means adequately accounts for them, since it may

sometimes happen that what in one land is the practice of the men is in

another the practice of the women, and yet the practices of the two sexes

are still opposed[194]. Men instinctively desire to avoid doing things in

women's ways, and women instinctively avoid doing things in men's ways,

yet both sexes admire in the other sex those things which in themselves

they avoid. In the matter of clothing this charm of disparity reaches its

highest point, and it has constantly happened that men have even called in

the aid of religion to enforce a distinction which seemed to them so

urgent[195]. One of the greatest of sex allurements would be lost and the

extreme importance of clothes would disappear at once if the two sexes

were to dress alike; such identity of dress has, however, never come about

among any people.

FOOTNOTES:

[171] L. da Vinci, _Frammenti_, selected by Solmi, pp. 177-180.

[172] Westermarck, who accepts the "charm of disparity," gives references,

_History of Human Marriage_, p. 354.

[173] _Descent of Man_. Part II, Chapter XVIII.

[174] Bloch (_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil II,

pp. 260 et seq.) refers to the tendency to admixture of races and to the

sexual attraction occasionally exerted by the negress and sometimes the

negro on white persons as evidence in favor of such charm of disparity. In

part, however, we are here concerned with vague statements concerning

imperfectly known facts, in part with merely individual variations, and

with that love of the exotic under the stimulation of civilized conditions

to which reference has already been made (p. 184).

[175] In this connection the exceptional case of Tennyson is of interest.

He was born and bred in the very fairest part of England (Lincolnshire),

but he himself and the stock from which he sprang were dark to a very

remarkable degree. In his work, although it reveals traces of the

conventional admiration for the fair, there is a marked and unusual

admiration for distinctly dark women, the women resembling the stock to

which he himself belonged. See Havelock Ellis, "The Color Sense in

Literature," _Contemporary Review_, May, 1896.

[176] It is noteworthy that in the _Round-About_, already referred to,

although no man expresses a desire to meet a short woman, when he refers

to announcements by women as being such as would be likely to suit him,

the persons thus pointed out are in a notable proportion short.

[177] It has been discussed by F.J. Debret, _La Selection Naturelle dans

l'espèce humaine_ (Thèse de Paris), 1901. Debret regards it as due to

natural selection.

[178] "Hérédité de la Couleur des Yeux dans l'espèce humaine," _Archives

des Sciences physiques et naturelles_, sér. iii, vol. xii, 1884, p. 109.

[179] _Revue Scientifique_, Jan., 1891.

[180] F. Galton, _Natural Inheritance_, p. 85. It may be remarked that

while Galton's tables on page 206 show a slight excess of disparity as

regards sexual selection in stature, in regard to eye color they

anticipate Karl Pearson's more extensive data and in marriages of

disparity show a decided deficiency of observed over chance results. In

_English Men of Science_ (pp. 28-33), also, Galton found that among the

parents parity decidedly prevailed over disparity (78 to 31) alike as

regards temperament, hair color, and eye color.

[181] Karl Pearson, _Phil. Trans. Royal Society_, vol. clxxxvii, p. 273,

and vol. cxcv, p. 113; _Proceedings of the Royal Society_, vol. lxvi, p.

28; _Grammar of Science_, second edition, 1900, pp. 425 _et seq._;

_Biometrika_, November, 1903. The last-named periodical also contains a

study on "Assortative Mating in Man," bringing forward evidence to show

that, apart from environmental influence, "length of life is a character

which is subject to selection;" that is to say, the long-lived tend to

marry the long-lived, and the short-lived to marry the short-lived.

[182] For a summary of the evidence on this point see Havelock Ellis, _Man

and Woman_, fourth edition, 1904, pp. 256-264.

[183] "The Comparative Abilities of the Fair and the Dark," _Monthly

Review_, August, 1901.

[184] The fact that even in Europe the abhorrence to incest is not always

strongly felt is brought out by Bloch, _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der

Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil II, pp. 263 et seq.

[185] Westermarck, _History of Marriage_, Chapters XIV and XV.

[186] Crawley (_The Mystic Rose_, p. 446) has pointed out that it is not

legitimate to assume the possibility of an "instinct" of this character;

instinct has "nothing in its character but a response of function to

environment."

[187] Fromentin, in his largely autobiographic novel _Dominique_, makes

Olivier say: "Julie is my cousin, which is perhaps a reason why she should

please me less than anyone else. I have always known her. We have, as it

were, slept in the same cradle. There may be people who would be attracted

by this almost fraternal relationship. To me the very idea of marrying

someone whom I knew as a baby is as absurd as that of coupling two dolls."

[188] It may well be, as Crawley argues (_The Mystic Rose_, Chapter XVII),

that sexual taboo plays some part among primitive people in preventing

incestuous union, as, undoubtedly, training and moral ideas do among

civilized peoples.

[189] The remarks of the Marquis de Brisay, an authority on doves, as

communicated to Giard (_L'Intermédiare des Biologistes_, November 20,

1897), are of much interest on this point, since they correspond to what

we find in the human species: "Two birds from the same nest rarely couple.

Birds coming from the same nest behave as though they regarded coupling as

prohibited, or, rather, they know each other too well, and seem to be

ignorant of their difference in sex, remaining unaffected in their

relations by the changes which make them adults." Westermarck (op. cit.,

p. 334) has some remarks on a somewhat similar tendency sometimes observed

in dogs and horses.

[190] See Appendix to vol. lii of these _Studies_, "The Sexual Impulse

among Savages."

[191] See, especially, _ante_, pp. 163 et seq.

[192] Kistemaecker, as quoted by Bloch (_Beiträge, etc._, ii. p. 340),

alludes in this connection to the dark clothes of men and to the tendency

of women to wear lighter garments, to emphasize the white underlinen, to

cultivate pallor of the face, to use powder. "I am white and you are

brown; ergo, you must love me"; this affirmation, he states, may be found

in the depths of every woman's heart.

[193] K. Pearson, _Grammar of Science_, second edition, p. 430.

[194] In _Man and Woman_ (fourth edition, p. 65) I have referred to a

curious example of this tendency to opposition, which is of almost

worldwide extent. Among some people it is, or has been, the custom for the

women to stand during urination, and in these countries it is usually the

custom for the man to squat; in most countries the practices of the sexes

in this matter are opposed.

[195] It is sufficient to quote one example. At the end of the sixteenth

century it was a serious objection to the fashionable wife of an English

Brownist pastor in Amsterdam that she had "bodies [a bodice or corset]

tied to the petticoat with points [laces] as men do their doublets and

their hose, contrary to I Thess., v, 22, conferred with Deut. xxii, 5; and

I John ii, 16."

V.

Summary of the Conclusions at Present Attainable in Regard to the Nature

of Beauty and its Relation to Sexual Selection.

The consideration of vision has led us into a region in which, more

definitely and precisely than is the case with any other sense, we can

observe and even hope to measure the operation of sexual selection in man.

In the conception of feminine beauty we possess an instrument of universal

extension by which it seems possible to measure the nature and extent of

such selection as exercised by men on women. This conception, with which

we set out, is, however, by no means so precise, so easily available for

the attainment of sound conclusions, as at first it may seem to be.

It is true that beauty is not, as some have supposed, a mere matter of

caprice. It rests in part on (1) an objective basis of æsthetic character

which holds all its variations together and leads to a remarkable

approximation among the ideals of feminine beauty cherished by the most

intelligent men of all races. But beyond this general objective basis we

find that (2) the specific characters of the race or nation tend to cause

divergence in the ideals of beauty, since beauty is often held to consist

in the extreme development of these racial or national anthropological

features; and it would, indeed, appear that the full development of racial

characters indicates at the same time the full development of health and

vigor. We have further to consider that (3) in most countries an important

and usually essential element of beauty lies in the emphasis of the

secondary and tertiary sexual characters: the special characters of the

hair in woman, her breasts, her hips, and innumerable other qualities of

minor saliency, but all apt to be of significance from the point of view

of sexual selection. In addition we have (4) the factor of individual

taste, constituted by the special organization and the peculiar

experiences of the individual and inevitably affecting his ideal of

beauty. Often this individual factor is merged into collective shapes,

and in this way are constituted passing fashions in the matter of beauty,

certain influences which normally affect only the individual having become

potent enough to affect many individuals. Finally, in states of high

civilization and in individuals of that restless and nervous temperament

which is common in civilization, we have (5) a tendency to the appearance

of an exotic element in the ideal of beauty, and in place of admiring that

kind of beauty which most closely approximates to the type of their own

race men begin to be agreeably affected by types which more or less

deviate from that with which they are most familiar.

While we have these various and to some extent conflicting elements in a

man's ideal of feminine beauty, the question is still further complicated

by the fact that sexual selection in the human species is not merely the

choice of the woman by the man, but also the choice of the man by the

woman. And when we come to consider this we find that the standard is

altogether different, that many of the elements of beauty as it exists in

woman for man have here fallen away altogether, while a new and

preponderant element has to be recognized in the shape of a regard for

strength and vigor. This, as I have pointed out, is not a purely visual

character, but a tactile pressure character translated into visual terms.

When we have stated the sexual ideal we have not yet, however, by any

means stated the complete problem of human sexual selection. The ideal

that is desired and sought is, in a large measure, not the outcome of

experience; it is not even necessarily the expression of the individual's

temperament and idiosyncrasy. It may be largely the result of fortuitous

circumstances, of slight chance attractions in childhood, of accepted

traditions consecrated by romance. In the actual contacts of life the

individual may find that his sexual impulse is stirred by sensory stimuli

which are other than those of the ideal he had cherished and may even be

the reverse of them.

Beyond this, also, we have reason for believing that factors of a still

more fundamentally biological character, to some extent deeper even than

all these psychic elements, enter into the problem of sexual selection.

Certain individuals, apart altogether from the question of whether they

are either ideally or practically the most fit mates, display a greater

energy and achieve a greater success than others in securing partners.

These individuals possess a greater constitutional vigor, physical or

mental, which conduces to their success in practical affairs generally,

and probably also heightens their specifically philogamic activities.

Thus, the problem of human sexual selection is in the highest degree

complicated. When we gather together such scanty data of precise nature as

are at present available, we realize that, while generally according with

the results which the evidence not of a quantitative nature would lead us

to accept, their precise significance is not at present altogether clear.

It would appear on the whole that in choosing a mate we tend to seek

parity of racial and individual characters together with disparity of

secondary sexual characters. But we need a much larger number of groups of

evidence of varying character and obtained under varying conditions. Such

evidence will doubtless accumulate now that its nature is becoming defined

and the need for it recognized. In the meanwhile we are, at all events, in

a position to assert, even with the evidence before us, that now that the

real meaning of sexual selection is becoming clear its efficacy in human

evolution can no longer be questioned.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A.

THE ORIGINS OF THE KISS.

Manifestations resembling the kiss, whether with the object of expressing

affection or sexual emotion, are found among various animals much lower

than man. The caressing of the antennæ practiced by snails and various

insects during sexual intercourse is of the nature of a kiss. Birds use

their bills for a kind of caress. Thus, referring to guillemots and their

practice of nibbling each other's feet, and the interest the mate always

takes in this proceeding, which probably relieves irritation caused by

insects, Edmund Selous remarks: "When they nibble and preen each other

they may, I think, be rightly said to cosset and caress, the expression

and pose of the bird receiving the benefit being often beatific."[196]

Among mammals, such as the dog, we have what closely resembles a kiss, and

the dog who smells, licks, and gently bites his master or a bitch,

combines most of the sensory activities involved in the various forms of

the human kiss.

As practiced by man, the kiss involves mainly either the sense of touch or

that of smell. Occasionally it involves to some extent both sensory

elements.[197]

The tactile kiss is certainly very ancient and primitive. It is common

among mammals generally. The human infant exhibits, in a very marked

degree, the impulse to carry everything to the mouth and to lick or

attempt to taste it, possibly, as Compayre suggests,[198] from a memory of

the action of the lips protruded to seize the maternal nipple. The

affectionate child, as Mantegazza remarks,[199] not only applies inanimate

objects to its lips or tongue, but of its own impulse licks the people it

likes. Stanley Hall, in the light of a large amount of information he

obtained on this point, found that "some children insist on licking the

cheeks, necks, and hands of those they wish to caress," or like having

animals lick them.[200] This impulse in children may be associated with

the maternal impulse in animals to lick the young. "The method of licking

the young practiced by the mother," remarks S.S. Buckman, "would cause

licking to be associated with happy feelings. And, further, there is the

allaying of parasitical irritation which is afforded by the rubbing and

hence results in pleasure. It may even be suggested that the desire of the

mother to lick her young was prompted in the first place by a desire to

bestow on her offspring a pleasure she felt herself." The licking impulse

in the child may thus, it is possible, be regarded as the evanescent

manifestation of a more fundamental animal impulse,[201] a manifestation

which is liable to appear in adult life under the stress of strong sexual

emotion. Such an association is of interest if, as there is some reason to

believe, the kiss of sexual love originated as a development of the more

primitive kiss bestowed by the mother on her child, for it is sometimes

found that the maternal kiss is practiced where the sexual kiss is

unknown.

The impulse to bite is also a part of the tactile element which lies at

the origin of kissing. As Stanley Hall notes, children are fond of biting,

though by no means always as a method of affection. There is, however, in

biting a distinctly sexual origin to invoke, for among many animals the

teeth (and among birds the bill) are used by the male to grasp the female

more firmly during intercourse. This point has been discussed in the

previous volume of these _Studies_ in reference to "Love and Pain," and

it is unnecessary to enter into further details here. The heroine of

Kleist's _Penthesilea_ remarks: "Kissing (Küsse) rhymes with biting

(Bisse), and one who loves with the whole heart may easily confound the

two."

The kiss, as known in Europe, has developed on a sensory basis that is

mainly tactile, although an olfactory element may sometimes coexist. The

kiss thus understood is not very widely spread and is not usually found

among rude and uncultured peoples. We can trace it in Aryan and Semitic

antiquity, but in no very pronounced form; Homer scarcely knew it, and the

Greek poets seldom mention it. Today it may be said to be known all over

Europe except in Lapland. Even in Europe it is probably a comparatively

modern discovery; and in all the Celtic tongues, Rhys states, there is no

word for "kiss," the word employed being always borrowed from the Latin

_pax_.[202] At a fairly early historic period, however, the Welsh Cymri,

at all events, acquired a knowledge of the kiss, but it was regarded as a

serious matter and very sparingly used, being by law only permitted on

special occasions, as at a game called rope-playing or a carousal;

otherwise a wife who kissed a man not her husband could be repudiated.

Throughout eastern Asia it is unknown; thus, in Japanese literature kisses

and embraces have no existence. "Kisses, and embraces are simply unknown

in Japan as tokens of affection," Lafcadio Hearn states, "if we except the

solitary fact that Japanese mothers, like mothers all over the world, lip

and hug their little ones betimes. After babyhood there is no more hugging

or kisses; such actions, except in the case of infants, are held to be

immodest. Never do girls kiss one another; never do parents kiss or

embrace their children who have become able to walk." This holds true, and

has always held true, of all classes; hand-clasping is also foreign to

them. On meeting after a long absence, Hearn remarks, they smile, perhaps

cry a little, they may even stroke each other, but that is all. Japanese

affection "is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and

kindness."[203] Among nearly all of the black races of Africa lovers never

kiss nor do mothers usually kiss their babies.[204] Among the American

Indians the tactile kiss is, for the most part, unknown, though here and

there, as among the Fuegians, lovers rub their cheeks together.[205]

Kissing is unknown to the Malays. In North Queensland, however, Roth

states, kissing takes place between mothers (not fathers) and infants,

also between husbands and wives; but whether it is an introduced custom

Roth is unable to say; he adds that the Pitta-pitta language possesses a

word for kissing.[206]

It must be remarked, however, that in many parts of the world where the

tactile kiss, as we understand it, is usually said to be unknown, it still

exists as between a mother and her baby, and this seems to support the

view advocated by Lombroso that the lovers' kiss is developed from the

maternal kiss. Thus, the Angoni Zulus to the north of the Zambesi, Wiese

states, kiss their small children on both cheeks[207] and among the

Fuegians, according to Hyades, mothers kiss their small children.

Even in Europe the kiss in early mediæval days was, it seems probable, not

widely known as an expression of sexual love; it would appear to have been

a refinement of love only practiced by the more cultivated classes. In the

old ballad of Glasgerion the lady suspected that her secret visitor was

only a churl, and not the knight he pretended to be, because when he came

in his master's place to spend the night with her he kissed her neither

coming nor going, but simply got her with child. It is only under a

comparatively high stage of civilization that the kiss has been emphasized

and developed in the art of love. Thus the Arabic author of the _Perfumed

Garden_, a work revealing the existence of a high degree of social

refinement, insists on the great importance of the kiss, especially if

applied to the inner part of the mouth, and he quotes a proverb that "A

moist kiss is better than a hasty coitus." Such kisses, as well as on the

face generally, and all over the body, are frequently referred to by

Hindu, Latin, and more modern erotic writers as among the most efficacious

methods of arousing love.[208]

A reason which may have stood in the way of the development of the kiss in

a sexual direction has probably been the fact that in the near East the

kiss was largely monopolized for sacred uses, so that its erotic

potentialities were not easily perceived. Among the early Arabians the

gods were worshiped by a kiss.[209] This was the usual way of greeting the

house gods on entering or leaving.[210] In Rome the kiss was a sign of

reverence and respect far more than a method of sexual excitation.[211]

Among the early Christians it had an all but sacramental significance. It

retains its ancient and serious meaning in many usages of the Western and

still more the Eastern Churches; the relics of saints, the foot of the

pope, the hands of bishops, are kissed, just as the ancient Greeks kissed

the images of the gods. Among ourselves we still have a legally recognized

example of the sacredness of the kiss in the form of taking an oath by

kissing the Testament.[212]

So far we have been concerned mainly with the tactile kiss, which is

sometimes supposed to have arisen in remote times to the east of the

Mediterranean--where the vassal kissed his suzerain and where the kiss of

love was known, as we learn from the Songs of Songs, to the Hebrews--and

has now conquered nearly the whole of Europe. But over a much larger part

of the world and even in one corner of Europe (Lapland, as well as among

the Russian Yakuts) a different kind of salutation rules, the olfactory

kiss. This varies in form in different regions and sometimes simulates a

tactile kiss, but, as it exists in a typical form in China, where it has

been carefully studied by d'Enjoy, it may be said to be made up of three

phases: (1) the nose is applied to the cheek of the beloved person; (2)

there is a long nasal inspiration accompanied by lowering of the eyelids;

(3) there is a slight smacking of the lips without the application of the

mouth to the embraced cheek. The whole process, d'Enjoy considers, is

founded on sexual desire and the desire for food, smell being the sense

employed in both fields. In the form described by d'Enjoy, we have the

Mongolian variety of the olfactory kiss. The Chinese regard the European

kiss as odious, suggesting voracious cannibals, and yellow mothers in the

French colonies still frighten children by threatening to give them the

white man's kiss. Their own kiss the Chinese regard as exclusively

voluptuous; it is only befitting as between lovers, and not only do

fathers refrain from kissing their children except when very young, but

even the mothers only give their children a rare and furtive kiss. Among

some of the hill-tribes of south-east India the olfactory kiss is found,

the nose being applied to the cheek during salutation with a strong

inhalation; instead of saying "Kiss me," they here say "Smell me." The

Tamils, I am told by a medical correspondent in Ceylon, do not kiss during

coitus, but rub noses and also lick each other's mouth and tongue. The

olfactory kiss is known in Africa; thus, on the Gambia in inland Africa

when a man salutes a woman he takes her hand and places it to his nose,

twice smelling the back of it. Among the Jekris of the Niger coast mothers

rub their babies with their cheeks or mouths, but they do not kiss them,

nor do lovers kiss, though they squeeze, cuddle, and embrace.[213] Among

the Swahilis a smell kiss exists, and very young boys are taught to raise

their clothes before women visitors, who thereupon playfully smell the

penis; the child who does this is said to "give tobacco."[214] Kissing of

any kind appears to be unknown to the Indians throughout a large part of

America: Im Thurn states that it is unknown to the Indians of Guiana, and

at the other end of South America Hyades and Deniker state that it is

unknown to the Fuegians. In Forth America the olfactory kiss is known to

the Eskimo, and has been noted among some Indian tribes, as the Blackfeet.

It is also known in Polynesia. At Samoa kissing was smelling.[215] In New

Zealand, also, the _hongi_, or nose-pressing, was the kiss of welcome, of

mourning, and of sympathy.[216] In the Malay archipelago, it is said, the

same word is used for "greeting" and "smelling." Among the Dyaks of the

Malay archipelago, however, Vaughan Stevens states that any form of

kissing is unknown.[217] In Borneo, Breitenstein tells us, kissing is a

kind of smelling, the word for smelling being used, but he never himself

saw a man kiss a woman; it is always done in private.[218]

The olfactory kiss is thus seen to have a much wider extension over the

world than the European (or Mediterranean) tactile kiss. In its most

complete development, however, it is mainly found among the people of

Mongolian race, or those yellow peoples more or less related to them.

The literature of the kiss is extensive. So far, however, as that

literature is known to me, the following list includes everything that may

be profitably studied: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions_; Ling

Roth, "Salutations," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, November,

1889; K. Andree, "Nasengruss," _Ethnographische Parallelen_, second

series, 1889, pp. 223-227; Alfred Kirchhoff, "Vom Ursprung des Küsses,"

_Deutsche Revue_, May, 1895; Lombroso, "L'Origine du Baiser," _Nouvelle

Revue_, 1897, p. 153; Paul d'Enjoy, "Le Baiser en Europe et en Chine,"

_Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie_, Paris, 1897, fasc. 2. Professor

Nyrop's book, _The Kiss and its History_ (translated from the Danish by

W.F. Harvey), deals rather with the history of the kiss in civilization

and literature than with its biological origins and psychological

significance.

FOOTNOTES:

[196] E. Selous, _Bird Watching_, 1901, p. 191. This author adds: "It

seems probable indeed that the conferring a practical benefit of the kind

indicated may be the origin of the caress throughout nature."

[197] Tylor terms the kiss "the salute by tasting," and d'Enjoy defines it

as "a bite and a suction"; there seems, however, little evidence to show

that the kiss contains any gustatory element in the strict sense.

[198] Compayre, _L'Evolution intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant_, p. 9.

[199] Mantegazza, _Physiognomy and Expression_, p. 144.

[200] G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," _American Journal of

Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 361.

[201] In some parts of the world the impulse persists into adult life. Sir

S. Baker (_Ismailia_, p. 472) mentions licking the eyes as a sign of

affection.

[202] _Book of Common Prayer in Manx Gaelic_, edited by A.W. Moore and J.

Rhys, 1895.

[203] L. Hearn, _Out of the East_, 1895, p. 103.

[204] See, e.g., A.B. Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 288. Among the

Swahili the kiss is practiced, but exclusively between married people and

with very young children. Velten believes they learned it from the Arabs.

[205] Hyades and Deniker, _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, vol. vii, p.

245.

[206] W. Roth, _Ethnological Notes Among the Queensland Aborigines_, p.

184.

[207] _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1900, ht. 5, p. 200.

[208] E.g., the _Kama Sutra_ of Vatsyayana, Bk. III, Chapter I.

[209] Hosea, Chapter xiii, v. 2; I Kings, Chapter xix, v. 18.

[210] Wellhausen, _Reste Arabischen Heidentums_, p. 109.

[211] The Romans recognized at least three kinds of kiss: the _osculum_,

for friendship, given on the face; the _basium_, for affection, given on

the lips; the _suavium_, given between the lips, reserved for lovers.

[212] In other parts of the world it would appear that the kiss sometimes

has a sacred or ritual character. Thus, according to Rev. J. Macdonald

(_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, November, 1890, p. 118), it

is part of the initiation ceremony of a girl at her first menstruation

that the women of the village should kiss her on the cheek, and on the

mons veneris and labia.

[213] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, August and November,

1898, p. 107.

[214] Velten, _Sitten und Gebraüche der Suaheli_, p. 142.

[215] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 45.

[216] Tregear, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1889.

[217] _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1896, ht. 4, p. 272.

[218] Breitenstein, _21 Jahre in India_, vol. i, p. 224.

APPENDIX B.

HISTORIES OF SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT.

The histories here recorded are similar in character to those given in

Appendix B of the previous volume.

HISTORY I.--C.D., clergyman, age, 34. Height about 5 ft. 8 in.

Weight, 8st. 8lb. Complexion, fair. Physical infirmities, very

myopic, tendency to consumption.

"My family is of old lineage on both sides. My parents were

normal and fairly healthy; but I consider that heredity, though

not vitiated, is somewhat overrefined, and there is a neuropathic

tendency, which has appeared in myself and in one or two other

members of the family. As a child, I suffered, though not very

frequently, from nocturnal enuresis. My sexual nature, though

normal, has been keenly alive and sensitive as far back as I can

remember; and as I look back I discern within myself in early

childhood what I now understand to be a decided masochistic or

passively algolagnic tendency. So far as I remember, this

manifested itself in me in two aspects; one psychic or

sentimental and free from carnality, expressing itself in

imaginative visions such as the following: I used, to imagine

myself kneeling before a young and beautiful woman and being

sentenced by her to some punishment, and even threatened with

death. At other times I would picture myself as a wounded soldier

watched over on his sickbed by queenly women. These visions

always included an imagination of something heroic in my own

personality. No doubt they were the same kind of dreamings as are

present in multitudes of imaginative children; they are only of

interest in so far as a sexual element was present; and that was

algolagnic in character.

"I had a small fund of natural common sense; and my surroundings

were not favorable to sentimental imaginings; consequently I

believe I began to throw them off at an early age, though the

temperament which produced them is still a part of my nature.

"On the carnal side, the sexual instinct was decidedly

algolagnic. Masturbation is one of my earliest recollections;

indeed, it was not at first, so far as I remember, associated

with any sexual ideas at all; but began as a reflex animal act. I

do not remember its first occurrence. It soon, however, became

associated in my mind with algolagnic excitement, giving rise to

reveries which took the ordinary form of imagining oneself

stripped and whipped, etc., by persons of the opposite sex. The

_dramatis personæ_ in my own algolagnic reveries were elderly

women; somewhat strangely, I did not associate physical sexuality

at this period with young and attractive women. If scientific

light on these matters were generally available in the practical

bringing up of children, persons in charge of young children

might refrain from exciting an algolagnic tendency or doing

anything calculated to awake sexual emotions prematurely. In my

own case, I recollect acts performed by older persons in

ignorance and thoughtlessness which undoubtedly tended to foster

and strengthen my algolagnic instinct.

"Little or nothing was done to prevent, discover, or remedy the

pernicious habit into which I was falling unknowingly.

Circumcision was perhaps little thought of in those days as a

preventive of juvenile masturbation; at any rate, it was not

resorted to in my case. I remember, indeed, that a nurse

discovered that I was practicing masturbation, and I think she

made a few half-hearted attempts to stop it. It was probably

these attempts which gave me a growing feeling that there was

something wrong about masturbation, and that it must be practiced

secretly. But they were unsuccessful in their main object. The

practice continued.

"I went to school at the age of 10. There I came in contact

almost without warning, with the ordinary lewdness and grossness

of school conversation, and took to it readily. I soon became

conversant with the theory of sexual relations; but never got the

opportunity of sexual intercourse, and probably should have felt

some moral restraint even had such opportunity presented itself,

for coitus, however interesting it might be to talk about, was a

bigger thing to practice than masturbation. I masturbated fairly

frequently, occasionally producing two orgasms in quick

succession. I seldom masturbated with the hand; my method was to

lie face downward. There was probably little or no homosexuality

at my first school. I never heard of it till later, and it was

always repugnant to me, though surrounded with a certain morbid

interest. Masturbation was discountenanced openly at the school,

but was, I believe, extensively practiced, both at that school

and at the two others I afterward attended. The boys often talked

about the hygiene of it; and the general theory was that it was

somehow physically detrimental; but I heard no arguments advanced

sufficiently cogent to make me see the necessity for a real moral

effort against the habit, though, as I neared puberty, I was

indulging more moderately and with greater misgivings.

"The fact of becoming acquainted with the theory of sexual

intercourse tended to diminish the algolagnia, and to impel my

sexual instinct into an ordinary channel. On one occasion

circumstances brought me into close contact with a woman for

about three or four weeks, I being a mere boy and she very much

my senior. I felt sexually attracted by this woman, and allowed

myself a degree of familiarity with her which I have since

recognized as undue and have deeply regretted. It did not,

however, go to the length of seduction, and I trust may have

passed away without leaving any permanent harm. It should,

indeed, be remarked here that I never knew a woman sexually till

my marriage; and with the one exception mentioned I do not recall

any instance of conduct on my part toward a woman which could be

described as giving her an impulse downhill.

"On the psychic side my sexual emotions awoke in early childhood;

and though my love affairs as a boy were not frequent and were

kept to myself, they attained a considerable degree of emotional

power. Leaving out of account the precocious movements of the

sexual instinct to which I have already referred as colored by

psychic algolagnia, I may say that somewhat later, from the age

of puberty and onward, I had three or four love affairs, devoid

of any algolagnic tendency, and considerably more developed on

the psychic and emotional, than on the physical, side. In fact,

my experience has been that when deeply in love, when the mind is

full of the love ecstasy, the physical element of sexuality is

kept--doubtless only temporarily--in abeyance.

"To return now to the subject of masturbation. Here befell the

chief moral struggle of my early life; and no terms that I have

at command will adequately describe the stress of it.

"A casual remark heard one day as I was arriving at puberty

convinced me that there must be truth in the vague schoolboy

theory that masturbation was _weakening_. It was to the effect

that the evil results of masturbation practiced in boyhood would

manifest themselves in later life. I then realized that I must

relinquish masturbation, and I set myself to fight it; but with

grave misgivings that, owing to the early age at which I had

formed the habit, I had already done myself serious harm.

"Before many weeks had passed, I had formed a resolution to

abstain, which I kept thereafter without--so far as I

remember--more than one conscious lapse into my former habit.

Here it must be said at once that, so far as touches my own

experience of a struggle of this kind, the religious factor is of

primary importance as strengthening and sustaining the moral

effort which has to be made. I am writing an account of my

sexual, not my spiritual, experiences; but I should not only be

untrue to my convictions, but unable to give an accurate and

penetrating survey of the development of my sex life, unless I

were clearly to state that it was to a large extent on that life

that my strongest and most valuable religious experiences

arose.[219] It is to the endeavor to discipline the sexual

instinct, and to grapple with the difficulties and anxieties of

the sex life, that I owe what I possess of spiritual religion, of

the consciousness that my life has been brought into contact with

Divine love and power.

"My early habits, after they were broken off, left me none the

less a legacy of sexual neurasthenia and a slight varicocele. My

nocturnal pollutions were overfrequent; and I brooded over them,

being too reticent and too much afraid of exposure at school and

possible expulsion to confide in a doctor. Far better for me had

I done so, for a few years later I received the truest kindness

and sympathy in regard to sexual matters at the hands of more

than one medical man. But while at school I was afraid to speak

of the trouble which so unnerved and depressed me; and as a

consequence my morbid fears grew stronger, being intensified by

generalities which I met with from time to time in my reading on

the subject of the punishment which nature metes out to impurity.

"On leaving school my sex life continued for some years on the

same lines: a struggle for chastity, morbid fears and regrets

about the past, efforts to cope with the neurasthenia, and a

haunting dread of coming insanity. These troubles were increased

by my sedentary life. However I obtained medical aid, and put as

good a face on matters as possible.

"But the most trying thing of all has yet to be mentioned--the

discovery that I had not yet got fully clear of the habit of

masturbation. I had, indeed, repudiated it as far as my conscious

waking moments were concerned, even though strongly impelled by

sexual desire; but one night, about a year after I had

relinquished the practice, I found myself again giving way to it

in those moments between sleeping and waking when the will is

only semiconscious. It was as if a race took place for

wakefulness between my physical instinct, on the one side, and my

moral sense and inhibitory nerves on the other; and very

frequently the physical instinct won. This, perhaps, is not an

uncommon experience, but it distressed me greatly; and I never

felt safe from it until marriage. I resorted to various

expedients to combat this tendency, at length having to tie

myself in a certain position every night with a cord round my

legs, so as to render it impossible to turn over upon my face.

"In my early manhood the strain on my constitution was

considerable from causes other than the sexual neurasthenia,

which, indeed, I am now well aware I exaggerated in importance.

Medical advisers whom I consulted in that period assured me that

this was so; and, though at the time I often thought that they

were concealing the real facts from me out of kindness, my own

reading has since convinced me that they spoke nothing but

scientific truth.

"The years went on. I went through a university course, and in

spite of my poor health took a good degree. The agony of my

struggle for chastity seemed to come to a climax about four years

later when for a long period, partly owing to overstudy and

partly to the sexual strain, I fell into a condition of severe

nervous exhaustion, one of the most distressing symptoms of which

was insomnia. The dreaded cloud of insanity seemed to come

closer. I had to use alcohol freely at nights; and might by now

have become a drunkard, had I not been casually--or I must say,

Providentially--directed to the common sense plan of measuring my

whisky in a dram glass; so that the alcohol could not steal a

march upon me.

"This period was one of acute mental suffering. One cause of the

nervous tension was--as I have now no doubt--the need of healthy

sexual intercourse. I proved this eventually. My circumstances,

which had long been adverse to marriage, at length were shaped in

that direction. I renewed acquaintance with a lady whom I had

known well some years before; and our friendship ripened until,

after much perplexity on my side, owing to the uncertainty of my

health and prospects, I decided that it was right to speak. We

were married after a few months; and I realized that I had gained

an excellent wife. We did not come together sexually for some

nights after marriage; but, having once tasted the pleasure of

the marriage bed, I have to admit that, partly owing to ignorance

of the hygiene of marriage, I was for some time rather

unrestrained in conjugal relations, requiring intercourse as

often as eight or nine times a month. This was not unnatural when

one considers that I had now for the first time free access to a

woman, after a long and weary struggle to preserve chastity.

Married life, however, tends naturally--or did so in my case--to

regulate desire; and when I began to understand the ethics and

hygiene of sex, as I did a year or two after marriage, I was

enabled to exercise increasing self-restraint. We are now sparing

in our enjoyment of conjugal pleasure. We have had no children;

and I attribute this chiefly to the remaining sexual weakness in

myself.[220] But I may say that not only my sexual power, but my

nerve-power and general health, were greatly improved by

marriage; and though I have fallen back, the last year or two,

into a poor state of health, the cause of this is probably

overwork rather than anything to do with sex. Not but what it

must be said that, had it not been for the juvenile masturbation

superadded to a neuropathic temperament, my constitution would no

doubt have endured the general strain of life better than it has

done. The algolagnia, being one of the congenital conditions of

my sexual instinct, must be considered fundamental, and certainly

has not been eliminated. If I were to allow myself indulgence in

algolagnic reveries they would even now excite me without

difficulty; but I have systematically discouraged them, so that

they give me little or no practical trouble. My erotic dreams,

which years ago were (to the best of my remembrance) frequently

algolagnic, are now almost invariably normal.

"My conjugal relations have always been on the lines of strictly

normal sexuality. I have a deep sense of the obligations of

monogamous marriage, besides a sincere affection for my wife;

consequently I repress as far as possible all sexual

inclinations, such as will come involuntarily sometimes, toward

other women.

"From what I have disclosed, it will be seen that I am but a

frail man; but for many years I have striven honestly and hard to

discipline sexuality within myself, and to regulate it according

to right reason, pure hygiene, and the moral law; and I can but

hope and believe that the Divine Power in which I have endeavored

to trust will in the future, as it has done in the past, working

by natural methods and through the current events of my life,

amend and control my sex life and conduct it to safe and

honorable issues."

HISTORY II.--A.B., married, good general health, dark hair, fair

complexion, short-sighted, and below medium height. Parents both

belong to healthy families, but the mother suffered from nerves

during early years of married life, and the father, a very

energetic and ambitious man, was cold, passionless, and

unscrupulous. A.B. is the oldest child; two of the brothers and

sisters are slightly abnormal, nervously. But, so far as is

known, none of the family has ever been sexually abnormal.

A.B. was a bright, intelligent child, though inclined to be

melancholy (and in later years prone to self-analysis). At

preparatory school was fairly forward in studies, at public

school somewhat backward, at University suddenly took a liking to

intellectual pursuits. Throughout he was slack at games. Has

never been able to learn to swim from nervousness. Can whistle

well. Has always been fond of reading, and would like to have

been an author by profession. He married at 24, and has had two

children, both of whom showed congenital physical abnormalities.

Before the age of 7 or 8 A.B. can remember various trifling

incidents. "One of the games I used to play with my sister," he

writes, "consisted in pretending we were 'father and mother' and

were relieving ourselves at the w.c. We would squat down in

various parts of the room, prolong the simulated act, and talk. I

do not remember what our conversation was about, nor whether I

had an erection. I used also to make water from a balcony into

the garden, and in other unusual places.

"The first occasion on which I can recollect experiencing

sensations or emotions similar in character to later and more

developed feelings of desire was at the age of about 7 or 8, when

I was a dayboy at a large school in a country town and absolutely

innocent as to deed, thought, or knowledge. I fell in love with a

boy with whom I was brought in contact in my class, about my own

age. I remember thinking him pretty. He paid me no attention. I

had no distinct desire, except a wish to be near him, to touch

him, and to kiss him. I blushed if I suddenly saw him, and

thought of him when absent and speculated on my chances of seeing

him again. I was put into a state of high ecstasy when he invited

me to join him and some friends one summer evening in a game of

rounders.

"At the age of 8 I was told by my father's groom where babies

came from and how they were produced. (I already knew the

difference in sexual organs, as my sister and I were bathed in

the same room.) He told me no details about erection, semen, etc.

Nor did he take any liberties with me. I used to notice him

urinating; he used to push back the foreskin and I thought his

penis large.

"When about 8 years old the nursemaid told me that the boy at her

last place had intercourse with his sister. I thought it

disgusting. About a year later I told the nurse I thought the

story of Adam and Eve was not true and that when Eve gave Adam

the apple he had intercourse with her and she was punished by

having children. I don't know if I had thought this out, or if it

had been suggested to me by others. This nurse used often to talk

about my 'tassel.'

"A family of several brothers went to the same school with me,

and we used to indulge in dirty stories, chiefly, however, of the

w.c. type rather than sexual.

"When I was about 10 I learned much from my father's coachman. He

used to talk about the girls he had had intercourse with, and how

he would have liked this with my nursemaid.

"A year later I went to a large day school. I think most of the

boys, if not nearly all, were very ignorant and innocent in

sexual matters. The only incident in this connection I can

recollect is asking a boy to let me see his penis; he did so.

"During the summer holidays, at a watering place I attended a

theatrical performance and fell in love with a girl of about 12

who acted a part. I bought a photograph of her, which I kept and

kissed for several years after. About the same time I thought

rather tenderly of a girl of my own age whose parents knew mine.

I remember feeling that I should like to kiss her. Once I

furtively touched her hair.

"When I was 12 I was sent to a small preparatory boarding

school, in the country. During the holidays I used to talk about

sexual things with my father's footman. He must have told me a

good deal. I used to have erections. One evening, when I was in

bed and everyone else out (my mother and the children in the

country) he came up to my room and tried to put his hand on my

penis. I had been thinking of sexual matters and had an erection.

I resisted, but he persisted, and when he succeeded in touching

me I gave in. He then proceeded to masturbate me. I sank back,

overcome by the pleasant sensation. He then stopped and I went on

myself. In the meantime he had taken out his penis and

masturbated himself before me until the orgasm occurred. I was

disgusted at the sight of his large organ and the semen. He then

left me. I could hardly sleep from excitement. I felt I had been

initiated into a great and delightful mystery.

"I at once fell into the habit of masturbation. It was some

months before I could produce the orgasm; at about 13 a slight

froth came; at about 14 a little semen. I do not know how

frequently I did it--perhaps once or twice a week. I used to feel

ashamed of myself afterward. I told the man I was doing it and he

expressed surprise I had not known about it before he told me. He

warned me to stop doing it or it would injure my health. I

pretended later that I had stopped doing it.

"I practiced solitary masturbation for some months. At first the

semen was small in amount and watery.

"I had not at this time ever succeeded in drawing the foreskin

below the 'corona.' After masturbation I would sometimes feel

local pain in the penis, sometimes pains in the testicles, and

generally a feeling of shame, but not, I think, any lassitude.

The shame was a vague sense of discomfort at having done what I

knew others would regard as dirty. I also experienced fears that

I was injuring my health.

"It was not long before I found other boys at the preparatory

school with whom I talked of sexual things and in some cases

proceeded to acts. The boys were between the ages of 9 and 14;

they left at 14 or 15 for the public schools. We slept in

bedrooms--several in one room.

"There was no general conversation on sexual matters. Few of the

boys knew anything about things--perhaps 7 or 8 out of 40. Before

describing my experiences at the school I may mention that I

cannot remember having at this period any wish to experience

heterosexual intercourse; I knew as yet nothing of homosexual

practices; and I did not have, except in one case, any love or

affection for any of the boys.

"One night, in my bedroom--there were about six of us--we were

talking till rather late. My recollection commences with being

aware that all the boys were asleep except myself and one other,

P. (the son of a clergyman), who was in a bed at exactly the

opposite end of the room. I suppose we must have been talking

about this sort of thing, for I vividly remember having an

erection, and suddenly--as if by premonition--getting out of my

bed, and, with heart beating, going softly over to P.'s bed. He

exhibited no surprise at my presence; a few whispered words took

place; I placed my hand on his penis, and found he had an

erection. I started masturbating him, but he said he had just

finished. I then suggested, getting into bed with him. (I had

never heard at that time of such a thing being done, the idea

arose spontaneously.) He said it was not safe, and placed his

hand on my penis, I think with the object of satisfying and

getting rid of me. He masturbated me till the orgasm occurred.

"I had no further relations with him, except on one occasion,

shortly afterward, when one day, in the w.c. he asked me to

masturbate him. I did so. He did not offer to do the same to me.

"He was a delicate, feeble boy; not good at work; womanish in his

ways; inclined to go in for petty bullying, until a boy showed

fight, when he discovered himself to be an arrant coward. Four or

five years later I met him at the university. His greeting was

cool. My next affair was with a boy who was about my age (13),

strong, full-blooded, coarse, always in 'hot water.' He was the

son of the headmaster of one of the best-known public schools. It

was reported that two brothers had been expelled from this public

school for what we called 'beastliness.' He told me his older

brother used to have intercrural intercourse with him. This was

the first I had heard of this. We used to masturbate mutually. I

had, however, no affection or desire for him.

"With E., another boy, I had no relations, but I remember him as

the first person of the same sex for whom I experienced love. He

was a small, fair, thin, and little boy, some two years younger

than myself, so my inferior in the social hierarchy of a school.

"At the end of my last term I had two disappointments. I was

beaten by a younger and clever boy for the first place in the

school, and also beaten by one point in the competition for the

Athletic Cup by a stronger boy who had only come to the school

that very term. However, as a consolation prize, and as I was

leaving, the headmaster gave me a second prize. This soothed my

hurt feelings, and I remember, just after the 'head' had read out

the prizes, on the last day of term, E., coming up to me, putting

his arm on my shoulder, looking at me rather pensively, and in a

voice that thrilled me and made me wish to kiss and hug him, tell

me he was so glad I had got a prize and that it was a shame that

other chap had beaten me for the cup.

"I was three years (aged 12 to 15) at the preparatory school. I

started in the bottom form and ended second in the school. My

reports were generally good, and I was keen to do well in work. I

was considerably influenced by the 'head.' He was a clergyman,

but a man of wide reading, broad opinion, great scholarship, and

great enthusiasm. We became very friendly.

"During the holidays I now first practiced intercrural

intercourse with a younger brother. I started touching his penis,

and causing erections, when he was about 5. Afterward I got him

to masturbate me and I masturbated him; I used to get him into

bed with me. On one occasion I spontaneously (never having heard

of such a thing) made him take my penis in his mouth.

"This went on for several years. When I was about 16 and he about

10, the old family nurse spoke to me about it. She told me he had

complained of my doing it. I was in great fear that my parents

might hear of it. I went to him; told him I was sorry, but I had

not understood he disliked it, but that I would not do it again.