ALLEGED TESTIMONY OF NATIVES
In face of this imposing array of facts revealing the non-esthetic
character of primitive personal "decorations," what have the advocates
of the sexual selection theory to say? Taking Westermarck as their
most erudite and persuasive spokesman, we find him placing his
reliance on four things: (1) the practical ignoring of the vast
multitude of facts contradicting his theory; (2) the alleged testimony
of a few savages; (3) the testimony of some of their visitors; (4) the
alleged fact that "the desire for self-decoration is strongest at the
beginning of the age of puberty," the customs of ornamenting,
mutilating, painting, and tattooing being "practised most zealously at
that period of life." Concerning (1) nothing more need be said, as the
large number of decisive facts I have collected exposes and
neutralizes that stratagem. The other three arguments must be briefly
considered.

A native of Lukunor being asked by Mertens what was the meaning of
tattooing, answered: "It has the same object as your clothes; that is,
to please the women," In reply to the question why he wore his
ornaments, an Australian answered Bulmer: "In order to look well and
make himself agreeable to the women," (Brough Smyth, I., 275.) To one
who has studied savages not only anthropologically but
psychologically, these stories have an obvious cock-and-bull aspect. A
native of the Caroline Islands would have been as incapable of
originating that philosophical comparison between the object of our
clothes and of his tattooing as he would have been of writing
Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_. Human beings in his stage of evolution
never consciously reflect on the reasons of things, and considerations
of comparative psychology or esthetics are as much beyond his mental
powers as problems in algebra or trigonometry. That such a sailor's
yarn could be accepted seriously in an anthropologic treatise shows
that anthropology is still in its cradle. The same is true of that
Australian's alleged answer. The Australian is unequal to the mental
effort of counting up to ten, and, like other savages, is easily
fatigued by the simplest questions[99]. It is quite likely that Bulmer
asked that native whether he ornamented himself "in order to look well
and make himself agreeable to the women," and that the native answered
"yes" merely to gratify him or to get rid of the troublesome question.

The books of missionaries are full of such cases, and no end of
confusion has been created in science by such false "facts." The
answer given by that native is, moreover, utterly opposed to all the
well-attested details I have given in the preceding pages regarding
the real motives of Australians in "decorating" themselves; and to
those facts I may now add this crushing testimony from Brough Smyth
(_I.,_ 270):

"The proper arrangement of their apparel, the ornamentation
of their persons by painting, and attention to deportment,
were important only when death struck down a warrior, when
war was made, and when they assembled for a corroboree. In
ordinary life little attention was given to the ornamenting
of the person."


MISLEADING TESTIMONY OF VISITORS

"The Australians throughout the continent scar their persons, as Mr.
Curr assures us, only as a means of decoration," writes Westermarck
(169), and in the pages preceding and following he cites other
evidence of the same sort, such as Carver's assertion that the
Naudowessies paint their faces red and black, "which they esteem as
greatly ornamental;" Tuckey's assumption that the natives of the Congo
file their teeth and raise scars on the skin for purposes of ornament
and principally "with the idea of rendering themselves agreeable to
the women;" Kiedel's assertion, that in the Tenimber group the lads
decorate their locks with leaves, flowers, and feathers, "only in
order to please the women;" Taylor's statement that in New Zealand it
was the great ambition of the young to have fine tattooed faces, "both
to render themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicuous in
war," etc.

Beginning with Curr, it must be conceded that he is one of the leading
authorities on Australia, the author of a four-volume treatise on that
country and its natives. Yet his testimony on the point in question
happens to be as worthless as that of the most hasty globe-trotter,
partly because he had evidently paid little attention to it, and
partly also, I fancy, because of the fatal tendency of men of science
to blunder as soon as they touch the domain of esthetics. What he
really wrote (II., 275) is that Chatfield had informed him that scars
were made by the natives on the right thigh "for the purpose of
denoting the particular class to which they belong." This Curr doubts,
"without further evidence," because it would conflict with the custom
prevalent throughout the continent, "as far as known, which is to make
these marks for ornament only." Now this is a pure assumption of
Curr's, based on a preconceived notion, and contradicted by the
specific evidence of a number of explorers who, as even Grosse is
obliged to admit (75), "unanimously account for a part at least of the
scars as tribal marks."[100]

If so eminent an authority as Curr can err so grievously, it is
obvious that the testimony of other writers and casual observers must
be accepted with extreme caution. Europeans and Americans are so
accustomed to regard personal decorations as attempts to beautify the
appearance that when they see them in savages there is a natural
disposition to attribute them to the same motive. They do not realize
that they are dealing with a most subtle psychological question. The
chief source of confusion lies in their failure to distinguish between
what is admired as a thing of beauty as such and what pleases them for
other reasons. As Professor Sully has pointed out in his _Handbook of
Psychology_ (337):

"At the beginning of life there is no clear separation of
what is beautiful from what is simply pleasing to the
individual. As in the history of the race, so in that of the
individual, the sense of beauty slowly extricates itself
from pleasurable consciousness in general, and
differentiates itself from the sense of what _is personally
useful and agreeable_."

Bearing in mind this very important distinction between what is
beautiful and what is merely pleasing because of its being useful and
agreeable, we see at once that the words "decorative," "ornamental,"
"attractive," "handsome," etc., are constantly used by writers on this
subject in a misleading and question-begging way. We can hardly blame
a man like Barrington for writing (11) that among the natives of
Botany Bay "scars are, by both sexes, deemed highly ornamental"; but a
scientific author who quotes such a sentence ought to be aware that
the evidence did not justify Barrington in using any word but
_pleasing_ in place of "ornamental," because the latter implies and
takes for granted the esthetic sense, the existence of which is the
very thing to be proved. This remark applies generally to the evidence
of this kind which Westermarck has so industriously collected, and
which, on account of this undiscriminating, question-begging
character, is entirely worthless. In all these cases the fact is
overlooked that the "decorations" of one sex may be agreeable to the
other for reasons that have nothing to do with the sense of beauty.

Briefly summed up, Westermarck's theory is that in painting,
tattooing, and otherwise decorating his person, primitive man's
original and conscious object was to beautify himself for the sake of
gaining an advantage in courtship; whereas my theory is that all these
decorations originally subserved useful purposes alone, and that even
where they subsequently may have served in some instances as means to
please the women, this was not as things of beauty but indirectly and
unintentionally through their association with rank, wealth,
distinction in war, prowess, and manly qualities in general. When
Dobrizhoffer says (II., 12) that the Abipones, "more ambitious to
be dreaded by their enemies than to be loved, to terrify than attract
beholders, think the more they are scarred and sunburnt, the
_handsomer_ they are," he illustrates glaringly the slovenly and
question-begging use of terms to which I have just referred; for, as
his own reference to being loved and to attracting beholders shows, he
does not use the word "handsome" in an esthetic sense, but as a
synonyme for what is pleasing or worthy of approval on other grounds.
If the scars of these Indians do please the women it is not because
they are considered beautiful, but because they are tokens of martial
prowess. To a savage woman nothing is so useful as manly valor, and
therefore nothing so agreeable as the signs of it. In that respect the
average woman's nature has not changed. The German high-school girl
admires the scars in the face of a "corps-student," not, certainly,
because she considers them beautiful, but because they stand for a
daredevil, masculine spirit which pleases her.

When the Rev. R. Taylor wrote (321) that among the New Zealanders "to
have fine tattooed faces was the great ambition of the young, both to
render themselves attractive to the ladies and conspicuous in war," he
would have shown himself a better philosopher if he had written that
by making themselves conspicuous in war with their tattooing they also
make themselves attractive to the "ladies." That the sense of beauty
is not concerned here becomes obvious when we include Robley's
testimony (28, 15) that a Maori chief's great object was to excite
fear among enemies, for which purpose in the older days he "rendered
his countenance as terrible as possible with charcoal and red ochre";
while in more recent times,

"not only to become more terrible in war, when fighting was
carried on at close quarters, but to appear more
distinguished and attractive to the opposite sex, must
certainly be included"

among the objects of tattooing. It is hardly necessary to point out
that if we accept the sexual selection theory this expert testimony
lands us in insuperable difficulty; for it is clearly impossible that
on the same island, and in the same race, the painting and tattooing
of the face should have the effect of terrifying the men and of
appearing beautiful to the women. But if we discard the beauty
theory and follow my suggestion, we have no difficulty whatever. Then
we may grant that the facial daubs or skin mutilations may seem
terrible or hideous to an enemy and yet please the women, because the
women do not regard them as things of beauty, but as distinguishing
marks of valiant warriors.

By way of illustrating his maxim that "in every country, in every
race, beauty stimulates passion," Westermarck cites (257) part of a
sentence by Lumholtz (213) to the effect that Australian women take
much notice of a man's face, particularly of the part about the eyes.
He does not cite the rest of the sentence--"and they like to see a
frank and open, _or perhaps, more correctly, a wild expression of
countenance,_" which makes it clear to the reader that what stimulates
the passion of these women is not the lines of beauty in the
[never-washed] faces of these men, but the unbeautiful aspect peculiar
to a wild hunter, ferocious warrior, and intrepid defender of his
home. Their admiration, in other words, is not esthetic, but
instinctively utilitarian.


"DECORATION" AT THE AGE OF PUBERTY

We come now to the principal argument of Westermarck--the alleged fact
that in all parts of the world the desire for self-decoration is
strongest at the beginning of the age of puberty, the customs of
ornamenting, painting, mutilating, and tattooing the person being
practised most zealously at that period. This argument is as futile as
the others, for several reasons. In the first place, it is not true
that in all parts of the world self-decoration is practised most
zealously at that period. More frequently, perhaps, it is begun some
years earlier, before any idea of courtship can have entered the heads
of these children. The Congo cannibals begin the process of scarring
the face at the age of four.[101] Dyak girls are tattooed at
five.[102] The Botocudos begin the mutilating of children's lips at
the age of seven.[103] Eskimo girls are tattooed in their eighth
year,[104] and on the Andaman Islands few children are allowed to pass
their eighth year without scarification.[105] The Damaras chip the
teeth with a flint "when the children are young."[106] The female
Oraons are "all tattooed in childhood."[107] The Tahitians began
tattooing at eight.[108] The Chukchis of Siberia tattoo girls at
nine;[109] and so on in various parts of the world. In the second
place, of the divers personal "decorations" indulged in by the lower
races it is only those that are intended to be of a permanent
character (tattooing, scarring, mutilating) that are made chiefly,
though by no means exclusively[110] about or before the age of
puberty.

All the other methods of "decorating" described in the preceding pages
as being connected with the rites of war, superstition, mourning,
etc., are practised throughout life; and that they constitute by far
the greater proportion of "ornamentations" is evidenced by the
citation I have already made, from Brough Smyth, that the
ornamentation of their persons was considered important by Australians
only in connection with such ceremonies, and that "in ordinary life
little attention was given to the ornamenting of the person"; to which
much similar testimony might be added regarding other races; such as
Kane's (184), regarding the Chinooks: "Painting the face is not much
practised among them, except on extraordinary occasions, such as the
death of a relative, some solemn feast, or going on a war-party;" or
Morgan's (263), that the feather and war dances were "the chief
occasions" when the Iroquois warrior "was desirous to appear in his
best attire," etc.

Again, even if it were true that "the desire for self-decoration is
strongest at the beginning of the age of puberty," it does not by any
means follow that this must be due to the desire to make one's self
attractive to the opposite sex. Whatever their desire may be, the
children have no choice in the matter. As Curr remarks regarding
Australians (11., 51),

"The male must commonly submit, _without hope of escape_, to
have one or more of his teeth knocked out, to have the
septum of his nose pierced, to have certain painful cuttings
made in his skin, ...before he is allowed the rights of
manhood."

There are, however, plenty of reasons why he should desire to be
initiated. What Turner writes regarding the Samoans has a general
application:

"Until a young man was tattooed, he was considered in his
minority. He could not think of marriage, and he was
constantly exposed to taunts and ridicule, as being poor and
of low birth, and as having no right to speak in the society
of men. But as soon as he was tattooed he passed into his
majority, and considered himself entitled to the respect and
privileges of mature years. When a youth, therefore, reached
the age of sixteen, he and his friends were all anxiety that
he should be tattooed."[111]

No one can read the accounts of the initiatory ceremonies of
Australian and Indian boys (convenient summaries of which may be found
in the sixth volume of Waitz-Gerland and in Southey's _Brazil_ III.,
387-88) without becoming convinced that with them, as with the
Samoans, etc., there was no thought of women or courtship. Indeed the
very idea of such a thing involves an absurdity, for, since all the
boys in each tribe were tattooed alike, what advantage could their
marks have secured them? If all men were equally rich, would any woman
ever marry for money? Westermarck accepts (174) seriously the
assertion of one writer that the reason why Australians knock out some
of the teeth of the boys at puberty is because they know "that
otherwise they would run the risk of being refused on account of
ugliness." Now, apart from the childish supposition that Australian
women could allow their amorous inclinations to depend on the presence
or absence of two front teeth, this assertion involves the assumption
that these females can exercise the liberty of choice in the selection
of a mate--an assumption which is contrary to the truth, since all the
authorities on Australia agree on at least one point, which is that
women have absolutely no choice in the selection of a husband, but
have to submit in all cases to the dispositions made by their male
relatives. These Australian women, moreover, perversely act in a
manner utterly inconsistent with the theory of sexual selection. Since
they do not choose, but are chosen, one would naturally expect, in
accordance with that theory, that they would decorate themselves in
order to "stimulate the passion" of the _desirable_ men; but they do
no such thing.

While the men are apt to dress their hair carefully, the women "let
their black locks grow as irregular and tangled as do the Fuegians"
(Grosse, 87); and Buhner says they "did little to improve their
appearance;" while such ornaments as they had "were not much regarded
by the men." (Brough Smyth, I, 275.)[112]


"DECORATION" AS A TEST OF COURAGE

One of the most important reasons why young savages approaching
puberty are eager to receive their "decorations" remains to be
considered. Tattooing, scarring, and mutilating are usually very
painful processes. Now, as all who are familiar with the life of
savages know, there is nothing they admire so much as courage in
enduring torture of any kind. By showing fortitude in bearing the pain
connected with tattooing, etc., these young folks are thus able to win
admiration, gratify their vanity, and show that they are worthy to be
received in the ranks of adults. The Sea Dyaks are proud of their
scars, writes Brooke Low.

"The women often prove the courage and endurance of the
youngsters by placing a lighted ball of tinder in the arm
and letting it burn into the skin. The marks ... are much
valued by the young men as so many proofs of their power of
endurance."

(Roth, II., 80.) Here we have an illustration which explains in the
most simple way why scars _please_ both the men and the women, without
making necessary the grotesque assumption that either sex admires them
as things of beauty. To take another case, equally eloquent: Bossu
says of the Osage Indians that they suffer the pain of tattooing with
pleasure in order to pass for men of courage. If one of them should
have himself marked without having previously distinguished himself in
battle, he would be degraded and looked upon as a coward, unworthy of
such an honor. (Mallery, 1889-90, 394.)

Grosse is inclined to think (78) that it is in the male only that
courage is expected and admired, but he is mistaken, as we may see,
_e.g._, in the account given by Dobrizhoffer (II., 21) of the
tattooing customs of the Abipones, whom he studied so carefully. The
women, he says,

"have their face, breast, and arms covered with black
figures of various shapes, so that they present the
appearance of a Turkish carpet." "This savage ornament is
purchased with blood and many groans."

The thorns used to puncture the skin are poisonous, and after the
operation the girl has her eyes, cheeks, and lips so horribly swelled
that she "looks like a Stygian fury." If she groans while undergoing
the torture, or shows signs of pain in her face, the old woman who
operates on her exclaims, in a rage: "You will die single, be assured.
Which of our heroes would think _so cowardly a girl_ worthy to be his
wife?" Such courage, Dobrizhoffer explains further, is admired in a
girl because it makes her "prepared to bear the pains of parturition
in time." In some cases vanity supplies an additional motive why the
girls should submit to the painful operation with fortitude; for those
of them who "are most pricked and painted you may know to be of high
rank."

Here again we see clearly that the tattooing is admired for other than
esthetic reasons, and we realize how foolish it is to philosophize
about the peculiar "taste" of these Indians in admiring a girl who
looks like "a Turkish carpet" or "a Stygian fury." If they had even
the rudiments of a sense of beauty they would not indulge in such
disgusting disfigurements.


MUTILATION, FASHION, AND EMULATION

Grosse declares (80) that "we know definitely at least, that tattooing
is regarded by the Eskimo as an embellishment." He bases this
inference on Cranz's assertion that Eskimo mothers tattoo their
daughters in early youth "for fear that otherwise they would not get a
husband." Had Grosse allowed his imagination to paint a particular
instance, he would have seen how grotesque his inference is. A
favorite way among the Eskimo of securing a bride is, we are told, to
drag her from her tent by the hair. This young woman, moreover, has
never washed her face, nor does any man object to her filth. Yet we
are asked to believe that an Eskimo could be so enamoured of the
_beauty_ of a few simple lines tattooed on a girl's dirty face that he
would refuse to marry her unless she had them! Like other champions of
the sexual selection theory, Grosse searches in the clouds for a
comically impossible motive when the real reason lies right before his
eyes. That reason is fashion. The tattoo marks are tribal signs
(Bancroft, I., 48) which _every_ girl _must_ submit to have in
obedience to inexorable custom, unless she is prepared to be an object
of scorn and ridicule all her life.

The tyranny of fashion in prescribing disfigurements and mutilations
is not confined to savages. The most amazing illustration of it is to
be found in China, where the girls of the upper classes are obliged to
this day to submit to the most agonizing process of crippling their
feet, which finally, as Professor Flower remarks in his book on
_Fashion and Deformity_, assume "the appearance of the hoof of some
animal rather than a human foot." There is a popular delusion that the
Chinese approve of such deformed small feet because they consider them
beautiful--a delusion which Westermarck shares (200). Since the
Chinese consider small feet "the chief charm of women," it might be
supposed, he says, that the women would at least have the pleasure of
fascinating men by a "beauty" to acquire which they have to undergo
such horrible torture;

"but Dr. Strieker assures us that in China a woman is
considered immodest if she shows her artificially distorted
feet to a man. It is even improper to speak of a woman's
foot, and in decent pictures this part is always concealed
under the dress."

To explain this apparent anomaly Westermarck assumes that the object
of the concealment "is to excite through the unknown!" To such
fantastic nonsense does the doctrine of sexual selection lead. In
reality there is no reason for supposing that the Chinese consider
crippled feet--looking like "the hoof of an animal"--beautiful any
more than mutilations of other parts of the body. In all probability
the origin of the custom of crippling women's feet must be traced to
the jealousy of the men, who devised this procedure as an effective
way of preventing their wives from leaving their homes and indulging
in amorous intrigues; other practices with the same purpose being
common in Oriental countries. In course of time the foot-binding
became an inexorable fashion which the foolishly conservative women
were more eager to continue than the men. All accounts agree that the
anti-foot-binding movement finds its most violent and stubborn
opponents in the women themselves. The _Missionary Review_ for July,
1899, contains an article summing up a report of the _Tien Tsu Hui,_
or "Natural Foot Society," which throws a bright light on the whole
question and from which I quote as follows:

"The male members of a family may be opposed to the maiming
of their female relatives by the senseless custom, but the
women will support it. One Chinese even promised his
daughter a dollar a day to keep her natural feet, and
another, having failed with his older girls, arranged that
his youngest should be under his personal supervision night
and day. The one natural-footed girl was sought in marriage
for the dollars that had been faithfully laid by for her.
But at her new home she was so _ridiculed_ by the hundreds
who came to see her--and her feet--that she lost her reason.
The other girl also became insane as a result of the
_persecutions_ which she had to endure."

Thus we see that what keeps up this hideous custom is not the women's
desire to arouse the esthetic admiration and amorous passion of the
_men_ by a hoof of beauty, but the fear of ridicule and persecution by
the other women, slaves of fashion all. These same motives are the
source of most of the ugly fashions prevalent even in civilized Europe
and America. Théophile Gautier believed that most women had no sense
of beauty, but only a sense of fashion; and if explorers and
missionaries had borne in mind the fundamental difference between
fashion and esthetics, anthropological literature would be the poorer
by hundreds of "false facts" and ludicrous inferences.[113]

The ravages of fashion are aggravated by emulation, which has its
sources in vanity and envy. This accounts for the extremes to which
mutilations and fashions often go among both, civilized and
uncivilized races, and of which a startling instance will be described
in detail in the next paragraph. Few of our rich women wear their
jewels because of their intrinsic beauty. They wear them for the same
reason that Polynesian or African belles wear all the beads they can
get. In Mariner's book on the Tongans (Chap. XV.) there is an amusing
story of a chiefs daughter who was very anxious to go to Europe. Being
asked why, she replied that her great desire was to amass a large
quantity of beads and then return to Tonga, "because in England beads
are so common that no one would admire me for wearing them, and _I
should not have the pleasure of being envied."_ Bancroft (I., 128)
says of the Kutchin Indians: "_Beads are their wealth,_ used in the
place of money, and the rich among them literally load themselves with
necklaces and strings of various patterns." Referring to the tin
ornaments worn by Dyaks, Carl Bock says he has "counted as many as
sixteen rings in a single ear, each of them the size of a dollar";
while of the Ghonds Forsyth tells us (148) that they "deck themselves
with an inordinate amount of what they consider ornaments. _Quantity
rather than quality is aimed at."_


PERSONAL BEAUTY VERSUS PERSONAL DECORATION

Must we then, in view of the vast number of opposing facts advanced so
far in this long chapter, assume that savages and barbarians have no
esthetic sense at all, not even a germ of it? Not necessarily. I
believe that the germ of a sense of visible beauty _may_ exist even
among savages as well as the germ of a musical sense; but that it is
little more than a childish pleasure in bright and lustrous shells and
other objects of various colors, especially red and yellow, everything
beyond that being usually found to belong to the region of utility
(language of signs, desire to attract attention, etc.) and not to
_esthetics_--that is, _the love of beauty for its own sake._ Such a
germ of esthetic pleasure we find in our infants _years before they
have the faintest conception of what is meant by personal beauty;_ and
this brings me to the pith of my argument. Had the facts warranted it,
I might have freely conceded that savages decorate themselves for the
sake of gaining an advantage in courtship without thereby in the least
yielding the main thesis of this chapter, which is that the admiration
of personal beauty is not one of the motives which induce a savage to
marry a particular girl or man; for most of the "decorations"
described in the preceding pages are not elements of _personal_ beauty
at all, but are either external appendages to that beauty, or
mutilations of it. I have shown by a superabundance of facts that
these "decorations" do not serve the purpose of exciting the amorous
passion and preference of the opposite sex, except non-esthetically
and indirectly, in some cases, through their standing as marks of
rank, wealth, distinction in war, etc. I shall now proceed to show,
much more briefly, that still less does personal beauty proper serve
among the lower races as a stimulant of sexual passion. This we should
expect naturally, since in the race as in the child the pleasure in
bright baubles must long precede the pleasure in beautiful faces or
figures. Every one who has been among Indians or other savages knows
that nature produces among them fine figures and sometimes even pretty
faces; but these are not appreciated. Galton told Darwin that he saw
in one South African tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls, but
they were not attractive to the natives. Zöller saw at least one
beautiful negress; Wallace describes the superb figures of some of the
Brazilian Indians and the Aru Islanders in the Malay Archipelago
(354); and Barrow says that some of the Hottentot girls have beautiful
figures when young--every joint and limb well turned. But as we shall
see presently, the criterion of personal charm among Hottentots, as
among savages in general, is fat, not what we call beauty. Ugliness,
whether natural or inflicted by fashion, does not among these races
act as a bar to marriage. "Beauty is of no estimation in either sex,"
we read regarding the Creeks in Schoolcraft (V., 272): "It is
strength or agility that recommends the young man to his mistress; and
to be a skilful or swift hunter is the highest merit with the woman he
may choose for a wife." Belden found that the squaws were valued "only
for their strength and ability to work, and no account whatever is
taken of their personal beauty," etc., etc. Nor can the fact that
savages kill deformed children be taken as an indication of a regard
for personal beauty. Such children are put out of the way for the
simple reason that they may not become a burden to the family or the
tribe.

Advocates of the sexual selection theory make much ado over the fact
that in all countries the natives prefer their own peculiar color and
features--black, red, or yellow, flat noses, high cheek bones, thick
lips, etc.--and dislike what we consider beautiful. But the likes of
these races regarding personal appearance have no more to do with a
sense of beauty than their dislikes. It is merely a question of habit.
They like their own faces because they are used to them, and dislike
ours because they are strange. In their aversion to our faces they are
actuated by the same motive that makes a European child cry out and
run away in terror at sight of a negro--not because he is ugly, for he
may be good-looking, but because he is strange.

Far from admiring such beauty as nature may have given them, the lower
races exercise an almost diabolical ingenuity in obliterating or
mutilating it. Hundreds of their visitors have written of certain
tribes that they would not be bad looking if they would only leave
nature alone. Not a single feature, from the feet to the eyeballs, has
escaped the uglifying process. "Nothing is too absurd or hideous to
please them," writes Cameron. The Eskimos afford a striking
illustration of the fact that a germ of taste for ornamentation in
general is an earlier manifestation of the esthetic faculty than the
appreciation of personal beauty; for while displaying considerable
skill and ingenuity in the decorations of their clothes, canoes, and
weapons, they mutilate their persons in various ways and allow them to
be foul and malodorous with the filth of years. One of the most
disgusting mutilations on record is that practised by the Indians of
British Columbia, who insert a piece of bone in the lower lip, which,
gradually enlarged, makes it at last project three inches. Bancroft
(I., 98) devotes three pages to the lip mutilation indulged in by the
Thlinkeet females. When the operation is completed and the block is
withdrawn "the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather,
displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle."
The lower teeth and gum, says one witness, are left quite naked;
another says that the plug "distorts every feature in the lower part
of the face"; a third that an old woman, the wife of a chief, had a
lip "ornament" so large "that by a peculiar motion of her under-lip
she could almost conceal her whole face with it"; and a fourth gives a
description of this "abominably revolting spectacle," which is too
nauseating to quote.


DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM (?)

"Abominably revolting," "hideous," "filthy," "disgusting,"
"atrocious"--such are usually the words of observers in describing
these shocking mutilations. Nevertheless they always apply the word
"ornamentation" to them, with the implication that the savages look
upon them as beautiful, although all that the observers had a right to
say was that they pleased the savages and were approved by fashion.
What is worse, the philosophers fell into the pitfall thus dug for
them. Darwin thinks that the mutilations indulged in by savages show
"how different is the standard of _taste_"; Humboldt (III., 236)
reflects on the strange fact that nations "attach the idea of beauty"
to whatever configuration nature has given them; and Ploss (I., 48)
declares bluntly that there is no such thing as an absolute standard
of beauty and that savages have "just as much right" to their ideas on
the subject as we have to admire a madonna of Raphael. This view,
indeed, is generally held; it is expressed in the old saw, _De
gustibus non est disputandum_. Now it is true that it is _unwise_ to
dispute about tastes _conversationally_; but scientifically speaking,
that old saw has not a sound tooth in it.

If a peasant who has never had an opportunity to cultivate his musical
sense insisted that a certain piano was exquisitely in tune and had as
beautiful a tone as any other piano, whereas an expert musician
declared that it had a shrill tone and was terribly out of tune, would
anybody be so foolish as to say that the peasant had as much right to
his opinion as the musician? Or if an Irish toper declared that a
bottle of Chambertin, over which French epicures smacked their lips,
was insipid and not half as fine as the fusel-oil on which he daily
got drunk, would not everybody agree that the Irishman was no judge of
liquors, and that the reason why he preferred his cheap whiskey to the
Burgundy was that his nerves of taste were too coarse to detect the
subtle and exquisite bouquet of the French wine? In both these
examples we are concerned only with simple questions of sense
perception; yet in the matter of personal beauty, which involves not
only the senses, but the imagination, the intellect, and the subtlest
feelings, we are asked to believe that any savage who has never seen a
woman but those of his own race has as much right to his opinion as a
Ruskin or a Titian, who have given their whole life to the study of
beauty!

If an astronomer--to take another illustration--were told that _de
astronomia non est disputandum_, and that the Namaquas, who believe
that the moon is made of bacon, or the Brazilian tribes who think that
an eclipse consists in an attempt on the part of a monstrous jaguar to
swallow the sun--have as much right to their opinion as he has, he
would consider the person who advanced such an argument either a wag
or a fool. Only a wag or a fool, again, would argue that a Fijian has
just as much right as we have to his opinions on medical matters, or
on the morality of polygamy, infanticide, and cannibalism. Yet when we
come across a dirty, malodorous savage, so stupid that he cannot count
ten, who mutilates every part of his body till he has lost nearly all
semblance to a human being, we are soberly asked to look upon this as
merely a "difference in the standard of esthetic taste," and to admit
that the savage has "as much right to his taste," as we have. The more
I think of it, the more I am amazed at this unjust and idiotic
discrimination against the esthetic faculty--a discrimination for
which I can find no other explanation than the fact already referred
to, that most men of science know so much less about matters of beauty
than about everything else in the world. They labor under the delusion
that the sense of beauty is one of the earliest products of mental
evolution, whereas their own attitude in the matter affords painful
proof that it is one of the latest. They will understand some day that
a steatopygous "Hottentot Venus" is no more beautiful because an
African finds her attractive, than an ugly, bloated, blear-eyed harlot
is beautiful because she pleases a drunken libertine.

What makes the traditional attitude of scientific men in this matter
the less pardonable is that--as we have seen--there is always a
simple, practical explanation for the predilections of these savages,
so that there is no necessity whatever for assuming the existence of
so paradoxical and impossible a thing as an esthetic admiration of
these hideous deformities. Thus, in regard to the nauseating lip
"ornaments" of the Thlinkeets just referred to, the testimony
collected by Bancroft indicates unmistakably that they are approved
of, perpetuated, and aggravated for two reasons--both
non-esthetic--namely, as indications of rank, and from the necessity
of conforming to fashion. Ladies of distinction, we read, increase the
size of their lip plug. Langsdorff even saw women "of very high rank"
with this "ornament" full five inches long and three broad; Dixon says
the mutilation is always in proportion to the person's wealth; and
Mayne relates, in his book on the British Columbia Indians, that "a
woman's rank among women is settled according to the size of her
wooden lip."


INDIFFERENCE TO DIRT

That savages can have no sense of personal beauty is further proved by
their habitual indifference to personal cleanliness, the most
elementary and imperative of esthetic requirements. When we read in
McLean (II., 153) that some Eskimo girls "might pass as pretty if
divested of their filth;" or in Cranz (I., 134) that "it is almost
sickening to view their hands and faces smeared with grease ... and
their filthy clothes swarming with vermin;" and when we further read
in Kotzebue (II., 56) regarding the Kalush that his "filthy
countrywomen with their lip-trough ... often awaken in him the most
vehement passion," we realize vividly that that passion is a coarse
appetite which exists quite apart from, and independently of, anything
that might be considered beautiful or ugly.

The subject is not a pleasant one; but as it is one of my strongest
arguments, I must be pardoned for giving some more unsavory details.
Among some of the British Columbia Indians "pretty women may be seen;
nearly all have good eyes and hair, but the state of filth in which
they live generally neutralizes any natural charms they may possess."
(Mayne, 277.) Lewis and Clarke write (439) regarding the Chinook
Indians:

"Their broad, flat foreheads, their falling breasts, their
ill-shaped limbs, the awkwardness of their positions, and
_the filth which intrudes through their finery_--all these
render a Chinook or Clatsop beauty in full attire one of the
most disgusting objects in nature."

Muir says of the Mono Indians of the California Mountains (93): "The
dirt on their faces was fairly stratified, and seemed so ancient and
so undisturbed it might also possess a geological significance."
Navajo girls "usually evince a catlike aversion to water."
(Schoolcraft, IV., 214.) Cozzens relates (128) how, among the
Apaches, "the sight of a man washing his face and hands almost
convulsed them with laughter." He adds that their personal appearance
explained their surprise. Burton (80) found among the Sioux a dislike
to cleanliness "which nothing but the fear of the rod will subdue."
"In an Indian village," writes Neill (79), "all is filth and
litter.... Water, except in very warm weather, seldom touches their
bodies."

The Comanches are "disgustingly filthy in their persons."
(Schoolcraft, I., 235.) The South American Waraus "are exceedingly
dirty and disgusting in their habits, and their children are so much
neglected that their fingers and toes are frequently destroyed by
vermin." (Bernau, 35.) The Patagonians "are excessively filthy in
their personal habits." (Bourne, 56.) The Mundrukus "are very dirty"
(Markham, 172), etc.

Of the Damara negroes, Anderson says (_N._, 50): "Dirt often
accumulates to such a degree on their persons as to make the color of
their skins totally undistinguishable;" and Galton (92) "could find no
pleasure in associating or trying to chat with these Damaras, they
were so filthy and disgusting in every way." Thunberg writes of the
Hottentots (73) that they "find a peculiar pleasure in filth and
stench;" wherein they resemble Africans in general. Griffith declares
that the hill tribes of India are "the dirtier the farther we
advance;" elsewhere[114] we read:

"Both males and females, as a class, are very dirty and
filthy in both person and habits. They appear to have an
antipathy to bathing, and to make matters worse, they have a
habit of anointing their bodies with _ghee_ (melted
butter);"

and of another of these tribes:

"The Karens are a dirty people. They never use soap, and
their skins are enamelled with dirt. When water is thrown on
them, it rolls off their backs like globules of quicksilver
on a marble slab. To them bathing has a cooling, but no
cleansing effect."

The Mishinis are "disgustingly dirty." By the Kirgliez "uncleanliness
is elevated into a virtue hallowed by tradition." The Kalmucks are
described as filthy, the Kamtschadales as exceedingly so, etc.


REASONS FOR BATHING.