Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iv Part 14

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 mediaeval 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 cla.s.ses in Europe to-day, but not easily traceable in cla.s.sic times. Duhren (Das Geschlechtsleben in England, bd. II, pp. 359 et seq.) brings forward quotations from aesthetic 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. (Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil I, p. 156.) He states that, like most other feminine fashions in dress, it was certainly invented by prost.i.tutes.

[148]

The racial variations in the form and character of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 Schonheit das Weiblichen Korpers, Chapter X).

[149]

Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 28.

[150]

These devices are dealt with and ill.u.s.trations 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 uber die Libido s.e.xualis, 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 s.e.xual 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 part.i.tion 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 Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers, fourteenth edition, Chapter XII.

[155]

See, e.g., Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, pp. 59-75.

[156]

Sergi (The Mediterranean Race, Chapter 1), by an a.n.a.lysis 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]

Lechat's study of the numerous realistic colored statues recently discovered in Greece (summarized in Zentralblatt fur 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 Beaute des Femmes dans la Litterature et dans l'Art du XIIe au XVIe Siecle, 1876, pp. 32 et seq.

[160]

Houdoy, op. cit., pp. 41 et seq.

[161]

Houdoy, op. cit., p. 83.

[162]

Brantome, 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 cla.s.sic 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 Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers, p. 217.

[167]

Bloch (Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual selection has been mainly an attempt to disentangle the chief elements of beauty in so far as beauty is a stimulus to the s.e.xual instinct. Beauty by no means comprehends the whole of the influences which make for s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual and to the aesthetic impulses, to which no other sense can furnish anything in any degree a.n.a.logous. 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 s.e.xual 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, pa.s.sed 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s were ornamented with rainbow-colored mother-of-pearl sh.e.l.ls, 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 s.e.xual selection.

It may be in place here to mention, in pa.s.sing, the considerable place which vision occupies in normal and abnormal methods of heightening tumescence under circ.u.mstances which exclude definite selection by beauty. The action of mirrors belongs to this group of phenomena. Mirrors are present in profusion in high-cla.s.s 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 s.e.xual 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 Nacke 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 s.e.xual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or of gratifying s.e.xual appet.i.tes, and the frequency with which even normal photographs of the nude appeal to the same l.u.s.t 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 s.e.xual love of statues; it is sometimes restricted to cases in which a man requires of a prost.i.tute that she shall a.s.sume the part of a statue which gradually comes to life, and finds s.e.xual gratification in this performance alone; Eulenburg quotes examples, s.e.xuale 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 m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed 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 aesthetic sense; but the manifestation is due rather to the absence than to the presence of aesthetic 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 s.e.xual 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, Athenaeus, aelian, and others refer to cases of men who fell in love with statues. Tarnowsky (s.e.xual 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, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil II, pp. 297-305, brings together various facts bearing on this group of manifestations.)

Necrophily, or a s.e.xual 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.