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.
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.
[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.
[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.