346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



erally ranked in the lowest order, reach a decidedly higher aesthetic 

 level. 



In most savage communities, the men, not the women, monopolize 

 the handsomest costumes, which are worn as marks of distinction, not 

 merely as ornaments. But the former use must be necessarily deriva- 

 tive and secondary, not original. Mr. Herbert Spencer has gathered 

 together a large and interesting collection of cases in his " Ceremonial 

 Institutions " (chapter ix). Nevertheless, the original aesthetic intent of 

 most of such decorations is obvious from the fact that they are univer- 

 sal among women, whenever they do not arise from the habit of trophy- 

 taking, as with the use of flowers with the Polynesians generally. So, 

 too, tattooing and other mutilative practices, originally subordinative 

 in their intention, becoming at last merely testhetic, are prized by wo- 

 men as increasing their natural attractions. Every one must remember 

 the plea of the New Zealand girls, quoted by Mr. Darwin, who an- 

 swered the remonstrances of the missionary against tattooing by say- 

 ing, " We must have just a few lines upon our lips, or else when we 

 grow old we shall be so very ugly." Similarly, Central African women 

 admire their own peUl'e, the piece of wood inserted in their mutilated 

 lips. I notice in many works of travel that, even where the men almost 

 or entirely monopolize the ornaments, the women are always described 

 as displaying great admiration for the beads, red cloth, and other finery 

 taken about by travelers. I may add that I am often struck by the 

 extraordinary folly of missionaries, who habitually preach down the 

 love of ornament on the part of savages or of emancipated slaves 

 (especially the women), when in reality this love is the first step in 

 aesthetic progress, and the one possible civilizing element in their other- 

 wise purely animal lives.* It ought rather to be used as a lever, by 

 first making them take a pride in their dress, and then j^assing on the 

 feeling so acquired to their children, their huts, their gardens, and their 

 other belongings. 



Such in fact has been, I believe, the actual course of our aesthetic 

 evolution. The feelings vaguely aroused by beautiful objects in the 

 non-practical environment become whetted and strengthened by exer- 

 ercise upon ornaments and pigments, and so extend themselves with 

 increased vividness into new channels. Art, however rude, has espe- 

 cially helped on this primitive progress. The appreciation for the 

 beautiful in man's handicraft leads on to the appreciation of the cor- 

 responding beauty in natural objects. I have attempted to trace Jliis 

 reaction, so far as regards the sense of symmetry, in a prefrr^us 

 number of this journal, f and I shall endeavor still further ia the 



* I once asked a West Indian official of great experience and liberal views whether, in 

 his opinion, Christianity had done any practical good to the negroes ; and I was much 

 struck by his answering : " Oh, yes ! It makes them dress up in good clothes once a week, 

 and so gives them an object in life for which to work and save." 



f See an article on " The Origin of the Sense of Symmetry," in " Mind," xv. 



