NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN, 523 



chanted arms spoken of in the old fables — arms which, after having 

 struck the mark, come back themselves to their possessor. 



V. Dress. — If I point out some facts relative to dress, it is to show 

 you how much of connection, of real resemblance, there is between 

 the most savage and the most civilized people. 



Everywhere and always man has sought to embellish himself. 

 Sometimes by acting on himself, sometimes by borrowing the elements 

 of his dress from without. In the tombs discovered from time to 

 time which inclose the remains of men with their stone hatchets, used 

 in France against the elephant and rhinoceros, in those tombs, I say, 

 we find collars (Fig. 6) made of morsels of shells or small corals 



Fig. 6. 



Necklace. 



which had not, in the eyes of their possessors, a less value than the 

 precious stones have for us. We might almost define man as a being 

 who ornaments himself; and certainly here is a great difierence sepa- 

 rating him from the animals. I shall not dwell on the diflferent ma- 

 terials taken from the exterior world to cover our bodies and embel- 

 lish us. Were you to see a woman of Tahiti in grand costume, you 

 would remark that when our grandmothers had contrived the pan- 

 niers, and the women of our day the crinoline, they only borrowed 

 from the children of the South Sea a part of their attire. 



It is worthy of attention that, under the pretext of embellishing him- 

 self, man has almost always sought to modify his own body. So the 

 Chinese women, in order to make their feet very small, cripple them- 

 selves in so grave a manner that often the little children succumb in 

 the operation. The bones of the heel, in place of elongating behind, 

 are violently displaced and directed downward, so that the women 

 walk on their own heels as on the heels of their shoes. The toes are 

 likewise turned under, the big toe alone being in place. Our women 

 do not go so far; but you know women who, to make the feet small, 

 fear not to give themselves corns, and many men do the same. 



At the Philippines, the group of isles that you see at the east of 

 Asia, is a people whose women attach great importance to having the 



