"MANKIND IN THE MAKING'' ^ 33 



fail to be captivated by the bright hues of birds and 

 butterflies, and flowers, the glorious colour-effects of dawn 

 and sunset, the seasons in their changes and so forth. 

 And as this sense of the beautiful slowly gathered force 

 he would seek to decorate his naked body with such 

 of the more brightly-coloured objects around him as were 

 suitable or rather with such as could be affixed thereto. 



As a signal mark of his favour and affection, he would 

 occasionally transfer some one, or another, of his most 

 lasting ornaments to his mate, and the additional 

 charm this would give her ensured a continuance of such 

 gifts, and paved the way for tribal fashions. But then, 

 as now among savages, the males take the lead in this 

 matter of ornamentation, but in proportion as affection 

 grows, they are transferred from him to her, so that 

 among civilized races to-day, the custom is entirely 

 reversed, the women, not the men, wearing the finery. 

 So soon as families began to be neighbourly and to com- 

 bine for the sake of company and mutual help, the spirit 

 of rivalry, so essential to progress everywhere, would 

 tend to increase the number of such gifts, and to set 

 " fashions." With the foundation of society " selec- 

 tion " — by the elimination of the unsocial, would ensure, 

 not only the survival of such fashions, but their multi- 

 plication and diversification, producing results which, to 

 our eyes, have often been hideous. The immediate 

 effect of this form of selection, however, was not a change 

 in physical characteristics, but in the evolution of per- 

 sonal ornaments and development of the aesthetic sense. 

 Progress in this direction must have been infinitely slow, 

 and the lower races of to-day furnish us with Instructive 

 object-lessons in its course. In many cases uglification 

 rather than refinement has attended their efforts. 



