MAN— BEAUTY. 571 



bodies to make themselves appear terrible in battle; certain muti- 

 lations are connected with religious rites, or they mark the age 

 of puberty, or the rank of the man, or they serve to distinguish 

 the tribes. Amongst savages the same fashions prevail for long 

 periods,''" and thus mutilations, from whatever cause first made, 

 soon come to be valued as distinctive marks. But self -adornment, 

 vanity, and the admiration of others, seem to be the commonest 

 motives. In regard to tattooing, I was told by the missionaries 

 in New Zealand, that when they tried to persuade some girls to 

 give up the practice, they answered, "We must just have a few 

 "lines on our lips; else when we grow old we shall be so very 

 "ugly." With the men of New Zealand, a most capable judge" says, 

 "to have fine tattooed faces was the great ambition of the young, 

 "both to render themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicu- 

 "ous in war." A star tattooed on the forehead and a spot on the 

 chin are thought by the women in one part of Africa to be 

 irresistible attractions."^^ In most, but not all parts of the world, 

 the men are more ornamented than the women, and often in a 

 different manner; sometimes, though rarely, the women are 

 hardly at all ornamented. As the women are made by savages to 

 perform the greatest share of the work, and as they are not al- 

 lowed to eat the best kinds of food, so it accords with the char- 

 acteristic selfishness of man that they should not be allowed to 

 obtain, or use the finest ornaments. Lastly, It is a remarkable 

 fact, as proved by the foregoing quotations, that the same fash- 

 ions in modifying the shape of the head, in ornamenting the hair, 

 in painting, tattooing, in perforating the nose, lips, or ears, in 

 removing or filing the teeth, &c., now prevail, and have long 

 prevailed, in the most distant quarters of the world. It is ex- 

 tremely improbable that these practices, followed by so many 

 distinct nations, should be due to tradition from any common 

 source. They indicate the close similarity of the mind of man, 

 to whatever race he may belong, just as do the almost universal 

 habits of dancing, masquerading, and making rude pictures. 



Having made these preliminary remarks on the admiration 

 felt by savages for various ornaments, and for deformities most 

 unsightly in our eyes, let us see how far the men are attracted 

 by the appearance of their women, and what are their ideas of 

 beauty. I have heard it maintained that savages are quite in- 



M Sir S. Baker (ibid. vol. i. p. 210) speaking of the natives of Central 

 Africa says, "every tribe has a distinct and unchanging fashion for 

 "dressing the hair." See Agassiz ('Journey in Brazil," 1868, p. 3is) on 

 the invariability of the tattooing of the Amazonian Indians. 



51 Rev. B. Taylor, 'New Zealand and its Inhabitants,' 1855, p. 152. 



K Mantegazza, 'Viaggi e Studi,' p. 543. 



