132 Beauty in the Eyes of an Evolutionist. [March, 
peopled as the British Isles have been, even were there no 
variety of environment therein. 
Supposing the environment, by means of Natural and 
Sexual Selection, makes the beauty accepted by the inha- 
bitants of the locality, how are we to account for the faCt 
that savage nations practise artificial deformities on its 
members ? Only by assuming that the so-called “ deformity ” 
is actually beneficial to the race. It does not follow that 
because we have not yet found out how a flattened forehead 
is a gain in the struggle for existence, that therefore it is not 
so. I venture to say that it cannot be materially injurious, 
and it is certainly most probable that it is in some obscure 
way a decided advantage ; otherwise the taste for it would 
be weeded out by those having most pleasure in the sight of 
it lessening thereby the number of their descendants. In 
such cases, and indeed wherever Sexual Selection aCts, we 
see Natural Selection choosing, as fittest to survive in the 
locality, the strains which are the possessors of certain 
brain-cells containing an aesthetic taste. 
Amongst artificial deformities must be included the con- 
striction of the waist by English ladies. This practice, 
though generally now deprecated, will, I believe, come to be 
understood in time. Women who do not perform more 
foot-pounds work than is accomplished in a promenade 
have a good deal more lung-power than they require, and it 
is a question whether a reduction of the oxygenation done 
in the body does not lead to a diminution in the amount of 
food which the digestive apparatus is called upon to deal 
with. To talk of “ interferences with Nature ” is not to the 
purpose ; for, as with all other animals, the organs with 
which mankind are at birth endowed have no reference 
whatever to their own future requirements, but are fixed 
solely by the needs of their forefathers, from whom they 
inherit them. 
But whether a tightened cinCture is good or evil, the 
objeCt in the mind of the lady who thus operates on her own 
waist is to appear “ genteeh” This natural inherited in- 
stinct — the desire we have to appear to belong to the upper 
ranks of society — springs from the faCt that in former times 
the higher were the safer classes, the lower being more 
likely to perish from want ; on which account the proud 
and ambitious, who strove to raise their social position, left 
more children (inheriting their traits of character) than 
those who were content with their natively humble grade. 
One aim of the slight waist is therefore parallel to that of 
wearing fine clothes, or any mimicry of a higher rank, 
