beauty in a woman's eye is to a much greater extent than in a
man's a picture of energy, in other words, a translation of
pressure contracts, with which the question of physical purity is
necessarily more intimately associated than it is with the
picture of purely visual beauty. It is noteworthy that Ovid (_Ars
Amandi_, lib. I) urges men who desire to please women to leave
the arts of adornment and effeminacy to those whose loves are
homosexual, and to practice a scrupulous attention to extreme
neatness and cleanliness of body and garments in every detail, a
sun-browned skin, and the absence of all odor. Some two thousand
years later Brummell in an age when extravagance and effeminacy
often marked the fashions of men, introduced a new ideal of
unobtrusive simplicity, extreme cleanliness (with avoidance of
perfumes), and exquisite good taste; he abhorred all eccentricity, and may be said to have constituted a tradition
which Englishmen have ever since sought, more or less
successfully to follow; he was idolized by women.
It may be added that the attentiveness of women to tactile
contacts is indicated by the frequency with which in them it
takes on morbid forms, as the _délire du contact_, the horror of
contamination, the exaggerated fear of touching dirt. (See, e.g.,
Raymond and Janet, _Les Obsessions et la Psychasthénie_.)
FOOTNOTES:
[168] William Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, second edition, 1832, vol.
1, p. 215.
[169] Stendhal (_De l'Amour_, Chapter XVIII) has some remarks on this
point, and refers to the influence over women possessed by Lekain, the
famous actor, who was singularly ugly. "It is _passion_," he remarks,
"which we demand; beauty only furnishes _probabilities_."
[170] The charm of a woman's garments to a man is often due in part to
their expressiveness in rendering impressions of energy, vivacity, or
languor. This has often been realized by the poets, and notably by
Herrick, who was singularly sensitive to these qualities in a woman's
garments.
IV.
The Alleged Charm of Disparity in Sexual Attraction--The Admiration for
High Stature--The Admiration for Dark Pigmentation--The Charm of
Parity--Conjugal Mating--The Statistical Results of Observation as Regards
General Appearance, Stature, and Pigmentation of Married Couples--Preferential Mating and Assortative Mating--The Nature of the
Advantage Attained by the Fair in Sexual Selection--The Abhorrence of
Incest and the Theories of its Cause--The Explanation in Reality
Simple--The Abhorrence of Incest in Relation to Sexual Selection--The
Limits to the Charm of Parity in Conjugal Mating--The Charm of Disparity
in Secondary Sexual Characters.
When we are dealing with the senses of touch, smell, and hearing it is
impossible at present, and must always remain somewhat difficult, to
investigate precisely the degree and direction of their influence in
sexual selection. We can marshal in order--as has here been attempted--the
main facts and considerations which clearly indicate that there is and
must be such an influence, but we cannot even attempt to estimate its
definite direction and still less to measure it precisely. With regard to
vision, we are in a somewhat better position. It is possible to estimate
the direction of the influence which certain visible characters exert on
sexual selection, and it is even possible to attempt their actual
measurement, although there must frequently be doubt as to the
interpretation of such measurements.
Two facts render it thus possible to deal more exactly with the influence
of vision on sexual selection than with the influence of the other senses.
In the first place, men and women consciously seek for certain visible
characters in the persons to whom they are attracted; in other words,
their "ideals" of a fitting mate are visual rather than tactile,
olfactory, or auditory. In the second place, whether such "ideals" are
potent in actual mating, or whether they are modified or even inhibited by
more potent psychological or general biological influences, it is in
either case possible to measure and compare the visible characters of
mated persons.
The two visible characters which are at once most frequently sought in a
mate and most easily measurable are degree of stature and degree of
pigmentation. Every youth or maiden pictures the person he or she would
like for a lover as tall or short, fair or dark, and such characters are
measurable and have on a large scale been measured. It is of interest in
illustration of the problem of sexual selection in man to consider briefly
what results are at present obtainable regarding the influence of these
two characters.
It has long been a widespread belief that short people are sexually
attracted to tall people, and tall people to short; that in the matter of
stature men and women are affected by what Bain called the "charm of
disparity." It has not always prevailed. Many centuries ago Leonardo da
Vinci, whose insight at so many points anticipated our most modern
discoveries, affirmed clearly and repeatedly the charm of parity. After
remarking that painters tend to delineate the figures that resemble
themselves he adds that men also fall in love with and marry those who
resemble themselves; "_chi s'innamora voluntieri s'innamorano de cose a
loro simiglianti_," he elsewhere puts it.[171] But from that day to this,
it would seem Leonardo's statements have remained unknown or unnoticed.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre said that "love is the result of contrasts," and
Schopenhauer affirmed the same point very decisively; various scientific
and unscientific writers have repeated this statement.[172]
So far as stature is concerned, there appears to be very little reason to
suppose that this "charm of disparity" plays any notable part in
constituting the sexual ideals of either men or women.
Indeed, it may
probably be affirmed that both men and women seek tallness in the person
to whom they are sexually attracted. Darwin quotes the opinion of Mayhew
that among dogs the females are strongly attracted to males of large
size.[173] I believe this is true, and it is probably merely a particular
instance of a general psychological tendency.
It is noteworthy as an indication of the direction of the sexual
ideal in this matter that the heroines of male novelists are
rarely short and the heroes of female novelists almost invariably
tall. A reviewer of novels addressing to lady novelists in the
_Speaker_ (July 26, 1890) "A Plea for Shorter Heroes," publishes
statistics on this point. "Heroes," he states, "are longer this
year than ever. Of the 192 of whom I have had my word to say
since October of last year, 27 were merely tall, and 11 were only
slightly above the middle height. No less than 85
stood exactly
six feet in their stocking soles, and the remainder were
considerably over the two yards. I take the average to be six
feet three."
As a slight test alike of the supposed "charm of disparity" as
well as of the general degree in which tall and short persons are
sought as mates by those of the opposite sex I have examined a
series of entries in the _Round-About_, a publication issued by a
club, of which the president is Mr. W.T. Stead, having for its
object the purpose of promoting correspondence, friendship, and
marriage between its members. There are two classes, of entries,
one inserted with a view to "intellectual friendship," the other
with a view to marriage. I have not thought it necessary to
recognize this distinction here; if a man describes his own
physical characteristics and those of the lady he would like as a
friend, I assume that, from the point of view of the present
inquiry, he is much on the same footing as the man who seeks a
wife. In the series of entries which I have examined 35 men and
women state approximately the height of the man or woman they
seek to know; 30 state in addition their own height.
The results
are expressed in the table on the following page.
Although the cases are few, the results are, in two main
respects, sufficiently clear without multiplication of data. In
the first place, those who seek parity, whether men or women, are
in a majority over those who seek disparity. In the second place,
the existence of any disparity at all is due only to the
universal desire to find a tall person. Not one man or woman sets
down shortness as his or her ideal. The very fact that no man in
these initial announcements ventures to set himself down as short
(although a considerable proportion describe themselves as tall)
indicates a consciousness that shortness is undesirable, as also
does the fact that the women very frequently describe themselves
as tall.
The same charm of disparity which has been supposed to rule in selective
attraction as regards stature has also been assumed as regards
pigmentation. The fair, it is said, are attracted to the dark, the dark to
the fair. Again, it must be said that this common assumption is not
confirmed either by introspection or by any attempt to put the matter on a
statistical basis.[174]
WOMEN. MEN.
TOTALS.
Tall women seek tall men.. 8 Tall men seek tall women..
6 14
Short women seek short men 0 Short men seek short women 0 0
Medium-sized women seek Medium-sized men seek medium-sized men ....... 0 medium-sized women ....
3 3
Seek parity........... 8 Seek parity...........
9 17
Tall women seek short men. 0 Tall men seek short women.
0 0
Short women seek tall men. 4 Short men seek tall women.
0 4
Medium-sized woman seeks Medium-sized men seek tall tall man................ 1 women ..................
8 9
Seek disparity........ 5 Seek disparity........
8 13
Men of unknown height seek
tall women..............
5 5
Most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in
this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the
opposite sex who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary
characters. Even when the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person
is endowed with certain pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or
darkness,--either of which is liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to
the imagination,--it is usually found, on testing the feeling for
particular persons, that the variation from the personal type of the
subject is usually only agreeable within narrow limits, and that there is
a very common tendency for persons of totally opposed pigmentary types,
even though they may sometimes be considered to possess a certain æsthetic
beauty, to be regarded as sexually unattractive or even repulsive. With
this feeling may perhaps be associated the feeling, certainly very widely
felt, that one would not like to marry a person of foreign, even though
closely allied, race.
From the same number of the _Round-About_ from which I have
extracted the data on stature, I have obtained corresponding data
on pigmentation, and have embodied them in the following table.
They are likewise very scanty, but they probably furnish as good
a general indication of the drift of ideals in this matter as we
should obtain from more extensive data of the same character.
WOMEN. MEN.
TOTALS.
Fair women seek fair men. 2 Fair men seek fair women 2
4
Dark woman seeks dark man 1 Dark men seek dark women 7
8
Seek parity.......... 3 Seek parity......... 9
12
Fair women seek dark men. 4 Fair men seek dark women 3
7
Dark woman seeks fair man 1 Dark men seek fair women 4
5
Medium-colored man seeks
Seek disparity....... 5 dark woman ........... 1
1
Medium-colored man seeks
fair woman ........... 1
1
Seek disparity...... 9
14
Men of unknown color seek
dark women ........... 3
3
It will be seen that in the case of pigmentation there is not as
in the case of stature a decided charm of parity in the formation
of sexual ideals. The phenomenon, however, remains essentially
analogous. Just as in regard to stature there is without
exception an abstract admiration for tall persons, so here,
though to a less marked extent, there is a general admiration for
dark persons. As many as 6 out of 8 women and 14 out of 21 men
seek a dark partner. This tendency ranges itself with the
considerations already brought forward (p. 182), leading us to
believe that, in England at all events, the admiration of
fairness is not efficacious to promote any sexual selection, and
that if there is actually any such selection it must be put down
to other causes. No doubt, even in England the abstract æsthetic
admiration of fairness is justifiable and may influence the
artist. Probably also it influences the poet, who is affected by
a long-established convention in favor of fairness, and perhaps
also by a general tendency on the part of our poets to be
themselves fair and to yield to the charm of parity,--the
tendency to prefer the women of one's own stock,--
which we have
already found to be a real force.[175] But, as a matter of fact,
our famous English beauties are not very fair; probably our
handsomest men are not very fair, and the abstract sexual ideals
of both our men and our women thus go out toward the dark.
The formation of a sexual ideal, while it furnishes a predisposition to be
attracted in a certain direction, and undoubtedly has a certain weight in
sexual choice, is not by any means the whole of sexual selection. It is
not even the whole of the psychic element in sexual selection. Let us
take, for instance, the question of stature. There would seem to be a
general tendency for both men and women, apart from and before experience,
to desire sexually large persons of the opposite sex. It may even be that
this is part of a wider zoölogical tendency. In the human species it shows
itself also on the spiritual plane, in the desire for the infinite, in the
deep and unreasoning feeling that it is impossible to have too much of a
good thing. But it not infrequently happens that a man in whose youthful
dreams of love the heroine has always been large, has not been able to
calculate what are the special nervous and other characteristics most
likely to be met in large women, nor how far these correlated
characteristics would suit his own instinctive demands.
He may, and
sometimes does, find that in these other demands, which prove to be more
important and insistent than the desire for stature, the tall women he
meets are less likely to suit him than the medium or short women.[176] It
may thus happen that a man whose ideal of woman has always been as tall
may yet throughout life never be in intimate relationship with a tall
woman because he finds that practically he has more marked affinities in
the case of shorter women. His abstract ideals are modified or negatived
by more imperative sympathies or antipathies.
In one field such sympathies have long been recognized, especially by
alienists, as leading to sexual unions of parity, notwithstanding the
belief in the generally superior attraction of disparity. It has often
been pointed out that the neuropathic, the insane and criminal,
"degenerates" of all kinds, show a notable tendency to marry each other.
This tendency has not, however, been investigated with any precision.[177]
The first attempt on a statistical basis to ascertain what degree of
parity or disparity is actually attained by sexual selection was made by
Alphonse de Candolle.[178] Obtaining his facts from Switzerland, North
Germany, and Belgium, he came to the conclusion that marriages are most
commonly contracted between persons with different eye-colors, except in
the case of brown-eyed women, who (as Schopenhauer stated, and as is seen
in the English data of the sexual ideal I have brought forward) are found
more attractive than others.
The first series of serious observations tending to confirm the result
reached by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and to show that sexual
selection results in the pairing of like rather than of unlike persons was
made by Hermann Fol, the embryologist.[179] He set out with the popular
notion that married people end by resembling each other, but when at Nice,
which is visited by many young married couples on their honeymoons, he was
struck by the resemblances already existing immediately after marriage. In
order to test the matter he obtained the photographs of 251 young and old
married couples not personally known to him. The results were as follows:
RESEMBLANCES NONRESEMBLANCES
COUPLES. (PERCENTAGE). (PERCENTAGE).
TOTAL.
Young.............. 132, about 66,66 66, about 33.33
198
Old ................ 38, about 71.70 15, about 28.30
53
He concluded that in the immense majority of marriages of inclination the
contracting parties are attracted by similarities, and not by
dissimilarities, and that, consequently, the resemblances between aged
married couples are not acquired during conjugal life.
Although Fol's
results were not obtained by good methods, and do not cover definite
points like stature and eye-color, they represented the conclusions of a
highly skilled and acute observer and have since been amply confirmed.
Galton could not find that the average results from a fairly large number
of cases indicated that stature, eye-color, or other personal
characteristics notably influenced sexual selection, as evidenced by a
comparison of married couples.[180] Karl Pearson, however, in part making
use of a large body of data obtained by Galton, referring to stature and
eye-color, has reached the conclusion that sexual selection ultimately
results in a marked degree of parity so far as these characters are
concerned.[181] As regards stature, he is unable to find evidence of what
he terms "preferential mating"; that is to say, it does not appear that
any preconceived ideals concerning the desirability of tallness in sexual
mates leads to any perceptibly greater tallness of the chosen mate;
husbands are not taller than men in general, nor wives than women in
general. In regard to eye-color, however, there appeared to be evidence of
preferential mating. Husbands are very decidedly fairer than men in
general, and though there is no such marked difference in women, wives are
also somewhat fairer than women in general. As regards
"assortative
mating" as it is termed by Pearson,--the tendency to parity or to
disparity between husbands and wives,--the result were in both cases
decisive. Tall men marry women who are somewhat above the average in
height; short men marry women who are somewhat below the average, so that
husband and wife resemble each other in stature as closely as uncle and
niece. As regards eye-color there is also a tendency for like to marry
like; the light-eyed men tend to marry light-eyed women more often than
dark-eyed women; the dark-eyed men tend to marry dark-eyed women more
often than light-eyed. There remains, however, a very considerable
difference in the eye-color of husband and wife; in the 774 couples dealt
with by Pearson there are 333 dark-eyed women to only 251 dark-eyed men,
and 523 light-eyed men to only 441 light-eyed women. The women in the
English population are darker-eyed than the men;[182]
but the difference
is scarcely so great as this; so that even if wives are not so dark-eyed
as women generally it would appear that the ideal admiration for the
dark-eyed may still to some extent make itself felt in actual mating.
While we have to recognize that the modification and even total inhibition
of sexual ideals in the process of actual mating is largely due to psychic
causes, such causes do not appear to cover the whole of the phenomena.
Undoubtedly they count for much, and the man or the woman who, from
whatever causes, has constituted a sexual ideal with certain characters
may in the actual contacts of life find that individuals with other and
even opposed characters most adequately respond to his or her psychic
demands. There are, however, other causes in play here which at first
sight may seem to be not of a purely psychic character.
One unquestionable
cause of this kind comes into action in regard to pigmentary selection.
Fair people, possibly as a matter of race more than from absence of
pigment, are more energetic than dark people. They possess a sanguine
vigor and impetuosity which, in most, though not in all, fields and
especially in the competition of practical life, tend to give them some
superiority over their darker brethren. The greater fairness of husbands
in comparison with men in general, as found by Karl Pearson, is thus
accounted for; fair men are most likely to obtain wives.
Husbands are
fairer than men in general for the same reason that, as I have shown
elsewhere,[183] created peers are fairer than either hereditary peers or
even most groups of intellectual persons; they have possessed in higher
measure the qualities that insure success. It may be added that with the
recognition of this fact we have not really left the field of sexual
psychology, for, as has already been pointed out, that energy which thus
insures success in practical life is itself a sexual allurement to women.
Energy in a woman in courtship is less congenial to her sexual attitude
than to a man's, and is not attractive to men; thus it is not surprising,
even apart from the probably greater beauty of dark women, that the
preponderance of fairness among wives as compared to women generally,
indicated by Karl Pearson's data, is very slight. It may possibly be
accounted for altogether by homogamy--the tendency of like to marry
like--in the fair husbands.
The energy and vitality of fair people is not, however, it is probable,
merely an indirect cause of the greater tendency of fair men to become
husbands; that is to say, it is not merely the result of the generally
somewhat greater ability of the fair to attain success in temporal
affairs. In addition to this, fair men, if not fair women, would appear to
show a tendency to a greater activity in their specifically sexual
proclivities. This is a point which we shall encounter in a later _Study_
and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss it here.
In dealing with the question of sexual selectio