Olivier say: "Julie is my cousin, which is perhaps a reason why she should
please me less than anyone else. I have always known her. We have, as it
were, slept in the same cradle. There may be people who would be attracted
by this almost fraternal relationship. To me the very idea of marrying
someone whom I knew as a baby is as absurd as that of coupling two dolls."
[188] It may well be, as Crawley argues (_The Mystic Rose_, Chapter XVII),
that sexual taboo plays some part among primitive people in preventing
incestuous union, as, undoubtedly, training and moral ideas do among
civilized peoples.
[189] The remarks of the Marquis de Brisay, an authority on doves, as
communicated to Giard (_L'Intermédiare des Biologistes_, November 20,
1897), are of much interest on this point, since they correspond to what
we find in the human species: "Two birds from the same nest rarely couple.
Birds coming from the same nest behave as though they regarded coupling as
prohibited, or, rather, they know each other too well, and seem to be
ignorant of their difference in sex, remaining unaffected in their
relations by the changes which make them adults."
Westermarck (op. cit.,
p. 334) has some remarks on a somewhat similar tendency sometimes observed
in dogs and horses.
[190] See Appendix to vol. lii of these _Studies_, "The Sexual Impulse
among Savages."
[191] See, especially, _ante_, pp. 163 et seq.
[192] Kistemaecker, as quoted by Bloch (_Beiträge, etc._, ii. p. 340),
alludes in this connection to the dark clothes of men and to the tendency
of women to wear lighter garments, to emphasize the white underlinen, to
cultivate pallor of the face, to use powder. "I am white and you are
brown; ergo, you must love me"; this affirmation, he states, may be found
in the depths of every woman's heart.
[193] K. Pearson, _Grammar of Science_, second edition, p. 430.
[194] In _Man and Woman_ (fourth edition, p. 65) I have referred to a
curious example of this tendency to opposition, which is of almost
worldwide extent. Among some people it is, or has been, the custom for the
women to stand during urination, and in these countries it is usually the
custom for the man to squat; in most countries the practices of the sexes
in this matter are opposed.
[195] It is sufficient to quote one example. At the end of the sixteenth
century it was a serious objection to the fashionable wife of an English
Brownist pastor in Amsterdam that she had "bodies [a bodice or corset]
tied to the petticoat with points [laces] as men do their doublets and
their hose, contrary to I Thess., v, 22, conferred with Deut. xxii, 5; and
I John ii, 16."
V.
Summary of the Conclusions at Present Attainable in Regard to the Nature
of Beauty and its Relation to Sexual Selection.
The consideration of vision has led us into a region in which, more
definitely and precisely than is the case with any other sense, we can
observe and even hope to measure the operation of sexual selection in man.
In the conception of feminine beauty we possess an instrument of universal
extension by which it seems possible to measure the nature and extent of
such selection as exercised by men on women. This conception, with which
we set out, is, however, by no means so precise, so easily available for
the attainment of sound conclusions, as at first it may seem to be.
It is true that beauty is not, as some have supposed, a mere matter of
caprice. It rests in part on (1) an objective basis of æsthetic character
which holds all its variations together and leads to a remarkable
approximation among the ideals of feminine beauty cherished by the most
intelligent men of all races. But beyond this general objective basis we
find that (2) the specific characters of the race or nation tend to cause
divergence in the ideals of beauty, since beauty is often held to consist
in the extreme development of these racial or national anthropological
features; and it would, indeed, appear that the full development of racial
characters indicates at the same time the full development of health and
vigor. We have further to consider that (3) in most countries an important
and usually essential element of beauty lies in the emphasis of the
secondary and tertiary sexual characters: the special characters of the
hair in woman, her breasts, her hips, and innumerable other qualities of
minor saliency, but all apt to be of significance from the point of view
of sexual selection. In addition we have (4) the factor of individual
taste, constituted by the special organization and the peculiar
experiences of the individual and inevitably affecting his ideal of
beauty. Often this individual factor is merged into collective shapes,
and in this way are constituted passing fashions in the matter of beauty,
certain influences which normally affect only the individual having become
potent enough to affect many individuals. Finally, in states of high
civilization and in individuals of that restless and nervous temperament
which is common in civilization, we have (5) a tendency to the appearance
of an exotic element in the ideal of beauty, and in place of admiring that
kind of beauty which most closely approximates to the type of their own
race men begin to be agreeably affected by types which more or less
deviate from that with which they are most familiar.
While we have these various and to some extent conflicting elements in a
man's ideal of feminine beauty, the question is still further complicated
by the fact that sexual selection in the human species is not merely the
choice of the woman by the man, but also the choice of the man by the
woman. And when we come to consider this we find that the standard is
altogether different, that many of the elements of beauty as it exists in
woman for man have here fallen away altogether, while a new and
preponderant element has to be recognized in the shape of a regard for
strength and vigor. This, as I have pointed out, is not a purely visual
character, but a tactile pressure character translated into visual terms.
When we have stated the sexual ideal we have not yet, however, by any
means stated the complete problem of human sexual selection. The ideal
that is desired and sought is, in a large measure, not the outcome of
experience; it is not even necessarily the expression of the individual's
temperament and idiosyncrasy. It may be largely the result of fortuitous
circumstances, of slight chance attractions in childhood, of accepted
traditions consecrated by romance. In the actual contacts of life the
individual may find that his sexual impulse is stirred by sensory stimuli
which are other than those of the ideal he had cherished and may even be
the reverse of them.
Beyond this, also, we have reason for believing that factors of a still
more fundamentally biological character, to some extent deeper even than
all these psychic elements, enter into the problem of sexual selection.
Certain individuals, apart altogether from the question of whether they
are either ideally or practically the most fit mates, display a greater
energy and achieve a greater success than others in securing partners.
These individuals possess a greater constitutional vigor, physical or
mental, which conduces to their success in practical affairs generally,
and probably also heightens their specifically philogamic activities.
Thus, the problem of human sexual selection is in the highest degree
complicated. When we gather together such scanty data of precise nature as
are at present available, we realize that, while generally according with
the results which the evidence not of a quantitative nature would lead us
to accept, their precise significance is not at present altogether clear.
It would appear on the whole that in choosing a mate we tend to seek
parity of racial and individual characters together with disparity of
secondary sexual characters. But we need a much larger number of groups of
evidence of varying character and obtained under varying conditions. Such
evidence will doubtless accumulate now that its nature is becoming defined
and the need for it recognized. In the meanwhile we are, at all events, in
a position to assert, even with the evidence before us, that now that the
real meaning of sexual selection is becoming clear its efficacy in human
evolution can no longer be questioned.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A.
THE ORIGINS OF THE KISS.
Manifestations resembling the kiss, whether with the object of expressing
affection or sexual emotion, are found among various animals much lower
than man. The caressing of the antennæ practiced by snails and various
insects during sexual intercourse is of the nature of a kiss. Birds use
their bills for a kind of caress. Thus, referring to guillemots and their
practice of nibbling each other's feet, and the interest the mate always
takes in this proceeding, which probably relieves irritation caused by
insects, Edmund Selous remarks: "When they nibble and preen each other
they may, I think, be rightly said to cosset and caress, the expression
and pose of the bird receiving the benefit being often beatific."[196]
Among mammals, such as the dog, we have what closely resembles a kiss, and
the dog who smells, licks, and gently bites his master or a bitch,
combines most of the sensory activities involved in the various forms of
the human kiss.
As practiced by man, the kiss involves mainly either the sense of touch or
that of smell. Occasionally it involves to some extent both sensory
elements.[197]
The tactile kiss is certainly very ancient and primitive. It is common
among mammals generally. The human infant exhibits, in a very marked
degree, the impulse to carry everything to the mouth and to lick or
attempt to taste it, possibly, as Compayre suggests,[198] from a memory of
the action of the lips protruded to seize the maternal nipple. The
affectionate child, as Mantegazza remarks,[199] not only applies inanimate
objects to its lips or tongue, but of its own impulse licks the people it
likes. Stanley Hall, in the light of a large amount of information he
obtained on this point, found that "some children insist on licking the
cheeks, necks, and hands of those they wish to caress,"
or like having
animals lick them.[200] This impulse in children may be associated with
the maternal impulse in animals to lick the young. "The method of licking
the young practiced by the mother," remarks S.S.
Buckman, "would cause
licking to be associated with happy feelings. And, further, there is the
allaying of parasitical irritation which is afforded by the rubbing and
hence results in pleasure. It may even be suggested that the desire of the
mother to lick her young was prompted in the first place by a desire to
bestow on her offspring a pleasure she felt herself."
The licking impulse
in the child may thus, it is possible, be regarded as the evanescent
manifestation of a more fundamental animal impulse,[201]
a manifestation
which is liable to appear in adult life under the stress of strong sexual
emotion. Such an association is of interest if, as there is some reason to
believe, the kiss of sexual love originated as a development of the more
primitive kiss bestowed by the mother on her child, for it is sometimes
found that the maternal kiss is practiced where the sexual kiss is
unknown.
The impulse to bite is also a part of the tactile element which lies at
the origin of kissing. As Stanley Hall notes, children are fond of biting,
though by no means always as a method of affection.
There is, however, in
biting a distinctly sexual origin to invoke, for among many animals the
teeth (and among birds the bill) are used by the male to grasp the female
more firmly during intercourse. This point has been discussed in the
previous volume of these _Studies_ in reference to "Love and Pain," and
it is unnecessary to enter into further details here.
The heroine of
Kleist's _Penthesilea_ remarks: "Kissing (Küsse) rhymes with biting
(Bisse), and one who loves with the whole heart may easily confound the
two."
The kiss, as known in Europe, has developed on a sensory basis that is
mainly tactile, although an olfactory element may sometimes coexist. The
kiss thus understood is not very widely spread and is not usually found
among rude and uncultured peoples. We can trace it in Aryan and Semitic
antiquity, but in no very pronounced form; Homer scarcely knew it, and the
Greek poets seldom mention it. Today it may be said to be known all over
Europe except in Lapland. Even in Europe it is probably a comparatively
modern discovery; and in all the Celtic tongues, Rhys states, there is no
word for "kiss," the word employed being always borrowed from the Latin
_pax_.[202] At a fairly early historic period, however, the Welsh Cymri,
at all events, acquired a knowledge of the kiss, but it was regarded as a
serious matter and very sparingly used, being by law only permitted on
special occasions, as at a game called rope-playing or a carousal;
otherwise a wife who kissed a man not her husband could be repudiated.
Throughout eastern Asia it is unknown; thus, in Japanese literature kisses
and embraces have no existence. "Kisses, and embraces are simply unknown
in Japan as tokens of affection," Lafcadio Hearn states,
"if we except the
solitary fact that Japanese mothers, like mothers all over the world, lip
and hug their little ones betimes. After babyhood there is no more hugging
or kisses; such actions, except in the case of infants, are held to be
immodest. Never do girls kiss one another; never do parents kiss or
embrace their children who have become able to walk."
This holds true, and
has always held true, of all classes; hand-clasping is also foreign to
them. On meeting after a long absence, Hearn remarks, they smile, perhaps
cry a little, they may even stroke each other, but that is all. Japanese
affection "is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and
kindness."[203] Among nearly all of the black races of Africa lovers never
kiss nor do mothers usually kiss their babies.[204]
Among the American
Indians the tactile kiss is, for the most part, unknown, though here and
there, as among the Fuegians, lovers rub their cheeks together.[205]
Kissing is unknown to the Malays. In North Queensland, however, Roth
states, kissing takes place between mothers (not fathers) and infants,
also between husbands and wives; but whether it is an introduced custom
Roth is unable to say; he adds that the Pitta-pitta language possesses a
word for kissing.[206]
It must be remarked, however, that in many parts of the world where the
tactile kiss, as we understand it, is usually said to be unknown, it still
exists as between a mother and her baby, and this seems to support the
view advocated by Lombroso that the lovers' kiss is developed from the
maternal kiss. Thus, the Angoni Zulus to the north of the Zambesi, Wiese
states, kiss their small children on both cheeks[207]
and among the
Fuegians, according to Hyades, mothers kiss their small children.
Even in Europe the kiss in early mediæval days was, it seems probable, not
widely known as an expression of sexual love; it would appear to have been
a refinement of love only practiced by the more cultivated classes. In the
old ballad of Glasgerion the lady suspected that her secret visitor was
only a churl, and not the knight he pretended to be, because when he came
in his master's place to spend the night with her he kissed her neither
coming nor going, but simply got her with child. It is only under a
comparatively high stage of civilization that the kiss has been emphasized
and developed in the art of love. Thus the Arabic author of the _Perfumed
Garden_, a work revealing the existence of a high degree of social
refinement, insists on the great importance of the kiss, especially if
applied to the inner part of the mouth, and he quotes a proverb that "A
moist kiss is better than a hasty coitus." Such kisses, as well as on the
face generally, and all over the body, are frequently referred to by
Hindu, Latin, and more modern erotic writers as among the most efficacious
methods of arousing love.[208]
A reason which may have stood in the way of the development of the kiss in
a sexual direction has probably been the fact that in the near East the
kiss was largely monopolized for sacred uses, so that its erotic
potentialities were not easily perceived. Among the early Arabians the
gods were worshiped by a kiss.[209] This was the usual way of greeting the
house gods on entering or leaving.[210] In Rome the kiss was a sign of
reverence and respect far more than a method of sexual excitation.[211]
Among the early Christians it had an all but sacramental significance. It
retains its ancient and serious meaning in many usages of the Western and
still more the Eastern Churches; the relics of saints, the foot of the
pope, the hands of bishops, are kissed, just as the ancient Greeks kissed
the images of the gods. Among ourselves we still have a legally recognized
example of the sacredness of the kiss in the form of taking an oath by
kissing the Testament.[212]
So far we have been concerned mainly with the tactile kiss, which is
sometimes supposed to have arisen in remote times to the east of the
Mediterranean--where the vassal kissed his suzerain and where the kiss of
love was known, as we learn from the Songs of Songs, to the Hebrews--and
has now conquered nearly the whole of Europe. But over a much larger part
of the world and even in one corner of Europe (Lapland, as well as among
the Russian Yakuts) a different kind of salutation rules, the olfactory
kiss. This varies in form in different regions and sometimes simulates a
tactile kiss, but, as it exists in a typical form in China, where it has
been carefully studied by d'Enjoy, it may be said to be made up of three
phases: (1) the nose is applied to the cheek of the beloved person; (2)
there is a long nasal inspiration accompanied by lowering of the eyelids;
(3) there is a slight smacking of the lips without the application of the
mouth to the embraced cheek. The whole process, d'Enjoy considers, is
founded on sexual desire and the desire for food, smell being the sense
employed in both fields. In the form described by d'Enjoy, we have the
Mongolian variety of the olfactory kiss. The Chinese regard the European
kiss as odious, suggesting voracious cannibals, and yellow mothers in the
French colonies still frighten children by threatening to give them the
white man's kiss. Their own kiss the Chinese regard as exclusively
voluptuous; it is only befitting as between lovers, and not only do
fathers refrain from kissing their children except when very young, but
even the mothers only give their children a rare and furtive kiss. Among
some of the hill-tribes of south-east India the olfactory kiss is found,
the nose being applied to the cheek during salutation with a strong
inhalation; instead of saying "Kiss me," they here say
"Smell me." The
Tamils, I am told by a medical correspondent in Ceylon, do not kiss during
coitus, but rub noses and also lick each other's mouth and tongue. The
olfactory kiss is known in Africa; thus, on the Gambia in inland Africa
when a man salutes a woman he takes her hand and places it to his nose,
twice smelling the back of it. Among the Jekris of the Niger coast mothers
rub their babies with their cheeks or mouths, but they do not kiss them,
nor do lovers kiss, though they squeeze, cuddle, and embrace.[213] Among
the Swahilis a smell kiss exists, and very young boys are taught to raise
their clothes before women visitors, who thereupon playfully smell the
penis; the child who does this is said to "give tobacco."[214] Kissing of
any kind appears to be unknown to the Indians throughout a large part of
America: Im Thurn states that it is unknown to the Indians of Guiana, and
at the other end of South America Hyades and Deniker state that it is
unknown to the Fuegians. In Forth America the olfactory kiss is known to
the Eskimo, and has been noted among some Indian tribes, as the Blackfeet.
It is also known in Polynesia. At Samoa kissing was smelling.[215] In New
Zealand, also, the _hongi_, or nose-pressing, was the kiss of welcome, of
mourning, and of sympathy.[216] In the Malay archipelago, it is said, the
same word is used for "greeting" and "smelling." Among the Dyaks of the
Malay archipelago, however, Vaughan Stevens states that any form of
kissing is unknown.[217] In Borneo, Breitenstein tells us, kissing is a
kind of smelling, the word for smelling being used, but he never himself
saw a man kiss a woman; it is always done in private.[218]
The olfactory kiss is thus seen to have a much wider extension over the
world than the European (or Mediterranean) tactile kiss.
In its most
complete development, however, it is mainly found among the people of
Mongolian race, or those yellow peoples more or less related to them.
The literature of the kiss is extensive. So far, however, as that
literature is known to me, the following list includes everything that may
be profitably studied: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions_; Ling
Roth, "Salutations," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, November,
1889; K. Andree, "Nasengruss," _Ethnographische Parallelen_, second
series, 1889, pp. 223-227; Alfred Kirchhoff, "Vom Ursprung des Küsses,"
_Deutsche Revue_, May, 1895; Lombroso, "L'Origine du Baiser," _Nouvelle
Revue_, 1897, p. 153; Paul d'Enjoy, "Le Baiser en Europe et en Chine,"
_Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie_, Paris, 1897, fasc. 2. Professor
Nyrop's book, _The Kiss and its History_ (translated from the Danish by
W.F. Harvey), deals rather with the history of the kiss in civilization
and literature than with its biological origins and psychological
significance.
FOOTNOTES:
[196] E. Selous, _Bird Watching_, 1901, p. 191. This author adds: "It
seems probable indeed that the conferring a practical benefit of the kind
indicated may be the origin of the caress throughout nature."
[197] Tylor terms the kiss "the salute by tasting," and d'Enjoy defines it
as "a bite and a suction"; there seems, however, little evidence to show
that the kiss contains any gustatory element in the strict sense.
[198] Compayre, _L'Evolution intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant_, p. 9.
[199] Mantegazza, _Physiognomy and Expression_, p. 144.
[200] G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self,"
_American Journal of
Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 361.
[201] In some parts of the world the impulse persists into adult life. Sir
S. Baker (_Ismailia_, p. 472) mentions licking the eyes as a sign of
affection.
[202] _Book of Common Prayer in Manx Gaelic_, edited by A.W. Moore and J.
Rhys, 1895.