ed as stronger and stronger stimuli to the hen."[133]

FOOTNOTES:

[131] "It is likely that all visible parts of the organism, even those
with a definite physiological meaning, appeal to the aesthetic sense of the
opposite sex," Poulton remarks, speaking primarily of insects, in words
that apply still more accurately to the human species. E. Poulton, _The
Colors of Animals_, 1890, p. 304.

[132] "The Arabs in general," Lane remarks, "entertain a prejudice against
blue eyes--a prejudice said to have arisen from the great number of
blue-eyed persons among certain of their northern enemies."

[133] _Nature_, April 14, 1898, p. 55.

II.

Beauty to Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the
Sexual Characters--The Sexual Organs--Mutilations, Adornments, and
Garments--Sexual Allurement the Original Object of Such
Devices--The Religious Element--Unaesthetic Character of the Sexual
Organs--Importance of the Secondary Sexual Characters--The Pelvis and
Hips--Steatopygia--Obesity--Gait--The Pregnant Woman as a Mediaeval Type of
Beauty--The Ideals of the Renaissance--The Breasts--The Corset--Its
Object--Its History--Hair--The Beard--The Element of National or Racial
Type in Beauty--The Relative Beauty of Blondes and Brunettes--The General
European Admiration for Blondes--The Individual Factors in the
Constitution of the Idea of Beauty--The Love of the Exotic.

In the constitution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was
inevitable that the sexual characters should from a very early period in
the history of man form an important element. From a primitive point of
view a sexually desirable and attractive person is one whose sexual
characters are either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so. The
beautiful woman is one endowed, as Chaucer expresses it,

"With buttokes brode and brestes rounde and hye";

that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children
and to suckle them. These two physical characters, indeed, since they
represent aptitude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must
necessarily tend to be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all
stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined
and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on
the east side of the Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a
representation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with
a very small