nsuring their being
well received by Koranna everywhere. On the Congo, scarifications are
made on the back for therapeutic reasons, and on the face as tribal
marks. (Mallery, 417; H. Ward, 136.) Bechuana priests make long scars
on a warrior's thigh to indicate that he has slain an enemy in battle.
(Lichtenstein, II., 331.) According to d'Albertis the people of New
Guinea use some scars as a sign that they have travelled (I., 213).
And so on, _ad infinitum_.

ALLEGED TESTIMONY OF NATIVES

In face of this imposing array of facts revealing the non-esthetic
character of primitive personal "decorations," what have the advocates
of the sexual selection theory to say? Taking Westermarck as their
most erudite and persuasive spokesman, we find him placing his
reliance on four things: (1) the practical ignoring of the vast
multitude of facts contradicting his theory; (2) the alleged testimony
of a few savages; (3) the testimony of some of their visitors; (4) the
alleged fact that "the desire for self-decoration is strongest at the
beginning of the age of puberty," the customs of ornamenting,
mutilating, painting, and tattooing being "practised most zealously at
that period of life." Concerning (1) nothing more need be said, as the
large number of decisive facts I have collected exposes and
neutralizes that stratagem. The other three arguments must be briefly
considered.

A native of Lukunor being asked by Mertens what was the meaning of
tattooing, answered: "It has the same object as your clothes; that is,
to please the women," In reply to the question why he wore his
ornaments, an Australian answered Bulmer: "In order to look well and
make himself agreeable to the women," (Brough Smyth, I., 275.) To one
who has studied savages not only anthropologically but
psychologically, these stories have an obvious cock-and-bull aspect. A
native of the Caroline Islands would have been as incapable of
originating that philosophical comparison between the object of our
clothes and of his tattooing as he would have been of writing
Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_. Human beings in his stage of evolution
never consciously reflect on the reasons of things, and considerations
of comparative psychology or esthetics are as much beyond his mental
powers as problems in algebra or trigonometry. That such a sailor's
yarn could be accepted seriously in an anthropologic treatise shows
that anthropology is still in its cradle. The same is true of that
Au