in using any word but
_pleasing_ in place of "ornamental," because the latter implies and
takes for granted the esthetic sense, the existence of which is the
very thing to be proved. This remark applies generally to the evidence
of this kind which Westermarck has so industriously collected, and
which, on account of this undiscriminating, question-begging
character, is entirely worthless. In all these cases the fact is
overlooked that the "decorations" of one sex may be agreeable to the
other for reasons that have nothing to do with the sense of beauty.

Briefly summed up, Westermarck's theory is that in painting,
tattooing, and otherwise decorating his person, primitive man's
original and conscious object was to beautify himself for the sake of
gaining an advantage in courtship; whereas my theory is that all these
decorations originally subserved useful purposes alone, and that even
where they subsequently may have served in some instances as means to
please the women, this was not as things of beauty but indirectly and
unintentionally through their association with rank, wealth,
distinction in war, prowess, and manly qualities in general. When
Dobrizhoffer says (II., 12) that the Abipones, "more ambitious to
be dreaded by their enemies than to be loved, to terrify than attract
beholders, think the more they are scarred and sunburnt, the
_handsomer_ they are," he illustrates glaringly the slovenly and
question-begging use of terms to which I have just referred; for, as
his own reference to being loved and to attracting beholders shows, he
does not use the word "handsome" in an esthetic sense, but as a
synonyme for what is pleasing or worthy of approval on other grounds.
If the scars of these Indians do please the women it is not because
they are considered beautiful, but because they are tokens of martial
prowess. To a savage woman nothing is so useful as manly valor, and
therefore nothing so agreeable as the signs of it. In that respect the
average woman's nature has not changed. The German high-school girl
admires the scars in the face of a "corps-student," not, certainly,
because she considers them beautiful, but because they stand for a
daredevil, masculine spirit which pleases her.

When the Rev. R. Taylor wrote (321) that among the New Zealanders "to
have fine tattooed faces was the great ambition of the young, both to
render themselves attractive to the ladies and conspicuous in war," he
would have shown himse