voluptuous enjoyment the possession of her promises
us."

He adds that for this reason a man of twenty finds nearly all women
beautiful.

Thus the beauty of a woman, in the opinion of these writers, consists
in those physical qualities which arouse a man's concupiscence. I
admit that this theory applies to savages and to Orientals; the
details given in the preceding pages prove that. It applies also, I
must confess, to the majority of Europeans and Americans. I have paid
special attention to this point in various countries and have noticed
that a girl with a voluptuous though coarse figure and a plain face
will attract much more masculine attention than a girl whose figure
and face are artistically beautiful without being voluptuous. But this
only helps to prove my main thesis--that the sense of personal beauty
is one of the latest products of civilization, rare even at the
present day. What I deny most emphatically is that the theory
advocated by Bain, Eckstein, and Mantegazza applies to those persons
who are so lucky as to have a sense of beauty. These fortunate
individuals can admire the charms of a living beauty without any more
concupiscence or thought of an endearing embrace than accompanies
their contemplation of the Venus de Milo or a Madonna painted by
Murillo; and if they are in love with a particular girl their
admiration of her beauty is superlatively free from carnal
ingredients, as we saw in the section on Mental Purity. Since in such
a question personal evidence is of importance, I will add that,
fortunately, I have been deeply in love several times in my life and
can therefore testify that each time my admiration of the girl's
beauty was as purely esthetic as if she had been a flower. In each
case the mischief was begun by a pair of brown eyes.

Eyes, it is true, can be as wanton and as voluptuous as a plump
figure. Powers notes (20) that some California Indian girls are pretty
and have "large, voluptuous eyes." Such eyes are common among the
lower races and Orientals; but they are not the eyes which inspire
romantic love. Lips, too, it might be said, invite kisses; but a lover
would consider it sacrilege to touch his idol's lips unchastely.
Savages are strangers to kissing for the exactly opposite reason--that
it is too refined a detail of sensuality to appeal to their coarse
nerves. How far they are from being able to appreciate lips
esthetically appears from the way in which they so often de