“stimulant of sexual passion,” in case of a girl whose appearance otherwise did not tempt men to court her!  The obvious object of the paint was to indicate that the girl was in the market.  In other words, it was part of that language of signs which had such a remarkable development among some of the uncivilized races (see Mallery’s admirable treatises on Indian Pictographs, taking up hundreds of pages in two volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington).  Belden relates (145) of the Plains Indians that a warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow or blue, and the squaw paints hers red.  He even knew squaws, go through the painful operation of reddening the eyeballs, which he interprets as resulting from a desire to fascinate the men; but it is much more likely that it had some special significance in the language of courtship, probably as a mark of courage in enduring pain, than that the inflamed eye itself was considered beautiful.  Belden himself further points out that “a red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other, means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment,” and on p. 144 he explains that “when a warrior smears his face with lampblack and then draws zigzags with his nails, it is a sign that he desires to be left alone, or is trapping, or melancholy, or in love.”  I had intended to give a special paragraph to Decorations as Parts of the Language of Signs, but desisted on reflecting that most of the foregoing facts relating to war, mourning, tribal, etc., decorations, really came under that head.

[114] Trans.  Eth.  Soc., London, N.S., VII., 238; Journ.  Asiatic Soc.  Bengal, XXXV., Pt.  II., 25.  Spencer, D.S.

[115] In Fiji fatness is also “a mark of high rank, for these people can only imagine one reason for any person being thin and spare, namely, not having enough to eat.” (W.J.  Smythe, 166.)

[116] Yet Westermarck has the audacity to remark (259), that natural deformity and the unsymmetrical shape of the body are “regarded by every race as unfavorable to personal appearance”!

[117] It is not strange that the human race should have had to wait so long for a complete analysis of love.  It is not so very long ago since Newton showed that what was supposed to be a simple white light was really compounded of all the colors of the rainbow; or that Helmholtz analyzed sounds into their partial tones of different pitch, which are combined in what seems to be a simple tone of this or that pitch.  Similarly, I have shown that the pleasures of the table, which everybody supposes to be simple, gustatory sensations (matters of taste), are in reality compound odors.  See my article on “The Gastronomic Value of Odors,” in the Contemporary Review, 1881.

[118] II., 271-74.  See also Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1887, 31; Hellwald, 144.

[119] Which even in tropical countries seldom comes before the eleventh or twelfth year.  See the statistics in Ploss-Bartels, I., 269-70.