He remarks on the contrast between the prehistoric man of Chancelade,—­delicately made, with elegant face and high forehead,—­who created the great Magdalenian civilization, and his seemingly much more powerful, but less beautiful, predecessor, the man of Spy, with enormous muscles and powerful jaws. (Bulletin de la Societe d’Anthropologie, 1899, p. 220.)

The largely objective character of beauty is further indicated by the fact that to a considerable extent beauty is the expression of health.  A well and harmoniously developed body, tense muscles, an elastic and finely toned skin, bright eyes, grace and animation of carriage—­all these things which are essential to beauty are the conditions of health.  It has not been demonstrated that there is any correlation between beauty and longevity, and the proof would not be easy to give, but it is quite probable that such a correlation may exist, and various indications point in this direction.  One of the most delightful of Opie’s pictures is the portrait of Pleasance Reeve (afterward Lady Smith) at the age of 17.  This singularly beautiful and animated brunette lived to the age of 104.  Most people are probably acquainted with similar, if less marked, cases of the same tendency.

The extreme sexual importance of beauty, so far, at all events, as conscious experience is concerned is well illustrated by the fact that, although three other senses may and often do play a not inconsiderable part in the constitution of a person’s sexual attractiveness,—­the tactile element being, indeed, fundamental,—­yet in nearly all the most elaborate descriptions of attractive individuals it is the visible elements that are in most cases chiefly emphasized.  Whether among the lowest savages or in the highest civilization, the poet and story-teller who seeks to describe an ideally lovely and desirable woman always insists mainly, and often exclusively, on those characters which appeal to the eye.  The richly laden word beauty is a synthesis of complex impressions obtained through a single sense, and so simple, comparatively, and vague are the impressions derived from the other senses that none of them can furnish us with any corresponding word.

Before attempting to analyze the conception of beauty, regarded in its sexual appeal to the human mind, it may be well to bring together a few fairly typical descriptions of a beautiful woman as she appears to the men of various nations.

In an Australian folklore story taken down from the lips of a native some sixty years ago by W. Dunlop (but evidently not in the native’s exact words) we find this description of an Australian beauty:  “A man took as his wife a beautiful girl who had long, glossy hair hanging around her face and down her shoulders, which were plump and round.  Her face was adorned with red clay and her person wrapped in a fine large opossum rug fastened by a pin formed from the small bone