We have seen that underlying the conception of beauty, more especially as it manifests itself in woman to man, are to be found at least three fundamental elements:  First there is the general beauty of the species as it tends to culminate in the white peoples of European origin; then there is the beauty due to the full development or even exaggeration of the sexual and more especially the secondary sexual characters; and last there is the beauty due to the complete embodiment of the particular racial or national type.  To make the analysis fairly complete must be added at least one other factor:  the influence of individual taste.  Every individual, at all events in civilization, within certain narrow limits, builds up a feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own special organization and its demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced.  It is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration of sexual selection in civilized man.  But its variations are numerous and in impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful.  It may be said of many a man, as d’Annunzio says of the hero of his Trionfo della Morte in relation to the woman he loved, that “he felt himself bound to her by the real qualities of her body, and not only by those which were most beautiful, but specially by those which were least beautiful” (the novelist italicizes these words), so that his attention was fixed upon her defects, and emphasized them, thus arousing within himself an impetuous state of desire.  Without invoking defects, however, there are endless personal variations which may all be said to come within the limits of possible beauty or charm.  “There are no two women,” as Stratz remarks, “who in exactly the same way stroke back a rebellious lock from their brows, no two who hold the hand in greeting in exactly the same way, no two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same movement."[166] Among the multitude of minute differences—­which yet can be seen and felt—­the beholder is variously attracted or repelled according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual selection are effected accordingly.

Another factor in the constitution of the ideal of beauty, but one perhaps exclusively found under civilized conditions, is the love of the unusual, the remote, the exotic.  It is commonly stated that rarity is admired in beauty.  This is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and characters which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally admired type. “Jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas,” according to the saying of Publilius Syrus.  The greater nervous restlessness and sensibility of civilization heightens this tendency, which is not infrequently found also among men of artistic genius.  One may refer, for instance,