Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In ManEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In Man
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
[187] Fromentin, in his largely autobiographic novel _Dominique_, makes
Olivier say: "Julie is my cousin, which is perhaps a reason why she should
please me less than anyone else. I have always known her. We have, as it
were, slept in the same cradle. There may be people who would be attracted
by this almost fraternal relationship. To me the very idea of marrying
someone whom I knew as a baby is as absurd as that of coupling two dolls."
[188] It may well be, as Crawley argues (_The Mystic Rose_, Chapter XVII),
that sexual taboo plays some part among primitive people in preventing
incestuous union, as, undoubtedly, training and moral ideas do among
civilized peoples.
[189] The remarks of the Marquis de Brisay, an authority on doves, as
communicated to Giard (_L'Intermédiare des Biologistes_, November 20,
1897), are of much interest on this point, since they correspond to what
we find in the human species: "Two birds from the same nest rarely couple.
Birds coming from the same nest behave as though they regarded coupling as
prohibited, or, rather, they know each other too well, and seem to be
ignorant of their difference in sex, remaining unaffected in their
relations by the changes which make them adults." Westermarck (op. cit.,
p. 334) has some remarks on a somewhat similar tendency sometimes observed
in dogs and horses.
[190] See Appendix to vol. lii of these _Studies_, "The Sexual Impulse
among Savages."
[191] See, especially, _ante_, pp. 163 et seq.
[192] Kistemaecker, as quoted by Bloch (_Beiträge, etc._, ii. p. 340),
alludes in this connection to the dark clothes of men and to the tendency
of women to wear lighter garments, to emphasize the white underlinen, to
cultivate pallor of the face, to use powder. "I am white and you are
brown; ergo, you must love me"; this affirmation, he states, may be found
in the depths of every woman's heart.
[193] K. Pearson, _Grammar of Science_, second edition, p. 430.
[194] In _Man and Woman_ (fourth edition, p. 65) I have referred to a
curious example of this tendency to opposition, which is of almost
worldwide extent. Among some people it is, or has been, the custom for the
women to stand during urination, and in these countries it is usually the
custom for the man to squat; in most countries the practices of the sexes
in this matter are opposed.
[195] It is sufficient to quote one example. At the end of the sixteenth
century it was a serious objection to the fashionable wife of an English
Brownist pastor in Amsterdam that she had "bodies [a bodice or corset]
tied to the petticoat with points [laces] as men do their doublets and
their hose, contrary to I Thess., v, 22, conferred with Deut. xxii, 5; and
I John ii, 16."
V.
Summary of the Conclusions at Present Attainable in Regard to the Nature
of Beauty and its Relation to Sexual Selection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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