impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an extremely remote period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other’s ardent passions, during their mutual courtship and rivalry. _On the influence of beauty in determining the marriages of mankind._—In civilised life man is largely, but by no means exclusively, influenced in the choice of his wife by external appearance; but we are chiefly concerned with primeval times, and our only means of forming a judgment on this subject is to study the habits of existing semi-civilised and savage nations. If it can be shewn that the men of different races prefer women having certain characteristics, or conversely that the women prefer certain men, we have then to enquire whether such choice, continued during many generations, would produce any sensible effect on the race, either on one sex or both sexes; this latter circumstance depending on the form of inheritance which prevails. It will be well first to shew in some detail that savages pay the greatest attention to their personal appearance.[413] That they have a passion for ornament is notorious; and an English philosopher goes so far as to maintain that clothes were first made for ornament and not for warmth. As Professor Waitz remarks, “however poor and miserable man is, he finds a pleasure in adorning himself.” The extravagance of the naked Indians of South America in decorating themselves is shewn “by a man of large stature gaining with difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight to procure in exchange the _chica_ necessary to paint himself red.”[414] The ancient barbarians of Europe during the Reindeer period brought to their caves any brilliant or singular objects which they happened to find. Savages at the present day everywhere deck themselves with plumes, necklaces, armlets, earrings, &c. They paint themselves in the most diversified manner. “If painted nations,” as Humboldt observes, “had been examined with the same attention as clothed nations, it would have been perceived that the most fertile imagination and the most mutable caprice have created the fashions of painting, as well as those of garments.”