We have now found an answer to our question, why man, in the choice of mate, gives the preference to the best representatives of his race. The full development of racial characters indicates health, a deviation from them indicates disease. Physical beauty is thus in every respect the outward manifestation of physical perfection, or healthiness, and the development of the instinct which prefers beauty to ugliness is evidently within the power of natural selection. This explanation of the connection between love and beauty, as also of the origin of the races of men, is very different from that given by Mr. Darwin. “The men of each race,” he says, “prefer what they are accustomed to; they cannot endure any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic carried to a moderate extreme.... As the great anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety, and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.”[1616] In the fashions of our own dress, says Mr. Darwin, we see exactly the same principle and the same desire to carry every point to an extreme.[1617] Man prefers, to a certain extent, what he is accustomed to see. Thus the Maoris, who are in the habit of dyeing their lips blue, consider it “a reproach to a woman to have red lips;”[1618] and we ourselves dislike, on the whole, any great deviation from the leading fashions. But, on the other hand, man wants variety. Now in one, now in another way, he changes his dress in order to attract attention, or to charm. The fashions of savages are certainly more permanent than ours;[1619] but the extreme diversity of ornaments with which many uncivilized peoples bedeck themselves, shows their emulation to make themselves attractive by means of new enticements. “Each of the Outanatas (New Guinea),” says Mr. Earl, “seemed desirous of ornamenting himself in some way different from his neighbour;”[1620] and, with regard to the Pacific Islanders, Mr. John Williams remarks that “the inhabitants of almost every group ... have their peculiar ideas as to what constitutes an addition to beauty.”[1621] But it is impossible to believe that the different races’ ideal of personal beauty are in any way connected with this capriciousness of taste. Were this the case, as Mr. Darwin suggests, the men of each race would admire variations and piquant peculiarities in the appearance of their women, and not only each _characteristic_ point “carried to a moderate extreme.”