There are other reasons, moreover, why this last-mentioned circumstance, which apparently affords so strong support to the theory of Darwin and his followers, cannot be adduced as decisively solving the problem of purely decorative garments. In laying so great a stress upon the time of life when the body is decorated for the first time,[326] the advocates of the theory of erotic propitiation seem to have overlooked that almost everywhere sexual maturity coincides with civic majority. There is thus something to be said for the view that tattooing, feather-dresses, and so on, are conferred upon young men and women as outward signs of their changed status. And similarly all ulterior decorations can be explained as indications of later acquired rank. In ethnological literature, especially in German works, a great body of facts has been produced which speak in favour of such an analogy between primitive ornaments and modern signs of rank and merit.[327] By relying on this interpretation too we may often explain, without any reference to the advantages of courtship, the fact that in primitive races men are generally more decorated than women. An extreme Darwinist may perhaps object that the proportion between the ornaments of the sexes has been inverted since the male sex began to practise selection. But it is to be remembered that even now in the classes for which rank distinctions are most important, viz. in military and diplomatic circles, men generally are more gorgeously arrayed than women.[328] And it may further be adduced as an exception which proves the rule that on Pelew and Ponape Islands, where mothers give children their rank, women are richly tattooed.[329]