ART AND SEXUAL SELECTION
THE explanation which we have given in the preceding chapter of the pairing dresses of the birds can of course be equally well applied to the secondary sexual characters of man. And it holds good also, we believe, with regard to the most primitive voluntary alterations in the appearance of either sex. It is true, indeed, that artificial embellishments or deformations, the work of the individual himself, never can appeal so strongly to the instincts of the other sex as those alterations which are physiologically connected with sexual development. But when, as is the case with most primitive tribes, the so-called means of attraction have remained almost unchanged during innumerable successive generations, one may safely conclude that the instincts of either sex will gradually grow prompt to react with eminent force upon impressions received from such individuals as exhibit these conventional signs of their sex and tribe. Whether the acquired qualities are considered as hereditary, or whether the consistency in the predilections of all the members of the same tribe be explained--in the Weissmannian or the neo-Darwinian way--as a result of selection, there will always be found in either sex a sort of constitutional liking for
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