Sexual selection in man: by Ellis Havelock 1859-1939

Author:Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sex
Publisher: Philadelphia, F.A. Davis Co
Published: 1905-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

gracefulness of action. Their dress was singular, but elegant. The head was ornamented with a fine and beautiful braid of human hair, wound round the head in the form of a turban. A triple wreath of scarlet, white, and yellow flowers adorned the head-dress. A lose vest of spotted cloth covered the lower part of the bosom. The tihi, of fine white stiilened cloth frequently edged with a scarlet border, gathered like a large frill, passed under the arms and reached below the waist; while a handsome fine cloth, fastened round the waist with a band or sash, covered the feet. The breasts were ornamented with rainbow-colored mother-of-pearl shells, and a covering of curiously wrought network and feathers. The music of the hura was the large and small drum and occasionally the flute. The movements were generally slow, but always easy and natural, and no exertion on the part of the performers was wanting to render them graceful and attractive."^ We see here, in this very typical example, how the extraneous visual aids of movement, color, and brilliancy are invoked in conjunction with music to make the appeal of beauty more convincing in the process of sexual selection.

It may be in place here to mention, in passing, the considerable place which vision occupies in normal and abnormal methods of heightening tumescence under eireumstancea which exclude definite selection by beauty. The action of mirrors belongs to this group of phenomena. Mirrors are present in profusion in high-class brothels—on the walls and also above the beds. Innocent youths and girls are also often impelled to contemplate themselves in mirrors and sometimes thus produce the first traces of sexual excitement. I have referred to the developed forms of this kind of self-contemplation in the Study of Auto-erotism, and in this connection have alluded to the fable of Narcissus, whence Nacke has since devised the term Narcissism for this group of phenomena. It is only necessary to mention the enormous production of photographs, representing normal and abnormal sexual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or of gratifying sexual appetites, and the frequency with which even normal photographs of the nude appeal to the same lust of the eyes.

• William Ellis, Polynesian Researches, second edition, 1832, vol. 1, p. 215.

Pygmalionism, 'or falling in love with statues, is a rare form of erotomania founded on the sense of vision and closely related to the allurement of beauty. (I here use "pygmalionism" as a general term for the sexual love of statues; it is sometimes restricted to cases in which a man requires of a prostitute that she shall assume the part of a statue which gradually comes to life, and finds sexual gratification in this performance alone; Eulenburg quotes examples, Sexuale Neuropathie, p. 107.) An emotional interest in statues is by no means uncommon among young men during adolescence. Heine, in Florentine Nights, records the experiences of a boy who conceived a sentimental love for a statue, and, as this book appears to be largely autobiographical, the incident may have been founded on fact.

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