This accounts for the extremes to which
mutilations and fashions often go among both, civilized and
uncivilized races, and of which a startling instance will be described
in detail in the next paragraph. Few of our rich women wear their
jewels because of their intrinsic beauty. They wear them for the same
reason that Polynesian or African belles wear all the beads they can
get. In Mariner's book on the Tongans (Chap. XV.) there is an amusing
story of a chiefs daughter who was very anxious to go to Europe. Being
asked why, she replied that her great desire was to amass a large
quantity of beads and then return to Tonga, "because in England beads
are so common that no one would admire me for wearing them, and _I
should not have the pleasure of being envied."_ Bancroft (I., 128)
says of the Kutchin Indians: "_Beads are their wealth,_ used in the
place of money, and the rich among them literally load themselves with
necklaces and strings of various patterns." Referring to the tin
ornaments worn by Dyaks, Carl Bock says he has "counted as many as
sixteen rings in a single ear, each of them the size of a dollar";
while of the Ghonds Forsyth tells us (148) that they "deck themselves
with an inordinate amount of what they consider ornaments. _Quantity
rather than quality is aimed at."_
PERSONAL BEAUTY VERSUS PERSONAL DECORATION
Must we then, in view of the vast number of opposing facts advanced so
far in this long chapter, assume that savages and barbarians have no
esthetic sense at all, not even a germ of it? Not necessarily.
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