The ancient use of rouge testifies to the beauty of the
blush, and Darwin stated that, in Turkish slave-markets, the
girls who readily blushed fetched the highest prices. To evoke a
blush, even by producing embarrassment, is very commonly a cause
of masculine gratification.
Savages, both men and women, blush even beneath a dusky skin (for
the phenomenon of blushing among different races, see Waitz,
_Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_, Bd. I, pp. 149-150), and it is
possible that natural selection, as well as sexual selection, has
been favorable to the development of the blush. It is scarcely an
accident that, as has been often observed, criminals, or the
antisocial element of the community--whether by the habits of
their lives or by congenital abnormality--blush less easily than
normal persons. Kroner (_Das koerperliche Gefuehl_, 1887, p. 130)
remarks: "The origin of a specific connection between shame and
blushing is the work of a _social selection_. It is certainly an
immediate advantage for a man not to blush; indirectly, however,
it is a disadvantage, because in other ways he will be known as
shameless, and on that account, as a rule, he will be shut out
from propagation. This social selection will be specially
exercised on the female sex, and on this account, women blush to
a greater extent, and more readily, than men.
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