EVOLUTION AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCES

One of the redeeming features of what is ironically called “full-dress” is the opportunity it gives of admiring a woman’s shapely neck, shoulders, and arms—if she has such. No healthy woman of the well-to-do classes need have an ill-favoured arm if she has a sensible mother, who compels her from her childhood to exercise her muscles. The great preponderance of leathery, angular, bony arms at ballrooms shows, therefore, how shamefully the hygienic arts of personal adornment are neglected in our best society. The stifling heat which commonly prevails at social gatherings suggests the thought that many ladies are indifferent to the display of their bony arms on the grounds given in Sydney Smith’s exclamation: “Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.”

A meagre, skinny arm is objectionable not only because it offends against all the conditions of Beauty—plump roundness, softness, fresh colour, smoothness, gradual tapering to the wrist—but because it is associated with the aspect of old age and disease; and again, because it suggests man’s lowly origin by its approximation to the appearance of the arms in our simian country cousins.

Man’s arm has become differentiated from the ape’s not only in the matter of greater muscular rotundity and smoothness, i.e. loss of hair, but also in regard to length. An ape’s arms are much longer than a white man’s, the negro’s being intermediate. Says Mr. Tylor: “In an upright position and reaching down with the middle finger, the gibbon can touch its foot, the orang its ankle, the chimpanzee its knee, while man only reaches partly down his thigh.... Negro soldiers standing at drill bring the middle finger-tip an inch or two nearer the knee than white men can do, and some have been even known to touch the knee-pan.” Taking this in connection with the fact that the arms of sailors, who use them constantly in climbing, are longer than those of soldiers, we may safely infer that man’s arms have gradually become shorter because he has ceased to climb trees; while the greater muscular rotundity, especially of the forearm, has been acquired through the varied activity and movements of the hand and fingers: a circumstance almost self-evident on physiological principles, and furthermore corroborated by the fact that negroes, unskilled in trades which call for manipulation of the separate fingers, again occupy an intermediate position. “Even in muscular negroes the arms are less rotund,” says Professor Carl Vogt; and, according to Van der Hoeven, the skin between the fingers reaches up higher in the negro, which must impede activity.

The peculiar arrangement of the hair on man’s arm has been referred to by Wallace and Darwin as one of the countless signs arguing our descent from apelike ancestors. On the arm of man, as of most anthropoid apes, the hair “tends to converge from above and below to a point at the elbow.” Now it is known that the gorilla, as well as the orang, “sits in pelting rain with his hands over his head”; and Mr. Wallace, therefore, suggests that the present inclination of the hair on man’s arms is simply a survival of the time when his arboreal ancestors used to sit in that fashion, the hair having gradually assumed the direction which would most easily allow the rain to run off.

The evolution theory that the hair on the arm, as on the body in general, was lost through Sexual Selection, is corroborated by the fact that woman’s arm has made more progress toward complete smoothness than man’s, owing to the circumstance that man is in Sexual Selection more guided by Æsthetic, woman by dynamic, considerations. Yet there can be no doubt that a hairy arm and hand are always ugly, in man as in woman, not only on account of their simian suggestiveness, but because they cover the smooth skin and its delicate tints, and, moreover, especially if black, are very apt to make the arm and hand look as if they needed a good scrubbing. Hair on the hand may sometimes be permanently removed by passing the hand quickly and repeatedly through a large flame—a much less painful process than the use of pincers.

The muscular deviations from the lines of beauty are much more pardonable in a man’s arm than the hair, although it is evident that a professional athlete’s excessively muscular arm is Æsthetically objectionable, however much it may be admired on other grounds. To feminine beauty, and the chances of inspiring Love, an arm which is so muscular as to obliterate the lines of beauty is absolutely fatal. Among the labouring classes there are many women whose arms are so hard and sinewy that the very bones to which they are attached have become heavy and masculine, so that it becomes difficult to tell a woman’s from a man’s skeleton, which ordinarily is very easy.

CALISTHENICS AND MASSAGE

It is, however, hardly necessary to refer to these facts as a warning to girls not to use their arms too much. The danger almost always lies the other way, and what girls need is a set of intelligent directions for securing a shapely arm. If the arm is too plump the method discussed in preceding pages for the general reduction of corpulence will also affect the arm. If too thin, which is much more frequently the case in young women, don’t be afraid that exercise will make them thinner—on the ground that hard labourers are commonly meagre. It is only excessive exercise that produces leanness, by burning away all the fat. Moderate exercise develops the muscles—the plastic material of beauty—and stimulates the appetite, so that the fat-cushion under the skin also increases in depth, covering up the angular outlines of bones, muscles, and sinews.

It is a suggestive fact that the word calisthenics—"the art of promoting the health of the body by exercise"—comes from two Greek words meaning “beautiful” and “strength.”

So many books have been written on calisthenics that it is needless to repeat here minute directions for training the muscles of the arm or any other part of the body. One bit of sensible advice may, however, be quoted from the Ugly Girl Papers: “Throwing quoits and sweeping are good exercises to develop the arms. There is nothing like three hours of housework a day for giving a woman a good figure, and if she sleep in tight cosmetic gloves, she need not fear that her hands will be spoiled. The time to form the hand is in youth, and with thimbles for the finger-tips, and close gloves lined with cold cream, every mother might secure a good hand for her daughter.”

It is an ill wind that blows no man good. The incessant piano-banging and violin-scraping of thousands of unmusical young ladies has at least one thing to be said in its favour: it helps to round and beautify the arms of these young players.

Active exercise is the surest and quickest way of securing muscular rotundity. But in cases where, owing to some infirmity, long-continued spontaneous exertion is out of the question, massage, which has been defined as “passive exercise,” may be resorted to as of calisthenic value. It should only be performed by an expert, and always centripetally, i.e. in the direction of the heart. It facilitates the flow of the venous current, which in the arms and lower limbs has to struggle upwards against the force of gravitation; and to this is partly due its refreshing effect. As Americans are the most nervous and sensitive people in the world, it seems probable that the feeling of ease following the facilitating of the venous flow has taught them instinctively to assume that peculiar position, with the feet on a chair or table, which has been so often ridiculed by Europeans.

“The beauty of a youthful hand,” says Winckelmann “consists in a moderate degree of plumpness, and a scarcely observable depression, resembling a soft shadow, over the articulations of the fingers, where, if the hand is plump, there is a dimple. The fingers taper gently towards their extremities, like finely-shaped columns; and, in art, the articulations are not expressed. The fore part of the terminating joint is not bent over, nor are the nails very long, though both are common in the works of modern sculptors.”

Balzac pointed out that “men of superior intellect almost always have beautiful hands, the perfection of which is the distinctive indication of a high destination.... The hand is the despair of sculptors and painters when they wish to express the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments.”

A fine hand is, indeed, a sign of superior intelligence in a much more comprehensive sense than that which Balzac had in mind. The difference between the simian and human faces is hardly greater than the progress from an ape’s hand to a man’s in beauty of outline, smoothness of surface, grace of movement, and varied utility. The ape’s hand is hairy on the upper surface, hard and callous on the lower. Except in climbing, its movements are clumsy. The fingers have adapted themselves to the need of climbing, and have become permanently bent in front, so that when the animal goes on all fours it cannot walk on the palm, but only on the bent knuckles.

A step higher we have the negro’s hands, in which the fingers are less independent and nimble, and the palmar fat-cushions less developed and sensitive, than in our hands. These fat-cushions serve to protect the blood-vessels as well as the delicate nerves, which make the hand the principal organ of touch. The muscles of the hand are more easily and instantaneously obedient to the will than those of any other part of the body, except those of the mouth and eyes; and hence it is that the hands are almost as good an index of a man’s character, habits, and profession as his face, and have been aptly called his “second face.”

Division of labour is the index of progress in the evolution of organs. To the fact that his feet have become exclusively adapted to locomotion, leaving the hands free to serve as tools, man chiefly owes his superiority to other animals. For what would superior intellect avail him without the implements needed to carry out its schemes? Feeling, grasping, handling, writing, sewing, playing an instrument, squeezing, caressing,—these are a few of the innumerable functions of the human hand; while the ape’s is good for little but climbing. The finger language of deaf mutes shows to what subtle intellectual uses the hands can be put; and as for emotional expression, are there any facial muscles which can indicate finer shades of feeling than the infinitely varied touch with which a pianist or violinist gives utterance to every mood and phase of human passion?

No wonder that, just as the face has had its physiognomists and phrenologists, so the hand its chiromancers, who pretended, by looking at its lines, not only to read character, but even to foretell one’s fate. Books on this subject are indeed still published, which shows that the race of fools is in no immediate danger of extinction. Wrinkles in the face do bear some relation to character and experience; but surely no one needs to be told that the palmar lines are purely accidental—caused by the manner in which the skin is folded when we close the hand.

FINGER-NAILS

Our nails are modified claws—modified to their advantage.advantage. When properly cared for, they are one of the greatest personal ornaments—beginning and ending as they do with a delicate curve, rounded on the surface, suffused with a gentle blush, and smooth as ivory. They may also serve as a mode of expression and index of nationality, as seen in these remarks by Mr. E. B. Tylor: “In the Southern United States, till slavery was done away a few years ago, the traces of Negro descent were noted with the utmost nicety. Not only were the mixed breeds regularly classed as mulattos, quadroons, and down to octoroons, but even where the mixture was so slight that the untrained eye noticed nothing beyond a brunette complexion, the intruder, who had ventured to sit down at a public dinner-table, was called upon to show his hands, and the African taint detected by the dark tinge at the root of the finger-nails.”

Becker remarks that among the ancient Greeks “it was considered very unseemly to appear with nails unpared”; nor did the Greeks consider it beneath their dignity, like the Romans, to pare their own nails.

The Greeks, being an Æsthetic nation, were guided in the treatment of their nails by the sense of beauty. Elsewhere, however, the idiotic notion that laziness is aristocratic led to a different treatment of the nails. Mr. Tylor, in his Anthropology, gives an illustration of the hand of a Chinese ascetic whose finger-nails are five or six times as long as his fingers. “Long finger-nails,” he remarks, “are noticed even among ourselves as showing that the owner does no manual labour, and in China and neighbouring countries they are allowed to grow to a monstrous length as a symbol of nobility, ladies wearing silver cases to protect them, or at least as a pretence that they are there.”

Useless hands, with elongated nails, reverting to a clawlike character, as “symbols of nobility!” The study of evolution throws much sarcastic light on the fashionable follies of mankind.

MANICURE SECRETS

According to the New York Analyst: “There are not nearly as many secrets in manicure as people imagine. A little ammonia or borax in the water you wash your hands with, and that water just lukewarm, will keep the skin clean and soft. A little oatmeal mixed with the water will whiten the hands. Many people use glycerine on their hands when they go to bed, wearing gloves to keep the bedding clean; but glycerine don’tdon’t agree with every one. It makes some skins harsh and red. These people should rub their hands with dry oatmeal and wear gloves in bed. The best preparation for the hands at night is white of egg, with a grain of alum dissolved in it.... The roughest and hardest hands can be made soft and white in a month’s time by doctoring them a little at bedtime, and all the tools you need are a nail-brush (avoid metal), a bottle of ammonia, a box of powdered borax, and a little fine white sand to rub the stains off, or a cut of lemon. Manicures use acids in their shops, but the lemon is quite as good, and isn’t poisonous, while the acids are.”

In the Ugly Girl Papers the following recipes are given:—

“To give a fine colour to the nails, the hands and fingers must be well lathered and washed with scented soap; then the nails must be rubbed with equal parts of cinnabar and emery, followed by oil of bitter almonds. To take white specks from the nails, melt equal parts of pitch and turpentine in a small cup; add to it vinegar and powdered sulphur. Rub this on the nails and the specks will soon disappear. Pitch and myrrh melted together may be used with the same results.”

But, after all, what is the use of beautifying one’s hands as long as ladies bow to the Fashion Fetish, which compels them to conceal them in the skins of animals? To wear gloves on going out, as a protection against rough weather and for the sake of cleanliness, is rational enough; but to wear them at social gatherings is almost as absurd as the compulsory impenetrable veils of Turkish women; for does not the hand rank next to the face as an index of character?

Another stupidity of fashion is our enforced and cultivated right-handedness. Despite the force of inherited habit, children show a natural inclination toward using both their hands equally; but they are constantly scolded and punished, until they have succeeded, like their parents, in reducing one hand to a state of imbecility, so to speak, which is constantly betrayed in awkward, ungraceful action. Practising on a musical instrument, with special attention to the left hand, has a tendency to correct this awkwardness. Indeed, is there any part of the body that music does not benefit? Dancing to a Strauss waltz gives elasticity to the limbs and grace to the gait; singing is the most useful kind of lung-gymnastics, and develops the chest; a musically-trained ear modulates the voice to sweeter expression; while equally skilled and graceful hands are acquired by practice on a musical instrument. So that the word music, though much less comprehensive than among the ancient Greeks, has lost none of the magic, beautifying power they ascribed to it.

Much of the ugliness in the world is due to the neglect of parents in properly supervising the actions of their children, to prevent the formation of bad habits, which ruin beauty irretrievably. As an instance of what can be done in this direction may be cited the following remark by a Philadelphia surgeon: “The school-girl habit of biting the nails must be broken up at once. If in children, rub a little extract of quassia on the finger-tips. This is so bitter that they are careful not to taste it twice. Not only the nails, but the whole finger and hand is often forfeited by neglect in this respect.”

By travelling from the shoulder down to the finger-tips we have apparently interrupted our steady progress from toe to tip of the body. But we shall see in a moment that the interruption is only apparent, for our subject leads naturally “from Hand to Mouth.”