SAVAGE NOTIONS OF BEAUTY

In all the preceding remarks concerning the connection between mental and physical beauty, the assumption has been made tacitly that what we consider beautiful is so in reality; and that our taste is a safe guide to follow. Yet this assumption may be challenged, and has, indeed, been often challenged. Every nation, every savage tribe, has its own standard of Beauty; what right, therefore, have we to claim dogmatically that we are infallible judges?

Ask the devil, says Voltaire, what is the meaning of t? ?a???—the Beautiful—and he will tell you “Le beau est une paire de comes, quatre griffes, et une queue”—a couple of horns, four claws, and a tail. Ask a North American Indian, says Hearne, what is Beauty, he will answer: “A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a large, broad chin, a clumsy hook-nose, a tawny hide, and breasts hanging down to the belt.” In the Chinese empire “those women are preferred who have ... a broad face, high cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears.” “One of the titles of the Zulu king,” says Darwin (who gives many other instances À propos in chapter xix. of the Descent of Man), “is ‘You who are black.’ Mr. Galton, in speaking to me about the natives of South Africa, remarked that their ideas of beauty seem very different from ours; for in one tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls were not admired by the natives.”

Darwin himself appears to have been staggered and puzzled by this diversity of taste, and to have partly inclined to the theory that Beauty is relative to the human mind (though elsewhere he repudiates it)—a theory which Jeffrey has so boldly formulated in the assertion that “All tastes are equally just and true, in as far as concerns the individual whose taste is in question; and what a man feels distinctly to be beautiful is beautiful to him, whatever other people may think of it.”

Fiddlesticks! The Alison-Jeffrey school of Scotch Æstheticians, having been among the first in the field, have done more to confuse the English mind on the subject of Beauty than several generations of other clever writers will be able to clear up again.

There are about half a dozen sound, square, solid, scientific reasons why we have a better right to our opinion concerning the nature of Beauty than a Hottentot or a North American Indian.

NON-ÆSTHETIC ORNAMENTATION

One of the things most commonly forgotten by those who wonder at the strange “taste” of savages is that many of their customs have nothing whatever to do with the sense of beauty. The habit of putting on “war-paint” originated not in a desire for ornamentation, but in the wish to make themselves frightful in appearance to the enemy. For the same reason heads are mutilated. As Waitz notes in speaking of Tahiti: “A very ugly mutilation is that to which most of the boys had to subject themselves. Immediately after birth their mothers compressed their forehead and the back of the head, so that the former became narrow and high, the latter flat; this was done to make their aspect more terrible, and thus turn them into more formidable warriors.” Tattooing, likewise, was originally intended to be an easy sign of recognition, or of social or religious distinction, rather than an ornament of the body. And when we consider how prone the mind of our own fashionable ladies is to violate every canon of good taste in their wild effort to surpass one another in some novel extravagance just from Paris; when we note that if a Fifth Avenue lady wears a gull on her hat, her coloured cook will invest in a turkey or ostrich for hers, we understand at once that many of the mutilations approved by savages are the outcome of vanity and emulation, not of Æsthetic taste.

PERSONAL BEAUTY AS A FINE ART

Yet there are undoubtedly a number of physiognomic and other peculiarities which savages admire while we consider them ugly; and some, again, which we admire and they dislike. Have we a right to consider them inferior to us in taste because they fail to admire what we adore?

Certainly; beyond the shadow of a doubt. It takes genius to fully appreciate genius; it takes a refined taste to appreciate refined beauty. This is what the savage lacks.

Look at any one of the fine arts. Why does the savage prefer his monotonous drumming and ear-piercing war-songs to a soft, beautiful, dreamy Chopin nocturne? Because he cannot understand the nocturne.

Why does he prefer his painted, clumsy, coarse-featured squaw to a civilised woman with delicate contours, refined features, graceful gait? Because he does not understand the beauty of the latter. It is too subtle for his coarse nerves, his feeble imagination. The smiles and manifold expressions that chase one another across her lovely features, like the subtly-interwoven melodies in a symphonic poem, are the visible signs of thoughts and emotions which he has never experienced, and therefore cannot understand. It is like giving him a page of Sanskrit to read.

It is for this reason that a negro never falls in love with a white woman, and that a peasant prefers his plump, crude country-girl to the fair, delicate city visitor. He requires more vigorous arms, broader features, than the city girl possesses, to make an impression on his callous nerves of touch and sight. And it is fortunate for the peasant girl that her lover does lack taste, else she would soon find him a fickle deserter.

The savage, in a word, prefers his style of “beauty” to ours for the same reason that he prefers a piece of raw liver and a glass of oil to the subtle flavours of French cookery and French wines. His senses are too coarse, his mind too vulgar, to perceive the poetry of refined features. Everything must be loud and exaggerated to make an impression on him—loud music, loud and glaring red and yellow colours, loud and coarse features.

This doctrine that differences of taste are merely due to differences in the degree of Æsthetic culture, and that there is such a thing as an absolute standard of human beauty, derives further support from the facts (1) that the ideal of beauty set up by the Æsthetic Greeks two thousand years ago corresponds so remarkably with that of modern artistic minds; (2) that e.g. a Japanese student in the United States soon learns to prefer American female beauty to the Japanese variety; (3) that an English, Italian, or American audience who at first admire Norma and find Lohengrin tiresome, can in a few seasons be so educated as to prefer Lohengrin and actually scorn Norma; but not vice versÂ, in either case (2) or (3).

Mr. Ruskin takes a similar view regarding differences of taste when he says that “respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking with disgust on the white face, no importance whatever is to be attached to the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty whatsoever (these ideas being only received by minds under some certain degree of cultivation), and whose disgust arises naturally from what they suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill-health.”

That this consideration of health does affect the negro’s judgment regarding the beauty of the white complexion, is also shown by what Mr. Winwood Reade told Mr. Darwin, namely, that the negro’s “horror of whiteness may be attributed ... partly to the belief held by most negroes that demons and spirits are white, and partly to their thinking it a sign of ill-health.”

But of all the theoretical truths emphasised in the Modern Painters none is so important as this: “That not only changes of opinion take place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from variation of opinion to unity of opinion,—that whatever may be the difference of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there will be unity of taste among the experienced; and that, therefore, the result of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of preference in some sort common to all, and which are part of our nature.”

Let us now see what are those principles of Beauty that may be considered independent of a more or less crude and undeveloped taste. Some are negative, some positive.

(a) Animals.—"It has been argued," says Darwin (by Schaffhausen), “that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, and no doubt this is partly true with the more civilised nations, in which intellect is highly appreciated; but this explanation will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness.”

Curiously enough, savages themselves use animals as a negative test of beauty. Thus we read that “the Indians of Paraguay eradicate their eyebrows and eyelashes, saying that they do not wish to be like horses.” “On the Eastern coast, the negro boys, when they saw Burton, cried out, ‘Look at the white man; does he not look like a white ape?’” “A man of Cochin China ‘spoke with contempt of the wife of the English ambassador—that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like that of potato-flowers.’”

A few centuries ago it was a favourite pastime of physiognomists to draw elaborate parallels between men and animals. Thus, in 1593, there appeared a work, De Humana Physiognomia, with numerous illustrations, in which always a human face was matched with some animal’s head. Professor Wundt thus sums up the essence of this book: “A broad forehead, we are told, indicates fearfulness, because the ox with his broad head lacks courage. A long forehead, on the other hand, indicates erudition, as is shown by means of an intelligent dog who has the honour of serving as a pendant to Plato’s profile. Persons with shaggy hair are good-natured, as they resemble the lion. He whose eyebrows are turned inwards, towards the nose, is uncleanly like the pig, which this resembles. The narrow chin of the ape signifies malice and envy. Long ears and thick lips, such as the donkey possesses, are signs of stupidity. A person who has a nose crooked from the forehead inclines, like the raven, to theft, etc. These animal-physiognomists appear to have favoured a thoroughly pessimistic view of man’s capacities, inasmuch as for every creditable resemblance they find at least ten discreditable ones.”

Apart from these puerilities, it is in most cases simply absurd to compare man with animals. Except in the case of apes there are no proper terms of comparison, because the types are so distinct; and, moreover, from the point of view of its own type, the average animal of any species is more beautiful than the average man or woman from the human point of view. This assertion is indirectly corroborated by Mr. Galton’s testimony, that “our human civilised stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic.”

Schopenhauer considered animals beautiful in every way, and suggested that whenever we do find an animal ugly it is due to some irrelevant, inevitable association of ideas, as when a monkey suggests a man, or a toad mud. And Mr. Ruskin pertinently suggests that “That mind only is fully disciplined in its theoretic power which, when it chooses, throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the ideas of destructiveness or of innocence accustom us to regard the animal tribes, as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, I think, from the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own, can pursue the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the alligator, the coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle.”

When Sir Charles Bell intimated that in Greek sculpture the guiding principle was remoteness from the animal type, he stated only one side of the truth, of which the other is thus noted by Winckelmann: among the Greeks, he says, “The study of artists in producing ideal beauties was directed to the nature of the nobler beasts, so that they not only instituted comparisons between the forms of the human countenance and the shape of the head of certain animals, but they even undertook to adopt from animals the means of imparting greater majesty and elevation to their statues ... especially in the heads of Hercules.” Jupiter’s head “has the complete aspect of the lion, the king of beasts, not only in the large, round eyes, in the fulness of the prominent, and, as it were, swollen forehead, and in the nose, but also in the hair, which hangs from his head like the mane of the lion, first rising upward from the forehead, and then, parting on each side into a bow, again falling downward.”

So that we may safely reject the theory that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, whatever savages and Chinamen may think on this subject. Coarse minds little suspect what exquisite beauty is to be found in the head of a cow or a donkey, a puppy or a lamb—beauty which, like a lovely melody, may bring tears to the eyes of one who is sensitive to Æsthetic impressions. Objectively considered, even the destructive emotions do not appear ugly in an animal. The ferocity of a lion does not make him appear vicious, because ferocity is his nature. He knows no better; can only live by fighting. But a man is disfigured by ferocity because he does know better; he can live without fighting; and it is the consciousness of his selfish meanness that puts the stamp of ugliness on his distorted features.

In apes alone does fierceness seem ugly and brutal instead of sublime. For apes bear so much resemblance to us, and have a brain so superior in structure to that of other animals, that we feel justified in applying the human standard. Hence apes alone afford us a negative test of beauty. Their heads and faces are cast in our mould, and therefore afford the means of direct comparison. In looking at their massive, brutal jaws, their receding foreheads, their undifferentiated hands and feet, their coarse, hairy skin, their clumsy, inexpressive, gigantic mouths, their flat noses and nostrils open to the view, we are justified in calling them ugly, compared with ourselves, and in feeling proud that civilisation has gradually raised us so far above our country cousins, in beauty as in everything else, except the art of climbing trees.

(b) Savages are valuable as negative tests of beauty for the same reason: they enable us to see what progress we have made in refining our features into harmonious proportions, and making them susceptible of diverse emotional expression. It should be noted that Nature constantly endeavours to make primitive mankind beautiful, as it does with all other animals. Tourists constantly note the occurrence of remarkable instances of Personal Beauty among the young in most tribes. But this natural Beauty is not appreciated by the vulgar taste of savages, as we saw a few pages back in a case mentioned by Mr. Galton. Beauty must be distorted and exaggerated before it pleases the savage’s taste. Paint must be laid on an inch thick, the nose perforated and “adorned” with a ring, and ditto the abnormally lengthened lips. This corrects the notion that savage hideousness is a product of Nature. Nature may blunder, but never so sadly as in the appearance of a savage belle or warrior; and in scorning these we do not therefore scorn Nature, but merely the artificial products of the vulgar taste of primitive man.

(c) Degraded Classes.—Poverty, suffering, want of leisure for mental culture, want of money for sanitary modes of living, have, unfortunately, produced in all countries a large class in whom Personal Beauty occurs only as an accident. That such unhappy mortals afford a negative test of Beauty is seen by the fact that, just as savages are intermediate between monkeys and them, so they stand between savages and refined men in features and expression.

Poverty alone does not produce this vulgar type of personal appearance; it is intellectual indolence, moral vice, and hygienic indifference that are responsible for it. Hence this third negative teat of Beauty is not at all difficult to find in any sphere of society, from the hod-carrier to the aristocrat with a pedigree of a hundred generations. In every scale of the social ladder may be found “features seamed by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse; bodies consumed with sloth, broken down by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured in foul uses; intellects without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly and devilish” (Ruskin).

(d) Age and Decrepitude.—It is not true, as a famous Frenchwoman has remarked, that age and beauty are incompatible terms. Even age and Love are not incompatible, as we saw in the chapter on Genius in Love; and Byron has remarked that Love, like the measles, is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

There is a special variety of Beauty for every period of life, and the Beauty of old age certainly is not the least attractive of these varieties. What could be more majestic, more admirable, than the head of a Longfellow in his last days? Provided health of mind and body has been maintained, even the folds in the cheeks, the wrinkles on the forehead of old age, are not unbeautiful. But when senility means decrepitude, brought on by a neglectful or otherwise vicious life, then it is positively ugly. The loveliest thing in the world is a fair and amiable maiden; the ugliest a vicious old hag—savages and apes not excepted.

(e) Disease.—Temperance preachers and other hygienic reformers commonly dwell too exclusively on the dangers to health, domestic peace, moral progress, and refinement which the indulgence in various vices entails. If they would insist with equal, or even greater, emphasis on the havoc which diseases brought on by intemperance and neglect of the laws of Health make on Personal Beauty, they would double their influence on their audiences or readers. For in woman’s heart the desire to be beautiful is and always will be the strongest motive to action or nonaction; nor are men, as a rule, much less interested in the matter of preserving a handsome appearance. It may make some impression on a man to tell him that if he takes ice-water before breakfast, or “cock-tails” at various odd hours on an empty stomach, he will ruin his digestion; but the impression will be six times as deep if you can convince him that he will ere long look like that confirmed dyspeptic Jones, with lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, and a general expression of premature senility, which accounts for the fact that he has been twice already refused by the girl he adores.

Or take that girl over there who never takes a walk, always sleeps with her windows hermetically closed, and never allows a ray of sunshine to touch any part of her body. Tell her she is ruining her health and she may be momentarily alarmed by this vague warning, and walk half a mile for a week or so, until she has forgotten it. But make it clear to her what is the exact consequence of such neglect of the primal laws of health—namely, the premature loss of every trace of Personal Beauty and youthful charm, with old-maidenhood inevitably staring her in the face, owing to her apathetic appearance and gait, her sickly complexion, her features distorted by frequent headaches, brought on by lack of fresh, cool air—each of which leaves its permanent trace in the form of an addition to a wrinkle or subtraction from the plumpness of her cheeks,—tell her all this, and that her eyes will soon sink into their sockets and have blue rings like those of an invalid, and a ghastly stare—and she will, perhaps, be sufficiently roused to save her Health for the sake of her Beauty.

We are now confronted with the question, Why is it that disease is a mark of ugliness, health a mark of Beauty? The old Scotch school of Æstheticians think it is all a matter of association. We consider certain forms characteristic of health as beautiful simply because we associate with them various emotions of affection, the pleasures of love, etc., and conversely with disease and vice. According to Stendhal, “La beautÉ n’est que la promesse du bonheur,” or, in American, Beauty is simply the promise of a “good time.” But it is Lord Jeffrey who, to use another appropriate American expression, “goes the whole hog” in this matter, by practically denying the existence of such a thing as a pure, disinterested, Æsthetic sense. Suppose, he says, "that the smooth forehead, the firm cheek, and the full lip, which are now so distinctly expressive to us of the gay and vigorous periods of youth—and the clear and blooming complexion, which indicates health and activity—had been, in fact, the forms and colours by which old age and sickness were characterised; and that, instead of being found united to those sources and seasons of enjoyment, they had been the badges by which Nature pointed out that state of suffering and decay which is now signified to us by the livid and emaciated face of sickness, or the wrinkled front, the quivering lip, and hollow cheek of age; if this were the familiar law of our nature, can it be doubted that we should look upon these appearances, not with rapture, but with aversion, and consider it as absolutely ludicrous or disgusting to speak of the beauty of what was interpreted by every one as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude?

“Mr. Knight himself, though a firm believer in the intrinsic beauty of colours, is so much of this opinion that he thinks it entirely owing to those associations that we prefer the tame smoothness and comparatively poor colours of a youthful face to the richly fretted and variegated countenance of a pimpled drunkard.”

Bosh! and a hundred times bosh! One feels that these men lived at a time when port was drunk by the bottle, like claret, and when variegated noses were to a certain extent fashionable.

Though every reader feels the sophistry and absurdity of the above argumentation, it is not easy to refute it. Professor Blackie declaims against it, Ruskin sneers at it, but nowhere have I been able to find a definite direct refutation of the thesis. The following suggestions may, therefore, be of some value.

In the first place, Jeffrey’s supposition is equivalent to saying that if black were white, white would be black. For if all the phenomena of human nature were reversed, our taste, being also a “phenomenon,” would be reversed too. If health meant emaciation, then a lover would not be happy unless he could kiss a pair of leathery lips and embrace a skeleton. Hence his sense of touch, like his sight, would have to be the reverse of what they are now; and that being the case, Æsthetic taste, which is based on the senses, would of course be reversed too. But that is simply saying that if you stand a man on his head his feet will be in the air.

Secondly, Lord Jeffrey’s argument involves the old fallacy that the useful and the beautiful are identical—that we only consider those things beautiful which afford us some utilitarian gratification. If this theory were correct, a coal-boat would be more beautiful than a yacht; a savage’s big jaw-bone more beautiful than our delicate ones; a clumsy, dirty, coarse-featured labourer more beautiful than a society belle.

No; we have, thank heaven, an Æsthetic sense which enables us to see and admire beauty quite independently of any “associations” which it may have with our utilitarian cravings. It is possible, however, and even probable, that the Æsthetic sense was originally developed from utilitarian associations. On this subject Mr. Grant Allen has some exceedingly valuable remarks in his interesting work on the Colour-Sense. He there eloquently sets forth the view that it was the bright tints of luscious fruits that first taught primitive man to derive pleasure from the sight of coloured objects. This gradually led to a “predilection for brilliant dyes and glistening pebbles; till at last the whole series culminates in that intense and unselfish enjoyment of rich and pure tints which make civilised man linger so lovingly over the hues of sunset and the myriad shades of autumn.... The disinterested affection can only be reached by many previous steps of utilitarian progress.” But—and here lies the kernel of the argument—"fruit-eaters and flower-feeders derive pleasure from brilliant colours ... not because those colours have mental associations with their food, but because the structures which perceive them have been continually exercised and strengthened by hereditary use," until at last they formed a special nervous or cerebral apparatus which presides over impressions of beauty, and takes a special pleasure in its own activity, apart from all utilitarian considerations.

Lord Jeffrey apparently lacked this special Æsthetic sense, as shown by his whole argument, and by his inability, which he shared with Alison, of finding beauty in Nature, unless it was in some way associated with man’s presence and man’s mean utilities.

How different this from the feelings of the man who of all writers on Beauty has the most highly developed Æsthetic sense—Mr. Ruskin, who has just told us in his Autobiography that his love of Nature, ardent as it is, depends entirely on the wildness of the scenery, its remoteness from human influences and associations.

It is this specially-developed Æsthetic taste that would prevent man from calling flabby cheeks, sallow complexions, pimpled noses, and sunken eyes beautiful, if by some miracle they should be changed into signs of health. For this sense of beauty was first educated not by the sight of human beauty, but of beauty in Nature—fruits, pebbles, shells, lustrous metals, etc.; and the notions of beauty thus obtained have been gradually transferred to human beings as standards of attractiveness. It can be shown that what the best judges pronounce the highest human beauty, is so because it partakes of certain characteristics which we find beautiful throughout Nature. And conversely, what we consider ugly in the human form and features would also be called ugly in external objects; in both cases, be it distinctly understood, without any direct reference to utilitarian considerations, and sometimes even in opposition to them, as in our admiration of a beautiful poisonous plant or snake, or a tiger.

It is these universal characteristics of Beauty, found in man as in animals, that we now have to consider. They are the positive criteria of Beauty, and may be regarded as a new set of “overtones” or leading motives for the remainder of this volume, although the old ones will occasionally reappear and combine with them.

POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY

Of these there are at least eight—Symmetry, Curvature, Gradation, Smoothness, Delicacy, Colour, Lustre, Expression, including Variety and Individuality.

(a) Symmetry.—"In all perfectly beautiful objects," says Mr. Ruskin, “there is found the opposition of one part to another, and a reciprocal balance obtained; in animals the balance being commonly between opposite sides (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head); but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is, from their nature, impossible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be beheld with pleasure.... Symmetry is the opposition of equal quantities to each other. Proportion the connection of unequal quantities with each other. The property of a tree in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion.”

Mr. Darwin thus gives his testimony as to the prevalence of symmetry in Nature: “If beautiful objects had been created solely for man’s gratification, it ought to be shown that before man appeared there was less beauty on the face of the earth than since he came on the stage. Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary period, created that man might ages afterwards admire them in his cabinet? Few objects are more beautiful than the minute silicious cases of the diatomaceÆ: were they created that they might be examined and admired under the higher powers of the microscope? The beauty in this latter case, and in many others, is apparently wholly due to symmetry of growth” (Origin of Species, chap. vi.)

In the floral world, again, the natural tendency is always towards symmetry. Wind-fertilised flowers are symmetrical in form; and “as Mr. Darwin has observed, there does not appeal to be a single instance of an irregular flower which is not fertilised by insects or birds” (Lubbock), and therefore modified in form in the effort to adapt itself to useful insects and to exclude pirates.

Throughout the animal kingdom, including man, this law of symmetry is true. Hence it is not likely that we should ever admire a lame leg, a crooked nose, bent on one side, eyes that are not mates, or a face several inches longer on one side than the other, owing to paralysis—as beautiful, even if, as Jeffrey would have it, Madame Nature should suddenly take it into her head to associate such abnormalities with health instead of with disease.

(b) Gradation.—On this law of Nature Mr. Ruskin again has spoken at once more scientifically and poetically than any other writer on Æsthetics: "What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shades and colours.... For instances of the complete absence of gradation we must look to man’s work, or to his disease and decrepitude. Compare the gradated colours of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual concentration of the youthful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply-drawn veining of old age.

“Gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade and colour that the eye refuses in art to understand anything as either which appears without it; while, on the other hand, nearly all the gradations of nature are so subtile, and between degrees of tint so slightly separated, that no human hand can in any wise equal, or do anything more than suggest the idea of them.”

The following remarks which the same writer makes in another place concerning Gradation show at the same time how asinine it is for a savage or any other person of uncultivated taste to set himself up as a judge of Personal Beauty, as good as any one else, on the plea that it is all “a matter of taste” and de gustibus non est disputandum:—

“When the eye is quite uncultivated, it sees that a man is a man, and a face is a face, but has no idea what shadows or lights fall upon the form or features. Cultivate it to some degree of artistic power, and it will then see shadows distinctly, but only the more vigorous of them. Cultivate it still further, and it will see light within light, and shadow within shadow, and will continually refuse to rest in what it has already discovered, that it may pursue what is more removed and more subtle, until at last it comes to give its chief attention and display its chief power on gradations which to an untrained faculty are partly matters of indifference and partly imperceptible.”

The words italicised enable us to appreciate what Sokrates must have had in his mind when he distinguished between that which is beautiful and that which only appears beautiful. Æsthetic training enables us to see things as they are, instead of as they appear through inattention, through ignorance, or through clouds of national prejudice, or individual utilitarianism.

The way in which Æsthetic training enables us to see gradations of beauty previously imperceptible can be most strikingly illustrated in the case of music. There are thousands of intelligent folks who cannot tell the difference between a superb Steinway Grand, just timed for a concert, and a harsh, clangy, mountain-hotel piano that has not been tuned for two years. But give these persons a thorough musical education, and they will soon be able to smile at Jeffrey’s notion that the tone of the hotel-piano was quite as beautiful as that of the Steinway, because it seemed so to them. It is not only the imagination but the senses themselves that require training. A Hottentot or any unmusical person cannot tell the difference between two consecutive tones on the piano, whereas a skilled musician can detect all the gradations from one tone to another, down to the sixty-fourth part of a semitone!

“It is all a matter of taste!” Precisely. Of good taste and bad taste.

Examples of gradation in the human form are the gradual tapering of the limbs and the fingers, the exquisite line from the female neck to the shoulders and the bosom, the blushes on the cheeks, so long as they do not assume the form of a hectic flush, and the delicate tints of the complexion in general, varying with emotional states, according as the veins and arteries are more or less filled with the vital fluid.

Is it then “entirely owing to their associations” with health or disease that we prefer the complexion of a youthful face to the hideous daubs of red which Knight refers to as the “richly fretted and variegated countenance of a pimpled drunkard”? Is it owing to such associations that we prefer the delicately gradated blushes of coloured marble to the richly bedaubed countenance of a pimpled brickbat? But it would be a waste of time to refer again to the crude anti-Æsthetic notions of Messrs. Knight, Alison, and Jeffrey.

One more exquisite illustration of subtle gradation in the human form divine may be cited from Winckelmann:—

“The soul, though a simple existence, brings forth at once, and in an instant, many different ideas; so it is with the beautiful youthful outline, which appears simple, and yet at the same time has infinitely different variations, and that soft tapering which is difficult of attainment in a column, is still more so in the diverse forms of the youthful body. Among the innumerable kinds of columns in Rome some appear pre-eminently elegant on account of this very tapering; of these I have particularly noted two of granite, which I am always studying anew: just so rare is a perfect form, even in the most beautiful youth, which has a stationary point in our sex still less than in the female.”

(c) Curvature.—"That all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves will," Mr. Ruskin believes, “be at once allowed; but that which there will be need more especially to prove, is the subtility and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast (as in the slope of debris), in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are no lines or surfaces of nature without curvature, though, as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon, and in vast and extended plains, right lines are often suggested which are not actual. Without these we should not be sensible of the value of contrasting curves; and while, therefore, for the most part, the eye is fed in natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument can follow, other means are provided to give beauty to those surfaces which are admitted for contrast, as in water by its reflection of the gradations which it possesses not itself.”

In a footnote to the last edition of the Modern Painters he adds regarding the apparent exceptions named: “Crystals are indeed subject to rectilinear limitations, but their real surfaces are continually curved; the level of calm water is only right lined when it is shoreless.”

On the other hand, “Generally in all ruin and disease, and interference of one order of being with another (as in the cattle line of park trees), the curves vanish, and violently opposed or broken and unmeaning lines take their place.” I feel tempted to cite another most admirable passage on curvature throughout Nature—even where it is least looked for, and the untrained eye cannot see it—in the shattered walls and crests of mountains which “seem to rise in a gloomy contrast with the soft waves of bank and wood beneath.” But it is too long to quote, and I can only advise the reader most earnestly to look it up in chapter xiv. vol. iv.

“Straight lines,” Professor Bain observes, “are rendered artistic only by associations of power, regularity, fitness, etc.” “In some situations straight lines are Æsthetic.... In the human figure there underlies the curved outline a certain element of rigidity and straightness, indicating strength in the supporting limbs and spine. Whenever firmness is required, there must be a solid structure, and straightness of form is a frequent accompaniment of solidity. The straight nose and the flat brow are subsidiary to the movement and the stability of the face.”

Yet even our straight limbs follow in their motions the law of curvature. And to this fact that they move more easily and naturally in a curved than in a straight line, which requires laborious adjustment, Bain traces part of our superior pleasure in rounded lines.

What infinite subtlety and variety Curvature is capable of is vividly brought before the eyes by Winckelmann: “The forms of a beautiful body are determined by lines the centre of which is constantly changing, and which, if continued, would never describe circles. They are, consequently, more simple, but also more complex, than a circle, which, however large or small it may be, always has the same centre, and either includes others or is included in others. This diversity was sought after by the Greeks in works of all kinds; and their discernment of its beauty led them to introduce the same system even into the form of their utensils and vases, whose easy and elegant outline is drawn after the same rule, that is, by a line which must be found by means of several circles, for all these works have an elliptical figure, and herein consists their beauty. The greater unity there is in the junction of the forms, and in the flowing of one out of another, so much the greater is the beauty of the whole.”

Masculine and Feminine Beauty.—The universality of curvature as a form of beautiful objects throughout nature and art is of importance in helping us to determine the question which is the more beautiful form, a perfect man or a perfect woman—an Apollo or a Venus? A Venus, no doubt. In those qualities which are subsumed under the terms of the sublime or the characteristic—in strength, manly dignity, intellectual power, majesty—the masculine type, no doubt, is superior to the feminine. But in Beauty proper—in the roundness and delicacy of contours, in the smoothness of complexion and its subtle gradations of colour, in the symmetrical roundness and lustrous expressiveness of the eyes—the feminine type is pre-eminent.

“Woman,” says Professor Kollmann, “is smaller, more delicate, but also softer and more graceful (schwungvoller) in form, in her breasts, hips, thighs, and calves. No line on her body is short and sharply angular; they all swell, or vault themselves in a gentle curve.... The neck and the rounded shoulders are connected by gracefully curved lines, whereas a man’s neck is placed more at a right angle to the more straight and angular shoulders.... The hair is softer, the skin more tender and transparent. All the forms are more covered over with adipose tissue, and connected by those gradual transitions which produce the gently rounded outlines; whereas in a man everything—muscles, sinews, blood-vessels, bones—is more conspicuous.”

Schopenhauer, accordingly, was clearly in the wrong when he endeavoured to make out that man is vastly superior to woman in physical beauty,—a notion which Professor Huxley, too, does not appear to disapprove of very violently. At the same time it is, no doubt, true that there are more good specimens of masculine beauty in most countries than of feminine beauty; true also that man’s beauty lasts much longer than woman’s. A boy is more beautiful than a girl under sixteen, for the very reason that his form is more like that of an adult woman than a girl’s is. From eighteen to twenty-five woman is more beautiful than man; while after thirty, owing to the almost universal neglect of the laws of health—women are apt to become either too rotund, which ruins their grace and delicacy, or too angular—more angular than a man under fifty.

(d) Delicacy and Grace.—The difference between masculine and feminine beauty and the superiority of the latter is also indirectly brought out in Burke’s remarks on Delicacy, which, though open to criticism in one or two points, are on the whole admirable and exhaustive:—

"An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest which we consider as beautiful; they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of reverence. It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine, which we look on as vegetable beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and elegance. Among animals the greyhound is more beautiful than the mastiff, and the delicacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse is much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of war or carriage.

“I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe the point will be easily allowed me. The beauty of women is considerably owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it. I would not here be understood to say that weakness betraying very bad health has any share in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the bright colour, the lumen purpureum juventÆ is gone, and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines.”

Delicacy is a quality closely related to grace, or beauty in motion and attitude. “Grace,” says Dr. J. A. Symonds, “is a striking illustration of the union of the two principles of similarity and variety. For the secret of graceful action is that the symmetry is preserved through all the varieties of position.” This is well put; but the first condition and essence of grace is that there must be an exact correspondence between the work done and the limb which does it. The attitude of an oak-trunk, with nothing on the top but a geranium bush, however symmetrical, would always be ungraceful, owing to the ludicrous disproportion between the support and the thing supported. Conversely, a weak fern-stalk, trying to support a branch of heavy cactus leaves, would be equally ungraceful; for there must be neither a waste of energy nor a sense of effort. Part of this feeling may perhaps be traced to sympathy—thus showing how various emotions enter into our Æsthetic judgments, sometimes weakening, sometimes strengthening them. As Professor Bain remarks, À propos: “We love to have removed from our sight every aspect of suffering, and none more so than the suffering of toil.”

Grace is almost as powerful to inspire Love as Beauty itself. Women know this instinctively, and in order to acquire the Delicacy which leads to grace, they deprive their bodies of air and sunshine and strengthening sleep, hoping thereby to acquire artificially, through ill-health, what Nature has denied them. Fortunately such violations of the laws of health always frustrate their object. Delicacy conjoined with Health inspires Love, but delicacy born of disease inspires only pity—a feeling which may inspire in a woman what she imagines is Love, but in a man never.

(e) Smoothness is another attribute of Beauty on which Burke was the first to place proper emphasis: It is, he says, “a quality so essential to beauty that I do not recollect anything beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers, smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth streams in the landscape; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal beauties; in fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces.... Any ruggedness, any sudden projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to the idea of beauty.”

Though there are exceptions to this rule of smoothness—including such a marvel of beauty as the moss-rose, as well as various leaves covered with down, etc.—yet, on the whole, Burke is right. Certainly the smooth white hand of a delicate lady is more beautiful than the rough, horny “paws” of a bricklayer; and the inferior beauty of a man’s arm is owing as much to its rough scattered hairs as to the prominence of the muscles, in contrast to the smooth and rounded arm of woman. In animals, however, hairs on the limbs are not unbeautiful, because they are dense enough to overlap, and thus form a hairy surface admirable alike for its soft smoothness, its gloss, and its colour.

(f) Lustre and Colour.—Lustrous, sparkling eyes, glossy hair, pearly teeth,—where would human beauty be without them without the delicate tints and blushes of the skin, the brown or blue iris, the golden or chestnut locks, the ebony eyebrows and lashes?

Yet the greatest art-critics incline to the opinion that, on the whole, colour is a less essential ingredient of beauty than form. “Colour assists beauty,” says Winckelmann, but “the essence of beauty consists not in colour but in shape.” “A negro might be called handsome when the conformation of his face is handsome.” “The colour of bronze and of the black and greenish basalt does not detract from the beauty of the antique heads,” hence “we possess a knowledge of the beautiful, although in an unreal dress and of a disagreeable colour.”

Similarly Mr. Ruskin, who remarks of colour that it “is richly bestowed on the highest works of creation, and the eminent sign and seal of perfection in them; being associated with life in the human form, with light in the sky, with purity and hardness in the earth,—death, night, and pollution of all kinds being colourless. And although if form and colour be brought into complete opposition, so that it should be put to us as a stern choice whether we should have a work of art all of form, without colour (as an Albert DÜrer’s engraving), or all of colour, without form (as an imitation of mother-of-pearl), form is beyond all comparison the more precious of the two ... yet if colour be introduced at all, it is necessary that, whatever else may be wrong, that should be right,” etc.

Again: “An oak is an oak, whether green with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be yellow or crimson; and if some monster-hunting botanist should ever frighten the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia; but let one curve of the petals—one groove of the stamens—be wanting, and the flower ceases to be the same. Let the roughness of the bark and the angles of the boughs be smoothed or diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak; but let it retain its inward structure and outward form, and though its leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tricolour, it would be a white oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but an oak still.”

“If we look at Nature carefully, we shall find that her colours are in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the sky, or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local colour; this local colour, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light or quenched in the gray of the shadow; and the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great that were we left to find out what objects were by their colours only, we would scarcely in place distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond them or the ground beneath them. I know that people unpractised in art will not believe this at first; but if they have accurate powers of observation, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find that, while they can scarcely ever determine the exact hue of anything, except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or the blue sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided and evident, and the source of the chief character of every object.”

Professor Bain remarks on this topic that “Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colour.... For this reason we find the poets borrowing more of their epithets from colours than from any other topic.”

This view seems to be confirmed by the fact that lovers in expatiating on the beauty of their Dulcineas seem to have much more to say about their brown or golden locks, their light or dark complexion, their blue or black eyes, than about the shape of their features. This, however, partly finds its explanation in the fact that colour, being a sensuous quality, is more easily and more directly appreciated than form, the perception of which is a much more complicated matter, being a translation into intellectual terms of remembered impressions of touch, associated with certain colours, lights, and shades which recall them; and partly in the greater ease with which peculiarities of colour are referred to than peculiarities of form. In the days of ancient Greece the nomenclature of colours was equally undeveloped, and is so vague in Homer that Gladstone and Geiger actually set up the theory that Homer’s colour-sense was imperfect, and that that sense has been gradually developed within historic times,—a theory which I have confuted on anatomical grounds in Macmillan’s Magazine, Dec. 1879.

That as regards human beauty colour is of less importance than form is shown, moreover, in this, that a girl with regular features and a freckled complexion will much sooner find a lover than one with the most delicately-coloured complexion, conjoined with a big mouth, irregular nose, or sunken cheeks. And a beautifully-shaped eye is sure to be admired by all, no matter whether blue, gray, or brown; whereas an eye that is too small or otherwise defective in form can never be redeemed by the most beautiful colour or brilliancy.

On the other hand, there are several things to be said in favour of colour that will mitigate our judgment on this point. In the first place, colour is more perfect in its way than form, so that it is impossible ever to improve on it by idealising, as it is often with form. As Mr. Ruskin remarks, “Form may be attained in perfection by painters, who, in their course of study, are continually altering or idealising it; but only the sternest fidelity will reach colouring. Idealise or alter in that, and you are lost. Whether you alter by debasing or exaggerating, by glare or by decline, one fate is for you—ruin.... Colour is sacred in that you must keep to facts. Hence the apparent anomaly that the only schools of colour are the schools of realism.”

Again, looking at Nature with an artist’s eye, Ruskin discovered and frequently alludes to the “apparent connection of brilliancy of colour with vigour of life,” and Mr. Wallace, looking at Nature with a naturalist’s eye, established this “apparent connection” as a scientific fact. The passage in which he sums up his views has been once already quoted; but it is of such extreme importance in enforcing the lesson that beauty is impossible without health, that it may be quoted again:—

“The colours of an animal usually fade during disease or weakness, while robust health and vigour adds to its intensity.... In all quadrupeds a ‘dull coat’ is indicative of ill-health or low condition; while a glossy coat and sparkling eye are the invariable accompaniments of health and energy. The same rule applies to the feathers of birds, whose colours are only seen in their purity during perfect health; and a similar phenomenon occurs even among insects, for the bright hues of caterpillars begin to fade as soon as they become inactive, preparatory to their undergoing transformation. Even in the Vegetable Kingdom we see the same thing; for the tints of foliage are deepest, and the colours of flowers and fruits richest, on those plants which are in the most healthy and vigorous condition.”

(g) Expression, Variety, Individuality.—Besides the circumstances that colour is more uniformly perfect in Nature than form, and that it is always associated with Health, without which Beauty is impossible, another peculiarity may be mentioned in its favour. The complexion is a kaleidoscope whose delicate blushes and constant changes of tint, from the ashen pallor of despair to the rosy flush of delight, are the fascinating signs of emotional expression. And herein lies the superior beauty of the human complexion over all other tinted objects: it reflects not only the hues of surrounding external bodies, but all the moods of the soul within.

Form without colour is form without expression. But form without expression soon ceases to fascinate, for we constantly crave novelty and variety; and form is one, while expression is infinitely varied and ever new. Herein lies the extreme importance of expression as a test of Beauty. Colour, of course, is only one phase of expression. The soul not only changes the tints of the complexion, but liquifies the facial muscles so that they can be readily moulded into forms characteristic of joy, sadness, hope, fear, adoration, hatred, anger, affection, etc.

Why is the portrait-painter so infinitely superior to the photographer? Because the photographer—paradoxical as this may seem—gives you a less realistic picture of yourself than the artist. He only gives you the fixed form, or at most a transient expression which, being fixed permanently, loses its essence, which is motion—and thus becomes a caricature—an exaggeration in duration. But the artist studies you by the hour, makes you talk, notes the habitual forms of expression most characteristic of your individuality; and, blending these into a sort of “typical portrait” of your various individual traits, makes a picture which reveals all the advantages of art over mere solar mechanism or photography.

This explains why some of the most charming persons we know never appear well in a photograph, while others much less charming do. The beauty of the latter lies in form, of the former in expression. But expression is much more potent to inspire admiration and Love than mere beauty of features; and not without reason, for beautiful features, being a lucky inheritance, may be conjoined with unamiable individual traits, whereas beautiful expression is the infallible index of a beautiful mind and character; and promises, moreover, beautiful sons and daughters, because “expression is feature in the making.” It is by such subtle signs and promises that Love is unconsciously and instinctively guided in its choice.

Formal Beauty alone is external and cold. It is those slight variations in Beauty and expression which we call individuality and character that excite emotion: so much so that Love, as we have seen, is dependent on individuality, and a man who warmly admires all beautiful women is in love with none.

Speaking of the Greeks, Sir Charles Bell says: “In high art it appears to have been the rule of the sculptor to divest the form of expression.... In the Venus, the form is exquisite and the face perfect, but there is no expression there; it has no human softness, nothing to love.” “All individuality was studiously avoided by the ancient sculptors in the representation of divinity; they maintained the beauty of form and proportion, but without expression, which, in their system, belonged exclusively to humanity.”

But inasmuch as the Greeks attributed to their deities all the various emotions which agitate man, why did they refuse them the signs of expression? One cannot but suspect that the Greeks did not sufficiently appreciate the beauty of expression. Had they valued it more they would not have allowed their women to vegetate in ignorance like flowers, one like the other, but would have educated them and given them the individuality and expression which alone can inspire Love.

Again, if the Greeks had been susceptible to the superior charms of emotional expression, is it likely that they would have been so completely absorbed in the two least expressive and emotional of the arts—architecture and sculpture?

We cannot avoid the conclusion that the Greeks were as indifferent to the charms of individual expression as to Romantic Love, which is dependent on it. In their statues, as Dr. Max Schasler remarks, a mouth or eye has no more significance as a mark of beauty than a well-shaped leg. Whereas in modern, and even sometimes in mediÆval art, what a world of expression in a mouth, a pair of eyes!

Leaving individual exceptions (like Homer) aside, it may be said that the arts have been successively developed to a climax in the order of their capacity for emotional expression, viz.—Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Music. Poetry precedes music, because though its emotional scope is wider, it is less intense. To-day music is the most popular and universal of all the arts because it stirs most deeply our feelings. And just as the discovery of harmony, by individualising the melodies, has increased the power and variety of music a thousandfold; so the individualisation of Beauty and character through modern culture has made Romantic Love a blessing accessible to all—the most prevalent form of modern affection.

Individuality is of such extreme importance in Love that a slight blemish is not only pardoned but actually adored if it increases the individuality. Bacon evidently had this in his mind when he said that “there is no excellent beauty which has not some strangeness in its proportion.” Seneca, as well as Ovid, noted the attractiveness of slight short-comings; and the following anecdote shows that though the Persians, as a nation, have ever been strangers to Romantic Love, their greatest poet, HÁfiz, understood the psychology of the subject in its subtlest details:—

“One day Timur (fourteenth century) sent for HÁfiz and asked angrily: ‘Art thou he who was so bold as to offer my two great cities Samarkand and Bokhara for the black mole on thy mistress’s cheek?’ alluding to a well-known verse in one of his odes. ‘Yes, sire,’ replied HÁfiz, ‘and it is by such acts of generosity that I have brought myself to such a state of destitution that I have now to solicit your bounty.’ Timur was so pleased with the ready wit displayed in this answer that he dismissed the poet with a handsome present.”

To sum up: the reason why

is not, as Bryant implies, the transitoriness of the rose, but the fact that the marble flower, like the wax-flower, is dead and unchangeable, while the short-lived rose beams with the expression of happy vitality after a shower, or sadly droops and hangs its head in a drouth. It has life and expression, subtle gradations of colour, and light and shade, which are the signs of its vitality and moods, varying every day, every hour. And so with all the higher forms of life, those always being most beautiful and highly prized which are most capable of expressing subtle variations of health, happiness, and mental refinement.

There is no part of the human body which does not serve as a mark of expression—

It will not do, therefore, to neglect any part of the body. As it is the last straw which breaks the camel’s back, so Cupid’s capricious choice is often determined by some minor point of perfection, when the balance is otherwise equal. Suppose there are two sisters whose faces, figures, and mental attractions are about equal; then it is possible that one of them will die an old maid simply because the other had a smaller foot, a more graceful gait, or longer eyelashes.

But though every organ has its own beauty, there is an Æsthetic scale of lower and higher which corresponds pretty accurately with the physical scale from down upwards—from the foot to the eye and forehead. It is in this order, accordingly, that we shall now proceed to consider the various parts of the human form, and those peculiarities in them which are considered most beautiful and most liable to inspire Romantic Love.