A USELESS ORNAMENT

The shell of the ear appears to be the only part of man’s visible body which has ceased to be useful and become purely ornamental “Persons whose ears have been cut off hear just as well as before,” says Professor Haeckel. Dr. J. Toynbee, F.R.S., “after collecting all the evidence on this head, concludes that the external shell is of no distinct use;” and Darwin was informed by Professor Preyer that after experimenting on the functions of the shell of the ear he had come to nearly the same conclusion.

To infer from this that our external ears have been developed, through Sexual Selection, for purely ornamental purposes, would not be in accord with scientific analogies. For, often as existing organs (horns, feathers, etc.) are modified for ornamental purposes, there are no known instances of any that have been specially developed for that purpose; even the facial muscles of expression being, as we have seen, in this predicament. Hence we are led to conclude that man has inherited the shell of his ear from a remote apelike ancestor, to whom it was of use in catching faint sounds, and who consequently had the power, common to other animals, not only of directing the ears as a whole to different points of the compass, but of temporarily altering its shape. Indeed, one of the strongest proofs of our descent from lower animals lies in the fact that man still possesses, in a rudimentary form, the muscles needed to move the ears. Some savage tribes have considerable control over these muscles. The famous physiologist, Johannes MÜller, after long and patient efforts, succeeded in recovering the power of moving his ears; and Darwin writes: “I have seen one man who could draw the whole ear forwards; other men can draw it upwards; another who could draw it backwards; and from what one of these persons told me, it is probable that most of us, by often touching our ears, and thus directing our attention towards them, could recover some power of movement by repeated trials.”

Ordinary monkeys still possess the power to move their ears; but the manlike or anthropoid apes resemble us in the rudimentary condition of their ear-muscles; and Darwin was assured by the keepers in the London Zoological Gardens that these animals never move or erect their ears. He suggests two theories to account for the loss of this power: first, that, owing to their arboreal habits and great strength, these apes were not exposed to much danger, and thus gradually, through disuse, lost control over these organs, just as birds on oceanic islands where they are not subject to attacks have lost the use of their wings; secondly, that the freedom with which they can move the head in a horizontal plane enabled them to dispense with mobile ears.

The remarkable variability of the ears—greater, by the way, in men than in women—is another reason for regarding them as rudimentary organs, inherited from remote semi-human ancestors, to whom they were useful; for great variability is a characteristic of all rudimentary organs. Haeckel facetiously suggests that “at large assemblies, where our interest is not sufficiently enchained, nothing is more instructive and entertaining than a comparative study of the countless variations in the form of the ears.” The ancient Greek artists were aware of this variability, for Wincklemann speaks of “the infinite variety of forms of the ear on heads modelled from life.” “It was customary with the ancient artists to elaborate no portion of the head more diligently than the ears.” “In portrait figures, when the countenance is so much injured as not to be recognised, we can occasionally make a correct conjecture as to the person intended, if it is one of whom we have any knowledge, merely by the form of the ear; thus we infer a head of Marcus Aurelius from an ear with an unusually large inner opening.”

If we compare a man’s ears with those of a dog or horse, differences of shape appear no less conspicuous than differences in mobility. Two points are especially characteristic of man—the folded upper margin and the lobule. Our cousins, the anthropoid apes, are the only other animals which have the margin of the ear thus folded inwards, the lower monkeys having them simple and pointed, like other animals. The sculptor, Mr. Woolner, called Darwin’s attention to “a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly-folded margin or helix.” Darwin, on investigating the matter, came to the conclusion that these points “are vestiges of the tips of former erect and pointed ears”; being led to think so “from the frequency of their occurrence, and from the general correspondence in position with that of the tip of a pointed ear.”

The lobule is still more peculiar to man than the folded margin, since he does not even share it with the anthropoid apes, although, according to Professor Mivart, “a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla.” An intermediate stage between man and ape is occupied by some savage tribes in whom the lobule is scantily developed or even absent.

COSMETICS AND FASHION

The lobule of the human ear has been presumably developed through the agency of Sexual Selection, as it is an ornament the absence of which is at once felt. And there are other ways in which this organ has been gradually brought into harmony with the laws of beauty. Thus the loss of the hair (of which rudiments are still occasionally present) made visible the soft skin and the delicate tint of the ear, which, like that of the cheeks, may be momentarily heightened by a blush, and thus become an index of emotional expression. A permanently heightened colour of the ear, however, caused by exposure to extreme cold or by rough treatment, is almost as great a blemish as a red nose or pallid lips. If boxers are anxious to deform their ears, no one has a right to object; but children have a right to ask of their parents and teachers not to redden their ears permanently by pulling or boxing them. That a delicate and important sense-organ like the ear should be so frequently chosen as a place to inflict punishment, shows the necessity of a general diffusion of hygienic knowledge. It may not be superfluous to add a caution to lovers, that the ears should never be taken as an osculatory substitute for the lips or cheeks, as cases are known in medical practice where the tympanum, and consequently the hearing, has been destroyed by a vigorous kiss implanted by a foolish lover on his sweetheart’s ears.

An ear to be beautiful should be about twice as long as broad. It should be attached to the head almost straight, or slightly inclined backwards, and should almost touch the head with the back of its upper point. Many poor girls are deformed for life through the ignorance of their mothers, who allow them to wear their hair or bonnets in such a way as to make the ears stand out obliquely. As the ears contain no bones, but consist entirely of cartilages and skin, they can be, more readily even than the nose, moulded into a fine shape at an early age. As Drs. Brinton and Napheys remark, “Even when the ear is in part or altogether absent, the case is not desperate. An ‘artificial ear’ can be made of vulcanised rubber, or other material, tinted the colour of the flesh, and attached to the side of the head with such deftness that its character will escape every ordinary eye.” There is therefore no excuse for having badly-shaped or wrongly-inclined ears in these days of cosmetic surgery.

In the most beautiful ears the lobe is free, and not attached to the head in its lower part. Heavy earrings, which have a tendency to unduly enlarge the lobules, are now tabooed by Fashion; but very small jewels in the ear may be looked on, like small finger-rings, necklaces, and bracelets, as unobjectionable from an Æsthetic point of view, though real beauty unadorned is adorned the most.

Formerly Fashion maltreated the poor ears quite as badly as it still does the waist and the feet. Lubbock remarks that the East Islanders enlarge their ears till they come down to the shoulders; and Darwin, after referring to liberties taken with the nose, says that “the ears are everywhere pierced and similarly ornamented, and with the Botocudos and Lenguas of South America the hole is gradually so much enlarged that the lower edge touches the shoulder.”

Among the Greeks, as Becker remarks, "it was considered a dishonour, or a token of foreign manners, for men to have their ears bored.... Women and girls, however, not only used earrings, ???t?a, ?????a, ????t??e? which are seen perpetually in vases, but also wore numerous articles of jewellery about the neck, the arms, and on the leg above the ankle."

The ancients, too, had heard of the malformed ears of primitive peoples. “It is possible,” says Tylor, “that there may be some truth in the favourite wonder-tale of the old geographers, about the tribes whose great ears reached down to their shoulders, though the story had to be stretched a good deal when it was declared they lay down on one ear and covered themselves with the other for a blanket.”

Such blanket-ears would be the Æsthetic equivalent of modern bustles, crinolettes, and wasp-waists.

PHYSIOGNOMIC VAGARIES

Ever since the days of ancient Greek philosophy ingenious attempts have been made to find a special meaning for this or that particular form of the ear. According to Aristotle, a long ear indicates a good memory, whereas modern physiognomists incline to the opinion that a long ear shows a man’s mental relationship to a certain unjustly-maligned animal. Small ears, Lavater thinks, are a sign of an active mind, while a deep shell indicates a thirst for knowledge.

As a matter of fact, the ears have no connection whatever with intellectual or emotional expression, except that a well-shaped ear indicates in a general way that its possessor comes off a stock in which the laws of cosmetic hygiene have been observed during many generations. To many of the lower animals the ears are a means of emotional expression. What, for instance, could be more expressive and droll than the way a dog expresses mild surprise or expectation by pricking up his ears? Or what a more certain sign of viciousness in a horse than the drawing back of the ears?—a movement of which Darwin has found the reason in the fact that all animals that fight with their teeth retract their ears to protect them; whence, through habit and association, it comes that they draw them back whenever a fighting mood comes over them. Man, on the other hand, never uses his ears for emotional expression, because they are the least mobile part of the body. Now form is merely crystallised expression: and the absence of special movements for emotional expression necessarily prevents individual alterations indicative of character. Hence the absurdity of trying to use the ears as a basis for physiognomic distinctions.

NOISE AND CIVILISATION

What is the cause of the folding of the margin of the human ear, which distinguishes it from that of all other animals? Darwin remarks that it “appears to be in some manner connected with the whole external ear being permanently pressed backwards;” but this does not explain the mysterious phenomenon. After many hours of profound meditation on this subject I have come to the conclusion that this slight folding of the ear’s margin is the beginning of a new phase of human evolution. In course of time—this cannot be disproved—the fold of the margin will become larger and larger, until finally the shells of the ear will have been transformed into mobile lids for shutting out at will disagreeable noises, even as the eyelids have been developed to shut out glaring light. This would account for the providential preservation of the rudimentary ear-muscles referred to above. When this process of evolution is completed men coming home late will no longer have to listen to curtain-lectures. The innovation will tend to make them polite, for instead of telling the lecturer to “shut up,” they will shut up themselves.

Seriously speaking, such movable ear-lids are very much needed in this transition stage of civilisation. The present age of steam will by future historians be classified as the age of noise. It is almost impossible to find a place within ten miles of a city where one can rest without having one’s sleep constantly disturbed, or at least deprived of its refreshing depth, by the blowing of railway and factory whistles. Both are unnecessary, inasmuch as railway signals would be quite as effective if not so murderously loud and prolonged, while factory whistles are either blown at the moment when the operatives go to work, when a simple bell would do as well, or they are blown an hour earlier to wake up the workmen,—a most outrageous proceeding, as everybody else sleeping within a radius of a mile or more is thus waked up at six o’clock.

The fact that these nuisances have so long been tolerated shows how primitive is as yet the Æsthetic development of the average human ear. Some people even smile at you for being so “nervous,” and boast of their indifference to such hideous, brain-racking noises. The Esquimaux and Chinese would doubtless assume a similar attitude regarding their indifference to noisome stenches. In mediÆval times, Europeans in general were quite as indifferent to the emanations from their gutters as they still are to the hideous noises in the streets. It has often been noted with surprise that the death-rate in London and the general aspect of health should be so much more favourable than that of continental cities, which are free from the depressing London fogs. The reason, doubtless, lies chiefly in the facts that there are no vile sewer odours in London to poison the atmosphere, and that the pavement of the streets is of such a nature that one can sleep soundly at night, provided there are no steam whistles near. London, too, does not tolerate the brutal whip-cracking which transforms French, German, and Swiss towns and cities into Bedlams of noise. In this respect New York resembles London; but here the comparison ends. New York pavements are the noisiest, roughest, and dirtiest in the world. I have known of invalids who were advised to drive in the Central Park, but could not do so because they could not bear on their way to drive even up Fifth Avenue,—a street lined with the houses of millionaires. And to walk on Broadway for twenty minutes, talking to a friend, makes one as hoarse as delivering a two-hour lecture.

There can be no doubt that a horror of useless noise grows with the general refinement of the senses and the mind. Goethe’s aversion to noise, especially at night, is well known. It led him to poison dogs that disturbed him. The delicate hearing of Franz, the great song composer, was ruined by the whistle of a locomotive. And Schopenhauer has put the whole matter into a nutshell in these admirable words: “Intellectual persons, and all in general who have much esprit, cannot endure noise. Astounding, on the other hand, is the insensibility of ordinary people to noise. The quantity of noise which any one can endure without annoyance is really related inversely to his mental endowments, and may be regarded as a pretty accurate measure of them.”

A MUSICAL VOICE

It is self-evident that indifference to ear-splitting noises implies a lack of appreciation for the exquisite clang-tints of music; for whenever the acoustic nerve is sufficiently refined to appreciate such subtle tints, it is affected as painfully by harsh sounds as the artistic eye is by glaring colours and flickering light. And an ear which is indifferent to the sweetness of musical sounds is of course indifferent also to the musical charm of the speaking voice. But a sweetly modulated voice is one of the most conspicuous attributes of Personal Beauty—for Beauty refers to sounds as well as to sights—

There is as much variety in voices as in faces; and in estimating a person’s general refinement, the voice is perhaps a safer guide than the face; because the quality of the voice is largely a matter of individual training, whereas in reading faces the judgment is warped by the presence of inherited features speaking of traits which have not been modified by individual effort and culture.

Many young men and women live in absolute indifference to the quality of their speaking voice, till one day Cupid arouses them from their unÆsthetic slumber with his golden arrows, and makes them eager not only to brush up their hats and improve their personal appearance, but also to modulate their voices into sweet, expressive accents. But the vocal cords, like a violin, can only be made to yield mellow sounds after long practice; hence the usual result of a sudden effort to speak in love’s sweet accents is a ridiculous lover’s falsetto.