Beauty Part 15

The native country of beauty is not to be found either in regions where cold freezes up the living juices, or in those where the animal structure is withered by heat. A climate removed from the excessive influence of both these causes const.i.tutes an essential condition in the production of beauty; and this, with its effect, we find between the 35th and 65th degree of northern lat.i.tude, in Persia, the countries bordering upon Caucasus, and princ.i.p.ally Tcherca.s.sia, Georgia and Mongrelia, Turkey in Europe and Asia, Greece, Italy, some part of Spain, a very small part of France, England, Holland, some parts of Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and a part of Norway and even of Russia.

Even under the same degree of lat.i.tude, it is observed that the position of the place, its elevation, its vicinity to the sea, the direction of the winds, the nature of the soil, and all the peculiarities of locality which const.i.tute the climate proper to each place, occasion great differences in beauty.

In relation to the causes of beauty, some observations which seem to be important, arise out of the remarks of de Pauw on the Greeks.

De Pauw endeavored to show, that, though the men of ancient Greece were handsome, the women of that country were never beautiful. He thence accounted for the excessive admiration which there prevailed of courtesans from Ionia, &c.

This, however, was so contrary to the notions formed of the beauty of that people from what was known of their taste, that it was considered as a paradox. Travellers, accordingly, sought for such beauty in the women of modern Greece. They were disappointed in not finding it.

What rendered this the more remarkable was, that in various places they found the ancient and beautiful cast of countenance among the men, and not among the women of that country--thus corroborating in all respects the doctrine of de Pauw.

On considering that doctrine, however, and comparing it with more extended observations, it would seem to be only a particular application of a more general law unknown to de Pauw--that, in most countries, one of the s.e.xes excels the other in beauty.

Thus, in some parts of the highlands of Scotland, we find the men as remarkable for beauty as the women for ugliness; while, in some eastern counties of England, we find precisely the reverse. The strong features, the dark curled hair and the muscular form, of the highlander, are as unsuitable to the female s.e.x, as the soft features, the flaxen hair, and the short and tapering limbs, of the woman of the eastern coast, are unsuitable to the male.

If the soil, climate, and productions, of these countries be considered, we discover the causes of the differences alluded to. The hardships of mountain life are favorable to the stronger development of the locomotive system, which ought more or less to characterize the male; and the luxuriance of the plains is favorable to those developments of the nutritive system, which ought to characterize the female.

This is ill.u.s.trated even in inferior animals. Oxen become large-bodied and fat in low and rich soils, but are remarkable for shortness of legs; while, in higher and drier situations, the bulk of the body is less, and the limbs are stronger and more muscular.

The quant.i.ty and quality of the aliments are another cause, not less powerful in regard to beauty. Abundance, or rather a proper mediocrity, as to nutritious food, contributes to perfection in this respect.

Beauty is also, in some measure, a result of civilization. Women, accordingly, of consummate beauty, are found only in civilized nations.

Professions can rarely be said to favor beauty; but they do not impede its development when their exercise does not compel to laborious employments an organization suited only to sedentary occupations.

CHAPTER X.

OF THE STANDARD OF BEAUTY IN WOMAN.

The ideas of the beautiful vary in different individuals, and in different nations. Hence, many men of talent have thought them altogether relative and arbitrary.

"Ask," says Voltaire, "a Negro of Guinea [what is beauty]: the beautiful is for him a black oily skin, deep-seated eyes, and a broad flat nose."

"Perfect beauty," says Payne Knight, "taking perfect in its most strict, and beauty in its most comprehensive signification, ought to be equally pleasing to all; but of this, instances are scarcely to be found: for, as to taking them, or, indeed, any examples for ill.u.s.tration, from the other s.e.x of our own species, it is extremely fallacious; as there can be little doubt that all male animals think the females of their own species the most beautiful productions of nature. At least we know this to be the case among the different varieties of men, whose respective ideas of the beauty of their females are as widely different as those of man, and any other animal, can be. The sable Africans view with pity and contempt the marked deformity of the Europeans; whose mouths are compressed, their noses pinched, their cheeks shrunk, their hair rendered lank and flimsy, their bodies lengthened and emaciated, and their skins unnaturally bleached by shade and seclusion, and the baneful influence of a cold humid climate....

Who shall decide which party is right, or which is wrong; or whether the black or white model be, according to the laws of nature, the most perfect specimen of a perfect woman?... The s.e.xual desires of brutes are probably more strictly natural inclinations, and less changed or modified by the influence of acquired ideas, or social habits, than those of any race of mankind; but their desires seem, in general, to be excited by smell, rather than by sight or contact. If, however, a boar can think a sow the sweetest and most lovely of living creatures, we can have no difficulty in believing that he also thinks her the most beautiful."

"Among the various reasons," says Reynolds, "why we prefer one part of nature's works to another, the most general, I believe, is habit and custom; custom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and black white; it is custom alone determines our preference of the color of the Europeans to the Ethiopians, and they, for the same reason, prefer their own color to ours. I suppose n.o.body will doubt, if one of their painters were to paint the G.o.ddess of beauty, but that he would represent her black, with thick lips, flat nose, and woolly hair; and it seems to me, he would act very unnaturally if he did not; for by what criterion will any one dispute the propriety of his idea? We indeed say, that the form and color of the European are preferable to those of the Ethiopian; but I know of no other reason we have for it, but that we are more accustomed to it."

The coquetry of several tribes, it has been observed, leads them to mutilate and disfigure themselves, to flatten their forehead, to enlarge their mouth and ears, to blacken their skin, and cover it with the marks of suffering.--We make ugliness in that way, says Montaigne.

But, to confine our observations to individual nations, and these civilized ones; we every day see irregular or even common figures preferred to those which the enlightened judge deems beautiful.

How, then, it is asked, amid these different tastes, these opposite opinions, are we to admit ideas of absolute beauty?

These are the strongest objections against all ideas of absolute and essential beauty in woman.

To establish, in opposition to these objections, a standard of womanly beauty, equal talent has been employed; but the reasoning, though sufficient for such objections, has been rather of a vague description.

As, however, the subject is of great importance, I shall endeavor to abridge and concentrate the arguments of which it consists, before I point out the surer method which is founded on the Elements of Beauty already established.

To refute these objections, it has been thought sufficient to examine the chief conditions which are necessary, in order to appreciate properly the impression of those combinations, which woman presents, and to expose the princ.i.p.al circ.u.mstances which are opposed to the accuracy of opinions, and judgments respecting them.

The conditions necessary to enable us to p.r.o.nounce respecting the real attributes of beauty, are, first, a temperate climate, under which nature brings to perfection all her productions, and gives to their forms and functions, generally, and to those of man in particular, all the development of which they are capable, without excess in the action of some, and defect in that of others;--secondly, in man in particular, a brain capable of vigorous thought, sound judgment, and exquisite taste;--and thirdly, a very advanced civilization, without which these faculties cannot be duly exercised or attain any perfection.

It is evident enough that none of these conditions are to be met with in the whimsical judgments and tastes of many nations.

The consequence of the absence of these conditions, in relation to the uncivilized and ignorant inhabitants of hot climates, is marked in their deeming characteristics of beauty, the thick lips of Negresses, the long and pendent mammae of the women in several nations both of Africa and America, or the gross forms of those of Egypt.

The consequence of the absence of these conditions, in relation to the uncivilized and ignorant inhabitants of cold climates, is equally marked in their deeming characteristics of beauty the short figures of the women of icy regions, in which, deprived of the vivifying action of heat and light, living beings appear only in a state of deformity and alteration; and in their similarly deeming beautiful the obliquely-placed eyes of the Chinese and j.a.panese, and the crushed nose of the Calmucs, &c., &c.

Those who take these views, which are true, though somewhat vague and inconclusive, should, I think, have seen and added, that the deviations from beauty in the forms of the women of hot climates are commonly in _excess_, owing to the great development of organs of sense or of s.e.x; while the deviations from beauty, in the forms of the women of cold climates, are commonly in _defect_, owing to the imperfect development of organs of sense, and of the general figure.

This view renders it more clear that both these kinds of deviation are deformities, incompatible with the consistent and harmonious development of the whole. And without this view, the preceding arguments are indeed too vague to be easily tenable.

In relation more especially to the second of the preceding conditions, the possession of a brain capable of vigorous thought, sound judgment, and exquisite taste, Hume observes that the same excellence of faculties which contributes to the improvement of reason, the same clearness of conception, the same exactness of distinction, the same vivacity of apprehension, are essential to the operations of true taste.

Here, again, those who take these true, but vague and inconclusive views, should, I think, have seen and added that this excellence of the thinking faculties is incompatible with the obviously constricted brain, which is a defect common both to the Negro and the Mongol--a _defect_ which is incompatible with beauty either of form or function, and which I have shown, in my work on physiognomy, to be intimately connected with climate.

This renders the argument sufficiently strong.

Those who employ these arguments as to a standard of beauty in woman, proceed to show the modes in which defects of this kind unfit persons to judge of beauty; and though their farther arguments are similarly vague, they nevertheless tend to support the truth.

If, say they, among the forms and the features which we compare, some are a.s.sociated by us with certain qualities or sentiments which please us, they equally lead us to a predilection or prejudice, in consequence of which the most common or the least beautiful figure is preferred to the most perfect. In this case, the imagination has perverted the judgment.

Winckelmann truly observes, that young people are most exposed to such errors: placed under the influence of sentiment and of illusion, they often regard, as very beautiful, women who have nothing capable of charming, but an animated physiognomy, in which breathe desire, voluptuousness, and languor. The results of this as to life may easily be foreseen.

Of the excess to which such prejudice may go, a good instance is adduced in Descartes, who preferred women who squinted to the most perfect beauties, because squinting was one of the most remarkable features of the woman who was the first object of his affections.

Winckelmann observes that even artists themselves have not always an exquisite sentiment of beauty: their first impressions have often an influence which they cannot overcome, nor even weaken, especially when, at a distance from the admirable productions of the ancients, they cannot rectify their first judgments.

Circ.u.mstances of profession, it is truly observed, may also lead to a.s.sociations of ideas capable of deceiving us in our opinions respecting beauty. Men are apt to refer everything to their exclusive knowledge and the mode of judging which it employs. The "what does that prove" of the mathematician, when judging the finest products of imagination, has pa.s.sed into a proverb. And every one knows of that other cultivator of the same science, who declared that he never could discover anything sublime in Milton's Paradise Lost, but that he could never read the queries at the end of one of the books in Newton's Optics, without his hair standing on end and his blood running cold.

The necessity of the third condition, namely, advanced civilization, to a right judgment respecting a standard of beauty in woman, is evident, when we consider that it requires a taste formed by the habit of bringing things together and of comparing them.

One accustomed to see, says Hume, "and examine, and weigh the several performances, admired in different ages and nations, can alone rate the merits of a work exhibited to his view, and a.s.sign its proper rank among the productions of genius."

From all this, it is certainly evident--not merely that that which pleases us is not always beautiful; that numerous causes may form so many sources of diversity and of error on this subject; and that we cannot thence conclude that the ideas of beauty are relative and arbitrary--but that certain conditions are indispensable to form the judgment respecting beauty; and that the princ.i.p.al of these conditions are, a temperate climate and fertile soil, a well-developed brain, sound judgment, and delicate taste, and a highly-advanced civilization.

This is perfectly conformable with the practical fact that it was under a most delightful climate, among a people of unrivalled judgment, genius, and taste, and amid a civilization which the world has never since witnessed, that the laws of Nature as to beauty were discovered, and applied to the production of those immortal forms which the unfavorable accidents occurring to the existence of all beings, have never permitted Nature herself to combine in any one individual.

Though I have endeavored to amend these arguments respecting a standard of beauty in woman, I prefer those which may be founded on the doctrine I have laid down respecting the Elements of Beauty. It will be found that the greatest number of these elements are combined in the woman whom we commonly deem the most beautiful.

To ill.u.s.trate this, it will be sufficient to examine their most striking and distinctive characteristic, namely, their fair complexion, which is intimately connected with all their other characteristics, and which gives increased splendor and effect to their form and features.

It is remarkable that even Alison, though the advocate of all beauty being dependant on a.s.sociation, grants that the pure white of the countenance is expressive to us, according to its different degrees, of purity, fineness, gayety; that the dark complexion, on the other hand, is expressive to us of melancholy, gloom, or sadness; and that so far is this from being a fanciful relation, that it is generally admitted by those who have the best opportunities of ascertaining it, the professors of medical science.

He also observes that black eyes are commonly united with the dark, and blue eyes with the fair complexion; and that, in the color of the eyes, blue, according to its different degrees, is expressive of softness, gentleness, cheerfulness, or severity; and black, of thought, or gravity, or of sadness.