Beauty Part 16

Even this, however, is less conclusive than the pathological or physiological facts stated by Cheselden, as to the boy restored by him to sight, namely, that the first view of a black object gave him great pain, and that that of a negro-woman struck him with horror.

Independently of this, white, as every one is aware, is the color which reflects the greatest number of luminous rays; and, for that reason, it bestows the brilliance and splendor upon beautiful forms with which all are charmed.

Winckelmann, indeed, observes that the head of Scipio the elder, in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, executed in basalt of a deep green, is very beautiful. But, in that case, it is the form, not the color, of the head, that is beautiful. While greenness of complexion would not be beautiful in a man, it would certainly be hideously ugly in a woman.

Moreover, while, in a dead black or any dark color of face, it cannot be pretended that, considering its color only, we should have more than blackness or darkness for admiration, it is evident that, in a fair complexion, we have, in addition to its general brilliance or splendor, the infinite variety of its teints, their exquisite blendings, and the beautiful expression of every transient emotion.

I have now only to expose the sophistry which Payne Knight has employed upon this subject.

"I am aware," he says, "indeed, that it would be no easy task to persuade a lover that the forms upon which he dotes with such rapture, are not really beautiful, independent of the medium of affection, pa.s.sion, and appet.i.te, through which he views them. But before he p.r.o.nounces either the infidel or the skeptic guilty of blasphemy against nature, let him take a mould from the lovely features or lovely bosom of this masterpiece of creation, and cast a plum-pudding in it (an object by no means disgusting to most men's appet.i.te), and I think he will no longer be in raptures with the form, whatever he may be with the substance."

Now, it happens that a grosser incongruity can scarcely be supposed than that which exists between lovely features or a lovely bosom and a plum-pudding, or between the sentiment of love and the propensity to gluttony; and therefore to place the substance of the pudding, in which internal composition is alone of importance, and shape of none, under the form of features or a bosom, in which internal structure is unknown or unthought of, and shape or other external properties are alone considered, is a gross and offensive subst.i.tution, intended, not to enlighten judgment respecting form, but to pervert it, and to degrade the higher object by comparison with the lower one. The shape, moreover, is a true sign in the one case, and a false one in the other.--Of nearly similar character is the following:--

"If a man, perfectly possessed both of feeling and sight--conversant with, and sensible to the charms of women--were even to be in contact with what he conceived to be the most beautiful and lovely of the s.e.x, and at the moment when he was going to embrace her, he was to discover that the parts which he touched only were feminine or human; and that, in the rest of her form, she was an animal of a different species, or a person of his own s.e.x, the total and instantaneous change of his sentiments from one extreme to another, would abundantly convince him that his s.e.xual desires depended as little upon that abstract sense of touch, as upon that of sight."

That, in detecting an imposture of this kind, admiration would give place to disgust, only proves that the external qualities which were admired were the natural and appropriate signs of the internal qualities expected to be found under them, and that they now cease to interest only because they have become, not naturally less the signs of these qualities, but because they have by a mere trick been rendered insignificant, because truth and nature have been violated, and because the mind feels only disgust at the imposture. I cannot help saying that if Knight was in earnest when he framed such arguments, his mind was sometimes dull as well as perverse.

"The redness of any morbid inflammation," he says, "may display a gradation of teint, which, in a pink or a rose, we should think as beautiful as 'the purple light of love and bloom of young desire;' and the cadaverous paleness of death or disease, a degree of whiteness, which, in a piece of marble or alabaster, we should deem to be as pure, as that of the most delicate skin of the fairest damsel of the frigid zone: consequently, the mere visible beauty is in both the same; and the difference consists entirely in mental sympathies, excited by certain internal stimuli, and guided by habit."

There is here the same confusion of heterogeneous and inconsistent objects, as in the preceding cases. To judge of beauty in simple objects, each quality may be separately considered; and in this view, if the inflammation presented the same teint as the pink or the rose, then, as a mere teint, abstracted from every other quality of the respective objects, it would be precisely as beautiful in the one as in the other; but as the color of a rose on the human body would indicate that flow of blood to the skin which can result only from excessive action, it ceases to be considered intrinsically, and is regarded only as a sign of disease.

The same observations are applicable to the other case here adduced.

"The African black," he says, "when he first beholds an European complexion, thinks both its red and white morbid and unnatural, and of course disgusting. His sunburnt beauties express their modesty and sensibility by variations in the sable teints of their countenances, which are equally attractive to him, as the most delicate blush of red to us."

In treating of the Elements of Beauty, I have endeavored to show, that the more those simpler elements of beauty, which characterize inanimate bodies, are retained in more compound ones, the more beautiful these become; but that the latter retain these elements in very different degrees, dependant upon internal or external circ.u.mstances, and that such elementary beauty is often sacrificed to the higher ones of life or mind.

Now, in the case of the African, he is born whitish, like the European, but he speedily loses such beauty for that of adaptation, by his color, to the hot climate in which he exists. The latter beauty is the higher and more important one, and forms for the African a profitable exchange; but the European is still more fortunate, because, in the region he inhabits, the simple and elementary beauty is compatible with that of adaptation to climate. The climate of Africa, the cerebral structure of its inhabitants, and the degree of their civilization, are as unfavorable to the existence of beauty as to the power of judging respecting it. What he adds as to variation in sable countenances is a mere exaggeration.

"Were it possible for a person to judge of the beauty of color in his own species, upon the same principles and with the same impartiality as he judges of it in other objects, both animal, vegetable, and mineral, there can be no doubt that mixed teints would be preferred; and a pimpled face have the same superiority over a smooth one, as a zebra has over an a.s.s, a variegated tulip over a plain one, or a column of jasper or porphyry over one of a common red or white marble."

Here the same mistake is committed. Elementary beauty is preferred to that of adaptation to climate, fitness for physiognomical expression, &c.

Knight's other arguments all involve similar errors, and admit of similar answers.

CHAPTER XI.

THE THREE SPECIES OF FEMALE BEAUTY GENERALLY VIEWED.

These have been already briefly mentioned. They are repeated and ill.u.s.trated here.

The view which is given of them will throw light on the celebrated temperaments of the ancients. It will appear that all the disputes which have occurred respecting these, have arisen from their being founded, not on precise data, but on empirical observation, at a time when the great truths of anatomy and physiology were unknown; that, to the rectification of the doctrine of temperaments, the arrangement of these sciences, laid down in a preceding chapter, is indispensable; that some of these temperaments are comparatively simple, and consist in an excessive or a defective action of locomotive, nutritive, or thinking organs; that others, which have been confounded with these, are, on the contrary, compound; and that, from this want of cla.s.sification, their nature has been imperfectly understood.

To make this clear, it is necessary to lay before the reader a succinct view of the doctrine of temperaments.

The ancients cla.s.sed individuals in one or other of four temperaments, founded on the hypothesis of four humors, of which the blood was supposed to be composed--the red part, phlegm, yellow and black bile. These were regarded as the elements of the body, and their respective predominance pa.s.sed for the cause of the differences which it presented. Hence were derived the names of the sanguine, the phlegmatic, the choleric, and the melancholic temperament.

Although the hypothesis on which this doctrine was founded is universally discarded, the phenomena which observation had taught the ancients, and which they had hypothetically connected with these elements, were so true, that that cla.s.sification has been more or less employed in all the hypotheses which have since been invented to explain their cause; and their nomenclature has continued in use to the present day.

A temperament may be defined a peculiar state of the system, depending on the relative proportion of its different ma.s.ses, and the relative energy of its different functions, by which it acquires a tendency to certain actions.

The predominance of any particular organ or system of organs, its excess of force, extends its sphere of activity to all the other functions, and modifies them in a peculiar manner. Thus, conforming in the ill.u.s.tration to the preceding arrangement, in one person, the muscles are more frequently employed than the brain; in another, the stomach or the organs of reproduction are more employed than the muscles; and in a third, the brain and nerves are more employed than either. This predominance or excess establishes the temperament.

The relative feebleness of any organ or system of organs, similarly forms modifications not less important. Thus in one person, the organs of the abdomen are less employed; in another, those of the chest; in a third, the brain.

Disease, it is observed, "commonly enters into the organization by these feeble points: death even attacks them first; extends afterward from one to another; and makes progress more or less rapid, according to the importance of the organ primitively affected."

Temperaments, however, vary infinitely. It may be said that every individual has a peculiar one, to which he owes his mode of existence and his degree of health, ability, and happiness.

The temperament, moreover, of each individual is not always characterized by well-marked symptoms; and even where it has been strongly marked by nature, education, age, the influence of climate, the exercise of professions and trades, and various habits, produce in it infinite changes.

Temperaments also combine together, so that all men are, in some degree, at once sanguine and bilious, or otherwise compound. Thus all intermediate shades of temperament are produced; and it is often difficult, or, under particular circ.u.mstances, impossible, to determine under which temperament individuals may be cla.s.sed.

The simple temperaments are therefore abstractions, which it is difficult to realize; and the influence of any temperament is sometimes undiscoverable except in some extraordinary circ.u.mstances of disorder or disease, during which it may be observed.

Cullen admits the four temperaments of Hippocrates, and remarks concerning them, that it is probable they were first founded upon observation, and afterward adapted to the theory of the ancients, since we find they "have a real existence."

Dr. Prichard remarks, that "this division of temperaments is by no means a fanciful distinction."

To the four temperaments of Hippocrates, Gregory adds a fifth, the nervous temperament.

Thus are formed five temperaments generally admitted, namely, 1st, the phlegmatic or relaxed; 2d, the sanguine arterial; 3d, the sanguine venous or bilious; 4th, the nervous; and, 5th, the muscular or athletic.

Some writers join to these the partial temperaments which determine the ascendency of the functions exercised by particular organs; whence princ.i.p.ally come the temperaments which they call the cerebral, epigastric, abdominal, hepatic, genital, &c.

As already said, it will in the sequel appear that some of these temperaments are comparatively simple, that others are compound, and that from this want of cla.s.sification, their nature has been imperfectly understood.[32]

CHAPTER XII.

FIRST SPECIES OF BEAUTY--BEAUTY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE SYSTEM.

The average stature of woman, as already said, is two or three inches less than that of man.

The bones of woman remain always smaller than those of man; the cylindrical ones being more slender, and the flat ones thinner, while the former are also rounder. The muscles render the surfaces of the bones less uneven; the projections of the latter are less; and all their cavities and impressions have less depth. The bones of woman have likewise less hardness than those of man.

Such being the solid and fundamental parts of this system in woman, the most remarkable circ.u.mstances in their combination should next be noticed.

In woman, the magnitude of the pelvis or lower part of the trunk, has the greatest influence on the apparent proportion of parts, and on the general figure.

The most remarkable differences between the two s.e.xes, in relation to this system, are consequently those presented by the inferior and superior part of the trunk in each. The breast and the haunches are in an inverse proportion in the two s.e.xes. Man has the breast larger and wider than that of woman: woman has the haunches less circ.u.mscribed than those of man.

The upper part of the body is also less prominent, and the lower part more prominent, in woman than in man; and therefore, when they stand upright, or lie on the back, the breast is most prominent in the male, and the p.u.b.es in the female. The indication this affords of the fitness of woman for impregnation, gestation, and parturition, is obvious.

From the same cause, the back of woman is more hollow.