Chapter 10 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 illustration, from the other sex 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 sexual 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 nobody will doubt, if one of their painters were to paint the goddess 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 principal circumstances which are opposed to the accuracy of opinions, and judgments respecting them.

The conditions necessary to enable us to pronounce 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 mamm? 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 Japanese, 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 sex; 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 associated 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.

Circumstances of profession, it is truly observed, may also lead to associations 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 passed 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 assign 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 principal 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 illustrate 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 association, 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.

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, passion, and appetite, through which he views them. But before he pronounces 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 appetite), 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 substitution, 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 sex, 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 sex, the total and instantaneous change of his sentiments from one extreme to another, would abundantly convince him that his sexual 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 circumstances, 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 ass, 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.

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