reflections have a moral. As habit becomes character, so expression
hardens into feature. The tail of a sheep grows downwards, but that of a
goat upwards, and this is the only infallible outward mark of
distinction between the two animals. But it is the permanent record of a
long history. The sheep was never anything but sheepish; the goat and
its forefathers were pert as kids and insolent when their beards grew.
It is useless to inquire why insolence should express itself by an
upturned tail until someone can advance a reason why it should express
itself in another way.
For proof of the fact you need go no farther than your own dogs. The
ancestral wolf, or jackal, hunting and fighting, fearing and hoping,
showed every changing mood by the pose of its tail; but a change came
when it acquired an assured position of security and importance as the
chosen companion of man, so dreaded by all its kith and kin. The tail
went up at once and stayed there; when it could go no higher, it curled
over. But promotion breeds conceit only in base natures. The greyhound
is a gentleman, respectful and self-respecting, and it shows that by the
very carriage of its tail. Only a snob at heart, petted and pampered for
many generations, could have produced that perfect incarnation of smug
self-satisfaction, the pug. Let us take the lesson home. The thoughts on
which we let our minds dwell, and the sentiments that we harbour in our
hearts, are the chisels with which we are carving out our faces and
those of our children's children.
IV
NOSES
Some may think that I have chosen a trivial subject, and they will look
for frivolous treatment of it. I can only hope that they will be
disappointed. There is nothing that the progress of science has taught
us more emphatically than this--that we must call nothing insignificant.
Seemingly trivial pursuits have led to discoveries which have benefited
all mankind, and priceless truths have been dug out of the most
unpromising mines. I am not insinuating that anyone's nose is an
unpromising mine, but I say that I am persuaded there is wisdom hidden
in that organ for him who will observingly distil it out.
[Illustration: A SHREW CAN DO IT, BUT NOT A MAN.]
It possesses a peculiar and mystical significance not shared by any
other feature. This is abundantly proved by common speech, which is one
of the most trustworthy of all kinds of evidence. For example, we speak
of a person turning up his nose at a good offer. The phrase is absurd,
for the power of turning up his nose is one which no human being ever
possessed. A shrew can do it, but not a man. Yet the meaning of the
saying needs no interpretation. Akin to it is the classical phrase,
_adunco suspendere naso_. What Horace means scarcely requires
explanation, but no commentator has successfully explained it. These
expressions well illustrate the mystery that enshrouds our most salient
feature. They show that, while everybody can see that disdain is
expressed through the nose, nobody can define how it is done. Then there
is that curious expression "put his nose out of joint," which is quite
inexplicable, the nose being destitute of joint. There are many other
phrases and also gestures which point in the same direction, but need
not be cited, being for the most part vulgar. Allusions to the nose have
a tendency to be vulgar, which is another mystery inciting us to
investigate it. So let us proceed.
The first thing required by the principles of scientific precedure is a
definition. What is a nose? But this proves to be a much more difficult
question than anyone would suspect before he tried to answer it. The
individual human nose we can recognise, describe or sketch more easily
than any other feature, but try to define the thing _nose_ in Nature and
it is a most elusive phenomenon. When we speak of a man being led by the
nose we imply that it is a part of him which is prominent and situated
in front, when we speak of keeping one's nose above water we refer to it
as the breathing orifice, but when we say that this or that offends our
nose we are regarding it as the seat of the sense of smell. I believe
that all these three ideas must be included in any definition. It should
follow that insects, which breathe through holes in their sides, cannot
have noses, and this is the truth.
Fishes, too, though they may have snouts, have not noses, because they
breathe by gills. In truth, it seems that the nose was a very late and
high acquisition, almost the finishing touch of the perfected animal
form. And incidentally this leads us to notice what a great step was
taken in evolution when the breathing holes were brought up to the
region of the mouth. For the sense of taste is necessarily situated in
the mouth, and the sense of smell is in close alliance with it. The
mouth tastes food dissolved in the saliva during the process of
mastication, and the primary use of the sense of smell is to detect and
analyse beforehand the small particles given off by food and floating in
the atmosphere.
A good many years ago, when the late Sally chimpanzee was the darling of
the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, I watched her eating dates. She
was an epicure, and always peeled each date delicately with her
preposterous lips before eating it, and during the process she would
apply the date to her nose every second to test its quality or enjoy its
aroma. The action was indescribably comical, but what would it have been
if her nostrils had been situated among her ribs? Imagine a mantis, for
example, as he chews up a fly, lifting one of his wings and applying it
to his flanks to see if it smells gamey. That is where some naturalists
believe that the sense of smell is situated in insects. Others, however,
think, with reason, that it is in the antennae or mouth. Nobody knows;
the senses of the lower animals seem to be stuck about all parts of the
body.
But, even if the sense of smell is at the mouth, how limited must its
usefulness be when it can only deal with substances that are held to it!
A new era dawned when the passages by which the breath of life
unceasingly comes and goes were transferred to the region of the mouth
also. The nerves of smell quickly spread themselves over the lining
membrane of those passages and became warders of the gate, challenging
every waft of air that entered the body and examining what it carried.
Thenceforth this region comprising the mouth, nostrils and surrounding
parts holds a new and high place in the economy of the body, for the
headquarters of the intelligence department are located there, and all
the faculties of the brain converge on that point. Of course, the eyes
and ears claim a share, but they are not far off.
Now it is being recognised more and more clearly by medical and
physiological science that when the mind is much directed to any part of
the body it exercises an influence in some way not understood on the
flow of blood to that part to a degree which may seriously affect its
functions and even its growth. When a person is suffering from any
nervous affection, from heart disease, or even from weakness of the
eyes, it is of the utmost importance to keep him from knowing it if
possible, for if he knows it he will think about it, and that will
inevitably aggravate it. This principle is well recognised in systems of
physical culture. And surely it is impossible that so much intelligence
should pass through that one sensitive region of the body which we are
considering without affecting its growth and structure. Every muscle in
it becomes quick to respond to various sensations in different ways,
till the very recollection of those sensations will excite the same
response.
Nay, we may go further. The mental emotions excited by those sensations
will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is
peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything which does violence
to the sense of hearing exasperates, but does not disgust. If a man
practises the accordion all day in the next room you do not loathe him,
you only want to kill him. But anything that stinks excites pure
disgust. Here you have the key to the fact that disgust and all feelings
akin to it, disdain, contempt and scorn, express themselves through the
nose. Darwin says that when we think of anything base or vile in a man's
character the expression of the face is the same "as if we smelled a bad
smell." This is an example of the temporary expression of a passing
emotion, and there are many others like it. But each of us has his
prevailing and dominant emotions which constitute the habitual
attitude of his mind. And by the habitual indulgence of any emotion the
features will become habituated to the expression of it, and so the set
of our features comes at last to express our prevailing and dominant
emotions; in other words, our _character_.
[Illustration: THE NOSTRILS OF THE APTERYX ARE AT THE TIP OF ITS BEAK.]
But let us return to the evolution of the nose. In these days of
universal "Nature study" nobody need be told that the practice of
breathing through the nostrils was introduced by the amphibians and
reptiles. The former (frogs and toads) take to it only when they come of
age, but lizards, snakes and all other reptiles do it from infancy. But
the nose is not yet. That is something too delicate to come out of a
cold-blooded snout covered with hard scales. Birds, too, by having their
mouth parts encased in a horny bill seem to be debarred from wearing
noses. And yet there is one primeval fowl, most ancient of all the
feathered families, which has come near it. I mean the apteryx, that
eccentric, wingless recluse which hides itself in the scrub jungles of
New Zealand. Its nostrils, unlike those of every other bird, are at the
tip of its beak, which is swollen and sensitive; and Dr. Buller says
that as it wanders about in the night it makes a continual sniffing and
softly taps the walls of its cage with the point of its bill. But the
apteryx is one of those odd geniuses which come into the world too soon,
and perish ineffectual. Its kindred are all extinct, and so will it be
ere long.
[Illustration: A BOLD ATTEMPT TO GROW IN THE CASE OF A TAPIR]
When we come to the beasts we find the right conditions at last for the
growth of the nose. Take the horse for an example of the average beast
without idiosyncrasy. Its profile is nearly a straight line from the
crown to the nostrils, beyond which it slopes downwards to the lips. The
skin of this part is soft and smooth, without hair, and the horse dearly
loves to have it fondled. The sense of touch is evidently uppermost. At
this stage there was what to the eye of fancy looks like a bold attempt
to grow a nose in the case of a tapir, but it miscarried. These hoofed
beasts are all very hard up for something in the way of a hand to bring
their food to their mouths. The camel employs its lips and the cow its
tongue; the muntjae or barking deer of India has attained a tongue of
such length that it uses it for a handkerchief to wipe its eyes. So the
tapir could not resist the temptation to misapply its nose to the
purpose of gathering fodder, and the ultimate result was the elephant,
whose nose is a wonderful hand and a bucket and other things. The pig,
being a swine, debased its nose in a worse way, making a grubbing tool
of it.
There has been another attempt to misuse and pervert this part of the
face which I scarcely dare to touch upon, for it is so utterly fantastic
and mystical that I fear the charge of heresy if I give words to my
thoughts. It occurs among bats, a tribe of obscure creatures about which
common knowledge amounts to this, that they fly about after sunset, are
uncanny, and fond of getting entangled in the hair of ladies, and should
be killed. But there are certain families of bats, named horseshoe bats,
leaf-nosed bats and vampires about which common knowledge is _nil_, and
the knowledge possessed by naturalists very little, so I will tell what
I know of them. They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad,
soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and
ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy
avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the
"droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs,
sleeping birds and _human blood_. The books will tell you that these
bats are distinguished by "complicated nasal appendages consisting of
foliaceous skin processes around the nostrils," which is quite true and
utterly futile. It may do for a dried skin or a specimen in spirits of
wine. I have had the foul fiend in a cage and looked him in the face.
His whole countenance, from lips to brow and from cheek to cheek, is
covered and hidden by a hideous design of
Spells and signs,
Symbolic letters, circles, lines,
sculptured in living, quivering skin. It is a sight to make the flesh
creep. The books suggest that these foliaceous appendages are the organs
of some special sense akin to touch. Futile again! There are things in
Nature still which prompt the naturalist who has not atrophied his inner
eye and starved his imagination to cry out:
Science ...
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
Supposing there should be in the unseen universe an evil spirit, an imp
of malice and mischief, not Milton's Satan, but the Deil of Burns:
Whyles ranging, like a roaring lion,
For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-winged tempest flyin,
Tirlin the kirks;
Whyles in the human bosom pryin,
and supposing him to crave possession of a body through which he might
get into touch with this material world and express himself in outward
forms and motions; then oh! how fitly were this bat explained.
But let us go back to firm ground. If you compare a dog's profile with
that of a horse you will note at once that the nostrils are in advance
of the lips, and have a kind of portal to themselves. This is a distinct
advance. The sense of smell has come to the front and pushed aside the
lower sense of touch. You will observe, too, that with the growth of the
brain the brain-pan has elevated itself above the level of the nose.
Through the cat to the monkeys the process proceeds, the forehead
advancing, the jaws retreating, and the nostrils leaving the lips, until
they finally settle in a detached villa midway between the eyes and the
mouth. This is the nose. I do not know the use of it. I cannot fathom
the meaning of it. It is a solemn mystery. See the face of an
orang-outang. It is a _countenance_, a signboard with three distinct
lines of writing on it, the eyes, the nose and the mouth. You may not
think much of this particular nose. Neither do I. I think it is
situated rather too near the eyes and too far from the mouth. It is a
little too small also, and wants style. But you must not judge a first
attempt too critically. I have seen human noses of a pattern not unlike
this, but they are not considered aristocratic: perhaps they indicate a
reversion to the ancestral type.
[Illustration: I HAVE SEEN HUMAN NOSES OF A PATTERN NOT UNLIKE THIS, BUT
THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED ARISTOCRATIC.]
But the noses even of monkeys are not all like this. In fact, there is a
good deal of variety, and two in particular have struck me as quite
remarkable. One is that of the long-nosed monkey (_Semnopithecus
nasalis_). I think it must have suggested Sterne's stranger on a mule,
who had travelled to the promontory of noses and threw all Strassburg
into a ferment. I have often contemplated this nose in mute wonderment,
and longed to see that monkey in life, if so be I might arrive at some
understanding of it; for the taxidermist cannot rise above his own
level, and the man who would mount _S. nasalis_ would need to be a Henry
Irving. Then there is the sub-nosed monkey, labelled _rhinopithecus_, of
which there is an expressive specimen at the South Kensington Museum.
Who can consider that nose seriously and continue to believe in a
recipe made up of struggle for existence, adaptation to environment, and
natural selection _quantum suf_.? If I could dine with that monkey, ask
it to drink a glass of wine with me, offer it a pinch of snuff and so
on, I might come in time to feel, if not to comprehend, the import of
its nose.
[Illustration: THE LONG-NOSED MONKEY.]
[Illustration: WHO CAN CONSIDER THAT NOSE SERIOUSLY?]
But one step further is required for the evolution of what we may call
the human nose, and that is a solid foundation, a ridge of bone
connecting it with the brow and separating the eyes from each other. I
believe that the completeness of this is a fair index of the comparative
advancement of different races of men. In the Greek ideal of a perfect
face the profile forms a straight line from the top of the forehead to
the tip of the nose. This is the type of face which painters have
delighted to give to the Virgin Mary; and, when looking at their
Madonnas, one cannot help wondering whether they forgot that Mary was a
Jewess. According to the Hebrew ideal, a perfect nose was like "the
tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus" (Song of Solomon, vii.
4); but not even the ruins of that tower remain to help us to-day. The
Romans, no doubt, accepted the ideal of the Greeks aesthetically, but
their destiny had given them a very different nose, and they ruled the
world.
Here is the nose of Julius Caesar as a coin has preserved it for us. I
think that the outline is too straight for a typical Roman, but the deep
dip under the brow and the downward point are characteristic. Now
compare the nose of another race which rules an empire greater than that
of the Caesars. Here is John Bull as _Punch_ usually represents him. It
belongs to the same genus as that of the Roman. The reason why this
should be the nose of command is not easy to give with scientific
precision, for we are dealing with the play of very subtle influences,
so the man without imagination will no doubt scoff. But I will take
shelter under Darwin. Dealing with the expression of pride he says, "A
proud man exhibits his sense of superiority by holding his head and body
erect. He is haughty _(haut),_ or high, and makes himself appear as
large as possible." Again, "The arrogant man looks down on others"; and
yet again, "In some photographs of patients affected by a monomania of
pride, sent me by Dr. Crichton-Browne, the head and body were held erect
and the mouth firmly closed. This latter action, expressive of decision,
follows, I presume, from the proud man feeling perfect self-confidence
in himself."
Darwin says nothing about the nose, but I believe that, by physiological
sympathy, it cannot but take part in the habitual downward look upon
inferior beings. Darwin goes on to say that, "The whole expression of
pride stands in direct antithesis to that of humility"; from which it
follows, if my philosophy is sound, that the nose of Uriah Heep was
turned upwards.
Of course, many emotions may share in the moulding of a nose, and the
whole subject is too intricate and vast to be treated briefly. I have
only given a few examples to illustrate my argument, and my conclusion
is that the key to the peculiar significance and personal quality of the
nose is to be found in its _immobility_. The eyes and lips are
incessantly in motion, we can twitch and wrinkle the cheeks and
forehead, and muscles to move the ears are there, though most men have
lost control of them. But the nose stands out like some bold promontory
on a level coast, or like the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert, with an
ancient history, no doubt, and a mystery perhaps, but without response
to any appeal. And for this very reason it is an index, not to that
which is transient in the man, but to that which is permanent. He may
knit his brows to seem thoughtful and profound, or compress his lips to
persuade his friends and himself that he has a strong will, but he can
play no trick with his nose. There it stands, an incorruptible witness,
testifying to what he is, and not only to what he is, but to the rock
whence he was hewn and to the pit whence he was digged. For his nose is
a bequest from his ancestors, an entailed estate which he cannot
alienate.
V
EARS
Men and women have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers. In the latter
case they are useful: jugs and pitchers are lifted by them. And what is
useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of beauty. But human
ears are put to no use, except sometimes when naughty little boys are
lifted by them in the way of discipline; and I can see no beauty in
them. It is only because they are so common that we do not notice how
ridiculous they are. In the days of Charles I. men sometimes had their
ears cut off for holding wrong opinions, which would have made them
famous and popular in these enlightened days, but at that time it made
all right-thinking people despise them, so the fashion of going without
ears did not spread among us. If it had, then how differently we should
all think of the matter now! If we were all accustomed to neat, round
heads at drawing-rooms, levees and balls, how repulsive it Would be to
see a well-dressed man with two ridiculous, wrinkled appendages sticking
out from the sides of his face!
In saying this I am not drawing on my fancy, but on my memory. I can
recollect the time when no gentleman, still less any lady, would have
owned a terrier with its ears on. And why go back so far? The same
sentiment is prevalent in good society with respect to men's beards in
this year of grace and smooth faces. Yet, if one chance to be looking at
a Rembrandt instead of at society, what an infinitely handsomer adjunct
to a noble face is a fine beard than a pair of ears!
When woman first looked at her face in a polished saucepan, she was at
once struck with the comicality of those things, and bethought herself
what to do with them. She decided to use them for pegs to hang ornaments
on. The improvement excited the admiration of her husband and the envy
of her rivals to such a degree that all other women of taste in her
tribe did the same, and from that day to this, in almost every country
in the world, it has been accounted a shame for any respectable woman to
show her face in public in the hideousness of naked ears. This discovery
of its capabilities gave a new value to the ear, and a large, roomy one
became an asset in the marriage market. I have seen a pretty little
damsel of Sind with fourteen jingling silver things hanging at regular
intervals from the outside edge of each ear. If Nature had been
niggardly, the lobe at least could be enlarged by boring it and
thrusting in a small wooden peg, then a larger one, and so on until it
could hold an ivory wheel as large as a quoit, and hung down to the
shoulders.
But Nature surely did not intend the ear for this purpose. Then what
did she intend? A popular error is that the ears are given to hear with,
but the ears cannot hear. The hearing is done by a box of assorted
instruments (_malleus, incus, stapes_, etc.) hidden in a burrow which
has its entrance inside of the ear. If you argue that the ears are
intended to catch sounds and direct them down to the hearing instrument,
then explain their absurd shape. They are useless. A man who wants to
hear distinctly puts his hand to his ear. And why do they not turn to
meet the sounds that come from different quarters? They are absolutely
immovable, and therefore also expressionless. A savage expresses his
mind with all the rest of his face; he smiles and grins and pouts and
frowns, but his ears stand like gravestones with the inscriptions
effaced. How different is the case when you turn from man to the
"irrational" animals! The eyes of a fawn are lustrous and beautiful, but
they would be as meaningless as polished stones without the eloquent
ears that stand behind them and tell her thoughts. Curiosity, suspicion,
alarm, anger, submission, friendliness, every emotion that flits across
her quick, sensitive mind speaks through them. They are in touch with
her soul, and half the music of her life is played on them. And if you
abstract yourself from individuals and look at that thing, the ear, in
the wide field of life, what a great, living reality it is!--a spiritual
unity under infinite diversity of material form and fashion. It is like
the telegraph wire overhead, the commonest and plainest of material
things, but charged with the silent and invisible currents of the life
of the world.
"Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore."