(_a_) _Animals._—"It has been argued," says Darwin (by Schaffhausen),
“that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower
animals, and no doubt this is partly true with the more civilised
nations, in which intellect is highly appreciated; but this explanation
will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness.”
Curiously enough, savages themselves use animals as a negative test of
beauty. Thus we read that “the Indians of Paraguay eradicate their
eyebrows and eyelashes, saying that they do not wish to be like horses.”
“On the Eastern coast, the negro boys, when they saw Burton, cried out,
‘Look at the white man; does he not look like a white ape?’” “A man of
Cochin China ‘spoke with contempt of the wife of the English
ambassador—that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like
that of potato-flowers.’”
A few centuries ago it was a favourite pastime of physiognomists to draw
elaborate parallels between men and animals. Thus, in 1593, there
appeared a work, _De Humana Physiognomia_, with numerous illustrations,
in which always a human face was matched with some animal’s head.
Professor Wundt thus sums up the essence of this book: “A broad
forehead, we are told, indicates fearfulness, because the ox with his
broad head lacks courage. A long forehead, on the other hand, indicates
erudition, as is shown by means of an intelligent dog who has the honour
of serving as a pendant to Plato’s profile. Persons with shaggy hair are
good-natured, as they resemble the lion. He whose eyebrows are turned
inwards, towards the nose, is uncleanly like the pig, which this
resembles. The narrow chin of the ape signifies malice and envy. Long
ears and thick lips, such as the donkey possesses, are signs of
stupidity. A person who has a nose crooked from the forehead inclines,
like the raven, to theft, etc. These animal-physiognomists appear to
have favoured a thoroughly pessimistic view of man’s capacities,
inasmuch as for every creditable resemblance they find at least ten
discreditable ones.”
Apart from these puerilities, it is in most cases simply absurd to
compare man with animals. Except in the case of apes there are no proper
terms of comparison, because the types are so distinct; and, moreover,
from the point of view of its own type, the average animal of any
species is more beautiful than the average man or woman from the human
point of view. This assertion is indirectly corroborated by Mr. Galton’s
testimony, that “our human civilised stock is far more weakly through
congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals,
whether wild or domestic.”
Schopenhauer considered animals beautiful in every way, and suggested
that whenever we do find an animal ugly it is due to some irrelevant,
inevitable association of ideas, as when a monkey suggests a man, or a
toad mud. And Mr. Ruskin pertinently suggests that “That mind only is
fully disciplined in its theoretic power which, when it chooses,
throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the ideas of
destructiveness or of innocence accustom us to regard the animal tribes,
as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, I think, from
the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own, can pursue
the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the alligator, the
coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle.”
When Sir Charles Bell intimated that in Greek sculpture the guiding
principle was remoteness from the animal type, he stated only one side
of the truth, of which the other is thus noted by Winckelmann: among the
Greeks, he says, “The study of artists in producing ideal beauties was
directed to the nature of the nobler beasts, so that they not only
instituted comparisons between the forms of the human countenance and
the shape of the head of certain animals, but they even undertook to
adopt from animals the means of imparting greater majesty and elevation
to their statues ... especially in the heads of Hercules.” Jupiter’s
head “has the complete aspect of the lion, the king of beasts, not only
in the large, round eyes, in the fulness of the prominent, and, as it
were, swollen forehead, and in the nose, but also in the hair, which
hangs from his head like the mane of the lion, first rising upward from
the forehead, and then, parting on each side into a bow, again falling
downward.”
So that we may safely reject the theory that ugliness consists in an
approach to the structure of the lower animals, whatever savages and
Chinamen may think on this subject. Coarse minds little suspect what
exquisite beauty is to be found in the head of a cow or a donkey, a
puppy or a lamb—beauty which, like a lovely melody, may bring tears to
the eyes of one who is sensitive to æsthetic impressions. Objectively
considered, even the destructive emotions do not appear ugly in an
animal. The ferocity of a lion does not make him appear vicious, because
ferocity is his nature. He knows no better; can only live by fighting.
But a man is disfigured by ferocity because he does know better; he
_can_ live without fighting; and it is _the consciousness of his selfish
meanness_ that puts the stamp of ugliness on his distorted features.
In apes alone does fierceness seem ugly and brutal instead of sublime.
For apes bear so much resemblance to us, and have a brain so superior in
structure to that of other animals, that we feel justified in applying
the human standard. Hence apes alone afford us a negative test of
beauty. Their heads and faces are cast in our mould, and therefore
afford the means of direct comparison. In looking at their massive,
brutal jaws, their receding foreheads, their undifferentiated hands and
feet, their coarse, hairy skin, their clumsy, inexpressive, gigantic
mouths, their flat noses and nostrils open to the view, we are justified
in calling them ugly, compared with ourselves, and in feeling proud that
civilisation has gradually raised us so far above our country cousins,
in beauty as in everything else, except the art of climbing trees.
(_b_) _Savages_ are valuable as negative tests of beauty for the same
reason: they enable us to see what progress we have made in refining our
features into harmonious proportions, and making them susceptible of
diverse emotional expression. It should be noted that Nature constantly
endeavours to make primitive mankind beautiful, as it does with all
other animals. Tourists constantly note the occurrence of remarkable
instances of Personal Beauty among the young in most tribes. But this
natural Beauty is not appreciated by the vulgar taste of savages, as we
saw a few pages back in a case mentioned by Mr. Galton. Beauty must be
distorted and exaggerated before it pleases the savage’s taste. Paint
must be laid on an inch thick, the nose perforated and “adorned” with a
ring, and ditto the abnormally lengthened lips. This corrects the notion
that savage hideousness is a product of Nature. Nature may blunder, but
never so sadly as in the appearance of a savage belle or warrior; and in
scorning these we do not therefore scorn Nature, but merely the
artificial products of the vulgar taste of primitive man.
(_c_) _Degraded Classes._—Poverty, suffering, want of leisure for mental
culture, want of money for sanitary modes of living, have,
unfortunately, produced in all countries a large class in whom Personal
Beauty occurs only as an accident. That such unhappy mortals afford a
negative test of Beauty is seen by the fact that, just as savages are
intermediate between monkeys and them, so they stand between savages and
refined men in features and expression.
Poverty alone does not produce this vulgar type of personal appearance;
it is intellectual indolence, moral vice, and hygienic indifference that
are responsible for it. Hence this third negative teat of Beauty is not
at all difficult to find in any sphere of society, from the hod-carrier
to the aristocrat with a pedigree of a hundred generations. In every
scale of the social ladder may be found “features seamed by sickness,
dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed
by sorrow, branded with remorse; bodies consumed with sloth, broken down
by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured in foul uses; intellects
without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly and devilish”
(Ruskin).
(_d_) _Age and Decrepitude._—It is not true, as a famous Frenchwoman has
remarked, that age and beauty are incompatible terms. Even age and Love
are not incompatible, as we saw in the chapter on Genius in Love; and
Byron has remarked that Love, like the measles, is most dangerous when
it comes late in life.
There is a special variety of Beauty for every period of life, and the
Beauty of old age certainly is not the least attractive of these
varieties. What could be more majestic, more admirable, than the head of
a Longfellow in his last days? Provided health of mind and body has been
maintained, even the folds in the cheeks, the wrinkles on the forehead
of old age, are not unbeautiful. But when senility means decrepitude,
brought on by a neglectful or otherwise vicious life, then it is
positively ugly. The loveliest thing in the world is a fair and amiable
maiden; the ugliest a vicious old hag—savages and apes _not_ excepted.
(_e_) _Disease._—Temperance preachers and other hygienic reformers
commonly dwell too exclusively on the dangers to health, domestic peace,
moral progress, and refinement which the indulgence in various vices
entails. If they would insist with equal, or even greater, emphasis on
the havoc which diseases brought on by intemperance and neglect of the
laws of Health make on Personal Beauty, they would double their
influence on their audiences or readers. For in woman’s heart the desire
to be beautiful is and always will be the strongest motive to action or
nonaction; nor are men, as a rule, much less interested in the matter of
preserving a handsome appearance. It may make _some_ impression on a man
to tell him that if he takes ice-water before breakfast, or “cock-tails”
at various odd hours on an empty stomach, he will ruin his digestion;
but the impression will be six times as deep if you can convince him
that he will ere long look like that confirmed dyspeptic Jones, with
lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, and a general expression of
premature senility, which accounts for the fact that he has been twice
already refused by the girl he adores.
Or take that girl over there who never takes a walk, always sleeps with
her windows hermetically closed, and never allows a ray of sunshine to
touch any part of her body. Tell her she is ruining her health and she
may be momentarily alarmed by this vague warning, and walk half a mile
for a week or so, until she has forgotten it. But make it clear to her
what is the exact consequence of such neglect of the primal laws of
health—namely, the premature loss of every trace of Personal Beauty and
youthful charm, with old-maidenhood inevitably staring her in the face,
owing to her apathetic appearance and gait, her sickly complexion, her
features distorted by frequent headaches, brought on by lack of fresh,
cool air—each of which leaves its permanent trace in the form of an
addition to a wrinkle or subtraction from the plumpness of her
cheeks,—tell her all this, and that her eyes will soon sink into their
sockets and have blue rings like those of an invalid, and a ghastly
stare—and she will, perhaps, be sufficiently roused to save her Health
for the sake of her Beauty.
We are now confronted with the question, Why is it that disease is a
mark of ugliness, health a mark of Beauty? The old Scotch school of
æstheticians think it is all a matter of association. We consider
certain forms characteristic of health as beautiful simply because we
associate with them various emotions of affection, the pleasures of
love, etc., and conversely with disease and vice. According to Stendhal,
“La beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur,” or, in American, Beauty is
simply the promise of a “good time.” But it is Lord Jeffrey who, to use
another appropriate American expression, “goes the whole hog” in this
matter, by practically denying the existence of such a thing as a pure,
disinterested, æsthetic sense. Suppose, he says, "that the smooth
forehead, the firm cheek, and the full lip, which are now so distinctly
expressive to us of the gay and vigorous periods of youth—and the clear
and blooming complexion, which indicates health and activity—had been,
in fact, the forms and colours by which old age and sickness were
characterised; and that, instead of being found united to those sources
and seasons of enjoyment, they had been the badges by which Nature
pointed out that state of suffering and decay which is now signified to
us by the livid and emaciated face of sickness, or the wrinkled front,
the quivering lip, and hollow cheek of age; if this were the familiar
law of our nature, can it be doubted that we should look upon these
appearances, not with rapture, but with aversion, and consider it as
absolutely ludicrous or disgusting to speak of the beauty of what was
interpreted by every one as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude?
“Mr. Knight himself, though a firm believer in the intrinsic beauty of
colours, is so much of this opinion that he thinks it entirely owing to
those associations that we prefer the tame smoothness and comparatively
poor colours of a youthful face to the richly fretted and variegated
countenance of a pimpled drunkard.”
Bosh! and a hundred times bosh! One feels that these men lived at a time
when port was drunk by the bottle, like claret, and when variegated
noses were to a certain extent fashionable.
Though every reader feels the sophistry and absurdity of the above
argumentation, it is not easy to refute it. Professor Blackie declaims
against it, Ruskin sneers at it, but nowhere have I been able to find a
definite direct refutation of the thesis. The following suggestions may,
therefore, be of some value.
In the first place, Jeffrey’s supposition is equivalent to saying that
if black were white, white would be black. For if all the phenomena of
human nature were reversed, our taste, being also a “phenomenon,” would
be reversed too. If health meant emaciation, then a lover would not be
happy unless he could kiss a pair of leathery lips and embrace a
skeleton. Hence his sense of touch, like his sight, would have to be the
reverse of what they are now; and that being the case, æsthetic taste,
which is based on the senses, would of course be reversed too. But that
is simply saying that if you stand a man on his head his feet will be in
the air.
Secondly, Lord Jeffrey’s argument involves the old fallacy that the
useful and the beautiful are identical—that we only consider those
things beautiful which afford us some utilitarian gratification. If this
theory were correct, a coal-boat would be more beautiful than a yacht; a
savage’s big jaw-bone more beautiful than our delicate ones; a clumsy,
dirty, coarse-featured labourer more beautiful than a society belle.
No; we have, thank heaven, an æsthetic sense which enables us to see and
admire beauty quite independently of any “associations” which it may
have with our utilitarian cravings. It is possible, however, and even
probable, that the æsthetic sense was originally _developed_ from
utilitarian associations. On this subject Mr. Grant Allen has some
exceedingly valuable remarks in his interesting work on the
Colour-Sense. He there eloquently sets forth the view that it was the
bright tints of luscious fruits that first taught primitive man to
derive pleasure from the sight of coloured objects. This gradually led
to a “predilection for brilliant dyes and glistening pebbles; till at
last the whole series culminates in that intense and unselfish enjoyment
of rich and pure tints which make civilised man linger so lovingly over
the hues of sunset and the myriad shades of autumn.... The
_disinterested_ affection can only be reached by many previous steps of
utilitarian progress.” But—and here lies the kernel of the
argument—"fruit-eaters and flower-feeders derive pleasure from brilliant
colours ... not because those colours have mental associations with
their food, but because the structures which perceive them have been
continually exercised and strengthened by hereditary use," until at last
they formed a special nervous or cerebral apparatus which presides over
impressions of beauty, and takes a special pleasure in its own activity,
apart from all utilitarian considerations.
Lord Jeffrey apparently lacked this special æsthetic sense, as shown by
his whole argument, and by his inability, which he shared with Alison,
of finding beauty in Nature, unless it was in some way associated with
man’s presence and man’s mean utilities.
How different this from the feelings of the man who of all writers on
Beauty has the most highly developed æsthetic sense—Mr. Ruskin, who has
just told us in his _Autobiography_ that his love of Nature, ardent as
it is, depends entirely on the _wildness_ of the scenery, its remoteness
from human influences and associations.
It is this specially-developed æsthetic taste that would prevent man
from calling flabby cheeks, sallow complexions, pimpled noses, and
sunken eyes beautiful, if by some miracle they should be changed into
signs of health. For this sense of beauty was first educated not by the
sight of human beauty, but of beauty in Nature—fruits, pebbles, shells,
lustrous metals, etc.; and the notions of beauty thus obtained have been
gradually transferred to human beings as standards of attractiveness. It
can be shown that what the best judges pronounce the highest human
beauty, is so because it partakes of certain characteristics which we
find beautiful throughout Nature. And conversely, what we consider ugly
in the human form and features would also be called ugly in external
objects; in both cases, be it distinctly understood, without any direct
reference to utilitarian considerations, and sometimes even in
opposition to them, as in our admiration of a beautiful poisonous plant
or snake, or a tiger.
It is these universal characteristics of Beauty, found in man as in
animals, that we now have to consider. They are the _positive_ criteria
of Beauty, and may be regarded as a new set of “overtones” or leading
motives for the remainder of this volume, although the old ones will
occasionally reappear and combine with them.