Just as among some male ruminants the growth of horns as a means of
defence has apparently led to the disappearance of the canine teeth, so
man’s erect attitude, by leaving his hands free to do much of the work
which inferior animals do with their jaws and teeth, has gradually
modified the appearance of his face, greatly to its advantage. “The
early male forefathers of man,” says Darwin, “were probably furnished
with great canine teeth; but as they gradually acquired the habit of
using stones, clubs, or other weapons, for fighting with their enemies
or rivals, they would use their jaws and teeth less and less. In this
case the jaws, together with the teeth, would become reduced in size, as
we may feel almost sure from innumerable analogous cases.” And in
another place he remarks: “As the prodigious difference between the
skulls of the two sexes in the orang and gorilla stands in close
relation with the development of the immense canine teeth in the males,
we may infer that the reduction of the jaws and teeth in the early
progenitors of man must have led to a most striking and favourable
change in his appearance.”
Why a “favourable” change? No doubt a male gorilla, if it could be
taught to pronounce an æsthetic judgment, would indignantly scout the
notion that our weak, delicate jaw is preferable to its own massive
bones; nor would a prognathous or “forward-jawed” African or Australian
admit that he is less beautiful than the orthognathous or
“upright-jawed” European. What right, then, have we to claim that we
alone have beautiful faces? Must we not admit, with the Jeffrey Alison
school, that it is all “a matter of taste,” and that in so far as a
heavy, projecting jaw _appears_ beautiful to a gorilla or a savage, it
_is_ beautiful to them?
The general answer to such questions as these has already been given in
another part of this volume. We need therefore only say in brief
_résumé_ that a heavy, projecting, clumsy, brutal jaw probably appears
to a gorilla or a Hottentot _neither ugly nor beautiful_. The æsthetic
sense—as we can see among ourselves—is the last and highest product of
civilisation. Monkeys are apparently excited by brilliant _colours_, but
to beauty of _form_ neither apes nor the lower races and classes of man
appear to be susceptible.
Should a negro, however, on having his attention called to this matter,
claim that his prognathous face is more beautiful than our orthognathous
face, the retort simple would be that his imagination is not
sufficiently educated to understand our more refined and delicate
beauty; just as an Esquimaux prefers a rotten egg to a fresh one, a
working man a glass of fusil oil to one of tokay—simply because their
senses of taste and smell are not sufficiently refined to appreciate _or
even detect_ the delicate flavour of a fresh egg and the subtle bouquet
of wine.
Of the positive tests of beauty, Delicacy is the one which most
emphatically condemns the heavy, prognathous jaw and the accompanying
big mouth. Massive bones and clumsy movements are everywhere the signs
of excessive toil, fatal to beauty, as may be seen on comparing the
angular and almost masculine skeleton of a labouring woman with the
delicately-articulated joints of a “society woman”; or the heavy
structure of a dray-horse with the fine contours of a race-horse;
showing that Delicacy is always associated with the other elements of
beauty—Curvature, Gradation, Expression, etc.
On the manner in which the beauty of the mouth is proportioned to its
capability for Expression, Mr. Ruskin has made the following interesting
observations: “Taking the mouth, another source of expression, we find
it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish; or perhaps where,
without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes a formidable
destructive instrument, as again in the alligator; and then, by some
increase of expression, we arrive at birds’ beaks, wherein there is much
obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles (compare the
bills of the duck and the eagle); and thence we reach the
finely-developed lips of the carnivora (which nevertheless lose their
beauty in the actions of snarling and biting); and from these we pass to
the nobler, because gentler and more sensitive, of the horse, camel, and
fawn, and so again up to man: only the principle is less traceable in
the mouths of the lower animals, because they are only in slight measure
capable of expression, and chiefly used as instruments, and that of low
function; whereas in man the mouth is given most definitely as a means
of expression, beyond and above its lower functions.... The beauty of
the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral or
intellectual virtue expressed by it.”
Shakspere, by the way, seems to differ from Ruskin’s theory implied in
this last sentence. According to Ruskin, animals “lose their beauty in
the actions of snarling and biting.” But man has an action similar to
snarling, namely, what Bell calls “that arching of the lips so
expressive of contempt, hatred, and jealousy.” It is to this that
Shakspere refers in these lines—
“O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip.”
But the word “beautiful” is here evidently taken by Shakspere in the
wider sense of interesting and characteristic, and not in the special
æsthetic sense of formal and emotional beauty.
Delicacy and the capacity for varied and subtle Expression—these, we may
conclude, are the chief criteria of beauty in the lower part of the
face. Anatomically, it may be well to state here, the word “face” does
not include the forehead, but only extends from the chin to the
eyebrows. The upper and posterior part is called the cranium or skull.
It seems odd at first not to include the forehead in the face, but there
are scientific grounds for making such a division, for a discussion of
which the reader must be referred to some anatomical text-book (_vide_
Kollmann, pp. 82-85).
To a certain extent the face and the cranium are independent of one
another in development and physiognomic significance. And it should be
noted that, contrary to the general impression, in estimating the degree
of intelligence and refinement, the face is a safer guide than the
cranium; for there are many powerful brains in low and even receding
foreheads, whereas a large projecting jaw is almost invariably a sign of
vulgarity or lack of delicate feeling. We do not find a dog ugly because
of his receding forehead; but we do find that the most infallible way of
giving a man’s picture a brutal expression is by enlarging the jaw and
mouth. It is the deadliest weapon of the caricaturist.
What makes a gorilla so frightfully ugly is the prominence and massive
preponderance of his face over his cranium. It is his monstrous jaws,
with their “simply brutal armature” of teeth, that give him such a
repulsive appearance. The gorilla’s mouth, as Professor Kollmann
remarks, is a caricature even from the animal point of view. How much
more delicate and refined are a dog’s or cat’s jaws and teeth in
comparison! Unfortunately, while man is a savage, or when he relapses
into brutal habits, it is the gorilla’s mouth and teeth that his
resemble, and not the cat’s or the dog’s.
A small face being therefore a test of refined beauty, we have here
another proof of the superiority of feminine over masculine beauty. For
although woman has a smaller cranium than man, it is larger than man’s
relatively to the face. In other words, women have smaller and less
massive faces than men, both absolutely and relatively to their size.
Kollmann, who is not an evolutionist, endeavours to account for this
difference on the ground that men are more addicted to the pleasures of
the table than women. But surely, though women eat less than men, they
do not make much less use of their teeth; and for any deficiency in this
respect they more than make up by the constant wagging of their jaws in
small-talk. It is infinitely more probable that Darwin is right in
attributing the massiveness of the masculine jaws to the accumulated,
inherited effects of constant use in fighting with enemies and
rivals—contests from which the passive females have as a rule been
exempt.
It is the assumption by the hands of many of the former functions of the
teeth that has led to the decrease in the size of the teeth, and, in
consequence, of the jaw-bones to which they are attached. Some writers
have even claimed that the wisdom-teeth are becoming rudimentary, and
will ultimately disappear, because there will be no room for them in our
gradually diminishing jaws. We may feel confident, however, that if this
reduction in the size of the jaws tended to go _too_ far, the sense of
beauty and Sexual Selection, _i.e._ Love, would step in to arrest the
process, by favouring the survival of those who gave their teeth
sufficient exercise to prevent the lower part of the face from becoming
too much reduced in size. Our sense of beauty demands that the distance
from tip of chin to nose should be about the same as the length of the
nose and the height of the forehead. Should these proportions be
violated, Love will restore the balance; for no lover would ever select
a face in which the chin almost touches the nose, as in infants, whose
teeth and jaws are not yet developed, or as in old men and women, in
whom the loss of the teeth has led to a collapse of the jaws, resulting
in a loss of proportion, clumsy movements, and prognathism.