Whereas the beauty of the chin is purely physical, its neighbour, the
mouth, has the emotional charm of expression besides the formal beauty
of outline. When we come to speak of the ears we shall find that some
animals have five times as many muscles as man, wherewith they can
execute expressive movements with those organs. But in the number and
delicacy of the muscles of the mouth no animal approaches man, in whom
they are more numerous even than those which serve for the varied
expression of the eyes. Great as is the difference between an animal’s
forefoot and man’s hand, it is not so great as the difference between an
animal’s and a man’s mouth. Chewing and sucking are almost the only
functions of the animal’s mouth, while man moulds his lips into a
thousand shapes in singing, whistling, pouting, blowing, speaking,
smiling, kissing, etc. From being a mere mechanism for masticating food,
it has become the most delicate instrument for intellectual and
emotional expression.
Sir Charles Bell’s testimony that “the lips are, of all the features,
the most susceptible of action, and the most direct index of the
feelings,” has already been quoted in the chapter on Kissing. Could
Rubinstein himself express a wider range of emotions, by subtle
variations of pianistic touch, than our lips can express degrees and
varieties of affection in the family, friendly, conjugal, and love
kisses? And can we find, even in the music of Chopin and Wagner,
harmonic changes more infinitely varied than the countless subtle
modulations of the human lips, as revealed in the fact that deaf mutes
can be taught to understand what we say to them merely by watching the
movements of our lips?
“The mouth, which is the end of love” (Dante), is also the seat of
Love’s smiles; “and in her smile Love’s image you may see.” We often
read of smiling eyes, and the eyes _do_ partake in the expression of
smiling, by increased brightness and the wrinkling of the surrounding
muscles. But that the mouth is a more important factor in this
expression can be shown by painting the face of a man with a sad
expression, and then pasting on a smiling mouth, which will give the man
at once a happy expression, notwithstanding the unchanged eyes. In life
the muscles of the mouth and eyes execute certain movements in harmony.
“In all exhilarating emotions,” says Bell, “the eyebrows, the eyelids,
the nostril, and the angle of the mouth are raised. In the depressing
emotions it is the reverse.”
For the execution of these diverse movements, which make it the most
expressive organ of the body, the mouth employs more than a dozen
important groups of muscles, some of which originate in the chin, some
in the cheeks, some in the lips themselves, enabling them to execute
independent movements.
While surpassing the eyes in expressiveness, the mouth rivals them in
beauty of form and colour. “The lips answer the purpose of displaying a
more brilliant red than is to be seen elsewhere,” says Winckelmann. “The
under lips should be fuller than the upper.” In Greek divinities the
lips are not always closed: “and this is especially the case with Venus,
in order that her countenance may express the languishing softness of
desire and love.” At the same time, “very few of the figures which have
been represented laughing, as some Satyrs or Fauns are, show the teeth.”
This is natural enough, for the long-continued exposure of the teeth
would only result in a grimace. It is only in the transient smile that
the teeth may peep forth; and then what a charming contrast their ivory
curve and lustrous colour presents to the full-blooded, soft, pink lips!
“Lilies married to the rose,
Have made her cheek the nuptial bed;
Her lips betray their virgin red,
As they only blushed for this,
That they one another kiss.”
Health, Beauty, and Love—everywhere we see them inseparably associated.
Who could ever fall in love with a pair of thin, pallid lips that have
lost their pink and plump loveliness through anæmic indolence, or
disease, or tight lacing? The very teeth, though the hardest substance
of the body, lose their natural colour and beauty in ill-health. Not
only do they decay and become blackish, but “in bilious people they
become yellow, and in consumptive patients they show occasionally an
unnaturally pearly and translucent whiteness” (Brinton and Napheys).
Negroes have, normally, teeth of a dazzling whiteness, which is often
regarded as a racial peculiarity, but is due, according to Waitz, to the
use of chalk or vegetal fibres. But various savages are dissatisfied
with the natural form and colour of their teeth, and disfigure them in
various ways. “In different countries the teeth are stained black, red,
blue, etc., and in the Malay Archipelago it is thought shameful to have
teeth like those of a dog” (Darwin).
“In Macassar the women spend a part of the day in painting their teeth
red and yellow, in such a way that a red tooth follows a yellow one, and
alternately.” In Japan, Fashion compels married women to blacken their
teeth, not, however, as an ornament, but to make them ugly and save them
from temptation.
Some African tribes knock out two or more of their front teeth, on the
ground that they do not wish to look like brutes. The Batokas “think the
presence of incisors most unsightly, and on beholding some Europeans,
cried out, ‘Look at the great teeth!’... In various parts of Africa, and
in the Malay Archipelago, the natives file the incisors into points like
those of a saw, or pierce them with holes, into which they insert
studs.”
In case of the lips, primitive Fashion prescribes still more atrocious
mutilations. One would think that a negro’s swollen lips were ugly
enough to suit even a devotee of African Fashion; but no! Her lips being
naturally large, the fashionable negro belle considers it incumbent on
her to exaggerate them into additional hideousness, just as European and
American fashionable women exaggerate the slight and beautiful natural
curve of their waist into the atrocious hour-glass shape.
“Among the Babines, who live north of the Columbia River,” says Sir John
Lubbock, “the size of the under lip is the standard of female beauty. A
hole is made in the under lip of the infant, in which a small bone is
inserted; from time to time the bone is replaced by a larger one, until
at last a piece of wood, three inches long and an inch and a half wide,
is inserted in the orifice, which makes the lip protrude to a frightful
extent. The process appears to be very painful.”
“In Central Africa,” says Darwin, “the women perforate the lower lip and
wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the tongue, has ‘a wriggling
motion, indescribably ludicrous during conversation.’ The wife of the
chief of Latooka told Sir S. Baker that Lady Baker ‘would be much
improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw,
and wear the long pointed polished crystal in her under lip.’ Further
south, with the Makalolo, the upper lip is perforated, and a large metal
and bamboo ring, called a _pelelé_, is worn in the hole. This caused the
lip to project in one point two inches beyond the tip of the nose; and
when the lady smiled, the contraction of the muscles elevated it over
the eyes. ‘Why do the women wear these things?’ the venerable chief
Chinsurdi was asked. Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he
replied, ‘For beauty! They are the only beautiful things women have; men
have beards, women have none. What kind of a person would she be without
a _pelelé_? She would not be a woman at all, with a mouth like a man but
no beard.’”
In New Zealand, according to Tylor, “it was considered shameful for a
woman not to have her mouth tattooed, for people would say with disgust,
‘She has red lips.’”
Compare these two pictures for a moment: on the one side, the
protuberant mouth-borders of the negro woman, swollen as by disease or
an insect’s sting, enlarged, in smiling, to the very ears, and showing
not only the teeth but the gums, the tongue and the unæsthetic
œsophagus; on the other side, the full but delicate cherry lips of
civilised woman, capable of an infinite variety of subtle, graceful
movements, a keyboard on which the whole gamut of human feelings finds
expression, and revealing, in a smile, only the tips of the pearly,
undeformed teeth. Shall we say, with Alison and Jeffrey, that it is all
a matter of taste, and that the negro has as much right to his taste as
we have to ours? Or have we not plentiful reasons for claiming that
Personal Beauty is a fine art, and that the reason why the negro prefers
his coarse mouth to our refined lips is because he _does not understand_
our highly-developed and specialised Beauty?
There are cogent scientific reasons for believing that, just as the
skull has been modified and developed from the upper part of the spinal
column, and the brain from its contents, so the facial muscles are all
developed from the broad muscle of the neck. In the orang, according to
Professor Owen, we find already all the important facial muscles which
man uses to express emotions. But, as Darwin remarks, “distinct uses,
independently of expression, can ... be assigned with much probability
for almost all the facial muscles.”
On the other hand, the facial muscles “are, as is admitted by every one
who has written on the subject, very variable in structure; and Moreau
remarks that they are hardly alike in half a dozen subjects. They are
also variable in function. Thus the power of uncovering the canine tooth
on one side differs much in different persons. The power of raising the
wings of the nostrils is also, according to Dr. Piderit, variable in a
remarkable degree; and other such cases could be given.”
The facts that the facial muscles blend so much together that their
number has been variously estimated at from nineteen to fifty-five, and
that they vary so much in details of structure and function in
individuals, are of extreme significance. For, in the first place, this
variableness allows Love—or Sexual Selection—to favour the survival of
those modifications of the features which are most in harmony with the
laws of Beauty; and, secondly, it affords the means of further
specialisation and increased accuracy in the modes of emotional
expression.
When we see a friend reading a letter, we fancy his face a perfect
mirror, reflecting every mood touched upon in its contents. Yet many of
our expressions are vague, and there is much room for improvement in
definiteness. Darwin, in the introduction to his work on the _Expression
of Emotions in Man and Animals_, has remarked how difficult it often is
to name the exact emotion intended to be expressed in a picture of a
man, unless we regard the accessories by which the painter illustrates
the situation; and how apt people are to disagree in naming the emotions
expressed by a series of physiognomic portraits. With monkeys, he says,
“the expression of slight pain, or of any painful emotion, such as
grief, vexation, jealousy, etc., is not easily distinguished from that
of moderate anger.”
Savages, as we saw in a previous chapter, are strangers to many of the
tender emotions which enter into our daily life; hence it would be
absurd to look for muscles specially trained to express them. And even
with Europeans the refined emotions are of such recent development that,
as just stated, they are capable of much further specialisation. To take
only one case: it is probable that, whereas in the present stage of
human evolution, it is almost impossible, without accessories, to
distinguish the facial expression of feminine Romantic Love from that of
maternal love, future generations will have specially modified muscles
for those modes of expression. Duchenne has pointed out on the side of
the nose a series of transient folds expressive of amorous desire. As
Romantic Love displaces coarse passion, may not these or another set of
muscles be pressed into the special service of refined Love as a sign of
encouragement to lovers about to propose? Coquettes, of course, would
immediately cultivate this expression, as a new wile or “wrinkle.”
Between the facial muscles that are thus utilised for the expression of
emotions and other muscles of the body, there is one difference which is
of the utmost importance from the point of view of Personal Beauty. The
function of ordinary muscles is to move bones, whereas the muscles of
expression in the face are only concerned with the movements of the
skin. Hence they do not enlarge the bones of the face, which would
destroy its delicacy. Their exercise gives elasticity and plump
roundness to the outlines of the face; and as they are subtly subdivided
in function, they cannot easily become too plump from exercise.
Individual peculiarities of expression are of course due to the frequent
exercise of certain sets of muscles, leading gradually to a fixed
physiognomic aspect; for form is merely crystallised expression. Hence
no one can be beautiful without being good. Vice soon destroys Personal
Beauty. If the muscles of anger, envy, jealousy, spite, cruelty, etc.,
are too frequently called into exercise, the result is a face on which
the word _vicious_ is written as legibly and in as many corners as the
numerals X and 10 are printed on a United States banknote.
One of the reasons why Fashion encourages the _blasé_, _nil admirari_
attitude, and the stolid suppression of emotional expression, is to hide
these signs of moral and hygienic sins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, anatomist and poet, says of Emerson that he had
“that look of refinement centring about the lips which is rarely found
in the male New Englander, unless the family features have been for two
or three cultivated generations the battlefield and the playground of
varied thoughts and complex emotions, as well as the sensuous and
nutritive port of entry.”
Dr. Holmes need not have limited his generalisation to “male New
Englanders.” Refined mouths are rare in every country, among women as
well as among men. As a writer in the _Victoria Magazine_ exclaims: “It
is wonderful how far more common good foreheads and eyes are amongst us
than good mouths and chins.” Yet there is a special reason for singling
out the average male New Englander as a “warning example.” He inherits
the thin, famished, pale, stern, forbidding lips of his Puritan
ancestors, whose sins are thus visited on later generations. Sins? Yes,
sins against health. Without cheerfulness there can be no sound health,
and the Puritans made the systematic pursuit of unhappiness the chief
object of their life. They made cruel war on all those innocent pursuits
and amusements which bring the bloom of health and beauty to the
youthful cheek, and exercise the lips in the expression of refined
æsthetic emotion. Even music, the most innocent of the arts, was
included in their fanatic ostracism, to which historians also trace the
rarity of musical taste of the highest order in England.
There is reason to believe that it is especially æsthetic culture which
betrays itself in the refined contours and expression of the lips. Men
of genius, though their cast of features is not always handsome,
commonly have finely-cut mouths. Among German women addicted to music
and love of nature, though beauty is comparatively rare—owing to causes
which will be considered in a later chapter—good mouths are more common
than in some other countries which boast a higher general average of
Personal Beauty. Among Americans in general, all the features are apt to
be finely cut, hence the lips also partake of this advantage.
But it is among Spanish maidens that perhaps the most inviting,
full-blooded yet delicate, soft, and refined lips are to be sought.
True, the Spanish maiden seems to lack refined feelings when she goes,
as commonly supposed, to be thrilled by a bull fight. Yet it is well
known that the upper classes of women in Spain do not commonly attend
these spectacles; and if they did, would they be more cruel than our
fashionable women? Which is the more glaring evidence of callous
emotions, to voluntarily witness the slaughter of an infuriated,
dangerous beast, or to wear on one’s hat the painted corpses of innocent
song-birds?
The following passage in one of Washington Irving’s works shows that the
Spanish have genuine æsthetic feeling and taste:—
“‘How near the Sierra looks this evening!’ said Mateo; ‘it seems as if
you could touch it with your hand, and yet it is many leagues off.’
While he was speaking a star appeared over the snowy summit of the
mountain, the only one yet visible in the heavens, and so pure, so
large, so bright and beautiful as to call forth ejaculations of delight
from honest Mateo.
”‘Que lucero hermoso!—que clara y limpio es!—no pueda ser lucero mas
brillante.’ (What a beautiful star! how clear and lucid!—no star could
be more brilliant!)
“I have often remarked this sensibility of the common people of Spain to
the charms of natural objects. The lustre of a star—the beauty or
fragrance of a flower—the crystal purity of a fountain, will inspire
them with a kind of poetical delight—and then what euphonious words
their magnificent language affords with which to give utterance to their
transports!”
Possibly the constant pronouncing of these “euphonious words” is one of
the causes of the beauty of Spanish lips. But one need not go into such
subtle details for an explanation of the phenomenon. Sexual Selection
accounts for it sufficiently. The admiration of Beauty is the strongest
factor in Romantic Love. The Spaniard’s sense of Beauty is refined
through his love of Beauty in natural objects. Hence in Sexual Selection
he is guided by a taste which abhors equally the coarse, protuberant
lips suggestive of mere animality, and the leathery, lifeless lips
indicating neglect of the laws of health and a lack of lusty vitality.
For true labial refinement consists not in ascetic elimination of
sensuous fulness, but in æsthetic harmony between sense and intellect.
The lips, like all other parts of the body, are naturally plump and
full-blooded in Southern nations, saturated with sunshine and fresh air;
and when this plumpness is checked by mental refinement and the
exigencies of varied expression, then it is that lips become ideally
beautiful.
It is with the lips as with Love, of which they are the perch. Neither
Zola nor Dante are the true painters of the romantic passion, but
Shakspere, who pays respect to flesh and blood as well as to emotion and
intellect.