“The charm of colour, especially in the intricate infinities of human
flesh, is so mysterious and fascinating, that some almost measure a
painter’s merit by his success in dealing with it,” says Hegel; and
again: “Man is the only animal that has flesh in its display of the
infinities of colour.” “No loveliness of colour, even of the humming
birds or the birds of Paradise, is living, is glowing with its own life,
but shines with the lustre of light reflected, and its charm is from
without and not from within” (_Æsthetics_, Kedney’s edition).
For a metaphysician, trained to scornfully ignore facts, the difference
between man and animals is in these sentences pointed out with
commendable insight. Regard for scientific accuracy, it is true, compels
us to qualify Hegel’s generalisation, for not only have monkeys bare
coloured patches in their faces, and elsewhere, which are subject to
changes, but the plumage of birds, too, is dulled by ill-health and
brightened by health, reaching its greatest brilliancy in the season of
Courtship, thus showing a connection between internal states and
external appearances. Nevertheless, these correspondences in animals are
transient and crude; and man is the only being whose nude skin is
sufficiently delicate and transparent to indicate the minute changes in
the blood’s circulation brought about by various phases of pleasure and
pain.
To understand the exact nature of these tints of the complexion, which
are so greatly admired—though different nations, as usual, have
different standards of “taste”—it is necessary to bear in mind a few
simple facts of microscopic anatomy.
To put the matter graphically, it may be said that our body wears two
tight-fitting physiological coats, called the epidermis or overskin, and
the cutis or underskin.
The overskin is not simple, but consists of an outside layer of horny
cells, such as are removed by the razor on shaving, and an inside mucous
layer, as seen on the lips, which have no horny covering.
The underskin contains nerves, fat cells, hairbulbs, and numerous
blood-vessels, some as fine as a hair, all embedded in a soft, elastic
network of connective tissue.
The overskin has none of these blood-vessels; but as it is very delicate
and transparent, it allows the colour of the blood to be seen as through
a veil. In the extremely blond races of the North nothing but the blood
can be seen through this veil; but in the coloured races the lower or
mucous layer of the overskin contains a number of black, brown, or
yellowish pigment cells. The colours of these cells blend with that of
the blood, thus producing, according to their number and depth of
coloration, the brunette, black, yellow, or red complexion. The palm of
the negro’s hand is whiter than the rest of his body, because there the
horny epidermis is so thick that the black pigmentary matter cannot be
seen through it. And the reason why every negro is born to blush unseen
is because the pigmentary matter in his skin is so deep and abundant
that it neutralises the colour of the blood.
Now, why do the races of various countries differ so greatly in the
colour of their skin? This is the most vexed and difficult question in
anthropology, on which there are almost as many opinions as writers.
The oldest and most obvious theory is that the sun is responsible for
dark complexions. Are not those parts of our body which are constantly
exposed to sunlight—the hands, face, and neck—darker than the rest of
the body? and does not this colour become darker still if we spend a few
weeks in the country or make a trip across the Atlantic? Do we not find
in Europe, as we pass from the sunny South to the cloudy North, that
complexion, hair, and eyes grow gradually lighter? And not only are the
Spaniards and Italians darker than the Germans, but the South Germans
are darker than the North Germans, and the Swedes and Norwegians lighter
still than the Prussians.
The same holds true not only of South America as compared to North
America, but of the southern United States compared to the northern. It
also holds true of the East, where, as Waitz tells us, “The Chinese from
Peking to Canton show every shade from a light to a dark-copper colour,
while in the Arabians, from the desert down to Yemen, we find every
gradation from olive colour to black.” Moreover, aristocratic ladies in
Japan and China are almost or quite white, whereas the labouring
classes, as with us, are of a darker tint.
These and numerous similar facts, taken in connection with the
circumstance that the blackest of all races lives in the hottest
continent, and that Jews may be found of all colours according to the
country they inhabit, lead almost irresistibly to the conclusion that it
is the sun who paints the complexion dark.
Nevertheless there are numerous and striking exceptions to the rule that
the warmer the climate the darker the complexion. To obviate this
difficulty, Heusinger in 1829, Jarrold in 1838, and others after them,
have endeavoured to show that the moisture and altitude, as well as the
direct action of the sun, had to be taken into consideration. But since
“D’Orbigny in South America, and Livingstone in Africa, arrived at
diametrically opposite conclusions with respect to dampness and
dryness,” Darwin excogitated the theory (which, he subsequently found,
had already been advanced in 1813 by Dr. Wells), that inasmuch as “the
colour of the skin and hair is sometimes correlated in a surprising
manner with a complete immunity from the action of certain vegetable
poisons, and from the attacks of parasites ... negroes and other dark
races might have acquired their dark tints by the darker individuals
escaping from the deadly influence of the miasma of their native
countries, during a long series of generations.”
The testimony on this point being, however, conflicting and
unsatisfactory, Darwin gave up this notion too, and fell back on the
theory that differences in complexion are due to differences in taste,
and were created through the agency of Sexual Selection. “We know,” he
says, “from the many facts already given that the colour of the skin is
regarded by the men of all races as a highly important element in their
beauty; so that it is a character which would be likely to have been
modified through selection, as has occurred in innumerable instances
with the lower animals. It seems at first sight a monstrous supposition
that the jet-blackness of the negro should have been gained through
sexual selection; but this view is supported by various analogies, and
we know that negroes admire their own colour.”
Doubtless there is some truth in Darwin’s view, but it does not cover
the whole ground. Natural as well as Sexual Selection has been
instrumental in producing the diverse colours of various races. Hitherto
the trouble has been that no one could understand how a black skin could
be useful to an African negro. It ought to make him feel uncomfortably
hot—for is it not well known that black absorbs heat more than any other
colour? and do we not feel warmer in summer if we wear black than if we
wear white clothes?
No doubt whatever. But it so happens that the skin is not made of dead
wool or felt. It contains, among various other ingenious arrangements, a
vast number of minute holes or pores, through which, when we are very
warm, the perspiration leaks, and, in changing into vapour, absorbs the
body’s heat and leaves it cool, or even cold. Now, in a negro’s skin
these pores are both larger and more numerous than in ours, which partly
accounts for his indifference to heat, and the fact that his temperature
is lower than ours. Yet it does not solve the problem in hand; for there
is no visible reason why Natural Selection should not succeed in
enlarging the number and size of the pores in a white skin as easily as
in a black one.
A year or two ago Surgeon-Major Alcock sent a communication to _Nature_
in which, as I believe, he for the first time suggested the true reason
why tropical man is black, and why his blackness is useful to him. He
pointed out that since the pigment-cells in the negro’s skin are placed
in front of the nerve terminations, they serve to lessen the intensity
of the nerve vibrations that would be caused in a naked human body by
exposure to a tropical sun; so that the pigment plays the same part as a
piece of smoked glass held between the sun and the eyes.
This ingenious theory at once explains some curious and apparently
anomalous observations communicated to _Nature_ by Mr. Ralph Abercrombie
from Darjeeling. They are that “In Morocco, and all along the north of
Africa, the inhabitants blacken themselves round the eyes to avert
ophthalmia from the glare off hot sand;” that “In Fiji the natives, who
are in the habit of painting their faces with red and white stripes as
an ornament, invariably blacken them when they go out fishing on the
reef in the full glare of the sun;” and that “In the Sikkim hills the
natives blacken themselves round the eyes with charcoal to palliate the
glare of a tropical sun on newly-fallen snow.”
How, on the other hand, are we to account for the white complexion of
northern races? It is well known that there is a tendency among arctic
animals to become white. This, in many cases, can be accounted for by
the advantage white beasts of prey, as well as their victims, thus gain
in escaping detection. But it is probable that another agency comes into
play, first suggested by Craven in 1846, and thus summarised by a writer
in _Nature_, 2d April 1885: “It is well known that white, as the worst
absorber, is also the worst radiator of all forms of radiant energy, so
that _warm-blooded_ creatures thus clad would be better enabled to
withstand the severity of an arctic climate—the loss of heat by
radiation might, in fact, be expected to be less rapid than if the hairs
or feathers were of a darker colour.”
This argument, which may be applied to man as well as to animals, is
greatly strengthened by a circumstance which at first appears to oppose
it—the fact, namely, that insects in northern regions, instead of being
light-coloured, show a tendency toward blackness. But this apparent
anomaly is easily explained. Insects, being cold-blooded, cannot lose
any bodily heat through radiation; whereas a black surface, by absorbing
as much solar heat as possible while it lasts, adds to their comfort and
vitality.
The question now arises, Which was the original colour of the human
race, white or black? This question, too, we are enabled to answer with
the aid of a principle of evolution which, so far, has stood every
test,—the principle that the child’s development is an epitome of the
evolution of his race. Before birth there is no colouring matter at all
in the skin of a negro child. “In a new-born child the colour is light
gray, and in the northern parts of the negro countries the completely
dark colour is not attained till towards the third year,” says Waitz;
and again, in speaking of Tahiti: “The children are here (as everywhere
in Polynesia) white at birth, and only gradually assume their darker
colour under the influence of sunlight; covered portions of their bodies
remain lighter, and since women wear more clothes than men, and dwell
more in the shade, they too are often of so light a colour that they
have red cheeks and blush visibly.”
So we are entitled to infer that primitive man was originally white, or
whitish. As he moved south, Natural Selection made him darker and darker
by continually favouring the survival of those individuals whose
colour—owing to the spontaneous variation found throughout Nature—was of
a dark shade, and therefore better able to dull the ardour of the sun’s
rays. In the north, on the contrary, a light complexion was favoured for
its quality of retaining the body’s heat. The yellow and red varieties
need not be specially considered, for it has been shown that the
different tints of the iris are merely due to the greater or less
quantity of the same pigmentary matter; and as the colouring matter of
the complexion and the hair is similar to that of the eye, it is
probable that the same holds true of different hues of the skin; so that
yellowish, brown, and reddish tints may be looked upon as mere
intermediate stages between white and black. A trace of pigment, indeed,
is found even in our skins; and I believe that the reason why we become
brown on exposure to the sun is that the skin, when thus exposed and
irritated, secretes a larger amount of this colouring matter, to serve,
like a dimly-smoked glass, as a protection against scorching rays.
From all these considerations we may safely infer that the particular
hue of man’s skin in each climate is useful to him, and not merely an
ornamental product of “taste,” as Darwin believed. Yet to some extent
Sexual Selection, doubtless, does come into play in most cases. At a low
stage of culture each race likes its special characteristics in an
exaggerated form,—a trait which would lead the more vigorous men to
persistently select the darkest girls as wives, and thus cause their
gradual predominance over the others: while the men, too, would, of
course, inherit a darker tint from their mothers. But a still more
important consideration is this, that, as Dr. Topinard points out, “Dark
colour in the negro is _a sign of health_,”—naturally, since the darker
the dermal pigment, the better are the nerves of temperature protected
against the enervating solar rays. Concerning the Polynesians, too,
Ellis (cited by Waitz) “notes expressly that a dark colour was more
admired and desired because it was looked upon as a sign of vigour.”
These facts yield us a most profound insight into the methods of amorous
selection. The erotic instinct, whose duty is the preservation of the
species, is above all things attracted by Health, because without Health
the species must languish and die out. In a climate where—under the
circumstances in which negroes live—a light complexion is incompatible
with Health, it is bound to be eliminated.
Fortunately, the negro’s taste is not sufficiently refined to make him
feel the æsthetic inferiority of the ebony complexion imposed on him by
his climate. Wherein this æsthetic inferiority consists is graphically
pointed out in these words of Figuier: “The colour of the skin takes
away all charm from the negro’s countenance. What renders the European’s
face pleasing is that each of its features exhibits a particular shade.
The cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin of the white have each a different
tinge. On an African visage, on the contrary, all is black, even the
eyebrows, as inky as the rest, are merged in the general colour;
scarcely another shade is perceptible, except at the line where the lips
join each other.”
Nor is this all. Not only do we look in vain, in the monotonous
blackness of the negro’s face, for those varied tints which adorn a
white maiden’s face, borrowing one another’s charms by insensible
gradations, but also for those subtle emotional changes which, even if
they existed in the negro’s mind, could not paint themselves so
delicately on his opaque countenance, betraying every acceleration or
retardation in the heart’s beats, indicating every _nuance_ of hope and
despair, of pleasure or anguish.
In our own latitude, luckily, Natural Selection favours, in the manner
indicated, the survival of the translucent white complexion. And what
Natural Selection leaves undone, Sexual Selection completes. Romantic
Love is the great awakener of the sense of Beauty, and in proportion as
Love is developed and unimpeded in its action, does the complexion
become more beautiful and more appreciated. Savages, blind to the
delicate tints of a transparent skin, daub themselves all over with
mixtures of grease and paint. The women of ancient Greece had taste
enough to feel the ugliness of the pallor caused by being constantly
chaperoned and locked up, but not enough to know that no artificial
paint can ever replace the natural colour of health. Hence, as Becker
tells us, “painting was almost universal among Grecian women.” Perhaps
they did not use any rouge at home, but it “was resumed when they were
going out, or wished to be specially attractive.” The men, apparently,
had better taste, for we read that “Ischomachos counselled his young
wife to take exercise, that she might do without rouge, which she was
accustomed constantly to use.”
Coming to more recent times, we find men still protesting in vain
against the feminine fashion of bedaubing the face with vulgar paint.
More than two centuries ago La Bruyère informed his countrywomen
pointedly that “If it is the men they desire to please, if it is for
them that they paint and stain themselves, I have collected their
opinions, and I assure them, in the name of all or most men, that the
white and red paint renders them frightful and disgusting; that the red
alone makes them appear old and artificial; that men hate as much to see
them with cherry in their faces, as with false teeth in their mouth and
lumps of wax in the jaws.”
It is needless to say that women who paint their faces put themselves on
a level with savages; for they show thereby that they prefer hideous
opaque daubs to the charm of translucent facial tints. Masculine
protestation, combined with masculine amorous preference for pure
complexions, has at last succeeded in banishing paint from the boudoir
of the most refined ladies; and this, combined with compulsory
vaccination against smallpox, accounts for the increasing number of good
complexions in the world.
But, the important question now confronts us, Is there no limit to the
evolution of whiteness of complexion? Will Sexual Selection continue to
favour the lighter shades until the hyperbolic “milk and blood”
complexion will have been universally realised?
An emphatic “No” is the answer. An exaggerated white is as objectionable
as black,—more so, in fact, because, whereas the deepest black indicates
good health, _extreme_ whiteness suggests the pallor of ill-health, and
will therefore always displease Cupid, the supreme judge of Personal
Beauty. Moreover, in a very white face the red cheek suggests the
confusing blush or the hectic flush rather than the subtle tints of
health and normal emotion. And again, the Scandinavian rose-and-lily
complexion is inferior to the delicate and slightly-veiled tint of the
Spanish brunette, because the latter suggests _the mellowing action of
the sun’s rays, which promises more permanence of beauty_. Hence it is
that in the marriage market a decided preference is shown for the
brunette type, as we shall see in the chapter on Blondes and Brunettes.