The proportions of the perfect human figure are strictly mathematical.
The whole figure is six times the length of the foot. Whether the form
be slender or plump, this rule holds good. Any deviation from it is a
departure from the highest beauty of proportion. The Greeks made all
their statues according to this rule. The face, from the highest point
of the forehead, where the hair begins, to the end of the chin, is
one-tenth of the whole stature. The hand, from the wrist to the end
of the middle finger, is the same. The chest is a fourth, and from the
nipples to the top of the head is the same. From the top of the chest
to the highest point of the forehead is a seventh. If the length of
the face, from the roots of the hair to the chin, be divided into
three equal parts, the first division determines the point where the
eyebrows meet, and the second the place of the nostrils. The navel is
the central point of the human body, and if a man should lie on his
back with his arms and legs extended, the periphery of the circle
which might be described around him, with the navel for its center,
would touch the extremities of his hands and feet. The height from
the feet to the top of the head is the same as the distance from the
extremity of one hand to the extremity of the other when the arms are
extended.
[Illustration: Lady's Dress in the days of Greece.]
The Venus de Medici is considered the most perfect model of the female
forms, and has been the admiration of the world for ages. Alexander
Walker, after minutely describing this celebrated statue, says: "All
these admirable characteristics of the female form, the mere existence
of which in woman must, one is tempted to imagine, be even to herself,
a source of ineffable pleasure, these constitute a being worthy, as
the personification of beauty, of occupying the temples of Greece;
present an object finer, alas, than Nature even seems capable of
producing; and offer to all nations and ages a theme of admiration and
delight." Well might Thomson say:
So stands the statue that enchants the world,
So, bending, tries to vail the matchless boast--
The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.
We beg our readers to observe the form of the waist (evidently
innocent of corsets and tight dresses) of this model woman, and also
that of the Greek Slave in the accompanying outlines. These forms
are such as unperverted nature and the highest art alike require.
To compress the waist, and thereby change its form, pushing the ribs
inward, displacing the vital organs, and preventing the due expansion
of the lungs, is as destructive to beauty as it is to health.
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