HEALTH AND BEAUTY.
Dr. Bell's new work on Health and Beauty. Its value. Adam and Eve
probably very beautiful. Primitive beauty of our race to be yet
restored. Sin the cause of present ugliness. Never too late to reform.
Opinion of Dr. Rush. An important principle. The doctrine of human
perfectibility disavowed. Various causes of ugliness. Obedience to law,
natural and moral, the true source of beauty. Indecency and immorality
of neglecting cleanliness.
Dr. Bell, of Philadelphia, whose reputation as a medical man and an
author is deservedly high, has written a volume, as the reader may
already know, entitled, "Health and Beauty"--in which he endeavors to
show that "a pleasing contour, symmetry of form, and a graceful
carriage of the body," may be acquired, and "the common deformities of
the spine and chest be prevented," by a due obedience to the "laws of
growth and exercise." These laws he has endeavored--and with
considerable success--to present in a popular and intelligible manner.
Nor was the task unworthy the efforts and pen of the gifted individual
by whom it was executed. Young women, of course, are inclined to set a
high value on beauty of form and feature, as well as to dread, more
than most other persons, what they regard as deformity. Surely they
ought to be glad of a work like that I have described.
I have no wish to disparage beauty; it is almost a virtue. There can
hardly be a doubt that Adam and Eve were exceedingly beautiful; nor
that so far as the world can be restored to its primitive state--which
we hope may be the case in its future glorious ages--the pristine
beauty of our race will be restored. It is sin, in the largest sense of
the term, which has distorted the human "face divine," disrobed it of
half its charms; and deprived the whole frame of its symmetry.
Does any one ask, of what possible service it can be to know these
facts, when it is too late to make use of them? The truth is, it can
never be too late. There is no person so old that she cannot improve
her appearance, more or less, if she will but take the appropriate
steps. I do not, of course, mean to say, that at twenty or thirty years
of age a person can greatly alter the contour of the face, or the
symmetry of the frame; though I believe some thing can be done, even in
these respects. It was the saying of Dr. Rush, that husbands and wives
who live happily together, always come to resemble one another more and
more, in their very features; and he accounted for it on the principle
of an increased resemblance in their feelings, tastes or dispositions.
And there are probably few who have not observed how much bad passions
and bad habits distort the features of every body, at every age. Then
why should not Dr. Rush be right; and why should not good feelings and
good affections change the countenance, in a greater or less degree, as
well as bad ones? And what reason, then, can be given why every young
woman--certainly those who are far down in the column of
_teens_--cannot change her countenance for the better, if she will take
the necessary pains for it?
That she can do but little, is no reason why that little should not be
done. The very consideration that she can do but little, enhances the
importance of doing what she can. Let her remember this. Would that the
principle were universally remembered and applied! Would that it were
generally believed--and the belief acted upon--that the latter day
glory of the world is to be brought about in no other way than by
having every individual of every generation, through a long series of
generations, do all in his power, aided by wisdom and strength from on
high, to hasten it.
Do not suppose that I entertain the belief, as foolish as it is absorb,
that in any future glorious period of the world's history, mankind will
be perfectly beautiful, or perfectly conformed to one standard of
beauty. I entertain no belief in human perfectibility. I believe--and I
wish to state this belief once for all, that I may not be
misunderstood--that we are destined, if we are wise, to approach
perfection forever, without the possibility of ever attaining to
it;--to any perfection, I mean, which is absolute and unqualified.
Nor do I believe that all mankind will ever become perfectly beautiful,
according to any particular standard of beauty. This were neither
useful nor desirable. There will probably be as great a variety of
features, and possibly, too, of size and symmetry, in the day of
millennial glory, as there is now.
What I believe, is this. That in falling, with our first parents, we
fall physically as well as morally; and that our physical departure
from truth is almost as wide as our moral. I suppose all the ugliness
of the young--not, of course, all their variety of feature or
complexion, but all which constitutes real ugliness of
appearance--comes directly or indirectly from the transgression of
God's laws, natural or moral; and can only be restored by obedience to
those laws by the transgression of which it came.
It is not tight dressing alone which spoils the shape; but improper
exercise, neglect of exercise, over exercise--and a thousand other
things also. Nor is it the application of _rouge_ alone, which spoils
the beauty. There are a thousand physical transgressions that dim the
lustre of the eye, or sink it too deep in the socket, or flatten it, or
paint a circle round it. So of the face in general. There are a
thousand forms of transgression that take away the carnation of the lip
and cheek, and leave unnatural hues, not to say pimples and furrows, in
its stead.
I might be much more particular. I might show how every physical
transgression--every breach of that part of the natural law which
imposes on us the duty of proper attention to cleanliness, exercise,
dress, air, temperature, eating, drinking, sleeping, &c.--mars, in a
greater or less degree, our beauty. Such a disclosure might be
startling; but it ought to be made. Dr. Bell, in the volume mentioned,
has led the way; and his work entitles him to a high place among the
benefactors of our race. But he has only begun the work; the important
honor of completing it, remains to him, or to some of his countrymen.
But enough on this subject, for the present, if I have convinced the
reader whence her help, in this respect, is to come;--if I have
convinced her that, under God, she is to restore her beauty only by
becoming a true Christian; by having her whole being--body, intellect
and affections--brought into subjection to divine law, especially by a
prompt, and minute, and thorough obedience to all the laws of health
and life, as far as she understands them; and by diligent effort to
understand them better and better, as long as she lives; and, lastly,
by the smiles of Almighty God upon her labors and efforts.