A mirror for witches

by Esther Forbes

3

A thought for a Wise Man. Is Beauty of Flesh a good or evil thing? And the opinions of pagan Antiquity as contrasted to our own THEOLOGY.

There is one quality in this world which men call goodness. This is the beauty of the spirit, and is from God and of God. There is another quality, which is beauty of the body, and from whence comes it?

The heathen Greeks, whom the Reverend Pyam Plover has suggested were but devil worshippers, believed these two things to be identical; that is, what is good is beautiful, what is ugly is evil. Yet need the thoughtful Christian but read history, or look about him to-day, to see that rather than identical these two beauties should be considered non-congruent or mutually antagonistic. All must have observed how often the most virtuous women have been of no great bodily beauty, and yet certain famous wantons have been blessed (or cursed) with bounteous fleshly charms. One should but consider the lives of Cleopatra, that Helen known as Helen of Troy, Dido, etc.

Beauty of the body, in that it excites to lust and evil thoughts, is wicked, but the sick, ugly, maimed body, in that it excites the sweet and gentle passion of pity, is from God. For this reason modesty in the young, blooming, comely female is of greater necessity than in the sick and ancient.

But it is not alone in a consideration of the needful and (in its proper place) decent female body that one may observe how often Evil has wormed its way into the hearts of humanity under specious guise of Beauty. For when the Devil would steal the soul of Bilby’s Doll, he showed her lavishly and in wanton profusion such sights of pagan beauty no Christian, godly woman may ever expect to see.

For her this seemly ordered earth, on which we set our houses, in which we humbly plough and delve—this quiet earth for her brake open into a rare flowering. She saw the satyrs (close by the salt marshes) gambolling upon mud flats. In the morning she saw the goatprints of their hooves. She heard nymphs sing all night in trees. She saw birch trees in the moonlight spun out of solid silver, and those common flowers, which by day (and in the sight of God) are but buttercups, turned into glittering jewels which by their very brilliance frightened her. Even that fiend the Devil sent to her was handsomer far than any mortal man might be. He was lovely to the eye, and his touch was as the touch of fire. The strength of his arms was beyond that of mortal men (who are born but to praise God and die). So was every moment that she spent with him a moment of ecstasy. How can mortal man contend with fiends in the love of woman? Have they such unholy power to arouse passion?

It is well known that no woman who has ever accepted an infernal lover may content herself with the ruck of men—such seeming, after the love of Hell, but pale, unsubstantial shadows. And the same may be said the other way over, for men, it is said, who have known nymphs, elves, or succubi, will long for them all their lives, eschewing the feeble impuissant arms of women.

So it is an established fact that Beauty that delights the eye is more often a curse from Lucifer than a blessing from God. Let the reasonable and righteous man content himself with that which is plain and seemly—whether it is a church or wife or horse or land that he considers. Let him not yield to the delights of the eye, but rather to the beauty of goodness, piety, etc., which burns from within.