NEGATIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY
(a) Animals.—"It has been argued," says Darwin (by Schaffhausen), “that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, and no doubt this is partly true with the more civilised nations, in which intellect is highly appreciated; but this explanation will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness.”
Curiously enough, savages themselves use animals as a negative test of beauty. Thus we read that “the Indians of Paraguay eradicate their eyebrows and eyelashes, saying that they do not wish to be like horses.” “On the Eastern coast, the negro boys, when they saw Burton, cried out, ‘Look at the white man; does he not look like a white ape?’” “A man of Cochin China ‘spoke with contempt of the wife of the English ambassador—that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like that of potato-flowers.’”
A few centuries ago it was a favourite pastime of physiognomists to draw elaborate parallels between men and animals. Thus, in 1593, there appeared a work, De Humana Physiognomia, with numerous illustrations, in which always a human face was matched with some animal’s head. Professor Wundt thus sums up the essence of this book: “A broad forehead, we are told, indicates fearfulness, because the ox with his broad head lacks courage. A long forehead, on the other hand, indicates erudition, as is shown by means of an intelligent dog who has the honour of serving as a pendant to Plato’s profile. Persons with shaggy hair are good-natured, as they resemble the lion. He whose eyebrows are turned inwards, towards the nose, is uncleanly like the pig, which this resembles. The narrow chin of the ape signifies malice and envy. Long ears and thick lips, such as the donkey possesses, are signs of stupidity. A person who has a nose crooked from the forehead inclines, like the raven, to theft, etc. These animal-physiognomists appear to have favoured a thoroughly pessimistic view of man’s capacities, inasmuch as for every creditable resemblance they find at least ten discreditable ones.”
Apart from these puerilities, it is in most cases simply absurd to compare man with animals. Except in the case of apes there are no proper terms of comparison, because the types are so distinct; and, moreover, from the point of view of its own type, the average animal of any species is more beautiful than the average man or woman from the human point of view. This assertion is indirectly corroborated by Mr. Galton’s testimony, that “our human civilised stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic.”
Schopenhauer considered animals beautiful in every way, and suggested that whenever we do find an animal ugly it is due to some irrelevant, inevitable association of ideas, as when a monkey suggests a man, or a toad mud. And Mr. Ruskin pertinently suggests that “That mind only is fully disciplined in its theoretic power which, when it chooses, throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the ideas of destructiveness or of innocence accustom us to regard the animal tribes, as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, I think, from the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own, can pursue the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the alligator, the coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle.”
When Sir Charles Bell intimated that in Greek sculpture the guiding principle was remoteness from the animal type, he stated only one side of the truth, of which the other is thus noted by Winckelmann: among the Greeks, he says, “The study of artists in producing ideal beauties was directed to the nature of the nobler beasts, so that they not only instituted comparisons between the forms of the human countenance and the shape of the head of certain animals, but they even undertook to adopt from animals the means of imparting greater majesty and elevation to their statues ... especially in the heads of Hercules.” Jupiter’s head “has the complete aspect of the lion, the king of beasts, not only in the large, round eyes, in the fulness of the prominent, and, as it were, swollen forehead, and in the nose, but also in the hair, which hangs from his head like the mane of the lion, first rising upward from the forehead, and then, parting on each side into a bow, again falling downward.”
So that we may safely reject the theory that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, whatever savages and Chinamen may think on this subject. Coarse minds little suspect what exquisite beauty is to be found in the head of a cow or a donkey, a puppy or a lamb—beauty which, like a lovely melody, may bring tears to the eyes of one who is sensitive to æsthetic impressions. Objectively considered, even the destructive emotions do not appear ugly in an animal. The ferocity of a lion does not make him appear vicious, because ferocity is his nature. He knows no better; can only live by fighting. But a man is disfigured by ferocity because he does know better; he can live without fighting; and it is the consciousness of his selfish meanness that puts the stamp of ugliness on his distorted features.
In apes alone does fierceness seem ugly and brutal instead of sublime. For apes bear so much resemblance to us, and have a brain so superior in structure to that of other animals, that we feel justified in applying the human standard. Hence apes alone afford us a negative test of beauty. Their heads and faces are cast in our mould, and therefore afford the means of direct comparison. In looking at their massive, brutal jaws, their receding foreheads, their undifferentiated hands and feet, their coarse, hairy skin, their clumsy, inexpressive, gigantic mouths, their flat noses and nostrils open to the view, we are justified in calling them ugly, compared with ourselves, and in feeling proud that civilisation has gradually raised us so far above our country cousins, in beauty as in everything else, except the art of climbing trees.
(b) Savages are valuable as negative tests of beauty for the same reason: they enable us to see what progress we have made in refining our features into harmonious proportions, and making them susceptible of diverse emotional expression. It should be noted that Nature constantly endeavours to make primitive mankind beautiful, as it does with all other animals. Tourists constantly note the occurrence of remarkable instances of Personal Beauty among the young in most tribes. But this natural Beauty is not appreciated by the vulgar taste of savages, as we saw a few pages back in a case mentioned by Mr. Galton. Beauty must be distorted and exaggerated before it pleases the savage’s taste. Paint must be laid on an inch thick, the nose perforated and “adorned” with a ring, and ditto the abnormally lengthened lips. This corrects the notion that savage hideousness is a product of Nature. Nature may blunder, but never so sadly as in the appearance of a savage belle or warrior; and in scorning these we do not therefore scorn Nature, but merely the artificial products of the vulgar taste of primitive man.
(c) Degraded Classes.—Poverty, suffering, want of leisure for mental culture, want of money for sanitary modes of living, have, unfortunately, produced in all countries a large class in whom Personal Beauty occurs only as an accident. That such unhappy mortals afford a negative test of Beauty is seen by the fact that, just as savages are intermediate between monkeys and them, so they stand between savages and refined men in features and expression.
Poverty alone does not produce this vulgar type of personal appearance; it is intellectual indolence, moral vice, and hygienic indifference that are responsible for it. Hence this third negative teat of Beauty is not at all difficult to find in any sphere of society, from the hod-carrier to the aristocrat with a pedigree of a hundred generations. In every scale of the social ladder may be found “features seamed by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse; bodies consumed with sloth, broken down by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured in foul uses; intellects without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly and devilish” (Ruskin).
(d) Age and Decrepitude.—It is not true, as a famous Frenchwoman has remarked, that age and beauty are incompatible terms. Even age and Love are not incompatible, as we saw in the chapter on Genius in Love; and Byron has remarked that Love, like the measles, is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
There is a special variety of Beauty for every period of life, and the Beauty of old age certainly is not the least attractive of these varieties. What could be more majestic, more admirable, than the head of a Longfellow in his last days? Provided health of mind and body has been maintained, even the folds in the cheeks, the wrinkles on the forehead of old age, are not unbeautiful. But when senility means decrepitude, brought on by a neglectful or otherwise vicious life, then it is positively ugly. The loveliest thing in the world is a fair and amiable maiden; the ugliest a vicious old hag—savages and apes not excepted.
(e) Disease.—Temperance preachers and other hygienic reformers commonly dwell too exclusively on the dangers to health, domestic peace, moral progress, and refinement which the indulgence in various vices entails. If they would insist with equal, or even greater, emphasis on the havoc which diseases brought on by intemperance and neglect of the laws of Health make on Personal Beauty, they would double their influence on their audiences or readers. For in woman’s heart the desire to be beautiful is and always will be the strongest motive to action or nonaction; nor are men, as a rule, much less interested in the matter of preserving a handsome appearance. It may make some impression on a man to tell him that if he takes ice-water before breakfast, or “cock-tails” at various odd hours on an empty stomach, he will ruin his digestion; but the impression will be six times as deep if you can convince him that he will ere long look like that confirmed dyspeptic Jones, with lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, and a general expression of premature senility, which accounts for the fact that he has been twice already refused by the girl he adores.
Or take that girl over there who never takes a walk, always sleeps with her windows hermetically closed, and never allows a ray of sunshine to touch any part of her body. Tell her she is ruining her health and she may be momentarily alarmed by this vague warning, and walk half a mile for a week or so, until she has forgotten it. But make it clear to her what is the exact consequence of such neglect of the primal laws of health—namely, the premature loss of every trace of Personal Beauty and youthful charm, with old-maidenhood inevitably staring her in the face, owing to her apathetic appearance and gait, her sickly complexion, her features distorted by frequent headaches, brought on by lack of fresh, cool air—each of which leaves its permanent trace in the form of an addition to a wrinkle or subtraction from the plumpness of her cheeks,—tell her all this, and that her eyes will soon sink into their sockets and have blue rings like those of an invalid, and a ghastly stare—and she will, perhaps, be sufficiently roused to save her Health for the sake of her Beauty.
We are now confronted with the question, Why is it that disease is a mark of ugliness, health a mark of Beauty? The old Scotch school of æstheticians think it is all a matter of association. We consider certain forms characteristic of health as beautiful simply because we associate with them various emotions of affection, the pleasures of love, etc., and conversely with disease and vice. According to Stendhal, “La beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur,” or, in American, Beauty is simply the promise of a “good time.” But it is Lord Jeffrey who, to use another appropriate American expression, “goes the whole hog” in this matter, by practically denying the existence of such a thing as a pure, disinterested, æsthetic sense. Suppose, he says, "that the smooth forehead, the firm cheek, and the full lip, which are now so distinctly expressive to us of the gay and vigorous periods of youth—and the clear and blooming complexion, which indicates health and activity—had been, in fact, the forms and colours by which old age and sickness were characterised; and that, instead of being found united to those sources and seasons of enjoyment, they had been the badges by which Nature pointed out that state of suffering and decay which is now signified to us by the livid and emaciated face of sickness, or the wrinkled front, the quivering lip, and hollow cheek of age; if this were the familiar law of our nature, can it be doubted that we should look upon these appearances, not with rapture, but with aversion, and consider it as absolutely ludicrous or disgusting to speak of the beauty of what was interpreted by every one as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude?
“Mr. Knight himself, though a firm believer in the intrinsic beauty of colours, is so much of this opinion that he thinks it entirely owing to those associations that we prefer the tame smoothness and comparatively poor colours of a youthful face to the richly fretted and variegated countenance of a pimpled drunkard.”
Bosh! and a hundred times bosh! One feels that these men lived at a time when port was drunk by the bottle, like claret, and when variegated noses were to a certain extent fashionable.
Though every reader feels the sophistry and absurdity of the above argumentation, it is not easy to refute it. Professor Blackie declaims against it, Ruskin sneers at it, but nowhere have I been able to find a definite direct refutation of the thesis. The following suggestions may, therefore, be of some value.
In the first place, Jeffrey’s supposition is equivalent to saying that if black were white, white would be black. For if all the phenomena of human nature were reversed, our taste, being also a “phenomenon,” would be reversed too. If health meant emaciation, then a lover would not be happy unless he could kiss a pair of leathery lips and embrace a skeleton. Hence his sense of touch, like his sight, would have to be the reverse of what they are now; and that being the case, æsthetic taste, which is based on the senses, would of course be reversed too. But that is simply saying that if you stand a man on his head his feet will be in the air.
Secondly, Lord Jeffrey’s argument involves the old fallacy that the useful and the beautiful are identical—that we only consider those things beautiful which afford us some utilitarian gratification. If this theory were correct, a coal-boat would be more beautiful than a yacht; a savage’s big jaw-bone more beautiful than our delicate ones; a clumsy, dirty, coarse-featured labourer more beautiful than a society belle.
No; we have, thank heaven, an æsthetic sense which enables us to see and admire beauty quite independently of any “associations” which it may have with our utilitarian cravings. It is possible, however, and even probable, that the æsthetic sense was originally developed from utilitarian associations. On this subject Mr. Grant Allen has some exceedingly valuable remarks in his interesting work on the Colour-Sense. He there eloquently sets forth the view that it was the bright tints of luscious fruits that first taught primitive man to derive pleasure from the sight of coloured objects. This gradually led to a “predilection for brilliant dyes and glistening pebbles; till at last the whole series culminates in that intense and unselfish enjoyment of rich and pure tints which make civilised man linger so lovingly over the hues of sunset and the myriad shades of autumn.... The disinterested affection can only be reached by many previous steps of utilitarian progress.” But—and here lies the kernel of the argument—"fruit-eaters and flower-feeders derive pleasure from brilliant colours ... not because those colours have mental associations with their food, but because the structures which perceive them have been continually exercised and strengthened by hereditary use," until at last they formed a special nervous or cerebral apparatus which presides over impressions of beauty, and takes a special pleasure in its own activity, apart from all utilitarian considerations.
Lord Jeffrey apparently lacked this special æsthetic sense, as shown by his whole argument, and by his inability, which he shared with Alison, of finding beauty in Nature, unless it was in some way associated with man’s presence and man’s mean utilities.
How different this from the feelings of the man who of all writers on Beauty has the most highly developed æsthetic sense—Mr. Ruskin, who has just told us in his Autobiography that his love of Nature, ardent as it is, depends entirely on the wildness of the scenery, its remoteness from human influences and associations.
It is this specially-developed æsthetic taste that would prevent man from calling flabby cheeks, sallow complexions, pimpled noses, and sunken eyes beautiful, if by some miracle they should be changed into signs of health. For this sense of beauty was first educated not by the sight of human beauty, but of beauty in Nature—fruits, pebbles, shells, lustrous metals, etc.; and the notions of beauty thus obtained have been gradually transferred to human beings as standards of attractiveness. It can be shown that what the best judges pronounce the highest human beauty, is so because it partakes of certain characteristics which we find beautiful throughout Nature. And conversely, what we consider ugly in the human form and features would also be called ugly in external objects; in both cases, be it distinctly understood, without any direct reference to utilitarian considerations, and sometimes even in opposition to them, as in our admiration of a beautiful poisonous plant or snake, or a tiger.
It is these universal characteristics of Beauty, found in man as in animals, that we now have to consider. They are the positive criteria of Beauty, and may be regarded as a new set of “overtones” or leading motives for the remainder of this volume, although the old ones will occasionally reappear and combine with them.