THE COMPLEXION
WHITE VERSUS BLACK
“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”[“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.