“I must add that of that higher beauty where heart and intellect and soul are mirrored in the eye, I found few traces in the whole Caucasus, either among men or women. I have seen the greater number of the beauties which Georgia boasts, but not one face have I seen that satisfied me completely, though the picturesque native costume does much to heighten the charms of the women. The face entirely lacks that refined mental expression which makes a beautiful European woman such a unique enchantress. Such a woman may still inspire love and win hearts long after the time of her bloom; whereas in a Georgian everything fades with youth. The eyes, which, notwithstanding their apparent fire, never expressed anything but calm and voluptuous indolence, lose their lustre; the nose, which even in its normal relations exceeds the limits of beauty, assumes, in consequence of the premature hollowness of the cheeks, such abnormal dimensions that many people imagine that it actually continues to grow; and the bosom, which the national costume makes no effort to conceal, prematurely loses its natural firmness—all of which phenomena are observed in European women much less frequently, and in a less exaggerated form. If you add to this the habit, so prevalent among Georgians, young and old, of using white and red cosmetics, you will understand that such rude and inartistic arts of the toilet can only add to the observer’s sense of dissatisfaction.”
America affords many illustrations of the manner in which refinement of mind and manners increases Beauty in a single generation. There are in every city thousands of parents who began life as ordinary labourers, but soon got rich through industry or good luck. They bring up their children in houses where every attention is paid to sanitary rules; they send them to school and college; and when they come back you would hardly believe that those coarse-featured, clumsy-limbed, ungraceful persons could be their father and mother. The discrepancy is sometimes so great that when the young folks invite people of “their set” to their house, the old birds keep out of the way discreetly, either of their own accord or by filial dictation, which in America appears to be displacing parental authority.
But if there is such an intimate connection between culture and Beauty, how is it that we so often find plain features joined with a noble mind and fine features with a mean mind? Mr. Spencer has endeavoured to explain this apparent discrepancy by assuming that in such cases plain features are inherited severally and separately from ancestors of diverse physiognomies, which being merely mechanically mixed, not fused, fail to harmonise. There may be something in this, but a simpler explanation is at hand.
Noble minds are often the result of individual effort, and persistence in it. Many men of genius have had humble parents not specially gifted. From these parents and their ancestors they inherited their plain faces. Now individual effort, in the short period of a lifetime, is insufficient to alter the proportions of a face, which depend on its bony parts; but it does suffice to alter the expression, which depends on the movements of the soft, muscular parts. Hence every person, however plain-featured, may acquire a beautiful expression by cultivating his mind and refining his manners and temper. Whenever, therefore, we meet a man or woman whose features are less attractive at rest than when moved to expression of emotion, we may feel sure that they owe their mental refinement more to individual effort than to inherited capacity.
The children of such persons will be more beautiful than they are themselves, because they will inherit the parents’ habit of expressive muscular action of the features. And owing to the fact that all the bony parts of the body are modified in accordance with the action of the muscles attached to them, the bony parts, the proportions, of the face will also be gradually modified and moulded into nobler shapes, through the continuance of refined emotional expression.
It is in this manner that intellectual growth and emotional refinement have gradually differentiated our features from those of our savage ancestors. Our lips have become more delicate, our mouths smaller, our jaws less gigantic, ponderous, and projecting, because civilisation has taught us to use the hands in preparing food, and to cut it instead of tearing it off the bone with the teeth, as savages and other wild animals do.
Use increases, disuse diminishes the size of an organ. Hence for the same reason that our jaws have become less projecting and heavy, our forehead has lost its backward slope and become straight and noble, owing to the growth of the brain. And similarly with other peculiarities of the face, indicating the connection between mental refinement and physical beauty. “Thus is it,” says Mr. Spencer, “with depression of the bridge of the nose, which is a characteristic both of barbarians and of our babes, possessed by them in common with our higher quadrumana. Thus, also, is it with that forward opening of the nostrils, which renders them conspicuous in a front view of the face,—a trait alike of infants, savages, and apes. And the same may be said of widespread alæ to the nose, of great width between the eyes, of long mouth, of large mouth—indeed of all those leading peculiarities of feature which are by general consent called ugly.”
EVOLUTION OF TASTE
SAVAGE NOTIONS OF BEAUTY
In all the preceding remarks concerning the connection between mental and physical beauty, the assumption has been made tacitly that what we consider beautiful is so in reality; and that our taste is a safe guide to follow. Yet this assumption may be challenged, and has, indeed, been often challenged. Every nation, every savage tribe, has its own standard of Beauty; what right, therefore, have we to claim dogmatically that we are infallible judges?