Should a negro, however, on having his attention called to this matter, claim that his prognathous face is more beautiful than our orthognathous face, the retort simple would be that his imagination is not sufficiently educated to understand our more refined and delicate beauty; just as an Esquimaux prefers a rotten egg to a fresh one, a working man a glass of fusil oil to one of tokay—simply because their senses of taste and smell are not sufficiently refined to appreciate or even detect the delicate flavour of a fresh egg and the subtle bouquet of wine.
Of the positive tests of beauty, Delicacy is the one which most emphatically condemns the heavy, prognathous jaw and the accompanying big mouth. Massive bones and clumsy movements are everywhere the signs of excessive toil, fatal to beauty, as may be seen on comparing the angular and almost masculine skeleton of a labouring woman with the delicately-articulated joints of a “society woman”; or the heavy structure of a dray-horse with the fine contours of a race-horse; showing that Delicacy is always associated with the other elements of beauty—Curvature, Gradation, Expression, etc.
On the manner in which the beauty of the mouth is proportioned to its capability for Expression, Mr. Ruskin has made the following interesting observations: “Taking the mouth, another source of expression, we find it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish; or perhaps where, without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes a formidable destructive instrument, as again in the alligator; and then, by some increase of expression, we arrive at birds’ beaks, wherein there is much obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles (compare the bills of the duck and the eagle); and thence we reach the finely-developed lips of the carnivora (which nevertheless lose their beauty in the actions of snarling and biting); and from these we pass to the nobler, because gentler and more sensitive, of the horse, camel, and fawn, and so again up to man: only the principle is less traceable in the mouths of the lower animals, because they are only in slight measure capable of expression, and chiefly used as instruments, and that of low function; whereas in man the mouth is given most definitely as a means of expression, beyond and above its lower functions.... The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral or intellectual virtue expressed by it.”
Shakspere, by the way, seems to differ from Ruskin’s theory implied in this last sentence. According to Ruskin, animals “lose their beauty in the actions of snarling and biting.” But man has an action similar to snarling, namely, what Bell calls “that arching of the lips so expressive of contempt, hatred, and jealousy.” It is to this that Shakspere refers in these lines—
“O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip.”
But the word “beautiful” is here evidently taken by Shakspere in the wider sense of interesting and characteristic, and not in the special æsthetic sense of formal and emotional beauty.
Delicacy and the capacity for varied and subtle Expression—these, we may conclude, are the chief criteria of beauty in the lower part of the face. Anatomically, it may be well to state here, the word “face” does not include the forehead, but only extends from the chin to the eyebrows. The upper and posterior part is called the cranium or skull. It seems odd at first not to include the forehead in the face, but there are scientific grounds for making such a division, for a discussion of which the reader must be referred to some anatomical text-book (vide Kollmann, pp. 82-85).
To a certain extent the face and the cranium are independent of one another in development and physiognomic significance. And it should be noted that, contrary to the general impression, in estimating the degree of intelligence and refinement, the face is a safer guide than the cranium; for there are many powerful brains in low and even receding foreheads, whereas a large projecting jaw is almost invariably a sign of vulgarity or lack of delicate feeling. We do not find a dog ugly because of his receding forehead; but we do find that the most infallible way of giving a man’s picture a brutal expression is by enlarging the jaw and mouth. It is the deadliest weapon of the caricaturist.
What makes a gorilla so frightfully ugly is the prominence and massive preponderance of his face over his cranium. It is his monstrous jaws, with their “simply brutal armature” of teeth, that give him such a repulsive appearance. The gorilla’s mouth, as Professor Kollmann remarks, is a caricature even from the animal point of view. How much more delicate and refined are a dog’s or cat’s jaws and teeth in comparison! Unfortunately, while man is a savage, or when he relapses into brutal habits, it is the gorilla’s mouth and teeth that his resemble, and not the cat’s or the dog’s.