On the other hand, the facial muscles “are, as is admitted by every one who has written on the subject, very variable in structure; and Moreau remarks that they are hardly alike in half a dozen subjects. They are also variable in function. Thus the power of uncovering the canine tooth on one side differs much in different persons. The power of raising the wings of the nostrils is also, according to Dr. Piderit, variable in a remarkable degree; and other such cases could be given.”
The facts that the facial muscles blend so much together that their number has been variously estimated at from nineteen to fifty-five, and that they vary so much in details of structure and function in individuals, are of extreme significance. For, in the first place, this variableness allows Love—or Sexual Selection—to favour the survival of those modifications of the features which are most in harmony with the laws of Beauty; and, secondly, it affords the means of further specialisation and increased accuracy in the modes of emotional expression.
When we see a friend reading a letter, we fancy his face a perfect mirror, reflecting every mood touched upon in its contents. Yet many of our expressions are vague, and there is much room for improvement in definiteness. Darwin, in the introduction to his work on the Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, has remarked how difficult it often is to name the exact emotion intended to be expressed in a picture of a man, unless we regard the accessories by which the painter illustrates the situation; and how apt people are to disagree in naming the emotions expressed by a series of physiognomic portraits. With monkeys, he says, “the expression of slight pain, or of any painful emotion, such as grief, vexation, jealousy, etc., is not easily distinguished from that of moderate anger.”
Savages, as we saw in a previous chapter, are strangers to many of the tender emotions which enter into our daily life; hence it would be absurd to look for muscles specially trained to express them. And even with Europeans the refined emotions are of such recent development that, as just stated, they are capable of much further specialisation. To take only one case: it is probable that, whereas in the present stage of human evolution, it is almost impossible, without accessories, to distinguish the facial expression of feminine Romantic Love from that of maternal love, future generations will have specially modified muscles for those modes of expression. Duchenne has pointed out on the side of the nose a series of transient folds expressive of amorous desire. As Romantic Love displaces coarse passion, may not these or another set of muscles be pressed into the special service of refined Love as a sign of encouragement to lovers about to propose? Coquettes, of course, would immediately cultivate this expression, as a new wile or “wrinkle.”
Between the facial muscles that are thus utilised for the expression of emotions and other muscles of the body, there is one difference which is of the utmost importance from the point of view of Personal Beauty. The function of ordinary muscles is to move bones, whereas the muscles of expression in the face are only concerned with the movements of the skin. Hence they do not enlarge the bones of the face, which would destroy its delicacy. Their exercise gives elasticity and plump roundness to the outlines of the face; and as they are subtly subdivided in function, they cannot easily become too plump from exercise.
Individual peculiarities of expression are of course due to the frequent exercise of certain sets of muscles, leading gradually to a fixed physiognomic aspect; for form is merely crystallised expression. Hence no one can be beautiful without being good. Vice soon destroys Personal Beauty. If the muscles of anger, envy, jealousy, spite, cruelty, etc., are too frequently called into exercise, the result is a face on which the word vicious is written as legibly and in as many corners as the numerals X and 10 are printed on a United States banknote.
One of the reasons why Fashion encourages the blasé, nil admirari attitude, and the stolid suppression of emotional expression, is to hide these signs of moral and hygienic sins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, anatomist and poet, says of Emerson that he had “that look of refinement centring about the lips which is rarely found in the male New Englander, unless the family features have been for two or three cultivated generations the battlefield and the playground of varied thoughts and complex emotions, as well as the sensuous and nutritive port of entry.”
Dr. Holmes need not have limited his generalisation to “male New Englanders.” Refined mouths are rare in every country, among women as well as among men. As a writer in the Victoria Magazine exclaims: “It is wonderful how far more common good foreheads and eyes are amongst us than good mouths and chins.” Yet there is a special reason for singling out the average male New Englander as a “warning example.” He inherits the thin, famished, pale, stern, forbidding lips of his Puritan ancestors, whose sins are thus visited on later generations. Sins? Yes, sins against health. Without cheerfulness there can be no sound health, and the Puritans made the systematic pursuit of unhappiness the chief object of their life. They made cruel war on all those innocent pursuits and amusements which bring the bloom of health and beauty to the youthful cheek, and exercise the lips in the expression of refined æsthetic emotion. Even music, the most innocent of the arts, was included in their fanatic ostracism, to which historians also trace the rarity of musical taste of the highest order in England.
There is reason to believe that it is especially æsthetic culture which betrays itself in the refined contours and expression of the lips. Men of genius, though their cast of features is not always handsome, commonly have finely-cut mouths. Among German women addicted to music and love of nature, though beauty is comparatively rare—owing to causes which will be considered in a later chapter—good mouths are more common than in some other countries which boast a higher general average of Personal Beauty. Among Americans in general, all the features are apt to be finely cut, hence the lips also partake of this advantage.