Romantic Love and Personal Beauty / Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities

by Henry T. Finck

Putting poetry aside, we must now consider a few scientific facts and correct a few misconceptions regarding the eye, its colour, lustre, form, and expression.

COLOUR

To say of any one that he has gray, blue, brown, or black eyes, is vague and incorrect from a strictly scientific point of view, inasmuch as there are no really gray or black eyes, and, as a matter of fact, every eye, if closely examined, shows at least five or six different colours.

There is, first, the tough sclerotic coat or white of the eye, which covers the greater part of the eyeball, and is not transparent, except in front where the coloured iris (or rainbow membrane) is seen through it. This central transparent portion of the sclerotic coat is called the cornea, and is slightly raised above the general surface of the eyeball, like the middle portion of some watch-glasses.

The white of the eye is sometimes slightly tinged with blue or yellow, and sometimes netted with inflamed blood-vessels. All these deviations are æsthetically inferior to the pure white of the healthy European, because suggestive of disease, and conflicting with the general cosmic standards of beauty. The bluish tint is a sign of consumption or scrofulous disorders, being caused by a diminution of the pigmentary matter in the choroid coat which lines the inside of the sclerotic. The yellowish tint, in the European, is indicative of jaundice, dyspepsia, or premature degeneracy of the white of the eye. It is normal, on the other hand, in the healthy negro; but if a negro should claim that, inasmuch as a yellowish sclerotic is to him not suggestive of disease, he has as much right to consider it beautiful as we our white sclerotic, the simple retort would be, that we are guided in our æsthetic judgment by positive as well as negative tests. Disease is the negative test; the positive lies in the fact that in inanimate objects, where disease is altogether out of the question—as in ivory ornaments (which no one associates with an elephant’s tusk)—we also invariably prefer a pure snowy white to a muddy uncertain yellow. It is these two tests in combination which have guided Sexual Selection in its efforts to eliminate all but the pure white sclerotic,—a tint which, moreover, throws into brighter relief the enchanting hues of the “sunbeamed” iris.

More objectionable still than a yellowish or bluish sclerotic is a bloodshot eye, not only because the inflamed blood-vessels which swell and flood the white surface of the eye deface the marble purity of the sclerotic (in a manner not in the least analogous to marble “veins”), but because the red, watery blear eye generally indicates the ravages of intemperance or unrestrained passions. However, a bloodshot eye may be the result of mere overwork, or reading in a flickering light, or lack of sleep; hence it is not always safe to allow the disagreeable æsthetic impression given by inflamed eyes to prognosticate moral obliquity. But, after all, the intimate connection between æsthetic and moral judgments is in this case based on a correct, subtle instinct; for is not a man who ruins the health and beauty of his eyes by intemperance in drink or night-work sinning against himself? If attempts at suicide are punished by law, why should not minor offences against one’s Health at least be looked upon with moral disapproval? If this sentiment could be made universal, there would be fifty per cent more Beauty in the world after a single generation.

In the centre of the white sclerotic is the membrane which gives the eyes their characteristic variations of colour,—the iris or rainbow curtain. If we look at an eye from a distance of a few paces, it seems to have some one definite colour, as brown or blue. But on closer examination we see that there are always several hues in each iris. The colour of the iris is due to the presence of small pigment granules in its interior layer. These granules are always brown, in blue and gray as well as in brown eyes; and the greater their number and thickness, the darker is the colour of the iris. Blue eyes are caused by the presence, in front of the pigment-layer, of a thin, almost colourless membrane, which absorbs all the rays of light except the blue, which it reflects, and thus causes the translucent iris to appear of that colour.

The Instructions de la Société d’Anthropologie, says Dr. Topinard, "recognise four shades of colour,—brown, green, blue, and gray; each having five tones—the very dark, the dark, the intermediate, the light, and the very light. The expression “brown” does not mean pure brown; it is rather a reddish, a yellowish, or a greenish brown, corresponding with the chestnut or auburn colour, the hazel and the sandy, made use of by the English. The gray, too, is not pure; it is, strictly speaking, a violet more or less mixed with black and white."

“The negro, in spite of his name, is not black but deep brown,” as Mr. Tylor remarks; and what is true of his complexion is also true of his eyes; “what are popularly called black eyes are far from having the iris really black like the pupil; eyes described as black are commonly of the deepest shades of brown or violet.”

The pupil, however, is always jetblack, not only in negroes, but in all races. For the pupil is simply a round opening in the centre of the iris which allows us to see clear through the lens and watery substance of the eyeball to the black pigment which lines its inside surface. The iris, in truth, is nothing but a muscular curtain for regulating the size of the pupil, and thus determining how much light shall be admitted into the interior of the eye. When the light is bright and glaring, a little of it suffices for vision, hence the iris relaxes its fibres and the pupil becomes smaller; whereas, in twilight and moonlight, the eye needs all the light it can catch, so the muscles of the iris-curtain contract and enlarge the pupil-window. This mechanism of the iris in diminishing or enlarging the pupil can be neatly observed by looking into a mirror placed on one side of a window. If the hand is put up in such a way as to screen the eye from the light, the pupil will be seen to enlarge; and if the hand is then suddenly taken away, it will immediately return to its smaller size. For the muscles of the iris have the power, denied to other unstriped or involuntary muscles, of acting quite rapidly.