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

by Henry T. Finck

Thus we find in the eyeball three distinct zones of colour—the white of the eye, sometimes slightly tinted blue, yellow, or red; the iris, which has various shades of brown, green, blue, and gray, commonly two or three in each eye; and the central black pupil. Add to this the flesh-colour of the eyelid and surrounding parts, and the light or dark lashes and eyebrows, and we see that the eye in itself is a perfect colour-symphony.

Can we account for the existence of all these colours? The easiest thing in the world, with the aid of the principles of Natural and Sexual Selection. There are reasons for believing that the sense of sight is merely a higher development from the sense of temperature, adapted to vibrations so rapid that the nerves of temperature can no longer distinguish them. In its simplest form, among the lowest animals, the sense of sight is represented by a mere pigment spot. And in the highest form of sight, after the development of the various parts of our complicated eye, we still find this pigment as one of the most essential conditions of vision. Its function, however, is not the same as that of the pigment in the human skin. There it is interposed between the sun and the underskin, in order to protect the nerves of temperature. The optic nerve needs no such protection; for the heat-rays of the sun cannot but be cooled on passing through the membranes, the lens, and the watery substance in the eye, before reaching the optic nerve, spread out on the retina. Consequently the eye-pigment, instead of being placed in front of the nerves, is put behind them; and their function is to absorb any excess of light that enters the eye. Were the membrane which contains this pigment whitish, all the light would be reflected back, and create such a glare and confusion that no object could be seen distinctly.

This view regarding the function of the pigment is strikingly supported by the anomalous case of Albinos. “The pink of their eyes (as of white rabbits) is caused by the absence of the black pigment,” says Mr. Tylor, “so that light passing out through the iris and pupil is tinged red from the blood-vessels at the back; thus their eyes may be seen to blush with the rest of the face.”

Bearing these facts in mind, it is obvious why it is an advantage in a sunny country to have as much pigmentary matter as possible in the eye, and why, therefore, Natural Selection makes the eyes blacker the nearer we approach the tropics. And, as with the complexion, so here, it is fortunate for the negro that he has not sufficient taste to feel the æsthetic inferiority of the monotonous black thus imposed on him by Natural Selection. “The iris is so dark,” says Figuier, “as almost to be confounded with the black of the pupil. In the European, the colour of the iris is so strongly marked as to render at once perceptible whether the person has black, blue, or gray eyes. There is nothing similar in the case of the negro, where all parts of the eye are blended in the same hue. Add to this that the white of the eye is always suffused with yellow in the Negro, and you will understand how this organ, which contributes so powerfully to give life to the countenance of the White, is invariably dull and expressionless in the Black Race.”

To the Esquimaux, living in the constant glare of ice and snowfields, a protective pigment is quite as necessary as to an African savage; hence their eyes are equally black. But among other northern races, who are less constantly exposed to the blinding rays of the sun, it suffices to have coal-black pigment in the back part of the eye, as seen through the pupil, while the iris need not be so absolutely opaque. This leaves room for the action of Sexual Selection in giving the preference to eyes less monotonously black. Our æsthetic sense craves variety and contrasts in colour; and as the sense of Beauty originally stood in the service of Love almost exclusively, it is to Cupid’s selective action that we doubtless owe the diverse hues of the modern iris.

To what kind of an iris does modern Love or æsthetic selection give the preference? Doubtless to that which has the deepest and most unmistakable colour—to dark brown, or deep blue, or violet. One reason why we care less for the lighter, faded tints of the iris is because they present a less vivid contrast to the white of the eye; and another reason, as Dr. Hugo Magnus suggests, lies in the disagreeable impression produced in us by the difficulty of making out the exact character of the various indistinct shades of gray, yellow, green, or blue.

The consideration of the question whether amorous selection shows any further preference for one of its two favourite colours—dark brown and deep blue—must be deferred to the chapter on Blondes and Brunettes.

LUSTRE

But Cupid is not guided by colour alone in his choice. However beautiful the colour of an eye, it loses half its charm if it lacks lustre. A bright, sparkling eye is the most infallible index of youthful vigour and health, whereas the lack-lustre eyes of ill-health can never serve as windows from which Cupid shoots his arrows. No wonder that the poets have searched all nature for analogies to the lustre of a maiden’s eye, comparing it to sun and stars, to diamonds, crystalline lakes, the light of glow-worms, glistening dewdrops, etc.

What is the source of this light which shines from the eye and intoxicates the lover’s senses? Several answers to this question have been suggested. Twenty-five hundred years ago Empedokles taught that “there is in the eye a fine network which holds back the watery substance swimming about in it, but the fiery particles penetrate through it like the rays of light through a lantern” (Ueberweg). And a notion similar to this, that there is a kind of magnetic or nervous emanation which beams from the eye and is a direct efflux of the soul, was entertained in recent times by Lavater and Carus. It was apparently supported by the peculiar light which may be seen occasionally in the eyes of cats, dogs, and horses in the twilight; but this has been proved to be a purely physical phenomenon of reflection, due to an anatomical peculiarity in the eyes of these animals.