But he’d cut their glib cheeks to the bone.

What has been rendered sometimes supportable by circumstances, an extravagant taste, the desire of being distinguished from the crowd, or to command their attention; true taste, and especially the art of pleasing, has always proscribed. We meet with women every day whose features are shaded with this ornament of virility. But very far from priding themselves on this superfluity of nature, they regard it as a blemish to be ashamed of, which they endeavour to eradicate. How many brunetts especially[[41]] are obliged, in the secret moments of their toilet, to make use of!... But let us by no means reveal these mysterious operations; they have a right to expect our indulgence, as they tend to please us: moreover, a woman may very well be pardoned for correcting this deviation of nature, since the men are not ashamed to disfigure her.

[41]. The number is greater than people think. We have at present a heroine whose dignities of warrior, juris-consult, man of letters, and minister, as well as a bearded chin, concealed her sex a long time from her countrymen.

It is as ridiculous for a man to look like a woman, as for a woman to look like a man. However, a man without a beard would be much less surprising now-a-days, than a bearded woman, which proves how unnatural our tastes and customs are.

CHAP. V.
That long Beards are salutary.

THE beard has not only the advantage of giving a man a stern, majestic air, of preserving over the sex the empire which Nature has bestowed on him, and of displaying on his face the characteristical marks of his manhood, but likewise enables the attentive observer to remark, by more determined changes, the different states of human life, and gives him the still more valuable advantage of being useful to his own preservation.

Nature made nothing in vain, and the course of her wise operations is never opposed with impunity. Is it not natural to suppose, that this bushy hair which she has placed on man’s face must have an influence on the salubrity of the neighbouring parts that are acknowledged to be essential? Is it possible to think otherwise, without accusing our common mother of inconsequence, and charging her uniform conduct, (which so fully explains its own motives,) with folly and extravagance? How is it possible then for people to venture to thwart the wisdom of her intentions, and destroy their effects, without being afraid of drawing on themselves a superabundance of evils, to which human nature is already too much subject? This however is what we do every day, in order to comply with a very unnatural custom.

The beard, among men, is the sign of puberty, vigour, and weakness. ’Tis this hair on the chin which first tells him that the time is come when his organs, being more unfolded, will procure him a new existence, that he is entering the state of manhood, that he is going to take his place in society, and that he is endowed with the valuable faculty of begetting his own likeness.

This down on the chin is the same with young men, as the increase of the bosom with young girls. These two proofs of puberty announce, in both sexes, that sweet inquietude, the prelude of love and pleasure; those emotions, desires, and wants to be happy which nature has implanted in the human breast; and at the same time the power of reason.[[42]] “The beard,” says Theodoret in his fourth discourse on the Providence of God, “informs these young folks, who have this downy hair on their chin, that it is time to leave off childish plays, in order to employ themselves about more serious things.” ’Tis then the greater or less quantity of beard a man has that determines, in the same proportion, the vigour of his body; ’tis then that Nature, steady in her course, requires its increase, and there is no doubt but our perseverance in thwarting her will, injures the adjoining parts.