CHAPTER X.

OF THE STANDARD OF BEAUTY IN WOMAN.

THE ideas of the beautiful vary in different individuals, and in different nations. Hence, many. men of talent have thought them altogether relative and arbitrary.

"Ask," says Voltaire, "a Negro of Guinea [what is beauty]: the beautiful is for him a black oily skin, deep-seated eyes, and a broad flat nose.".

"Perfect beauty," says Payne Knight, "taking perfect in its most strict, and beauty in its most comprehensive signification, ought to be equally pleasing to all; but of this, instances are scarcely to be found: for, as to taking them, or, indeed, any examples for illustration, from the other sex of our own species, it is extremely fallacious; as there can be little doubt that all male animals think the females of their own species the most beautiful productions of nature. At least we know this to be the case among the different varieties of men, whose respective ideas of the beauty of their females are as widely different as those of man, and any other animal, can be. The sable Africans view with pity and contempt the marked deformity of the Europeans; whose mouths are compressed, their noses

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pinched, their cheeks shrunk, their hair rendered lank and flimsy, their bodies lengthened and emaciated, and their skins unnaturally bleached by shade and seclusion, and the baneful influence of a cold. humid climate. . . . Who shall decide which party is right, or which is wrong; or whether the black or white model be, according to the laws of nature, the most perfect specimen of a perfect woman? . . The sexual desires of brutes are probably more strictly natural inclinations, and less changed or modified by the influence of acquired ideas, or social habits, than those of any race of mankind; but their desires seem, in general, to be excited by smell, rather than by sight or contact. If, however, a boar can think a sow the sweetest and most lovely of living creatures, we can have no difficulty in believing that he also thinks her the most beautiful."

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Among the various reasons," says Reynolds, why we prefer one part of nature's works to another, the most general, I believe, is habit and custom; custom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and black white; it is custom alone determines our preference of the color of the Europeans to the Ethiopians, and they, for the same reason, prefer their own color to ours. I suppose nobody will doubt, if one of their painters were to paint the goddess of beauty, but that he would represent her black, with thick lips, flat nose, and woolly hair; and it seems to me, he would act very unnaturally if he did not; for by what criterion will any one dispute the propriety of his idea? We indeed say,

that the form and color of the European are preferable to those of the Ethiopian; but I know of no other reason we have for it, but that we are more accustomed to it."

The coquetry of several tribes, it has been observed, leads them to mutilate and disfigure themselves, to flatten their forehead, to enlarge their mouth and ears, to blacken their skin, and cover it with the marks of suffering.-We make ugliness in that way, says Montaigne.

But, to confine our observations to individual nations, and these civilized ones; we every day see irregular or even common figures preferred to those which the enlightened judge deems beautiful.

How, then, it is asked, amid these different tastes, these opposite opinions, are we to admit ideas of absolute beauty?

These are the strongest objections against all ideas of absolute and essential beauty in woman.

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To establish, in opposition to these objections, a standard of womanly beauty, equal talent has been employed; but the reasoning, though sufficient for such objections, has been rather of a vague description. As, however, the subject is of great importance, I shall endeavor to abridge and concentrate the arguments of which it consists, before I point out the surer method which is founded on the Elements of Beauty already established.

To refute these objections, it has been thought sufficient to examine the chief conditions which are

necessary, in order to appreciate properly the impression of those combinations, which woman pre

sents, and to expose the principal circumstances which are opposed to the accuracy of opinions, and judgments respecting them.

The conditions necessary to enable us to pronounce respecting the real attributes of beauty, are, first, a temperate climate, under which nature brings to perfection all her productions, and gives to their forms and functions, generally, and to those of man in particular, all the development of which they are capable, without excess in the action of some, and defect in that of others; — secondly, in man in particular, a brain capable of vigorous thought, sound judgment, and exquisite taste ;-and thirdly, a very advanced civilization, without which these faculties cannot be duly exercised or attain any perfection.

It is evident enough that none of these conditions are to be met with in the whimsical judgments and tastes of many nations.

The consequence of the absence of these conditions, in relation to the uncivilized and ignorant inhabitants of hot climates, is marked in their deeming characteristics of beauty, the thick lips of Negresses, the long and pendent mammæ of the women in several nations both of Africa and America, or the gross forms of those of Egypt.

The consequence of the absence of these conditions, in relation to the uncivilized and ignorant inhabitants of cold climates, is equally marked in their deeming characteristics of beauty the short figures of the women of icy regions, in which, deprived of the vivifying action of heat and light, living beings appear only in a state of deformity

and alteration; and in their similarly deeming beautiful the obliquely-placed eyes of the Chinese and Japanese, and the crushed nose of the Calmucs, &c., &c.

Those who take these views, which are true, though somewhat vague and inconclusive, should, I think, have seen and added, that the deviations from beauty in the forms of the women of hot climates are commonly in excess, owing to the great development of organs of sense or of sex; while the deviations from beauty, in the forms of the women of cold climates, are commonly in defect, owing to the imperfect development of organs of sense, and of the general figure.

This view renders it more clear that both these kinds of deviation are deformities, incompatible with the consistent and harmonious development of the whole. And without this view, the preceding arguments are indeed too vague to be easily tenable.

In relation more especially to the second of the preceding conditions, the possession of a brain capable of vigorous thought, sound judgment, and exquisite taste, Hume observes that the same excellence of faculties which contributes to the improvement of reason, the same clearness of conception, the same exactness of distinction, the same vivacity of apprehension, are essential to the operations of true taste.

Here, again, those who take these true, but vague and inconclusive views, should, I think, have seen and added that this excellence of the thinking faculties is incompatible with the obviously constricted