Health, Beauty, and Love—everywhere we see them inseparably associated. Who could ever fall in love with a pair of thin, pallid lips that have lost their pink and plump loveliness through anæmic indolence, or disease, or tight lacing? The very teeth, though the hardest substance of the body, lose their natural colour and beauty in ill-health. Not only do they decay and become blackish, but “in bilious people they become yellow, and in consumptive patients they show occasionally an unnaturally pearly and translucent whiteness” (Brinton and Napheys).
Negroes have, normally, teeth of a dazzling whiteness, which is often regarded as a racial peculiarity, but is due, according to Waitz, to the use of chalk or vegetal fibres. But various savages are dissatisfied with the natural form and colour of their teeth, and disfigure them in various ways. “In different countries the teeth are stained black, red, blue, etc., and in the Malay Archipelago it is thought shameful to have teeth like those of a dog” (Darwin).
“In Macassar the women spend a part of the day in painting their teeth red and yellow, in such a way that a red tooth follows a yellow one, and alternately.” In Japan, Fashion compels married women to blacken their teeth, not, however, as an ornament, but to make them ugly and save them from temptation.
Some African tribes knock out two or more of their front teeth, on the ground that they do not wish to look like brutes. The Batokas “think the presence of incisors most unsightly, and on beholding some Europeans, cried out, ‘Look at the great teeth!’... In various parts of Africa, and in the Malay Archipelago, the natives file the incisors into points like those of a saw, or pierce them with holes, into which they insert studs.”
In case of the lips, primitive Fashion prescribes still more atrocious mutilations. One would think that a negro’s swollen lips were ugly enough to suit even a devotee of African Fashion; but no! Her lips being naturally large, the fashionable negro belle considers it incumbent on her to exaggerate them into additional hideousness, just as European and American fashionable women exaggerate the slight and beautiful natural curve of their waist into the atrocious hour-glass shape.
“Among the Babines, who live north of the Columbia River,” says Sir John Lubbock, “the size of the under lip is the standard of female beauty. A hole is made in the under lip of the infant, in which a small bone is inserted; from time to time the bone is replaced by a larger one, until at last a piece of wood, three inches long and an inch and a half wide, is inserted in the orifice, which makes the lip protrude to a frightful extent. The process appears to be very painful.”
“In Central Africa,” says Darwin, “the women perforate the lower lip and wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the tongue, has ‘a wriggling motion, indescribably ludicrous during conversation.’ The wife of the chief of Latooka told Sir S. Baker that Lady Baker ‘would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the long pointed polished crystal in her under lip.’ Further south, with the Makalolo, the upper lip is perforated, and a large metal and bamboo ring, called a pelelé, is worn in the hole. This caused the lip to project in one point two inches beyond the tip of the nose; and when the lady smiled, the contraction of the muscles elevated it over the eyes. ‘Why do the women wear these things?’ the venerable chief Chinsurdi was asked. Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, ‘For beauty! They are the only beautiful things women have; men have beards, women have none. What kind of a person would she be without a pelelé? She would not be a woman at all, with a mouth like a man but no beard.’”
In New Zealand, according to Tylor, “it was considered shameful for a woman not to have her mouth tattooed, for people would say with disgust, ‘She has red lips.’”
Compare these two pictures for a moment: on the one side, the protuberant mouth-borders of the negro woman, swollen as by disease or an insect’s sting, enlarged, in smiling, to the very ears, and showing not only the teeth but the gums, the tongue and the unæsthetic œsophagus; on the other side, the full but delicate cherry lips of civilised woman, capable of an infinite variety of subtle, graceful movements, a keyboard on which the whole gamut of human feelings finds expression, and revealing, in a smile, only the tips of the pearly, undeformed teeth. Shall we say, with Alison and Jeffrey, that it is all a matter of taste, and that the negro has as much right to his taste as we have to ours? Or have we not plentiful reasons for claiming that Personal Beauty is a fine art, and that the reason why the negro prefers his coarse mouth to our refined lips is because he does not understand our highly-developed and specialised Beauty?
There are cogent scientific reasons for believing that, just as the skull has been modified and developed from the upper part of the spinal column, and the brain from its contents, so the facial muscles are all developed from the broad muscle of the neck. In the orang, according to Professor Owen, we find already all the important facial muscles which man uses to express emotions. But, as Darwin remarks, “distinct uses, independently of expression, can ... be assigned with much probability for almost all the facial muscles.”
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.
But it is among Spanish maidens that perhaps the most inviting, full-blooded yet delicate, soft, and refined lips are to be sought. True, the Spanish maiden seems to lack refined feelings when she goes, as commonly supposed, to be thrilled by a bull fight. Yet it is well known that the upper classes of women in Spain do not commonly attend these spectacles; and if they did, would they be more cruel than our fashionable women? Which is the more glaring evidence of callous emotions, to voluntarily witness the slaughter of an infuriated, dangerous beast, or to wear on one’s hat the painted corpses of innocent song-birds?
The following passage in one of Washington Irving’s works shows that the Spanish have genuine æsthetic feeling and taste:—
“‘How near the Sierra looks this evening!’ said Mateo; ‘it seems as if you could touch it with your hand, and yet it is many leagues off.’ While he was speaking a star appeared over the snowy summit of the mountain, the only one yet visible in the heavens, and so pure, so large, so bright and beautiful as to call forth ejaculations of delight from honest Mateo.
”‘Que lucero hermoso!—que clara y limpio es!—no pueda ser lucero mas brillante.’ (What a beautiful star! how clear and lucid!—no star could be more brilliant!)
“I have often remarked this sensibility of the common people of Spain to the charms of natural objects. The lustre of a star—the beauty or fragrance of a flower—the crystal purity of a fountain, will inspire them with a kind of poetical delight—and then what euphonious words their magnificent language affords with which to give utterance to their transports!”
Possibly the constant pronouncing of these “euphonious words” is one of the causes of the beauty of Spanish lips. But one need not go into such subtle details for an explanation of the phenomenon. Sexual Selection accounts for it sufficiently. The admiration of Beauty is the strongest factor in Romantic Love. The Spaniard’s sense of Beauty is refined through his love of Beauty in natural objects. Hence in Sexual Selection he is guided by a taste which abhors equally the coarse, protuberant lips suggestive of mere animality, and the leathery, lifeless lips indicating neglect of the laws of health and a lack of lusty vitality. For true labial refinement consists not in ascetic elimination of sensuous fulness, but in æsthetic harmony between sense and intellect. The lips, like all other parts of the body, are naturally plump and full-blooded in Southern nations, saturated with sunshine and fresh air; and when this plumpness is checked by mental refinement and the exigencies of varied expression, then it is that lips become ideally beautiful.
It is with the lips as with Love, of which they are the perch. Neither Zola nor Dante are the true painters of the romantic passion, but Shakspere, who pays respect to flesh and blood as well as to emotion and intellect.
Although the size and shape of the lips afford an index of coarse or refined ancestry, the mouth is commonly the most self-made feature in the countenance, because it is such an important seat of individual expression. Herein lies a soothing balm to those who, owing to the stupidly irregular and incalculable laws of heredity, have inherited an ugly mouth from a grandfather or a more remote ancestor.
A pleasing impression, oft repeated, leaves its traces on the facial muscles. Kant gives this advice to parents: “Children, especially girls, must be accustomed early to smile in a frank, unconstrained manner; for the cheerfulness and animation of the features gradually leave an impression on the mind itself, and thus create a disposition towards gaiety, amiableness, and sociability, which lay an early foundation for the virtue of benevolence.”
So Kant evidently believed that we can beautify the soul by beautifying the body. And the reverse is equally true. As Mr. Ruskin remarks: “There is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features.... On the gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows a grace of action which by no discipline may be taught or obtained.”
If educators and parents would thoroughly impress on the minds of the young the great truth that good moral behaviour and the industry which leads to intellectual pre-eminence are magic sources of youthful and permanent Personal Beauty, they would find it the most potent of all civilising agencies, especially with women.
Drs. Brinton and Napheys, in their work on Personal Beauty (1870), which is especially valuable from the point of view of medical and surgical cosmetics, but which is unfortunately out of print, offer the following suggestions as to how the shape and expression of the mouth may be improved:—
"For cosmetic reasons, immoderate laughter is objectionable. It keeps the muscles on the stretch, destroys the contour of the features, and produces wrinkles. It is better to cultivate a ‘classic repose.’
"Still more decidedly should the habit of ‘making mouths’ be condemned, whether it occur in conversing in private or to express emotions. It never adds to the emphasis of the discourse, never improves the looks, and leads to actual malformations.
"Children sometimes learn to suck and bite their lips. This distorts these organs, and unless they are persuaded to give it up betimes, a permanent deformity will arise.
“When the lips have once assumed a given form, it is difficult to change them. Those that are too thin can occasionally be increased by adopting the plan of sucking them. This forces a large quantity of blood to the part, and consequently a greater amount of nutriment. When too large, compresses can sometimes, but not always, be used to effect. We have employed silver plates connected by a wire spring, or a mould of stiff leather. Either may be worn at night, or in the house during the day.”
It is astonishing to note how many persons are utterly unconcerned regarding the appearance of their mouths in talking, smiling, and laughing, sometimes revealing the whole of the teeth and even the gums, like savages, or as if they were walking tooth-powder advertisements. Self-observation before a mirror is the best antidote against such grimaces.
Chapped lips sometimes call for constitutional treatment, but ordinarily they can be easily cured by obtaining a lip-salve of some reputable chemist. Glycerine is almost always adulterated and injurious, and should only be used on any part of the skin when chemically pure.
Pale lips are commonly an indication of ill-health, and therefore call for exercise, tonics, or other medical treatment. And the colour of the lips is an index of emotion as well as of health—
That sound teeth, though they should never be seen except in glimpses, are an extremely important element in facial beauty, may be seen by the fact that the loss of a few front teeth makes a person look ten years older at once. The art of dentistry has reached such marvellous perfection that there is no excuse for having unsightly teeth. They may be easily preserved to a good age, if properly exercised on solid food—bread crusts, etc. Very hot and very cold food and drink is injurious, especially if cold and hot things are taken in immediate succession. The teeth should be cleaned twice a day, on rising and before retiring. The brush should not be too hard, and a harmless powder, wash, or soap should be obtained of a trustworthy chemist for the threefold purpose of whitening the teeth by removing tartar, of killing the numerous microbes in the mouth, and purifying the breath. An offensive breath is shockingly common, probably owing to the fact that many brush only the outside surface of their teeth. They should be brushed inside as well, and on the top, and the tooth wash or soap should be brought into contact with every corner and crevasse of the mouth and teeth. An offensive breath ought to be good cause for divorce, and certainly it is a deadly enemy of Romantic Love.
When we look at a Mongolian, the flat nose and oblique eyes at once attract our attention, but hardly to such a degree as his high and prominent cheek-bones. The North American Indians, who are probably the descendants of Mongolians, resemble them in their prominent cheek-bones; and the Esquimaux likewise possess these in a most exaggerated form. “The Siamese,” says Darwin, “have small noses with divergent nostrils, a wide mouth, rather thick lips, a remarkably large face, with very high and broad cheek-bones. It is therefore not wonderful that ‘beauty, according to our notion, is a stranger to them. Yet they consider their own females to be much more beautiful than those of Europe.’”
Here is another “matter of taste,” which is decided in our favour by the general laws of Beauty, positive and negative.
High, prominent cheek-bones are ugly, in the first place, because they interfere with the regularly gradated oval of the face. Secondly, because, like projecting bones and angles in any other part of the body, they interrupt the regular curve of Beauty. Thirdly, because they are coarse and inelegant, offending the sense of delicacy and grace, like big, clumsy ankles and wrists. Fourthly, because they suggest the decrepitude of old age and disease. In the healthy cheek of youth and beauty there is a large amount of adipose tissue, both under the skin and between the subjacent muscles. When age or disease makes fatal inroads on the body, this fat disappears and leaves the impression of starvation. “Famine is in thy cheeks,” exclaims Shakspere; and again—
When the malar bones are too high, the fleshy cheeks, instead of including them in a plump curve, are made by contrast to appear hollow, thus simulating and suggesting the appearance of disease to those whose imagination is sufficiently awake to notice such suggestions. And besides emaciation, hollow cheeks suggest another sign of age and decrepitude—the loss of the teeth, which on the sides of the jaws help to give youthful cheeks their plump outlines.
Finally, prominent cheek-bones are objectionable because they are concomitants of the large, clumsy, brutal jaws which characterise savages and apes. To the cheek-bones the upper jaw-bone is directly attached; hence the larger the teeth are, and the more vigorously they are exercised in fighting and picking bones, the more massive must be the cheek-bones, to prevent the upper jaw from being pushed out of position. Moreover, there is attached to the cheek-bones a powerful muscle which connects it with the lower jaw, and by its contraction brings the two jaws together; and this is a second way in which violent exercise of the jaws tends to enlarge the cheek-bones, for all bones become enlarged if the muscles attached to them are much exercised.
At a recent meeting of the British Association, Sir George Campbell advanced the theory that the Aryan race, to which we belong, originally had prominent cheek-bones, like those of lower races. On general evolutionary grounds this is indeed a foregone conclusion; as is the corollary that our cheek-bones have become smaller, for the same reason that our jaws have become more delicate; viz. because we no longer use them to fight and tear our food like wild beasts, but to masticate soft cooked food, to talk, etc. Thus does the progress of civilisation enhance our Personal Beauty.
An excessive diminution in the size of the cheek-bones, as of the jaws, will be prevented by Romantic Love (Sexual Selection), which ever aims at establishing and preserving those proportions and outlines of the features which are most in harmony with the general laws of beauty.
Among the lower animals cruel Natural Selection eliminates those individuals who are ugly, i.e. unnatural, unhealthy, clumsy. With mankind charity and pity have checked the operation of this cruel though beneficial law, and progress in the direction of refinement and Beauty would therefore be fatally impeded were it not that Sexual Selection, or Love guided by the sense of Beauty, steps in to eliminate the ill-favoured, who bear in their countenance too conspicuously the marks of their savage and animal ancestry. Perhaps Mr. Wallace had some such thought in his mind when he anticipated the time when man’s selection shall have supplanted natural selection.selection.
Yet there are thousands of good people who still profess to believe that “beauty is only skin deep,” and that Romantic Love and æsthetic culture are of no practical importance, but mere gaudy soap-bubbles to delight our vision for a transient moment!
In future ages, when æsthetic refinement will be more common, and Romantic Love, its offspring, less impeded by those considerations of rank and money and imaginary “prudence” which lead parents to sacrifice the physique and wellbeing of their grand-children to the illusive comfort of their sons and daughters (in “marriages of reason”)—what an impetus will then be given to the development of Personal Beauty! Refined mouths and noses, rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, plump and graceful healthy figures, now so lamentably rare, will then become as plentiful as blackberries in the autumn.
Although the heart’s warm blood is not carried to the cheeks in so dense a network of arteries, nor so near the surface as in the lips, yet the cheeks come next to the lips in delicate sensibility—a fact which Love has discovered instinctively; for a kiss on the cheeks is still a kiss of love, whereas a kiss on the forehead or eyelids indicates less ecstatic forms of affection or esteem.
What makes the cheeks so sensitive is the great delicacy of their transparent skin, which readily allows the colour of the blood to be seen as through a veil, not only in blushing, but in the natural rosy aspect of youth and health.
Though the cheeks may not vie with the lips and teeth, the hair and the eyes, in lustrous depth of colour, they have an advantage in their chamæleonic variety and changes of tint, and their delicious gradations. Even the delicate blushes on an apple or a peach, caused by the warm and loving glances of the sun,—what are they compared to the luscious, mellow tints on a maiden’s ripe cheeks? Nor is it possible to find in the leaves of an autumnal American forest more endless individual nuances and shades of red and rose and pink than in the cheeks of lovely girls—unless indolence or other sins against health have painted them with ghastly repulsive pallor, or the hideous Hottentot habit of bedaubing them with brutal paint has ruined their translucent delicacy.
Says the author of the Ugly Girl Papers: “Some cheeks have a winelike, purplish glow, others a transparent saffron tinge, like yellowish-pink porcelain; others still have clear, pale carmine; and the rarest of all, that suffused tint like apple-blossoms.”
At summer resorts where girls drink in daily draughts of the elixir of youth and beauty, commonly known as fresh air, one of their greatest love-charms is these colour-symphonies on their cheeks, changing their melody with every pulse-beat. These charms they might possess all the year round did not their parents commonly convert their dwelling-houses into hothouses, reeking with stagnant, enervating air.
If, therefore, we read that Africans prefer the opaque, inky, immutable ebony of their complexion to the translucent, ever-changing tints, eloquent of health and varied emotions, in a white maiden’s face, we—well, we simply smile, on recalling the fact that even among ourselves a cheap, gaudy chromo is preferred by the great multitude to the work of a great master which they do not understand. The slow growth of æsthetic refinement is illustrated by the fact that it is only a few years since Fashion has set its face against the use of vulgar paints and powders, which ensure a most questionable temporary advantage at the expense of future permanent defacement.
The colours of the cheeks, so far under consideration, are to a certain extent subject to our will and skill; for no one who cultivates the complexion and has plenty of pure air need be without these blooming buccal roses. But the “thousand blushing apparitions” that start into our faces are, as Shakspere’s well-chosen words imply, as independent of our will and control as any other apparitions.
Are blushes ornamental or useful? That is, were they developed through Sexual or through Natural Selection? Such Shaksperian expressions as “Bid the cheek be ready with a blush, modest as morning;” “Thy cheeks blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses;” and “To blush and beautify the cheek again,” suggest the notion that the great poet regarded blushes as beautiful; while the following permit a different interpretation: “Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty;” “Blushing cheeks by faults are bred, and fears by pale white shown;” “You virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing?” “His treasons will sit blushing in his face.”
Let us see if any light is thrown on the problem by going back to the beginning, and tracing the development of the habit of blushing. That blushing is a comparatively recent human acquisition is made apparent from the facts that it is not seen in animals, nor in very young children, nor in idiots, as a rule; while among savages the faculty of blushing seems to be dependent on the presence of a sense of shame, which is almost, if not entirely, unknown to the lowest tribes.
That animals never blush, Darwin thinks, is almost certain. “Blushing,” he says, “is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.” Concerning children he says: “The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy, which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls blushing at the ages of between two and three years; and of another sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault.”
“In the dark-brown Peruvian,” says Mr. Tylor, “or the yet blacker African, though a hand or a thermometer put to the cheek will detect the blush by its heat, the somewhat increased depth of colour is hardly perceptible to the eye.” Dr. Burgess repeatedly had occasion to observe that a scar in the face of a negress “invariably became red whenever she was abruptly spoken to, or charged with any trivial offence.” And Darwin was assured by several trustworthy observers “that they have seen on the faces of negroes an appearance resembling a blush, under circumstances which would have excited one in us, though their skins were of an ebony-black tint. Some describe it as a blushing brown, but most say that the blackness becomes more intense.”
Now evidence has already been quoted in a previous chapter showing that negroes admire a black skin more than a white one (vide Descent of Man, 1885, p. 579). Is it likely, therefore, that the blush was admired by negroes, and became a ground of selection, because it intensified the blackness of the skin. It hardly seems probable that the coarse negro can be influenced in his amorous choice by any such subtle, almost imperceptible difference; and even the great originator of the theory of Sexual Selection does not believe that it accounts for the origin of blushes: “No doubt a slight blush adds to the beauty of a maiden’s face; and the Circassian women who are capable of blushing invariably fetch a higher price in the seraglio of the Sultan than less susceptible women. But the firmest believer in the efficacy of sexual selection will hardly suppose that blushing was acquired as a sexual ornament. This view would also be opposed to what has just been said about the dark-coloured races blushing in an invisible manner.”
On the other hand, it seems equally difficult to account for the origin of blushing on utilitarian grounds. No one likes to be caught blushing; on the contrary, every one tries to conceal such a state by lowering or averting the face. How could such an unwelcome, embarrassing habit prove of advantage to us? Sir Charles Bell’s remarks on the subject may serve as a clue to the answer. That blushing “is a provision for expression may be inferred,” he says, “from the colour extending only to the surface of the face, neck, and breast—the parts most exposed.... The colour caused by blushing gives brilliancy and interest to the expression of the face. In this we perceive an advantage possessed by the fair family of mankind, and which must be lost to the dark; for I can hardly believe that a blush may be seen in the negro.... Blushing assorts well with youthful and with effeminate features, while nothing is more hateful than a dog-face that exhibits no token of sensibility in the variations of colour.”
The poet Young tells us that “the man that blushes is not quite a brute;” and Darwin quotes from Humboldt a sneer of the Spaniard, “How can those be trusted who know not how to blush?” Darwin’s remark that some idiots, “if not utterly degraded, are capable of blushing,” also accords with Bell’s notion that blushing is a provision for expression. Bell’s assertion that it is “indicative of excitement” is, however, not sufficiently definite. What is it that a blush expresses? Evidently nervous sensibility, a moral sense, modesty, innocence. The Circassian who can blush is more highly valued than another, because the blush is eloquent of maiden modesty and heart untainted. The fact that there is also a blush of violated modesty, a blush of shame, and of guilt, does not argue against this view, any more than the fact that we blush if, though innocent, we are accused of guilt. It is the association of ideas and of emotions that evokes the blush in such cases.
We may therefore conclude that a blush is useful on account of its moral beauty, i.e. its expressiveness of presumptive innocence, or at least of a desire to be considered innocent; whereas the unblushing front and cheek indicate a brutal, callous indifference to virtue. We admire a blush as “the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.” And we admire it also, to some extent, on purely æsthetic grounds, if not exaggerated. A slight blush has a rosy charm of its own, and it is only when it becomes a too diffused and deep facial Aurora borealis that it loses its charm, because suggestive of the hectic or fever flush, or the redness caused by anger, heat, violent exertion, etc., which has a physiological origin distinct from that of blushing.
According to Bell, “the colour which attends exertion or the violent passions, as of rage, arises from general vascular excitement, and differs from blushing. Blushing is too sudden and too partial to be traced to the heart’s action.” Darwin endeavours to find the explanation of blushing in the intimate sympathy which exists between the capillary circulation of the surface of the head and face, and that of the brain, which would account for the mental confusion of shyness, modesty, etc., being so immediately photographed on the face. He sums up his theory in these words:—
“I conclude that blushing—whether due to shyness—to shame for a real crime—to shame from a breach of the laws of etiquette—to modesty from humility—to modesty from an indelicacy—depends in all cases on the same principle; this principle being a sensitive regard for the opinion, more particularly for the depreciation of others, primarily in relation to our personal appearance, especially of our faces; and secondarily, through the force of association and habit, in relation to the opinion of others on our conduct.”
He gives various illustrations showing how by directing our attention to certain parts of the body we can increase their sensitivity and activity in a manner analogous to that postulated by the theory of blushing. But for these the reader must be referred to his essay on this subject in the Expression of Emotions—a masterpiece of physiological and psychological analysis. One more passage, however, may be cited, as it helps to justify this long discussion of blushing by showing its special relations to Romantic Love and Personal Beauty:—
“It is plain to every one that young men and women are highly sensitive to the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance; and they blush incomparably more in presence of the opposite sex than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy pair of young lovers, valuing each other’s admiration and love more than anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr. Bridges, blush ‘chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their own personal appearance.’”
The shell of the ear appears to be the only part of man’s visible body which has ceased to be useful and become purely ornamental “Persons whose ears have been cut off hear just as well as before,” says Professor Haeckel. Dr. J. Toynbee, F.R.S., “after collecting all the evidence on this head, concludes that the external shell is of no distinct use;” and Darwin was informed by Professor Preyer that after experimenting on the functions of the shell of the ear he had come to nearly the same conclusion.
To infer from this that our external ears have been developed, through Sexual Selection, for purely ornamental purposes, would not be in accord with scientific analogies. For, often as existing organs (horns, feathers, etc.) are modified for ornamental purposes, there are no known instances of any that have been specially developed for that purpose; even the facial muscles of expression being, as we have seen, in this predicament. Hence we are led to conclude that man has inherited the shell of his ear from a remote apelike ancestor, to whom it was of use in catching faint sounds, and who consequently had the power, common to other animals, not only of directing the ears as a whole to different points of the compass, but of temporarily altering its shape. Indeed, one of the strongest proofs of our descent from lower animals lies in the fact that man still possesses, in a rudimentary form, the muscles needed to move the ears. Some savage tribes have considerable control over these muscles. The famous physiologist, Johannes Müller, after long and patient efforts, succeeded in recovering the power of moving his ears; and Darwin writes: “I have seen one man who could draw the whole ear forwards; other men can draw it upwards; another who could draw it backwards; and from what one of these persons told me, it is probable that most of us, by often touching our ears, and thus directing our attention towards them, could recover some power of movement by repeated trials.”
Ordinary monkeys still possess the power to move their ears; but the manlike or anthropoid apes resemble us in the rudimentary condition of their ear-muscles; and Darwin was assured by the keepers in the London Zoological Gardens that these animals never move or erect their ears. He suggests two theories to account for the loss of this power: first, that, owing to their arboreal habits and great strength, these apes were not exposed to much danger, and thus gradually, through disuse, lost control over these organs, just as birds on oceanic islands where they are not subject to attacks have lost the use of their wings; secondly, that the freedom with which they can move the head in a horizontal plane enabled them to dispense with mobile ears.
The remarkable variability of the ears—greater, by the way, in men than in women—is another reason for regarding them as rudimentary organs, inherited from remote semi-human ancestors, to whom they were useful; for great variability is a characteristic of all rudimentary organs. Haeckel facetiously suggests that “at large assemblies, where our interest is not sufficiently enchained, nothing is more instructive and entertaining than a comparative study of the countless variations in the form of the ears.” The ancient Greek artists were aware of this variability, for Wincklemann speaks of “the infinite variety of forms of the ear on heads modelled from life.” “It was customary with the ancient artists to elaborate no portion of the head more diligently than the ears.” “In portrait figures, when the countenance is so much injured as not to be recognised, we can occasionally make a correct conjecture as to the person intended, if it is one of whom we have any knowledge, merely by the form of the ear; thus we infer a head of Marcus Aurelius from an ear with an unusually large inner opening.”
If we compare a man’s ears with those of a dog or horse, differences of shape appear no less conspicuous than differences in mobility. Two points are especially characteristic of man—the folded upper margin and the lobule. Our cousins, the anthropoid apes, are the only other animals which have the margin of the ear thus folded inwards, the lower monkeys having them simple and pointed, like other animals. The sculptor, Mr. Woolner, called Darwin’s attention to “a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly-folded margin or helix.” Darwin, on investigating the matter, came to the conclusion that these points “are vestiges of the tips of former erect and pointed ears”; being led to think so “from the frequency of their occurrence, and from the general correspondence in position with that of the tip of a pointed ear.”
The lobule is still more peculiar to man than the folded margin, since he does not even share it with the anthropoid apes, although, according to Professor Mivart, “a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla.” An intermediate stage between man and ape is occupied by some savage tribes in whom the lobule is scantily developed or even absent.
The lobule of the human ear has been presumably developed through the agency of Sexual Selection, as it is an ornament the absence of which is at once felt. And there are other ways in which this organ has been gradually brought into harmony with the laws of beauty. Thus the loss of the hair (of which rudiments are still occasionally present) made visible the soft skin and the delicate tint of the ear, which, like that of the cheeks, may be momentarily heightened by a blush, and thus become an index of emotional expression. A permanently heightened colour of the ear, however, caused by exposure to extreme cold or by rough treatment, is almost as great a blemish as a red nose or pallid lips. If boxers are anxious to deform their ears, no one has a right to object; but children have a right to ask of their parents and teachers not to redden their ears permanently by pulling or boxing them. That a delicate and important sense-organ like the ear should be so frequently chosen as a place to inflict punishment, shows the necessity of a general diffusion of hygienic knowledge. It may not be superfluous to add a caution to lovers, that the ears should never be taken as an osculatory substitute for the lips or cheeks, as cases are known in medical practice where the tympanum, and consequently the hearing, has been destroyed by a vigorous kiss implanted by a foolish lover on his sweetheart’s ears.
An ear to be beautiful should be about twice as long as broad. It should be attached to the head almost straight, or slightly inclined backwards, and should almost touch the head with the back of its upper point. Many poor girls are deformed for life through the ignorance of their mothers, who allow them to wear their hair or bonnets in such a way as to make the ears stand out obliquely. As the ears contain no bones, but consist entirely of cartilages and skin, they can be, more readily even than the nose, moulded into a fine shape at an early age. As Drs. Brinton and Napheys remark, “Even when the ear is in part or altogether absent, the case is not desperate. An ‘artificial ear’ can be made of vulcanised rubber, or other material, tinted the colour of the flesh, and attached to the side of the head with such deftness that its character will escape every ordinary eye.” There is therefore no excuse for having badly-shaped or wrongly-inclined ears in these days of cosmetic surgery.
In the most beautiful ears the lobe is free, and not attached to the head in its lower part. Heavy earrings, which have a tendency to unduly enlarge the lobules, are now tabooed by Fashion; but very small jewels in the ear may be looked on, like small finger-rings, necklaces, and bracelets, as unobjectionable from an æsthetic point of view, though real beauty unadorned is adorned the most.
Formerly Fashion maltreated the poor ears quite as badly as it still does the waist and the feet. Lubbock remarks that the East Islanders enlarge their ears till they come down to the shoulders; and Darwin, after referring to liberties taken with the nose, says that “the ears are everywhere pierced and similarly ornamented, and with the Botocudos and Lenguas of South America the hole is gradually so much enlarged that the lower edge touches the shoulder.”
Among the Greeks, as Becker remarks, "it was considered a dishonour, or a token of foreign manners, for men to have their ears bored.... Women and girls, however, not only used earrings, ἐνώτια, ἐλλόβια, ἑλικτῆρες which are seen perpetually in vases, but also wore numerous articles of jewellery about the neck, the arms, and on the leg above the ankle."
The ancients, too, had heard of the malformed ears of primitive peoples. “It is possible,” says Tylor, “that there may be some truth in the favourite wonder-tale of the old geographers, about the tribes whose great ears reached down to their shoulders, though the story had to be stretched a good deal when it was declared they lay down on one ear and covered themselves with the other for a blanket.”
Such blanket-ears would be the æsthetic equivalent of modern bustles, crinolettes, and wasp-waists.
Ever since the days of ancient Greek philosophy ingenious attempts have been made to find a special meaning for this or that particular form of the ear. According to Aristotle, a long ear indicates a good memory, whereas modern physiognomists incline to the opinion that a long ear shows a man’s mental relationship to a certain unjustly-maligned animal. Small ears, Lavater thinks, are a sign of an active mind, while a deep shell indicates a thirst for knowledge.
As a matter of fact, the ears have no connection whatever with intellectual or emotional expression, except that a well-shaped ear indicates in a general way that its possessor comes off a stock in which the laws of cosmetic hygiene have been observed during many generations. To many of the lower animals the ears are a means of emotional expression. What, for instance, could be more expressive and droll than the way a dog expresses mild surprise or expectation by pricking up his ears? Or what a more certain sign of viciousness in a horse than the drawing back of the ears?—a movement of which Darwin has found the reason in the fact that all animals that fight with their teeth retract their ears to protect them; whence, through habit and association, it comes that they draw them back whenever a fighting mood comes over them. Man, on the other hand, never uses his ears for emotional expression, because they are the least mobile part of the body. Now form is merely crystallised expression: and the absence of special movements for emotional expression necessarily prevents individual alterations indicative of character. Hence the absurdity of trying to use the ears as a basis for physiognomic distinctions.
What is the cause of the folding of the margin of the human ear, which distinguishes it from that of all other animals? Darwin remarks that it “appears to be in some manner connected with the whole external ear being permanently pressed backwards;” but this does not explain the mysterious phenomenon. After many hours of profound meditation on this subject I have come to the conclusion that this slight folding of the ear’s margin is the beginning of a new phase of human evolution. In course of time—this cannot be disproved—the fold of the margin will become larger and larger, until finally the shells of the ear will have been transformed into mobile lids for shutting out at will disagreeable noises, even as the eyelids have been developed to shut out glaring light. This would account for the providential preservation of the rudimentary ear-muscles referred to above. When this process of evolution is completed men coming home late will no longer have to listen to curtain-lectures. The innovation will tend to make them polite, for instead of telling the lecturer to “shut up,” they will shut up themselves.
Seriously speaking, such movable ear-lids are very much needed in this transition stage of civilisation. The present age of steam will by future historians be classified as the age of noise. It is almost impossible to find a place within ten miles of a city where one can rest without having one’s sleep constantly disturbed, or at least deprived of its refreshing depth, by the blowing of railway and factory whistles. Both are unnecessary, inasmuch as railway signals would be quite as effective if not so murderously loud and prolonged, while factory whistles are either blown at the moment when the operatives go to work, when a simple bell would do as well, or they are blown an hour earlier to wake up the workmen,—a most outrageous proceeding, as everybody else sleeping within a radius of a mile or more is thus waked up at six o’clock.
The fact that these nuisances have so long been tolerated shows how primitive is as yet the æsthetic development of the average human ear. Some people even smile at you for being so “nervous,” and boast of their indifference to such hideous, brain-racking noises. The Esquimaux and Chinese would doubtless assume a similar attitude regarding their indifference to noisome stenches. In mediæval times, Europeans in general were quite as indifferent to the emanations from their gutters as they still are to the hideous noises in the streets. It has often been noted with surprise that the death-rate in London and the general aspect of health should be so much more favourable than that of continental cities, which are free from the depressing London fogs. The reason, doubtless, lies chiefly in the facts that there are no vile sewer odours in London to poison the atmosphere, and that the pavement of the streets is of such a nature that one can sleep soundly at night, provided there are no steam whistles near. London, too, does not tolerate the brutal whip-cracking which transforms French, German, and Swiss towns and cities into Bedlams of noise. In this respect New York resembles London; but here the comparison ends. New York pavements are the noisiest, roughest, and dirtiest in the world. I have known of invalids who were advised to drive in the Central Park, but could not do so because they could not bear on their way to drive even up Fifth Avenue,—a street lined with the houses of millionaires. And to walk on Broadway for twenty minutes, talking to a friend, makes one as hoarse as delivering a two-hour lecture.
There can be no doubt that a horror of useless noise grows with the general refinement of the senses and the mind. Goethe’s aversion to noise, especially at night, is well known. It led him to poison dogs that disturbed him. The delicate hearing of Franz, the great song composer, was ruined by the whistle of a locomotive. And Schopenhauer has put the whole matter into a nutshell in these admirable words: “Intellectual persons, and all in general who have much esprit, cannot endure noise. Astounding, on the other hand, is the insensibility of ordinary people to noise. The quantity of noise which any one can endure without annoyance is really related inversely to his mental endowments, and may be regarded as a pretty accurate measure of them.”
It is self-evident that indifference to ear-splitting noises implies a lack of appreciation for the exquisite clang-tints of music; for whenever the acoustic nerve is sufficiently refined to appreciate such subtle tints, it is affected as painfully by harsh sounds as the artistic eye is by glaring colours and flickering light. And an ear which is indifferent to the sweetness of musical sounds is of course indifferent also to the musical charm of the speaking voice. But a sweetly modulated voice is one of the most conspicuous attributes of Personal Beauty—for Beauty refers to sounds as well as to sights—