Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman

SECTION II.
ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN LIVING BEINGS

I have now to show that, in living beings, while the characters of the first and fundamental beauty, that of inanimate beings, are still partially continued, new characteristics are added to them.

Plants accordingly possess both rigid parts, like some of those described in the preceding section, and delicate parts, which, in ascending through the classes of natural beings from the simplest to the most complex, are the very first to present to us new and additional characters totally distinct from those of the preceding class.

I. To begin as nature does, then, we find the trunks and stems of plants, which are near the ground, resembling most in character the inanimate bodies from among which they spring. They assume the simplest and most universal form in nature, the round one; but as growth is their great function, they extend in height and become cylindrical.

Even the branches, the twigs, and the tendrils, continue this elementary character; but it is in them, or in the stem when, like them, it is tender, that such elementary characters give way to the purposes of life, namely, growth and reproduction, and that we discover the new and additional characters of beauty which this class presents to us.

II. To render this matter plain, I must observe that the formation of rings, which unite in tubes, appears to be almost universally the material condition of growth and reproduction. Every new portion of these tubes, moreover, and every superadded ring, is less than that which preceded it.

It is from this that results the first characteristic of this second kind of beauty, namely, fineness or delicacy. Hence, Burke made the possession of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength, his fifth condition in beauty; and he here erred only from that want of discrimination which led him to confound together all the conditions of beauty, and prevented his seeing that they belonged to different genera.

Now, as fine and delicate bodies, which are growing, will shoot in that direction where space, air, and light, can best be had, and as this, amid other twigs and tendrils, will greatly vary, so will their productions rarely continue long in the same straight line, but will, on the contrary, bend. Hence, the curved or bending form is the second characteristic of this kind of beauty.

It is worthy of remark, that, as the trunks, stems, twigs, and tendrils, of plants assume the simplest and most universal form in nature, the round one, so their more delicate parts have again the tendency to bend into a similar form.

In the young and feeble branches of plants, it is observed by Alison, that the bending form is “beautiful, when we perceive that it is the consequence of the delicacy of their texture, and of their being overpowered by the weight of the flower.... In the smaller and feebler tribe of flowers, as in the violet, the daisy, or the lily of the valley, the bending of the stem constitutes a very beautiful form, because we immediately perceive that it is the consequence of the weakness and delicacy of the flower.”

From the circumstances now described, it results that all the parts of plants present the most surprising variety. They vary their direction every moment, as Burke observes, and they change under the eye by a deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a point.

Variety is therefore the third characteristic of this second kind of beauty; and in the indiscriminating views of Burke, he made two similar conditions, viz: “Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other;” thus applying these to beauty generally, to which they are not applicable, but in a confused and imperfect way.

It is scarcely necessary to observe that variety, as a character of beauty, owes its effect to the need of changing impressions, in order to enliven our sensibility, which does not fail to become inactive under the long-continued impression of the same stimulant.

It is connected with this variety that unequal numbers are preferred, as we see in the number of flowers and of their petals, in that of leaves grouped together, and in the indentations of these leaves.

From all this springs the fourth and last characteristic of this second species of beauty, namely, contrast. This strikes us when we at once look at the rigid stem and bending boughs, and all the variety which the latter display.

It will be observed, that, of all the characteristics of beauty, none tend to render our perceptions so vivid as variety and contrast.

I conclude this section with a few remarks on the errors which Alison has committed on this subject.

“In the rose,” says that writer, “and the white lily, and in the tribe of flowering shrubs, the same bending form assumed by the stem is felt as a defect; and instead of impressing us with the idea of delicacy, leads us to believe the operation of some force to twist it into this direction.”—This, however, is no defect arising from the bending form not being abstractly more beautiful, but from its being contrary to the nature of the stem of flowering shrubs to bend, from its being, as he himself observes, the result of some force to twist it.

He asserts, however, that in plants, angular forms are beautiful, when they are expressive of fineness, of tenderness, of delicacy, or such affecting qualities; and he thinks that this may perhaps appear from the consideration of the following instances:—

“The myrtle, for instance, is generally reckoned a beautiful form, yet the growth of its stem is perpendicular, the junction of its branches form regular and similar angles, and their direction is in straight or angular lines. The known delicacy, however, and tenderness of the vegetable, at least in this climate, prevail over the general expression of the form, and give it the same beauty which we generally find in forms of a contrary kind.”—The mistake here committed is in supposing the beauty of the myrtle to depend on its angularity, instead of its being evergreen, fragrant, and suggesting pleasures of association.

“How much more beautiful,” he says, “is the rose-tree when its buds begin to blow, than afterward, when its flowers are full and in their greatest perfection! yet, in this first situation, its form has much less winding surface, and is much more composed of straight lines and of angles, than afterward when the weight of the flower weighs down the feeble branches, and describes the easiest and most varied curves.”—But he answers himself by adding: “The circumstance of its youth, a circumstance in all cases so affecting, the delicacy of its blossom, so well expressed by the care which Nature has taken in surrounding the opening bud with leaves, prevail so much upon our imagination, that we behold the form itself with more delight in this situation than afterward, when it assumes the more general form of delicacy.”

“There are few things in the vegetable world,” he says, “more beautiful than the knotted and angular stem of the balsam, merely from its singular transparency, which it is impossible to look at without a strong impression of the fineness and delicacy of the vegetable.”—But it is its transparency, not its angularity, that is beautiful.

The beauty of color is not less conspicuous than that of form in this class of beings.

SECTION III.
ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN THINKING BEINGS

I have next to show that, in thinking beings, while the characters of inanimate, and those of living beauty, are still more or less continued, new characteristics are also added to them.

I. In animals, accordingly, the bones bear a close analogy to the wood of plants. They generally assume the same rounded form; but, as thinking beings are necessarily moving ones, their bones are hollow to combine lightness with strength, and they are separated by joints to permit flexion and extension.

II. As animals, like plants, grow and reproduce, a portion of their general organization, their vascular system, which serves the purpose of growth and reproduction, consists, like plants, of trunks, branches, &c.; and the surface of their bodies, the skin, is formed by a tissue of these vessels. Accordingly, both the vessels themselves, and the tissue which they form, present the delicacy, the bending, the variety, and the contrast, which are the characters of the preceding species of beauty.

The undulating and serpentine lines which art seeks always to design in its most beautiful productions, exist in greater number at the surface of the human body than at that of any other animal. Wherever, as Hogarth observes, “for the sake of the necessary motion of the parts, with proper strength and agility, the insertions of the muscles are too hard and sudden, their swellings too bold, or the hollows between them too deep, for their outlines to be beautiful; nature softens these hardnesses, and plumps up these vacancies with a proper supply of fat, and covers the whole with the soft, smooth, springy, and, in delicate life, almost transparent skin, which, conforming itself to the external shape of all the parts beneath, expresses to the eye the idea of its contents with the utmost delicacy of beauty and grace.”

It is principally in the features of the face, as has often been observed, and on the surface of the torso and of the members of a beautiful woman, that these delicate, bending, varied, and contrasted lines are multiplied: by their union, they mark the outlines of different parts, as in the region of the neck, of the bosom, at the shoulders, on the surface of the abdomen, on the sides, and principally in the gradual transitions from the head to the neck, and from the loins to the inferior extremities.

These lines vary under different circumstances; much enbonpoint producing round lines, and leanness or old age producing straight ones.

Woman and man stand pre-eminent among animals as to this kind of beauty; and to them succeed the swifter animals, as the horse, the stag, &c.

The animals, on the contrary, of which the surface presents right lines and square forms, are correspondingly deprived of beauty; as the toad, the hog, and all the animals which seem to us ugly.

In all animals, also, the beauty of color, even when slightly varied, becomes extremely interesting.—In human beauty, considerable variety is produced by the different shades of the skin.

Such, indeed, is the variety resulting from all this, that some degree even of intricacy is produced. The undulating lines which cross in every direction, and the tortuous paths of the eye, are the means of an agreeable complication.

Hence Burke, following Hogarth, says: “Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts: the smoothness, the softness, the easy and insensible swell, the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same, the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the great constituents of beauty?

The hair affords an excellent instance of this agreeable complication. Soft curls agitated by the wind have been the theme of every poet. And yet, says Hogarth, “to show how excess ought to be avoided in intricacy, as well as in every other principle, the very same head of hair, wisped and matted together, would make the most disagreeable figure; because the eye would be perplexed, and at a fault, and unable to trace such a confused number of uncomposed and entangled lines.”

III. But animals have a higher system of organs and functions which peculiarly distinguishes them, and which presents new and peculiar characteristics of beauty. This consists of the organs by which they receive impressions from, and react upon the objects around them—the first organs which Nature presents having altogether external relations, and the first, consequently, in which we look for fitness for any purpose.

The importance of fitness to the beauty of such objects is learned imperceptibly. Lines and forms, though the most elegant, fail to please us, if ill distributed in this respect: and objects, to a great extent destitute of the other characters of natural beauty, become beautiful when regarded in relation to fitness. Thus would this sense appear to be so powerful, as in some measure to regulate our other perceptions of beauty.

It is fitness which leads us to admire in one animal, what would displease us if found in another. “The variety,” says Barry, “and union of parts, which we call beautiful in a greyhound, are pleasing in consequence of the idea of agility which they convey. In other animals, less agility is united with more strength; and, indeed, all the different arrangements please because they indicate either different qualities, different degrees of qualities, or the different combinations of them.”

In relation to the various fitness of the human body, the same writer says: “We should not increase the beauty of the female bosom, by the addition of another protuberance; and the exquisite undulating transitions from the convex to the concave tendencies, could not be multiplied with any success. In fine, our rule for judging of the mode and degree of this combination of variety and unity, seems to be no other than that of its fitness and conformity to the designation of each species.”

But it is less necessary for me to adduce authorities in support of this truth, than to answer the objections that have been made to it by some of the ablest writers on the subject—objections which have generally their origin in the narrow views which these men have taken, and in those partial hypotheses which, even when true, led them to reject all other truth.

“It is said,” observes Burke, “that the idea of a part’s being well adapted to answer its end, is one cause of beauty, or indeed beauty itself.... In framing this theory, I am apprehensive that experience was not sufficiently consulted. For, on that principle, the wedgelike snout of a swine with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful.”—And so they are, when the beauty of fitness for their purpose is considered; but that purpose being the mere growth and fattening of an animal of sensual and dirty habits, it is a fallacy to represent this, without explanation, as a fair proof of the absence of connexion between fitness and beauty.

“If beauty in our species,” says the same writer, “was annexed to use, men would be much more lovely than women; and strength and agility would be considered as the only beauties.”—Burke was a stringer of fine words, not for woman, but for queens, when that served a selfish and venal purpose. The sentence just quoted shows that his gallantry was as ignorant as it was mean. He here asserts by implication that women are less useful than men, although it is to women that the care of the whole human race, during its most helpless years, is committed, and although they take upon themselves all that half of the duties of life which men are as little capable of performing, as women are of performing the portion suited to men.

“And,” says he, “I appeal to the first and most natural feelings of mankind, whether, on beholding a beautiful eye, or a well-fashioned mouth, or a well-turned leg, any ideas of their being well fitted for seeing, eating, or running, ever present themselves.”—Is running, then, the proper use of the leg in woman! Rousseau more truly thought its use was to fail in running, or not to run! Is eating the only use of her mouth! This, too from the man who deplored that “the age of chivalry was gone!”—Nevertheless, I will venture to assert that such things never were and never will be seen, without suggesting ideas of fitness of some kind or other.

“There is,” he proceeds, “another notion current, pretty closely allied to the former; that perfection is the constituent cause of beauty. This opinion has been made to extend much farther than to sensible objects. But in these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause of beauty, that this quality, where it is highest in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection.”—For this plain reason, that female perfection is utterly incompatible with great muscular perfection or strength, which would indeed be injurious to the performance of every feminine function.

We may now advance another step in the subject under discussion. What, then, are the peculiar physical characters of beings thus possessing sense and motion, and thus characterized by fitness?

“It must be remembered,” says Knight, “that irregularity is the general characteristic of trees, and regularity that of animals.”—It would have been more correct to say that symmetry is this peculiar characteristic. There is little resemblance between the parts of one side; and it is symmetry which results from the uniform disposition of double parts, and from the regular division of single ones.

Hence an agreeable impression is produced by the corresponding disposition and the exact resemblance of the eyes, of the eyebrows, of the ears, of the hemispheres of the bosom, and of the different parts of which the limbs are composed; and the forehead, the nose, the mouth, the abdomen, the back, are agreeably distinguished by means of the median line which divides them.

It appears that the eye is pleased by the exactness of corresponding parts; and that symmetry is the first character of beauty in thinking beings.

Occasional irregularity makes us better appreciate the importance of symmetry. The oblique direction of the eyes, squinting, twisting of the nose or lips, unequal magnitude of the hemispheres of the bosom, or unequal length of the limbs, disfigure the most beautiful person.

But how does symmetry contribute to fitness, or why is it necessary?

“All our limbs and organs,” says Payne Knight, “serve us in pairs, and by mutual co-operation with each other: whence the habitual association of ideas has taught us to consider this uniformity as indispensable to the beauty and perfection of the animal form. There is no reason to be deduced from any abstract consideration of the nature of things, why an animal should be more ugly and disgusting for having only one eye, or one ear, than for having only one nose or one mouth; yet if we were to meet with a beast with one eye, or two noses, or two mouths, in any part of the world, we should, without inquiry, decide it to be a monster, and turn from it with abhorrence: neither is there any reason, in the nature of things, why a strict parity, or relative equality, in the correspondent limbs and features of a man or a horse, should be absolutely essential to beauty, and absolutely destructive of it in the roots and branches of a tree. But, nevertheless, the Creator having formed the one regular, and the other irregular, we habitually associate ideas of regularity to the perfection of one, and ideas of irregularity to the perfection of the other; and this habit has been so unvaried, as to have become natural.”

This is the common cant of every weak man at loss for a reason. Now, it is not by any “habitual association” with “our limbs and organs serving us in pairs,” that we are “taught to consider this uniformity indispensable to beauty,” but because, independent of all association, we could not conveniently walk upon one leg, or, indeed, on any unequal number of legs: and there being two sides in the moving organs, there are necessarily two in the sensitive organs, which are mere portions of the same general system. Thus it is locomotion to be performed that renders “a strict parity, or relative equality, in the correspondent limbs and features of a man or a horse” absolutely essential to beauty; and it is the absence of locomotion which renders it utterly worthless, and therefore very rare, in “the roots and branches of a tree.”

In animals, proportion is not less essential than symmetry. It is indeed the second character of this kind of beauty. As this part of the subject has been perfectly well treated by Mr. Alison, I need only quote what he has said:—

“It is this expression of fitness which is, I apprehend, the source of the beauty of what is strictly and properly called proportion in the parts of the human form.

“We expect a different form, and a different conformation of limbs, in a running footman and a waterman, in a wrestler and a racing groom, in a shepherd and a sailor, &c.

“They who are conversant in the productions of the fine arts, must have equally observed, that the forms and proportions of features, which the sculptor and the painter have given to their works, are very different, according to the nature of the character they represent, and the emotion they wish to excite. The form or proportions of the features of Jove are different from those of Hercules; those of Apollo, from those of Ganymede; those of the Fawn, from those of the Gladiator. In female beauty, the form and proportions in the features of Juno are very different from those of Venus; those of Minerva, from those of Diana; those of Niobe, from those of the Graces. All, however, are beautiful; because all are adapted with exquisite taste to the characters they wish the countenance to express.”

In “the Hercules and the Antinous, the Jupiter and the Apollo, we find that not only the proportions of the form, but those of every limb, are different; and that the pleasure we feel in these proportions arises from their exquisite fitness for the physical ends which the artists were consulting.

“The illustration, however, may be made still more precise; for, even in the same countenance, and in the same hour, the same form of feature may be beautiful or otherwise.”