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

It would also appear that the most stupid animals, swine, rabbits, &c., in general produce the greatest number of young; while men of genius have engendered the fewest. It is remarked that none of the greatest men of antiquity were much given to sexual pleasure.

It is, then, of the greatest importance to young men who are ambitious of excellence, to mark well this truth, that the most powerful and distinguished in mental faculties, other things being equal, will be he who wastes them least in early life by sexual indulgence—who most economizes the vital stimulant, in order to excite the mental powers on great occasions. By such means may a man surely surpass others, if he have received from his parents proportional mental energy.

Beside the means already indicated, there is one proposed by an able writer, as serving to divert the instinct of propagation when too early and excessive, and consequently dangerous: that is, the sentiment of love. To employ this means, he observes, “it is necessary to search early, after knowing the character of the adolescent whom it is wished to direct, for a young woman whose beauty and good qualities may inspire him with attachment. This means will serve, more than can easily be imagined, to preserve the adolescent both from the grosser attractions of libertinism and the disease it entails, and from the more dangerous snares of coquetry. It is,” he adds, “a virtuous young woman and a solid attachment that are here spoken of.”—At some future period I shall probably show how wise this recommendation is, as well as the necessity and the advantages of early marriages, under favorable circumstances.

Having now shown the evils of early sexual association, I may briefly notice those of later libertinism.

If, even in more advanced life, and when the constitution is stronger, the instinct of propagation be not restrained within just limits, it degenerates into inordinate lewdness or real mania: “Repperit obscænas veneres vitiosa libido.” By such depravation, nobleness of character is utterly destroyed.

This scarcely evitable consequence of great fortune and of the facility of indulgence, it has been justly observed, will ever be the ruin of the rich, and a mode of enervating the most vigorous branches of the most powerful house.

The libertine, then, owing to exhaustion, by sexual indulgence, is characterized by physical and moral impotence, or has a brain as incapable of thinking, as his muscles are of acting.

As libertines are enfeebled by indulgence, it follows that they are proportionally distinguished by fear and cowardice. Nothing, indeed, destroys courage more than sexual abuses.

But, from cowardice, spring cunning, duplicity, lying, and perfidy. These common results of cowardice are uniformly found in eunuchs, slaves, courtiers, and sycophants; while boldness, frankness, and generosity, belong to virtuous, free, and magnanimous men.

Again, cowardice, artifice, falsehood, and perfidy, are the usual elements of cruelty. Men feel more wounded in self-love, as they are conscious of being more contemptible; and they avenge themselves with more malignity upon their enemy, as they find themselves more weak and worthless, and as they consequently dread him more.

These are the causes of that malignant revenge which princes have often shown, as, in ancient times, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Heliogabalus, &c. In later times, Catharine de Medici solicited the massacre of the Protestants; Paul, Constantine, and Nicholas, of Russia, were happy only when they wallowed in blood; Charles X., equally effeminate and bigoted, perpetrated the massacre of the Parisians; Don Miguel covered Portugal with his assassinations; and nearly all the sovereigns and sycophants in Europe upheld or palliated his atrocities.[6 - George IV., though the “first gentleman” in England, was guilty of cheating at a horserace.—Ed.]

The strong and brave man, on the contrary, scarcely feels hurt, and scorns revenge.

It is not cruelty only with which we may reproach these effeminate individuals: it is every vice which springs from baseness of character.

Libertinism, moreover, is not hurtful only to the health and welfare of these individuals: it is so also to those of their posterity.

Finally, the results of libertinism have constantly marked, not merely the ruin of families, but the degeneration of races, and the decay of empires. The delights of Capua caused the ruin of Hannibal; and the Roman, once so proud before kings, finally transformed himself into the wretched slave of monsters degraded far below the rank of humanity.

So little, however, do men look to remote consequences that perhaps the most frightful punishments of libertinism are the diseases which it inflicts. Man may, then, be said to meet only death on the path of life.

The dangers of promiscuous love are, indeed, far beyond what young men will easily believe. I do not exaggerate when I state, that, out of every three women, and those the least common of the promiscuous, two at least are certainly in a state of disease capable of the most destructive infection. A surgeon in the habit of receiving foul patients at a public hospital tells me, I might safely say that nine out of every ten are in this state.[7 - The above remark is true of the same class of females in this country.—Ed.]

While writing this, Sir Anthony Carlisle observes to me, that, “the special disease which appears to be a punishment for sexual profligacy, is not only malignant, painful, and hideous, in every stage of it, but the only remedy known for its cure, mercury, is a poison which generally leaves its own evils for the venom which it destroys. This frightful disease has no natural termination but in a disgusting disgraceful death, after disfiguring the countenance, by causing blindness, loss of the nose, the palate and teeth, and by the spoliation of the sinning organs. The miserables, who thus perish in public hospitals, are so offensive to the more respectable patients, that they are confined to appointed rooms, termed foul wards, where they linger and die in the bloom of life, either of the penalty inflicted by their profligacy, of the poison administered to them, or of incurable consequent diseases, such as consumption, palsy, or madness.”

Hence, it has been observed, that, if we have to deal with a young man incapable of guidance by the nobler motives, of feeling contempt for vice, and horror for debauchery, there yet remain means to be employed. Let him be conducted to the hospital, where he will find collected the poor victims of debauchery—the unhappy women whom, even the day before, he may have seen in the streets, with faces dressed in smiles, amid the torments, the corrosion, and the contagion of disease. This may leave an impression sufficiently deep. But let him also know that these unhappy creatures are a thousand times more pitiable than the libertine who destroys them, and who forfeits the only good we cannot refuse to other wretches, compassion for the misery he endures.[8 - Appendix B.]

CHAPTER IV.

NATURE OF BEAUTY

In this chapter, my aim is to show that there is more than one kind of beauty, and that much confusion has arisen among writers, from not clearly distinguishing the characteristics of these kinds.

An essential condition, then, of all excitement and action in animal bodies, is a greater or less degree of novelty in the objects impressing them—even if this novelty should arise only from a previous cessation of excitement.

Now, objects of greater or less novelty are the causes of excitement, pleasurable or painful, by means of their various relations.

The lowest degree of bodily pleasure (though, owing to its constancy, immense in its total amount) is that which arises, during health, from those relations of bodies and that excitement which cause the mere local exercise of the organs—a source of pleasure which is seldom the object of our voluntary attention, but which seems to me to be the chief cause of attachment to life amid its more definite and conspicuous evils.

All higher mental emotions consist of pleasure or pain superadded to more or less definite ideas. Pleasurable emotions arise from the agreeable relations of things; painful emotions, from the disagreeable ones.

The term by which we express the influence which objects, by means of their relations, possess of exciting emotions of pleasure in the mind, is beauty.

Beauty, when founded on the relations of objects, or of the parts of objects, to each other, forms a first class, and may be termed intrinsic beauty.

When beauty is farther considered in relation to ourselves, it forms a second class, and may be termed extrinsic beauty.

We are next led (hitherto this has apparently been done without analyzing or defining the operation) to a division of the latter into two genera; namely, the minor beauty, of which prettiness, delicacy, &c., are modifications, and that which is called grandeur or sublimity.

The characters of the minor beauty or prettiness, with relation to ourselves, are smallness, subordination, and subjection. Hence female beauty, in relation to the male.

The characters of grandeur or sublimity, with relation to ourselves, are greatness, superordination, and power. Hence male beauty, in relation to the female.

By the preceding brief train of analysis and definition, is, I believe, answered the question—“whether the emotion of grandeur make a branch of the emotion of beauty, or be entirely distinct from it.”

Having, by this concise statement of my own views on these subjects, made the reader acquainted with some of the materials of future consideration here employed, I may now examine the opinions of some philosophers, in order to see how far they accord with these first principles, and what answer can be given to them where they differ.

That beauty, generally considered, has nothing to do with particular size, is very well shown by Payne Knight, who, though he argues incorrectly about it in many other respects, here truly says: “All degrees of magnitude contribute to beauty in proportion as they show objects to be perfect in their kind. The dimensions of a beautiful horse are very different from those of a beautiful lapdog; and those of a beautiful oak from those of a beautiful myrtle; because, nature has formed these different kinds of animals and vegetables upon different scales.

“The notion of objects being rendered beautiful by being gradually diminished, or tapered, is equally unfounded; for the same object, which is small by degrees, and beautifully less, when seen in one direction, is large by degrees, and beautifully bigger, when seen in another. The stems of trees are tapered upward; and the columns of Grecian architecture, having been taken from them, and therefore retaining a degree of analogy with them, were tapered upward too: but the legs of animals are tapered downward, and the inverted obelisks, upon which busts were placed, having a similar analogy to them, were tapered downward also; while pilasters, which had no analogy with either, but were mere square posts terminating a wall, never tapered at all.”

Speaking of beauty generally, and without seeing the distinctions I have made above, Burke, on the contrary, states the first quality of beauty to be comparative smallness, and says: “In ordinary conversation, it is usual to add the endearing name of little to everything we love;” and “in most languages, the objects of love are spoken of under diminutive epithets.”

This is evidently true only of the objects of minor or subordinate beauty, which Burke confusedly thought the only kind of it, though he elsewhere grants, that beauty may be connected with sublimity! It shows, however, that relative littleness is essential to that first kind of beauty.

With greater knowledge of facts than Burke possessed, and with as feeble reasoning powers, but with less taste, and with a perverse whimsicality which was all his own, Payne Knight similarly, making no distinction in beauty, considered smallness as an accidental association, failed to see that it characterized a kind of beauty, and argued, that “if we join the diminutive to a term which precludes all such affection, or does not even, in some degree, express it, it immediately converts it into a term of contempt and reproach: thus, a bantling, a fondling, a darling, &c., are terms of endearment; but a witling, a changeling, a lordling, &c., are invariably terms of scorn: so in French, ‘mon petit enfant,’ is an expression of endearment; but ‘mon petit monsieur,’ is an expression of the most pointed reproach and contempt.”

Now, this chatter of grammatical termination and French phrase, though meant to look vastly clever, is merely a blunder. There is no analogy in the cases compared: a “darling” or little dear unites dear, an expression of love, with little, implying that dependance which enhances love; while “witling” or little wit unites wit, an expression of talent, with little, meaning the small quantity or absence of the talent alluded to; and it is because the latter term means, not physical littleness, which well associates with love, but moral littleness and mental degradation, that it becomes a term of contempt.

Even from the little already said, it seems evident that much of the confusion on this subject has arisen from not distinguishing the two genera of beauty, and not seeing that “the emotion of grandeur” is merely “a branch of the emotion of beauty.”

The other genus of beauty, grand or sublime beauty, is well described by the names given to it, grandeur or sublimity. Some have considered sublimity as expressing grandeur in the highest degree: it would perhaps be as well to express the cause of the emotion by grandeur, and the emotion itself by sublimity.

Nothing is sublime that is not vast or powerful, or that does not make him who feels it sensible of its physical or moral superiority.

The simplest cause of sublimity is presented by all objects of vast magnitude or extent—a seemingly boundless plain, the sky, the ocean, &c.; and the particular direction of the magnitude or extent always correspondingly modifies the emotion—height giving more especially the idea of power, breadth of resistance, depth of danger, &c. Of the objects mentioned above, the ocean is the most sublime, because, to vastness in length and breadth, it adds depth, and a force perpetually active.

Now, that these objects, though sublime, are beautiful, is very evident; and it is therefore also evident how much Burke erred in asserting comparative smallness to be the first character of beauty generally considered. This and similar errors, as already said, have greatly obscured this subject, and have led Burke and others so to modify and qualify their doctrines, as to take from them all precision and certainty.

Hence, in one place, Burke says: “As, in the animal world, and in a good measure in the vegetable world likewise, the qualities that constitute beauty may possibly be united to things of greater dimensions [that is, littleness may be united with bigness!]; when they are so united they constitute a species something different both from the sublime and beautiful, which I have before called, Fine.”

So also he says: “Ugliness I imagine likewise to be consistent enough with an idea of the sublime. But I would by no means insinuate that ugliness of itself is a sublime idea, unless united with such qualities as excite a strong terror.”

Here, he confounds sublimity with terror, as do Blair and other writers, when they say that “exact proportion of parts, though it enters often into the beautiful, is much disregarded in the sublime.” It is a fact, that exactly in proportion as ugliness is substituted for beauty in vast objects, is sublimity taken away, until at last it is utterly lost in the terrible.

Even Blair shows that sublimity may exist without terror or pain. “The proper sensation of sublimity appears,” he observes, “to be distinguishable from the sensation of either of these, and, on several occasions, to be entirely separated from them. In many grand objects, there is no coincidence with terror at all; as in the magnificent prospect of wide-extended plains, and of the starry firmament; or in the moral dispositions and sentiments, which we view with high admiration; and in many painful and terrible objects also, it is clear, there is no sort of grandeur. The amputation of a limb, or the bite of a snake, is exceedingly terrible, but is destitute of all claim whatever to sublimity.”

Payne Knight shows that terror is even opposed to sublimity: “All the great and terrible convulsions of nature; such as storms, tempests, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, &c., excite sublime ideas, and impress sublime sentiments by the prodigious exertions of energy and power which they seem to display: for though these objects are, in their nature, terrible, and generally known to be so, it is not this attribute of terror that contributes, in the smallest degree to render them sublime.... Timid women fly to a cellar, or a darkened room, to avoid the sublime effects of a thunder-storm; because to them they are not sublime, but terrible. To those only are they sublime, ‘qui formidine nulla imbuti spectant,’ who behold them without any fear at all; and to whom, therefore, they are in no degree terrible.”