This is illustrated even in inferior animals. Oxen become large-bodied and fat in low and rich soils, but are remarkable for shortness of legs; while, in higher and drier situations, the bulk of the body is less, and the limbs are stronger and more muscular. The quantity and quality of the aliments are another cause, not less powerful in regard to beauty. Abundance, or rather a proper mediocrity, as to nutritious food, contributes to perfection in this respect. Beauty is also, in some measure, a result of civilization. Women, accordingly, of consummate beauty, are found only in civilized nations. Professions can rarely be said to favor beauty; but they do not impede its development when their exercise does not compel to laborious employments an organization suited only to sedentary occupations. CHAPTER X. OF THE STANDARD OF BEAUTY IN WOMAN. The ideas of the beautiful vary in different individuals, and in different nations. Hence, many men of talent have thought them altogether relative and arbitrary. "Ask," says Voltaire, "a Negro of Guinea [what is beauty]: the beautiful is for him a black oily skin, deep-seated eyes, and a broad flat nose." "Perfect beauty," says Payne Knight, "taking perfect in its most strict, and beauty in its most comprehensive signification, ought to be equally pleasing to all; but of this, instances are scarcely to be found: for, as to taking them, or, indeed, any examples for illustration, from the other sex of our own species, it is extremely fallacious; as there can be little doubt that all male animals think the females of their own species the most beautiful productions of nature. At least we know this to be the case among the different varieties of men, whose respective ideas of the beauty of their females are as widely different as those of man, and any other animal, can be. The sable Africans view with pity and contempt the marked deformity of the Europeans; whose mouths are compressed, their noses pinched, their cheeks shrunk, their hair rendered lank and flimsy, their bodies lengthened and emaciated, and their skins unnaturally bleached by shade and seclusion, and the baneful influence of a cold humid climate.... Who shall decide which party is right, or which is wrong; or whether the black or white model be, according to the laws of nature, the most perfect specimen of a perfect woman?... The sexual desires of brutes are probably more strictly natural inclinations, and less changed or modified by the influence of acquired ideas, or social habits, than those of any race of mankind; but their desires seem, in general, to be excited by smell, rather than by sight or contact. If, however, a boar can think a sow the sweetest and most lovely of living creatures, we can have no difficulty in believing that he also thinks her the most beautiful."