Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in WomanWalker, Alexander
Philosophy
Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in Woman
Walker, Alexander
Beauty, Personal; Women
These views of Winckelmann, the ideal rule which they illustrate, and,
above all, the actual dimension of the forehead among the philosophers,
the poets, and the legislators of Greece, whose genius has been unequalled
in modern times, show the folly of the craniological hypothesis. The
reason of the ideal rule has not, indeed, been assigned: it appears to me
to be this, that the three parts of the face which, as I have shown both
here and in my work on physiognomy, are respectively connected with
ideas, emotions, and passions, should be equal one to another, or that
these acts of the organs of sense and brain should be in due proportion
and harmony. While, therefore, I do not, with the craniologists, seek the
predominance of any one of them, neither do I, with Giovani de Laet, take
no notice of the space between the top of the head and the commencement of
the forehead, and say this part is not to be considered in the height of a
man, _quia pars excrementosa est_!
Their next rule regarded the form of _the nose_, in nearly the same line
with the forehead, and with little indentation between these parts.
The foundation of this rule I have not seen pointed out; and it was indeed
difficult of discovery, without previous knowledge of the physiological
fact first mentioned in my physiognomical work, namely, that the nose is
the inlet of vital emotion or pleasure, as the eye is of mental emotion;
while the passions connected with nutrition and thought respectively,
depend upon other organs, the mouth and the ear. Anatomists know how
closely associated are the nose and the eyes, and the mouth and the ears,
respectively.
Now, as in these ideal representations, their object was to increase the
means of emotion, but not those of passion, the organs of the former, the
nose and the eyes, were all, at the same time, enlarged by raising the
junction of the forehead and the nose; while those of passion, the mouth
and the ears, were relatively decreased. Not only was the passage of nose
or of the olfactory nerves to the brain strikingly dilated by this
elevation of the intermediate part, but the orbits of the eyes were
enlarged. As then we naturally associate the increase of organs with the
increase of their sensations and with corresponding effects upon the
brain, and as the tendency to such configuration is as conspicuous in the
countries they inhabited, as is the energy of the emotions with which they
are connected, this rule was as admirably founded as the former in natural
tendencies.
I deem this a pendant to Camper's discovery of the facial angle, and one
too which was not quite so obvious or so easy to be made. It disposes of
this middle or intermediate part of the face, and shows that the Greeks in
beings of the highest character, desired the gradual predominance of
emotion over passion, and of ideas or intellect over emotion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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