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
We observe, then, a beauty of a third species:--Her face is generally
oval; her high and pale forehead announces the intellectuality of her
character; her intensely expressive eye is full of sensibility; in her
lower features, modesty and dignity are often united; she has not the
expanded bosom, the general embonpoint, or the beautiful complexion, of
the second species; and she boasts easy and graceful motion, rather than
the elegant proportion of the first.--The whole figure is characterized by
intellectuality and grace.
Such are the three species of beauty of which all the rest are varieties.
Now, as it is in general one only of these species which characterizes any
one woman, and as each of these species is suited to the wants of, and is
consequently agreeable to, a different individual, it is obvious why the
common vague reports of the beauty of any woman are always so various,
inconsistent, or contradictory.
In the more accurate study of this subject, it is indispensable that the
reader should understand the scientific principles on which the preceding
brief analysis of female beauty, as reducible to three species, is
founded.
To attain this knowledge, and to acquire facility in the art of
distinguishing and judging of beauty in woman, a little general knowledge
of anatomy is absolutely essential. The writer begs, therefore, attention
to the following sketch. It may not at first seem interesting to the
general reader; but it is the sole basis of a scientific knowledge of
female beauty; the study of it during one hour is sufficient to apprehend
it in all its bearings; and it will obviate every future difficulty.
In viewing the human organs in a general manner, a class of these organs
at once obtrudes itself upon our notice, from its consisting of an
apparatus of levers, from its performing motion from place to place or
locomotion, and from these motions being of the most obvious kind.--A
little more observation presents to us another class, which is
distinguished from the preceding by its consisting of cylindrical tubes,
by its transmitting and transmuting liquids, performing vascular action or
nutrition, and by its motions being barely apparent.--Farther
investigation discovers a third, which differs essentially from both
these, in its consisting of nervous particles, in its transmitting
impressions from external objects, performing nervous action or thought,
and in that action being altogether invisible.
Thus, each of these classes of organs is distinguished from another by the
structure of its parts, by the purposes which it serves, and by the
greater or less obviousness of its motions.
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