The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
the organ of nutritive support, and at the same time accepts the nasal
organ into its service as its instrument in creating the natural want
by virtue of its smell, and thereby declares its direct relation to the
material side. And in close connection with this reciprocity is the
contingent character of the form to the indeterminable modifications
of which both nose and forehead may be carried. The particular type of
the forehead's arch, the nature of its projection or retreat, loses its
secure lines of definition, and the nose can be fiat or fine, drooping,
arched, more acutely flattened and a snub.
By virtue of amelioration[159] and accommodation, however, that
beautiful harmony, which the Greek profile asserts in the gentle and
uninterrupted communication between the spiritual forehead and the
nose, that is, between the upper and lower portions of the face, the
nose appears on this very account of closer affinity to the forehead,
and consequently receives itself a spiritual expression and character
as though drawn up into the spiritual system. The sense of smell
becomes at the same time a sense independent of purely practical ends,
a nose refined for spiritual purpose; just as in fact also the nose by
its sneer and similar movements, however unimportant by themselves they
may be, is nevertheless shown to be in the highest degree pliable as
a mode of expressing the judgments and emotions of soul-life. So, for
example, we say of a proud man that he holds his nose high, or ascribe
sauciness to a young girl who tosses up her bit of a nose.
And the same thing may be said of the _mouth._ No doubt it is on the
one hand referable as an instrument to the satisfaction of hunger
and thirst; it expresses, however, in addition to this conditions of
the soul, opinions, and passions. Even among animals it is used in
this relation as the organ of animal cries, and by man as that of
speech, laughter, sighs, and so forth, by which means the lineaments
of the mouth are themselves associated with the facts of eloquent
soul-sympathy, or of joy, sorrow, and similar conditions.