(_γγ_) We have only now in conclusion to refer to the _hair._ Generally speaking the hair has rather the character of a vegetable than an animal formation; it testifies less to the strength of the organism than it is indicative of weakness. Barbarians allow the hair to hang in straight lines, or cut it off close to the head rather than in undulating line or locks. The ancients, on the contrary, devoted excessive attention to the elaboration of the hair in their ideal works of sculpture, a direction in which more modern artists devote less trouble and skill. No doubt the ancients also, when the stone on which they worked was extremely hard, did not suffer the hair of the head to flow in freely hanging locks, but arranged as though it was cropped short[164] and, in that form, finely combed out. In the case of marble sculpture of the better time the hair is in locks and of great vigour both in the case of male and female heads, where we find it presented in upward rolls and bound together on the crown of the head; one finds it at least, as Winckelmann points out, drawn out in winding rolls and with express depressions the better to indicate its various folds in light and shadow, which is impossible if the drills are shallow. Add to this in the case of particular gods the line of direction and the arrangement of the hair is different In a similar way in Christian painting Christ is made recognizable by a definite type of the crown of the head and the locks of hair, following which type in our own time there are not a few who deliberately imitate such an appearance. (_γ_) The parts above described in their form sum up collectively the head as a whole. The beautiful form is here determined by a line which most nearly approaches the oval of an egg, and thereby resolves every indication of sharpness, pointedness, and angularity in harmonious form and a gently progressive association, without, however, being exclusively regular and abstractly symmetrical, or issuing in multifold variety of lines and their direction and inclination as is the case with other portions of the body. In order to form this self-collected oval shape, the beautiful and free inclination from the chin to the ear contributes, particularly if we look at the face from the front, no less than the line already indicated, which describes the termination of the forehead, the bones of the eye-socket. And the arch over the profile from forehead over the point of the nose to the chin is equally noticeable, and the beautiful arching of the back of the head to the nape of the neck. So much I have permitted myself, without entering on further detail, to observe on the ideal shape of the head.