FACIAL ANOMALIES. 



75 



found one single head of this ideal perfection. Neither the contour 

 of the cheeks, nor the lines of the countenance, are the same on both 

 sides, and they are all the less so because every one unconsciously 

 tends to perform many unilateral facial movements, which in time 

 cause a divergence between the two sides of the face. Besides, the 

 head, projecting as it does freely into ah - , is more dependent than we 

 imagine on wind and weather. Suppose a person were to sit constantly 

 at a window, turning one side to the cooler atmosphere out-of-doors, 

 and the other toward a hot stove the result would be a twofold 

 growth of the facial muscles. One side of the face might become 

 rounded, the other flat or concave ; and, though such faces are not un- 

 frequent, we do not notice the anomaly, simply because we are accus- 

 tomed to it. In the Lapp we have a good illustration of this unequal 

 development. Just as the trees of his native land are stunted, so too 

 his features become monstrous, irregular, and one-sided : the frontal 

 bones are forced, as though by spasm, down on the maxillaries, pro- 

 ducing the most singular combinations and contortions of the features. 

 A not uncommon form of asymmetry, in more favored lands, is the 

 presence of a dimple on one cheek, while the other has no such inden- 

 tation, or but a very faint one. In such cases the face has, as it were, 

 a summer and a winter side, just like the apple, which is round and 

 ruddy on its summer side, but on the shade-side flattened and wan. 



We are too much inclined to regard these phenomena of asymmetry 

 as merely accidental, whereas the fact is that they are the result of a 

 universal law. Take, for instance, the case where the mustache is 

 longer or thicker on one side of the lip than on the other ; the law is 

 everywhere the same : nothing is like any thing else, as Goethe has 

 said. Throughout the entire organic world, and even down to the in- 

 organic creation, down to the world of crystals, nothing that wears a 

 specific form attains the full perfection of that form. I once requested 

 a friend of mine, a mathematician, to reduce to a single formula the 

 curves of an ivy-leaf. He spent weeks in measuring and calculating, 

 but at last gave up the undertaking as an impossibility : no leaf was 

 like another. Indeed, were Nature's forms ideally perfect, the result 

 would be primness rather than beauty. Observe how powerfully the 

 expression of the face is affected by the asymmetry between the upper 

 and lower rows of teeth. The position of the eyes at equal distances 

 on each side of the median line of the face the nose mitjjht seem to be 

 indispensable for beauty, and yet how very rarely are the eyes placed 

 with perfect symmetry ! The wonder is, that these asymmetries of 

 the face should be, after all, so slight as they are, considering how 

 serious are the impediments placed in its way by the requirements of 

 bodily growth. That the two halves of our body should grow so uni- 

 formly as they do, except in a very few instances, is the best evidence 

 of the absolute unity of this form of organism, which is based on the 

 vertebral column, and developed along with it. 



