&WONl)Aiit SEXUAL CSaUACTBRS. 66? 



tion will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness. The men 

 of each race prefer what they are accustomed to; they 

 cannot endure any great change; hut they like variety, and 

 admire each characteristic carried to a moderate extreme.* 

 Men accustomed to a nearly oval face, to straight and 

 regular features and to bright colors, admire, as we Euro- 

 ])cans know, these points when strongly developed. On 

 the other hand, men accustomed to a broad face, with high 

 cheek-bones, a depressed nose and a black skin admire 

 these peculiarities when strongly marked. No doubt 

 characters of all kinds may be too much developed for 

 beauty. Hence a perfect beauty, which implies many 

 characters modified in a particular manner, will be in every 

 race a prodigy. As the great anatomist Bichat long ago 

 said, if every one were cast in the same mold there would 

 be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to 

 become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici we should 

 for a time be charmed, but we should soon wish for variety; 

 and, as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish 

 to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the 

 then existing common standard. 



* Mr. Bain has collected (" Mental and Moral Science," 1868, pp. 

 804-314) about a dozen more or less different theories of the idea of 

 beauty; but none is quite the same as that here given. 



