THE HUMAN HEaD. 14/ 



90^. The former is a near approach to the monkey race : 

 the angle may be extended beyond the latter, as the Greeks 

 have done in their representations of the Deity : here, how- 

 ever, 100° seem to be the ne plus ultra; beyond which the 

 proportions of the head would appear deformed. That 

 angle, according to Camper, constitutes the most beautiful* 

 countenance ; and hence he supposes the Greeks adopted 

 it. " For,"' says he, " it is certain no such head was ever 

 met with ; and I cannot conceive any such should have 

 occurred among the Greeks, since neither the Egyptians, 

 from whom they probably descended, nor the Persians, nor 

 the Greeks themselves, ever exhibit such a formation on 

 their medals, when they are representing the portrait of any 

 real character. Hence the ancient model of beauty does 

 not exist in nature, but is a thing of imaginary creation : 

 it is wbat Winkelmann calls beau idc%V 



A vertical section of the head, in the longitudinal direc- 

 tion, shews us more completely the relative proportions of 

 the cranium and face. In man, the area of the section of 

 the cranium is nearly four times as large as that of the face ; 

 the lower jaw not being included. It is, perhaps, about 

 three times as large as the orang-utang ; twice as large in 

 the sapajous ; and they are nearly equal in the baboons and 

 the carnivorous animals, excepting the dogs with short 

 muzzles, such as the pug, where the cranium rather exceeds 



Lugduno-Batavum Vol. I. which has nearly the same — we find this method 

 insufficient, even to distinguish man and animals. An American monkey, 

 figured by Humboldt ('simia melano-cephala), has as good a facial line as 

 the generality of Negroes. Recueil d'Obs. de ZooL et d'Anat. Comp, i. pi. 

 29. He ascribes to it "facies nigra, anthropo-morpha, fere iEthiopis." 

 p. 317. 



*That these MnnaiwraZ proportions may have been selected by the Grecian 

 artists in order to convey the i^refernafuraHmpressions associated with their 

 notion of superior natures, and may have been well calculated to produce 

 the intended effect, is what I can easily understand. But that proportions, 

 which have never existed in nature, should yet constitute, in our estimation, 

 the most beautiful fbeau^ countenance, appears to me, in that unqualified 

 statement, either an unmeaning proposition, or inconsistent with any reason- 

 able sense of the word ' beautiful.' 



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