MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



may be allowed so material a metaphor 

 into which the image of his own kind and 

 of his own mate falls and fits exactly. The 

 moment that mould is completely filled and 

 satisfied, the creature that fills it he loves 

 as instinctively as Miranda loved Ferdinand, 

 the first human being she had ever beheld 

 save her father, Prospero. 



And what is thus true of the butterfly is 

 true, I believe, mutatis mutandis, of all of 

 us. On the human brain there is impressed 

 by anticipation a blank form or model of 

 the human face and the human figure. Our 

 central type of human beauty is thus found 

 for us by nature and ancestral experience : 

 the nearer a man and a woman approach to 

 that central type, the more beautiful, on the 

 average, other things equal, do normal 

 judges consider them. I do not doubt, 

 of course, that many other and more general 

 elements come in to complete the developed 

 concept. White teeth, rosy cheeks, bright 

 eyes, delicate curves, have of themselves a 



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