SECT. II.] IDEAS OF HUMAN BEAUTY. 305 



Even in the estimate of human beauty there is the same disa- 

 greement. Crawfurd 1 maintains that the views of the Malays cor- 

 respond in this respect with our own ; and it has otherwise been 

 assumed that the ideal of beauty is the same among all peoples. 

 This, however, is quite erroneous. Desmoulins 2 is no doubt too 

 rash in his conclusions from the deviations which the sculp- 

 tured portraits of the Chinese and old Mexicans exhibit from 

 the Greek ideal ; for although right in the main, it is question- 

 able whether these portraits were intended to represent the 

 beautiful. We are assured that the Negroes, who generally 

 imagine the Devil to be white, consider a black shiny skin, 

 thick lips, and flattened noses as the type of beauty ; 3 and that 

 the Tahitians, among whom " long-nose" is considered as a 

 word of insult, for the sake of beauty compress the forehead 

 and the nose of the children. 4 The artificial deformation of 

 the head among so many American nations also indicates a 

 difference in the ideas of personal beauty, Ap Australian 

 wo'man had a child by a white man : she smoked it and 

 rubbed it with oil to give it a darker colour. 5 A yellow, not a 

 white girl is considered a beauty in Java. 6 To have white 

 teeth, " like dogs," instead of black coloured teeth is consi- 

 dered ugly and disgraceful, just as the natives of North 

 America consider vegetable food as beastly aliment. A servant 

 of the king of Cochin China spoke with contempt of the wife of 

 the English ambassador (1821) that she had white teeth like a 

 dog and a rosy colour like that of potato flowers. 7 And even 

 a recent European traveller 8 assures us that whoever is once 

 accustomed to the grotesque painted visages of the Indians, 

 considers unpainted countenances unmeaning and ugly. 



Ideas of courtesy and manner differ still more than those 

 of beauty and ugliness. Among peoples who live chiefly in a 



1 " History of the Indian Archipelago," i, p. 22, 1820. 



2 " Histoire naturelle des races humaines," p. 229, 1826. 



3 Moore, " Travels into the inland parts of Africa," p. 93, London, 1730. 



4 Bang and Fitzroy, ii, p. 527. 



5 Barrington, loc. cit., p. 32. 



6 Pfeyffer, " Skizzen von der InselJava," p. 41, 1829; Selberg, " Eeise nach 

 Java," p. 182, 1846. 



7 Laplace, " Voyage autour du nionde," ii, p. 463, 1833. 



8 Kohl, " Kitchi-Gaini," i, p. 29. 



