752 THE DESOMNT OF MAN 



called beautiful; but why this should be so we know not. 

 It is certainly not true that there is in the mind of man 

 any universal standard of beauty with respect to the human 

 body. It is, however, possible that certain tastes may in 

 the course of time become inherited, though there is no 

 evidence in favor of this belief; and if so, each race would 

 possess its own innate ideal standard of beauty. It has been 

 argued" that ugliness consists in an approach to the struc- 

 ture of the lower animals, and no doubt this is partly true 

 with the more civilized nations, in which intellect is highly 

 appreciated; but this explanation 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; 

 but 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 Europeans 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. N"o 

 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 be- 

 come 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. 



" Schaaffhausen, "Arohiv far Anthropologie," 1866, a. 164. 



™ Mr. Bain has collected ("Mental and Moral Science," 1868, pp. 304-314) 

 about a dozen more or less different theories of the idea of beauty ; but none 

 is quite the same as that here given. 



