1882.] Beauty in the Eyes of the Evolutionist. 79 
no foundation whatever. And indeed in that case there 
would have been no Beauty, — that is to say, none of those 
aspects which now in either sex principally attract and de- 
light the eye of the other sex would have been gazed upon 
with any special admiration. 
It must be remembered that man is practically a machine, 
and that his beautiful body is adapted to a work-a-day world. 
To hear most people talk on the subjedt, one might suppose 
that the “ human face divine ” was made up of “ flesh ” 
placed on the bones for the purpose of making up a coun- 
tenance, whereas it is really composed of muscles which are 
required to move the jaws. Again, as regards the propor- 
tionate dimensions of the body : man’s heart and lungs fill 
his chest, and they and his whole respiratory system must 
be adapted to the composition of the air which he breathes. 
In the atmosphere the oxygen is in the proportion of 1 to 4 
of its ally, the nitrogen. But if the mixture of these two 
gases had been different ; had the oxygen, say, been equal in 
quantity to the nitrogen, or had been 1 to 40, or 400, the 
measurements of man’s body must have been altogether 
different from what they now are. And therefore those who, 
» when gazing on a fine statue, can believe in an intrinsic 
self-beauty, seem to be driven to a conclusion which jars 
very much with tbe widened conceptions of the universe 
existing at the present day, namely, that the ingredients of 
the atmosphere were mixed in proportions specially adapted 
to produce beautifully shaped men and women. And not 
only so ; but even the very mass of the earth itself must 
also have been regulated on the same grounds ; for the 
density of the air on the earth’s surface, and the quantity 
of oxygen inhaled at each inspiration, must depend on the 
weight of our planet. So that if Tellus had only been, say, 
of the same mass as the moon, man’s shape must have been 
quite different from that which we now consider beautiful. 
If we now diredt out attention to other aspedts of the 
human body, the theory advocated will be seen to be sup- 
ported by the evidence to be drawn therefrom. The vera 
causa of deep aesthetic emotion is seen as clearly in Com- 
plexion as in anything. For it will be allowed that a good 
colour is a sign of health. Now health being an advantage 
in the struggle for existence, it follows that the possession 
of it tends, on the one hand, to increase the number of one’s 
descendants, and, on the other, admiration of a visible sign 
of its existence in the other sex tends to give a numerous 
progeny to those who have this inheritable taste in force. 
The “association school ” of writers on the subjedt of Beauty 
