[April, 
Origin of the Idea of the Beautiful . 
A94 
by caprice, fancy, or otherwise, preferred the healthy woman 
naturally propagated their idea downwaids • C^amly they 
did not know what they were doing, and doubtle 
doing a number of things just m the same tha we > don t 
know. This instance will apply to eveiy pai ot the 
human body, every one of which no doubt has worked itse 
out from ‘‘the best,” the fancy becoming an mbred and 
useful instind. It stands to reason, then, a taste foi a p 
face is false, acquired ; but no doubt it has a complex 
reason for it : if it had not, a pale face would he hideous to 
eV W y hat e is hideousness ? Merely the negative to our notion 
of the beautiful? Is it not the unusual the unfamiliar? 
our perceptions are afraid of it. An ug y ace. j 
unavoidable outcome ? Or was it congenial to the geneial 
ideas of its parents ? Perhaps not to the imm ® dl ^ e on ^ 
but, disagreeable though. the question is, may it not be in 
the race ” ? There is undoubtedly a reason and a law foi 
all things. The beautiful does not infallibly indicate a simi- 
lar mind -often the reverse (though a man or womans 
“ notion of himself or herself ” must leave its '■"Pressu.n m 
their posterity). There must be great eompleK.ty , to add 
a new influence (in the shape of a fiesh cioss ) is 1 
pouring a new element, not only into one pot but a host of 
loti alongside one another, all containing different com- 
pounds —and that new element is itself a compound. 1 
old parts are still there, but how different and unre- 
C ° Tlie^be au tiful is the everlasting, familiar, and useful ; 
whilst the hideous is that which has been rare in the long 
work of Evolution, and hence, avoided and scorned, the 
development of the taste for the “ local type ot beau y 
qU The e beaut\ < fu\ h in thought is a repetition of that 
ence ; our brain has become used to its passages. Dli ect y 
we wander into the regions of pure thought it ceases to be 
beauthut^ and becomfs “dry.” (The distinction between 
sensuous thought and thought-thought— so to speak 
profound subject yet to be solved). . . . 
1 So when I look on the mountains, and love them, it is 
because they filled the brains of my lathers for aeons ol 
ages ; and when I peer about the dark caverns that man 
has excavated, they have no beauty to me, because my 
fathers knew them not. 
Q uei -y — Is one cause of the stunted race of median 
due to the constant strain on their vitality owing to its 
