Moral Physiognomy

—A distinguished Frenchman recently said that he would rather be a beautiful woman than anything else, if he had his choice; while another asserted that he would be a beautiful woman up to thirty, a general up to sixty, and a statesman the remainder of his life. Henry James draws attention to the fact that London, passing by the most royal social lions, will go to any length to find and to fête a beautiful woman. We Americans are not backward in the appreciation of beauty, but the gem is not so rare a one with us as it is across the water. While our women justly rank first in beauty among all intellectual nations, our men are somewhat inferior in what may be called handsome looks. Still there are some uncomely women left to keep the men company, and for the benefit of such a New York specialist advertises her success in treating her sex for ugliness. She warrants to render a downright ugly woman presentable, and a plain one profitably handsome. The nature of her treatment, like the Loisette system, must be a matter of curiosity to either sex. The fond lover would gladly send, for a small perquisite, the high cheek-bone and receding chin of his Aravilla for treatment; and the anxious mamma, with her eight ducklings of daughters ready to be launched into the matrimonial pool, would pay right handsomely for “beautiful girls warranted.” True, there are some defects of countenance that can and ought to be eradicated, — a squint of the eye, a crooked nose, a poor complexion ; all these misfortunes come under the head of therapeutics. But where is that thaumaturgist who can make beautiful a person naturally and obviously ugly, unless he call up the beauty expressive of a mind free from inclination to vice and a heart fine with sympathy ? When we come to think of it, is beauty of face an advantage to a woman, on the whole ? Of course it is good to look upon ; but somehow that kind of food by itself is never nutritive. The hot-house camellia has pride and perfection, hut no soul. That is unfortunately the case with the majority of beautiful women, especially with that class known as “ society belles.” Such as have not the gift of the gods are very apt to make up their deficiencies with amiability, courtesy, and intelligence, so that their loss becomes a general gain. The anecdote told of a distinguished nobleman and his son and heir, meets the point. After the son, with dignity, had refused, at his father’s suggestion, to marry the high-born and the wealthy, the father persistently tried again : “ Then, if it is beauty you seek, here is the lovely Miss Southampton. Her beauty alone has won her the most noted of suitors.”

“ But I do not look for beauty any more than I do for fortune. Since I am to marry, I desire only happiness.”

“Oh, that is quite a different case! If it is happiness you seek, marry a plain woman, by all means.”

Indeed, it is a mooted question whether the fashion be not on the eve of a disruptive change. A prominent scientist argues that a future race of men will be noseless, for in that highly differentiated state the barbaric sense of smell will be gone; then who will need a nose ? Proportionately the whole face will undergo a change. However that may be, there is a decided swing in the pendulum of inexorable taste toward stability and plainness. Gingerbread flippery in women as well as houses is becoming a recollection. Our girls’ colleges are developing broader foreheads, irregular features, indicative of alertness, thought, and capability. While no art can take from us our women’s matchless complexions, education does develop the mask face of inane regularity into the speaking countenance of quick beauty. The time has long passed when men doubt that “each state of the human mind and of internal sensation has its peculiar expression in the face,” as Lavater puts it. Let the beautiful face show the lines of envy and hatred or the traceries of passion, as it surely does if the concordant feelings exist, and it becomes repugnant and ugly. Deformity does not then express itself in inborn irregularity of features, but rather in those disagreeable changes that are impressed by constant repetition. So also the changes concomitant with a morally beautiful state impart the stable beauty we most admire. If, then, our New York friend is to make women really beautiful, she must first change moral deformity into moral grace. Character is the photographer, the face the sensitized paper. The process must be frequent before the print be permanent. Even in those beyond the “ can’tteach-an-old-dog ” line, moral loveliness, the supreme artist, can originate expressions that may become the herald of the noblest form of beauty. The plainest woman need never fear a successful rivalry based on beauty alone, if she carry in her face a harmony of qualities, which is but the natural reverberation of a pure and symmetrical mind.

The Son of Sirach, many centuries ago, gave the unfortunate good cheer when he said, “ The heart of man changeth his countenance, whether it be for good or evil ; and a merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.”