Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman

“The foregoing statements of general principles preclude the necessity of minute details in relation to particular curves. I shall at present consider those which do not return into themselves, so as to constitute the outlines of figures in the geometrical sense. Let us first select a semi-circumference, for example, that of a rainbow of maximum dimensions. In tracing it once, we employ three out of the four muscles. They are brought into action successively and rapidly, but not abruptly. All these circumstances are favorable to pleasure. Yet they are not conducive to it in the highest possible degree; for each muscle acts only once unless the examination be repeated; and in case of its repetition, the momentum of the eyeball is destroyed in stopping and reversing its motion. The waving line, as Hogarth’s line of beauty, obviates the first difficulty. This ensures not only the successive action of different muscles, but a repetition of action in the same. If the line forms a number of equal waves, these repetitions will be proportional to the number of waves, and will alternately and totally relieve, at least two muscles, and allow, in the action of a third, regular remissions of intensity at equal intervals. We have proved then, that on this physiological theory, a semi-circumference possesses more of the elements of beauty than any straight line, and a regular-waved line more than either. These results are conformable to experience. If there is any difficulty in admitting this, it will vanish on comparing the ocular with other muscles.

“Let us select a joint, which, in its spherical form, and the circular arrangement of its muscles, is analogous to the eye; for example, the shoulder joint. I think it will be uniformly found, that in the use of this joint, the curves most readily traced, are those of gentle and nearly equal curvature, and being such as are most easily traced by the eye, they would appear more beautiful than those drawn by the fingers with the same education. For example, let a man, without bending his wrist or elbow, draw various lines with a light stick or cane on the surface of snow: the lines most easily drawn (or most easily traced if already drawn), will be curves of considerable beauty, and nearly equal curvature; such as waved lines and spirals and looped curves. Circles and ellipses would also be among the figures with most facility and precision traced, and especially in cases of repeated tracing; but we are not at present considering figures in the proper geometrical sense of the term. In writing letters by the above method, a succession of ‘e’s, would be more readily drawn than a succession of ‘i’s, or a zigzag line with acute angles.

“To institute a fair comparison between terminated lines and figures, the component lines of the figures should be as beautiful as the terminated lines with which they are compared. With this precaution, physiology will conduct to the conclusion, that figures are more beautiful than terminated lines. For the survey of any figure requires the successive action of all these ocular muscles, and a repeated survey requires no reversal of the motion.

“We may apply the same principles to figures as compared with each other. Here we shall find the advantage on the side of those which are geometrically regular. We perceive that the circle and ellipse must possess in great perfection the essentials of beauty.

“From figures, the transition is natural and easy to solids or bodies of three dimensions. The form of a body depends on those of all its faces and sections; and these last are plane figures. The elliptical sections of a regular spheroid are all highly beautiful, but its sections are not all elliptical. Unless the spheroid be in certain positions, the sphere possesses still higher beauty, as presenting the same circular and highly beautiful outline in every position; although a variety of positions is not essential to the perception of its peculiar beauty, whenever the observer has learned by different methods, and especially by different degrees of convergence of the two optic axes, to estimate the relative distances of the different points of the visible hemisphere, and thus to recognise the spherical form. I will only add, from the analysis of the beauty of the circle it is evident, that within certain limits, to magnify a sphere is to magnify its beauty.

“The relative beauty of the sphere and spheroid, and of the spheroid as compared with itself in different positions, is modified by symmetry. The principle of symmetry, is in some measure distinct from any other heretofore considered. It may be treated under the heads of 1st, geometrical symmetry, or symmetry of form; 2d, of symmetry of position.

“Symmetry of form, though implied in geometrical regularity, is not identical with it, and requires a separate consideration. The beauty of forms geometrically symmetrical, in contradistinction from those deficient in the correspondence of opposite halves, depends upon two similar series of actions in different pairs or muscles. For example, the survey of an ovate leaf, or indeed that of almost any vegetable leaf—so numerous are the provisions for our gratification—requires for its opposite halves two series of muscular actions, the different parts of the one corresponding with those of the other in duration, intensity, and order of succession. The gratification in this case results from the harmony of muscular sensations individually pleasurable. The agreeableness of this harmony may depend upon a principle more psychological than that of the agreeableness of its elementary sensations. Yet the former is to a certain extent susceptible of a physiological generalization. This harmony would probably have been impaired by any considerable inequality in the distances between the points of insertion of the recti muscles, or in the strength of the antagonists. It is a curious coincidence, that in both these respects, these muscles are more nearly symmetrical than any others in the human body. Physiology, then, explains, not only the agreeableness of the elementary sensations, which give rise to the perception of beauty in regular curves, but unfolds the provisions for two similar series of such sensations, not only in figures simply regular, but in those which are simply symmetrical, and in those which are both symmetrical and regular. The principles of muscular action explain the agreeableness of a rapid succession of varied actions equally distributed among the muscles, and the structure of the optical apparatus explains why the curvature and regularity of an object require such actions in vision. Again, we discover in the symmetrical structure and arrangement of the ocular muscles, a provision for two similar series of pleasurable sensations in the survey of a symmetrical figure, in whatever position it may be placed, provided it retains its symmetry with respect to some visual plane. The coincidence between the location of the ocular muscles diametrically opposite, on the one hand, and our propensity to compare the opposite halves of bodies, and the pleasure afforded by their similarity on the other hand, is curious, and to a certain extent affords a physiological explanation of the beauty of symmetrical forms.

“The same principles which apply to the beauty of form of inanimate objects are applicable to the paths described by them in motion. The intrinsic beauty of their motions is exclusively referrible to sensations in the ocular muscles of the observer, while the gracefulness of human motions is referrible in part to these, and in part to sensations in other muscles.

“It would be foreign to the subject of the present memoir, to consider the beauty of expression of the human countenance; although this species of beauty is in a great degree referrible to muscular action. That muscular action which belongs to the present topic is not that of the object, but that of the observer. It may be scarcely necessary again to disclaim any design of giving a complete analysis of beauty in general, or to repeat the concession that man’s notions of beauty are modified by various associations.

“Final Cause.—The benevolence of the Author of nature is strikingly manifested in connecting present pleasure with obedience to the natural laws. It has been shown that vision is attended with muscular action which is generally pleasurable. If seeing had required no muscular action, we should have wanted one of our present stimuli to the acquisition of knowledge. This stimulus is especially necessary in infancy, and then powerfully prompts to observation, even anterior to the dawnings of intellectual curiosity, with which it subsequently co-operates. We see, in this arrangement, the exemplification of a principle which extensively pervades the laws under which we are placed by the Creator—which is, that mental attainments, as well as other acquisitions, shall require action; and that action shall be attended with pleasure. Whether the acquisition is to be made by the manual labor of the artisan, by the manipulations of the artist, the chymist, or the experimental philosopher, by the sedentary student of books, or by the observer of natural phenomena in his original survey of the universe—in every case it is muscular action.

“This application to natural theology, has thus far had reference to that degree of intrinsic agreeableness which is common to forms in general. But the laws of nature specially tend to the production of curved, regular, and symmetrical objects and motions, in inorganic vegetable and animal bodies; and impose the necessity of similar forms in artificial structures. With a different structure and arrangement of the ocular muscles, those forms peculiarly conducive to our welfare and that of the universe, had possessed no peculiar attractions; and we had felt no special impulse of this kind to conform our own artificial structures to those laws of nature, or to investigate many of the most important works of the Creator. Yet neither gravity or any other law of the external world could have determined the peculiar formation of the muscles of the human eye. We must, therefore, refer their actual structure and location to that Being who gives to the objects of his creative power, and to the principles by which he governs them, such a mutual adaptation as conduces to the greatest achievable good. Thus, while muscular pleasure originally prompts to the observation of the Creator’s works, this observation is rewarded and subsequently prompted by a pleasure of an incomparably higher order, of a character purely mental, by the discovery of moral beauty, which in rank and refinement surpasses all others. Still, the muscular pleasure of the eye strongly incites to the examination of the numberless forms of beauty in the organic and inorganic kingdoms, such as the symmetrical leaf, the bending bough, the symmetry of the tree itself that of inferior animals, and of the human form. Or we may extend our view to the circular or undulating horizon, the apparent limits of the apparently round world; or we may elevate the eyes to the arched dome of the firmament, on which the arches of the iris and aurora occasionally confer additional beauty. Or with the telescope we may pierce this apparent limit of upward vision, and discover beyond it a universe of spherical and spheroidal worlds, revolving in circular and elliptical orbits, worlds and orbits which present, even in our diminutive diagrams, a high order of beauty, designed to incite us to the contemplation of these most magnificent works of the Creator.

“All this beauty had been lost to man, but for the property of the eye, which, on a superficial reflection, might seem a defect. It is no less true than paradoxical, that the perception of these beauties depends on indistinctness of vision. To a being so constituted as to see with equal distinctness by oblique and direct vision, the same forms might be presented, but not as forms of beauty. Has the Creator, then, sacrificed a portion of our perceptive powers to our sensual gratification? I answer no. Has he, then, sacrificed a portion of our direct means of acquiring knowledge, to afford an incitement which should ultimately and indirectly enhance our attainments? Again I am compelled to answer in the negative. There is, in this arrangement, no intellectual sacrifice whatever, direct or indirect. This indistinctness of oblique vision, which might seem a defect, I consider an excellence. A simultaneous and distinct impression received from the whole field of vision, would distract the attention and preclude a minute and accurate examination of any particular part. But as our eyes are so constituted as to receive a strong and distinct impression only from the images of those objects toward which their axes are directed, and as our minds are so constituted that we can in a great measure neglect the weaker or less distinct impressions, we are able to acquire a more exact knowledge of any part of the field to which we choose to attend. To see every thing at once, would be to examine nothing. Such a constitution of the eye would be to vision what an indiscriminating memory is to the understanding.