Beauty in woman: analysed and classified : with a critical view of the hypotheses of the most eminent writers, painters, and sculptors / by Alexander Walker.

  • Alexander Walker
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Beauty in woman: analysed and classified : with a critical view of the hypotheses of the most eminent writers, painters, and sculptors / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    else than the more or less delicate and just percep- tion of a certain conformity of means with a want which has been created by nature, and which must be satisfied. “It is very obvious,” says Dr. Pritchard, “ that this peculiarity in the constitution of man, must have considerable effects on the' physical character of the race, and that it must act as a constant prin- ciple of improvement, supplying the place in our own kind of the beneficial control [in the crossing of races] which we exercise over the brute creation.” And he adds, “ This is probably the final cause for which the instinctive perception of human beauty was implanted by Providence in our nature.” We need not wonder then that the Greeks should have preferred beauty to all other advantages, should have placed it immediately after virtue in the order of their affections, or should have made it an object of worship. Even the practical application of this principle to the improvement of the human race is not a matter of conjecture. We have seen both families and nations ameliorated by the means which it affords. Of this, the Turks are a striking example. Nothing, therefore, can better deserve the researches of the - physiologist, or the exertions of the philanthropist, than the fact that there are laws, of which we have yet only a glimpse, according to which we may influence the amelioration of the human race in a manner the most extensive and profound, by acting according to a uniform and uninterrupted system. Well might Cahanis exclaim, “ After having occu- pied ourselves so curiously with the means of render- ing more beautiful and better the races of animals or