BEAUTIFYING INTELLIGENCE

Galton's reference to the Damaras illustrates the well-known fact that, even where nature makes an effort at chiselling beautiful features the result is a failure if there is no moral and intellectual culture to inspire them, and this puts the grave-stone on the Concupiscence Theory—for what have moral and intellectual culture to do with carnal desires? A noble soul even possesses the magic power of transforming a plain face into a radiant vision of beauty, the emotion changing not only the expression but the lines of the face. Goethe (Eckermann, 1824) and others have indeed maintained that intellect in a woman does not help a man to fall in love with her. This is true in so far as brains in a woman will not make a man fall in love with her if she is otherwise unattractive or unfeminine. But Goethe forgot that there is such a thing as hereditary intellectual culture incarnated in the face. This, I maintain, makes up more than half of the personal beauty which makes a man fall in love. A girl with good features is twice as beautiful if she is morally pure and has a bright mind.

Sometimes a face is accidentally moulded, into such a regular beauty of form that it seems to mirror mental beauty too. A man may fall in love with such a face, but as soon as he finds out that it is inhabited by a stupid or coarse mind he will make haste to fall out again, unless his love was predominantly sensual. I remember once falling in love with a country girl at first sight; her face and figure seemed to me extremely beautiful, except that hard work had enlarged and hardened her hands. But when I found that her intellect was as coarse as her hands, my ardor cooled at once.

If intellect, as revealed in the face, in words, and in actions, did not assist in inspiring the amorous sentiment, it would be as easy to fall in love with a doll-faced, silly girl as with a woman of culture; it would even be possible to fall in love with a statue or with a demented person. Let us imagine a belle who is thrown from a horse and has become insane from the shock. For a time her features will remain as regular, her figure as plump, as before; but the mind will be gone, and with it everything that could make a man fall in love with her. Who has ever heard of a beautiful idiot, of anyone falling in love with an imbecile? The vacant stare, the absence of intellect, make beauty and love alike impossible in such a case.