Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/20

 they draw the conclusion that there is, in fact, no absolute type of beauty, that it is solely a question of race and education.

What a lame conclusion it is!

We can show them in turn that the Fejee Islanders think it quite the proper thing to kill and eat their aged parents; that theft and murder are no crimes to the Kamschatkan, but that to scrape the snow from his shoe with a knife is a heinous sin which he will in nowise commit; that to lie and steal were not amiss in ancient Sparta, but to be found out was a punishable offence; that to destroy an infant which was not well formed was in the same state an approved custom, but to employ silver money was an infraction of the law. Does all this invalidate those eternal principles of truth, justice, goodness, and love, which lie at the base of the teachings of true religion, and the instructions of its ministers?

Not in the least.

Then, we answer, neither do those various and false notions of personal beauty in the least detract from the reality of an absolutely perfect form of personal human beauty.

But we do not stand in need of a theory to prove this. The verdict of art and the incontrovertible evidence of the most exact of sciences are at our command.

Where do the painter and the sculptor of to-day seek