Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/22

 "I do not know, but I can show it to you," he replied.

We shall follow the advice of this great master, and, troubling ourselves no further as to the ultimate nature of Beauty, we shall rather inquire ''how it is to be got, and how it is to be kept''.

These inquiries will appear to some the most important in the world, and to others the most trivial. We do not quite agree with the former; but we are still further in opinion from the latter. Yet these will be chiefly found in our own profession. Physicians look at the human body not as a "model," but as a "subject." They measure, and probe, and dissect it, not to learn what it is in its utmost perfection, but in order to detect the more readily its degradations and abasements. Then, again, they see so much of the miseries and accidents to which it is exposed, that they think people are well enough off when they are in health, and have no business to waste time in trying to become beautiful.

The period has been when this was all very well. It is right to provide the necessaries ere we cast about for the luxuries of life. Leather and wool should precede lace and diamonds.

But apart from the fact that in a sense health and good looks are synonyms, the hour is now come when the improvement, the maintenance, if possible the creation of personal beauty, deserve to be recognized as