Page:The philosophy of beards (electronic resource) - a lecture - physiological, artistic & historical (IA b20425272).pdf/19

 Beards; and a closer investigation would show that the rise and fall of this natural feature has had more influence on the progress and decline of nations, than has hitherto been suspected. Though there are individual exceptions, the absence of Beard is usually a sign of physical and moral weakness; and in degenerate tribes wholly without, or very deficient, there is a conscious want of manly dignity, and contentedness with a low physical, moral, and intellectual condition. Such tribes have to be sought for by the physiologist and ethnologist; the historian is never called upon to do honor to their deeds. Nor is it without significance that the effeminate Chinese have signalized their present attempt to become once more free men, instead of tartar tools-by a formal resolve to have done with pigtails, and let their hair take its natural course over head and chin.

But the hair does not merely act as an external sign; it has, or it would not be there, its own proper and distinct functions to perform. The most important of these is the protection of some of the most susceptible portions of our frame from cold and moisture—those fruitful sources of painful, and often fatal, disease. And what more admirable contrivance could be thought of for this purpose than a free and graceful veil of hair—a substance