Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/371

Rh and the famous swan's neck — beauties of which only a lover of consumption can approve. Do not study only the conditions of beauty, but also those of health, even of strength, in so far as it is compatible with grace. Do not choose a decidedly national type, above all not a too northern character, and not a blonde Thusnelda. The northern element is more typical of the masculine, the southern of the feminine character. But for both a blending of the two is the foundation and condition of elevation and perfection. Let your picture have brown eyes and black hair; if you make the eyes blue, then let the color of the hair, eyebrows and eyelashes be a dark blonde, approaching to black. The complexion must not incline toward yellow or brown, but must, in spite of the dark hair and dark eyes, betray the predominance of rosy, Caucasian blood. Spare the red on cheeks and lips, but be not sparing of intellectual expression in the shape of the eyes, the mouth and the forehead.

Would not a picture of this sort, derived from the most advanced civilization and executed by a Praxiteles or Apelles of our time, to represent the modern Venus, make a different impression than the sea-born Venus of the ancients? Would she not be a nobler and more timely object of adoration than the unintellectual, comfortless and joyless Madonna? Would it not give a higher tone to the culture of the beautiful? Would it not, as the feminine ideal, help to elevate woman in general?