But what the Dutch gardeners did
for trees the Greeks did for the human form; they lopped away its living
and sprawling features to give it a certain academic shape; they hacked
off noses and pared down chins with a ghastly horticultural calm. And
they have really succeeded so far as to make us call some of the most
powerful and endearing faces ugly, and some of the most silly and
repulsive faces beautiful. This disgraceful _via media_, this pitiful
sense of dignity, has bitten far deeper into the soul of modern
civilization than the external and practical Puritanism of Israel. The
Jew at the worst told a man to dance in fetters; the Greek put an
exquisite vase upon his head and told him not to move.
Scripture says that one star differeth from another in glory, and the
same conception applies to noses. To insist that one type of face is
ugly because it differs from that of the Venus of Milo is to look at it
entirely in a misleading light. It is strange that we should resent
people differing from ourselves; we should resent much more violently
their resembling ourselves. This principle has made a sufficient hash of
literary criticism, in which it is always the custom to complain of the
lack of sound logic in a fairy tale, and the entire absence of true
oratorical power in a three-act farce.
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