NG INTELLIGENCE

Galton's reference to the Damaras illustrates the well-known fact
that, even where nature makes an effort at chiselling beautiful
features the result is a failure if there is no moral and intellectual
culture to inspire them, and this puts the grave-stone on the
Concupiscence Theory--for what have moral and intellectual culture to
do with carnal desires? A noble soul even possesses the magic power of
transforming a plain face into a radiant vision of beauty, the emotion
changing not only the expression but the lines of the face. Goethe
(Eckermann, 1824) and others have indeed maintained that intellect in
a woman does not help a man to fall in love with her. This is true in
so far as brains in a woman will not make a man fall in love with her
if she is otherwise unattractive or unfeminine. But Goethe forgot that
there is such a thing as _hereditary intellectual culture incarnated
in the face_. This, I maintain, makes up more than half of the
personal beauty which makes a man fall in love. A girl with good
features is twice as beautiful if she is morally pure and has a bright
mind. Sometimes a face is accidentally moulded, into such a regular
beauty of form that it seems to mirror mental beauty too. A man may
fall in love with such a face, but as soon as he finds out that it is
inhabited by a stupid or coarse mind he will make haste to fall out
again, unless his love was predominantly sensual. I remember once
falling in love with a country girl at first sight; her face and
figure seemed to me extremely beautiful, except that hard work had
enlarged and hardened her hands. But when I found that her intellect
was as coarse as her hands, my ardor cooled at once.

If intellect, as revealed in the face, in words, and in actions, did
not assist in inspiring the amorous sentiment, it would be as easy to
fall in love with a doll-faced, silly girl as with a woman of culture;
it would even be possible to fall in love with a statue or with a
demented person. Let us imagine a belle who is thrown from a horse and
has become insane from the shock. For a time her features will remain
as regular, her figure as plump, as before; but the mind will be gone,
and with it everything that could make a man fall in love with her.
Who has ever heard of a beautiful idiot, of anyone falling in love
with an imbecile? The vacant stare, the absence of intellect, make
beauty and love alike impossible in such a case.

THE STRANGE GRE