r hand, regardless of the impressions of typical
beauty, accept from each creature, great or small, the more important
lessons taught by its position in creation as sufferer or chastiser, as
lowly or having dominion, as of foul habit or lofty aspiration, and from
the several perfections which all illustrate or possess, courage,
perseverance, industry, or intelligence, or, higher yet, of love and
patience, and fidelity and rejoicing, and never wearied praise. Which
moral perfections that they indeed are productive, in proportion to
their expression, of instant beauty instinctively felt, is best proved
by comparing those parts of animals in which they are definitely
expressed, as for instance the eye, of which we shall find those ugliest
which have in them no expression nor life whatever, but a corpse-like
stare, or an indefinite meaningless glaring, as in some lights, those of
owls and cats, and mostly of insects and of all creatures in which the
eye seems rather an external, optical instrument than a bodily member
through which emotion and virtue of soul may be expressed, (as
pre-eminently in the chameleon,) because the seeming want of sensibility
and vitality in a living creature is the most painful of all wants. And
next to these in ugliness come the eyes that gain vitality indeed, but
only by means of the expression of intense malignity, as in the serpent
and alligator; and next to these, to whose malignity is added the virtue
of subtlety and keenness, as of the lynx and hawk; and then, by
diminishing the malignity and increasing the expressions of
comprehensiveness and determination, we arrive at those of the lion and
eagle, and at last, by destroying malignity altogether, at the fair eye
of the herbivorous tribes, wherein the superioity of beauty consists
always in the greater or less sweetness and gentleness primarily, as in
the gazelle, camel, and ox, and in the greater or less intellect,
secondarily, as in the horse and dog, and finally, in gentleness and
intellect both in man. And again, taking the mouth, another source of
expression, we find it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish, or
perhaps where without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes
a formidable destructive instrument, as again in the alligator, and
then, by some increase of expression, we arrive at birds' beaks, wherein
there is more obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles
than is commonly supposed, (compare th