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>The first consideration that influences our choice and feelings is age. . . .
>The second consideration is that of health: a severe illness may alarm us for the time being, but an illness of a chronic nature or even cachexy frightens us away, because it would be transmitted.
>The third consideration is the skeleton, since it is the foundation of the type of the species. Next to old age and disease, nothing disgusts us so much as a deformed shape; even the most beautiful face cannot make amends for it — in fact, the ugliest face combined with a well-grown shape is infinitely preferable. Moreover, we are most keenly sensible of every malformation of the skeleton; as, for instance, a stunted, short-legged form, and the like, or a limping gait when it is not the result of some extraneous accident: while a conspicuously beautiful figure compensates for every defect. It delights us. Further, the great importance which is attached to small feet! This is because the size of the foot is an essential characteristic of the species, for no animal has the tarsus and metatarsus combined so small as man; hence the uprightness of his gait: he is a plantigrade. And Jesus Sirach has said (1) (according to the improved translation by Kraus), “A woman that is well grown and has beautiful feet is like pillars of gold in sockets of silver.” The teeth, too, are important, because they are essential for nourishment, and quite peculiarly hereditary.
>The fourth consideration is a certain plumpness, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity. . . . Hence excessive thinness strikingly repels us. . . . The last consideration that influences us is a beautiful face. Here, too, the bone parts are taken into account before everything else. So that almost everything depends on a beautiful nose, while a short retroussé one will mar all. A slight upward or downward turn of the nose has often determined the life’s happiness of a great many maidens; and justly so, for the type of the species is at stake.