Sketches of the History of Man. Lord Kames (Henry Home)
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He relates, that nuns walked the streets of Paris curled and powdered. That fashion spread by degrees through Europe. For many years after the civil wars in France, it was a fashion in Paris to wear boots and spurs with a long sword: a gentleman was not in full dress without these accouttrements. The sword continues an article of dress, though it distinguishes not a gentleman from his valet. To show that a taste for dress and ornament is deeply rooted in human nature, savages display that taste upon the body, having no covering to display it upon. Seldom is a child of a savage left to nature: it is deprived of a testicle, a finger, a tooth; or its skin is engraved with figures.
Clothing hath no slight influence, even with respect to morals. I venture to affirm, at the hazard of being thought paradoxical, that nakedness is more friendly to chastity than covering. Adultery is unknown among savages, even in hot climates where they have scarce any covering.4 Dress gives play to the imagination, <321> which pictures to itself many secret beauties which vanish when rendered familiar by sight: if a lady accidentally discover half a leg, imagination is instantly inflamed; tho’ an actress appearing in breeches is beheld with indifference: a naked Venus makes not such an impression as when a garter only is discovered.
Cleanness is an article in external appearance. Whether cleanliness be inherent in the nature of man, or only a refinement of polished nations, may at first appear doubtful. What pleads for the former is, that cleanness is remarkable in several nations which have made little progress in the arts of life. The savages of the Caribbee islands, once a numerous tribe, were remarked by writers as neat and cleanly. In the island Otaheite, or King George’s island, both sexes are cleanly: they bathe frequently, never eat nor drink without washing before and after, and their garments, as well as their persons, are kept free of spot or blemish. Ammianus Marcellinus, describing the Gauls, says, that they were cleanly; and that even the poorest women were never seen with dirty garments. The negroes, parti-<322>cularly those of Ardrah in the slave-coast, have a scrupulous regard to cleanness. They wash morning and evening, and perfume themselves with aromatic herbs. In the city of Benin, women are employed to keep the streets clean; and in that respect they are not outdone by the Dutch. In Corea, people mourn three years for the death of their parents; during which time they never wash. Dirtiness must appear dismal to that people, as to us.* But instances are no less numerous that favour the other side of the question. Ammianus Marcellinus reports of the Huns, that they wore a coat till it fell to pieces with dirt and rottenness. Plan Carpin, who visited the Tartars anno 1246, says, “That they never wash face nor hands; that they never clean a dish, a pot, nor a garment; that, like swine, they make food of every thing, not excepting the vermin that crawl on them.” The present people of Kamskatka answer to that description in every article. The nasti-<323>ness of North-American savages, in their food, in their cabins, and in their garments, passes all conception. As they never change their garments till they fall to rags, nor ever think of washing them, they are eat up with vermin. The Esquimaux, and many other tribes, are equally nasty.
As cleanness requires attention and industry, the cleanness of some savages must be the work of nature, and the dirtiness of others must proceed from indolence counteracting nature. In fact, cleanness is agreeable to all, and nastiness disagreeable: no person prefers dirt; and even those who are the most accustomed to it are pleased with a cleanly appearance in others. It is true, that a taste for cleanness, like that for order, for symmetry, for congruity, is extremely faint during its infancy among savages. Its strongest antagonist is indolence, which savages indulge to excess: the great fatigue they undergo in hunting, makes them fond of ease at home; and dirtiness, when once habitual, is not easily conquered. But cleanness improves gradually with manners, and makes a figure in every industrious nation. Nor is a taste for clean-<324>ness bestowed on man in vain: its final cause is conspicuous, cleanness being extremely wholesome, and nastiness no less unwholesome.*<325>
Thus it appears, that a taste for cleanness is inherent in our nature. I say more: cleanness is evidently a branch of propriety, and consequently a self-duty. The performance is rewarded with approbation; and the neglect is punished with contempt(a).
A taste for cleanness is not equally distributed among all men; nor indeed is any branch of the moral sense equally distributed: and if, by nature, one person be more cleanly than another, a whole nation may be so. I judge that to be the case of the Japanese, so finically clean as to find fault even with the Dutch for dirtiness. Their inns are not an exception; nor their little-houses, in which water is always at hand for washing after the operation. I judged it to be also the case of<326> the English, who, high and low, rich and poor, are remarkable for cleanness all the world over; and I have often amused myself with so singular a resemblance between islanders, removed at the greatest distance from each other. But I was forced to abandon the resemblance, upon a discovery that the English have not always been so clean as at present. Many centuries ago, as recorded in Monkish history, one cause of the aversion the English had to the Danes was their cleanness: they combed their hair, and put on a clean shirt once a-week. It was reputed an extraordinary effort in Thomas a Becket, that he had his parlor strewed every day with clean straw. The celebrated Erasmus, who visited England in the reign of Henry VIII. complains of the nastiness and slovenly habits of its people; ascribing to that cause the frequent plagues which infested them. “Their floors,” says he, “are commonly of clay strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested a collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and of every thing that is nauseous”(a). And the strewing a<327> floor with straw or rushes was common in Queen Elisabeth’s time, not excepting even her presence-chamber. A change so extraordinary in the taste and manners of the English, rouses our curiosity; and I flatter myself that the following cause will be satisfactory. A savage, remarkably indolent at home, though not insensible of his dirtiness, cannot rouse up activity sufficient to attempt a serious purgation; and would be at a loss where to begin. The industrious, on the contrary, are improved in neatness and propriety, by the art or manufacture that constantly employs them: they are never reduced to purge the stable of Augeas; for being prone to action, they suffer not dirt to rest unmolested. Industrious nations, accordingly, all the world over, are the most cleanly. Arts and industry had long flourished in Holland, where Erasmus was born and educated: the people were clean above all their neighbours, because they were industrious above all their neighbours; and, upon that account, the dirtiness of England could not fail to strike a Hollander. At the period mentioned, industry was as great a stranger to England as cleanness: <328> from which consideration, may it not fairly be inferred, that the English are indebted for their cleanliness to the great progress of industry among them in later times? If this inference hold, it places industry in an amiable light. The Spaniards, who are indolent to a degree, are to this day as dirty as the English were three centuries ago. Madrid, their capital, is nauseously nasty: heaps of unmolested dirt in every street, raise in that warm climate a pestiferous steam, which threatens to knock down every stranger. A purgation was lately set on foot by royal authority. But people habituated to dirt are not easily reclaimed: to promote industry is the only effectual remedy.* The nastiness of the<329> streets of Lisbon before the late earthquake, was intolerable; and so is at present the nastiness of the streets of Cadiz.
Though industry be the chief promoter of cleanness, yet it is seldom left to operate alone: other causes mix, some to accelerate the progress, some to retard it. The moisture of the Dutch climate has a considerable influence in promoting cleanliness; and, joined with industry, produces a surprising neatness and cleanness among people of business: men of figure and fashion, who generally resort to the Hague, the seat of government, are not so cleanly. On the other hand, the French are less cleanly than the English, though not less industrious. But the lower classes of people being in England more at their ease than in France, have a greater taste for living well, and in particular for keeping themselves clean.†<330>
A beard gives to the countenance a rough and fierce air, suited to the manners of a rough and fierce people. The same face without a beard appears milder; for which reason, a beard becomes unfashionable in a polished nation. Demosthenes, the orator, lived in the same period with Alexander the Great, at which time the Greeks began to leave off beards. A bust, however, of that orator, found in Herculaneum, has a beard, which must either have been done for him when he was young, or from reluctance in an old man to a new fashion. Barbers were brought