John Flaxman, Lectures on Sculpture (London, 1865), Lecture V., Beauty, 130-1:
Every passion, sentiment, virtue, or vice, have their corresponding signs in the face, body, and limbs, which are understood by the skilful physician and physiognomist, when not confused by the working of contrary affections or hidden by dissimulation.
In the formation and appearance of the body, we shall always find that its beauty depends on its health, strength, and agility, most convenient motion and harmony of parts in the male and female human figure, according to the purposes for which they were intended; the man for greater power and exertion, the woman for tenderness and grace. If these characteristics of form are animated by a soul in which benevolence, temperance, fortitude, and the other moral virtues preside, unclouded by vice, we shall recognize in such a one perfect beauty, and remember that «God created man in His own image.»
We know that sickness destroys the complexion and consumes the form, until that which was once admired for grace and attractive loveliness becomes a ghastly spectre; and is it not equally evident that brutal ferocity, revenge, hypocrisy, or any other of the malignant passions, still more effectually destroy the very traces of beauty by reducing man to a savage beast in his most degraded state?
The most perfect human beauty is that most free from deformity either of body or mind, and may be therefore defined—
The most perfect soul, in the most perfect body.
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