Shaving," is, in his degree, a benefactor to his fellow-creatures. The
mere existence of the beard may be accounted for in various ways; but,
however we explain it, the beard is apt to prove a nuisance to its
proprietor. Speculators of the old school may explain the beard as part
of the punishment entailed on man with the curse of labour. The toilsome
day begins with the task of scraping the chin and contemplating, as the
process goes on, a face that day by day grows older and more weary. No
race that shaves can shirk the sense of passing time, or be unaware of
the approach of wrinkles, of "crow's-feet," of greyness. Shaving is the
most melancholy, and to many people the most laborious of labours. It
seems, therefore, more plausible (if less scientific) to look on the
beard as a penalty for some ancient offence of our race, than to say with
Mr. Grant Allen, and perhaps other disciples of Mr. Darwin, that the
beard is the survival of a very primitive decoration. According to this
view man was originally very hairy. His hair wore off in patches as he
acquired the habits of sleeping on his sides and of sitting with his back
against a tree, or against the wall of his hut. The hair of dogs is not
worn off thus, but what of that? After some hundreds of thousands of
years had passed, our ancestors (according to this system) awoke to the
consciousness that they were patchy and spotty, and they determined to
eradicate all hair that was not ornamental. The eyebrows, moustache,
and, unfortunately, the beard seemed to most races worth preserving.
There are, indeed, some happy peoples who have no beards, or none worth
notice. Very early in their history they must have taken the great
resolve to "live down" and root out the martial growth that fringes our
lips. But among European peoples the absence of a beard has usually been
a reproach, and the enemies of Njal, in ancient Iceland, could find
nothing worse to say of him than that he was beardless. Mehemet Ali
bought sham beards for his Egyptian grenadiers, that they might more
closely resemble the European model. The soldiers of Harold thought that