Johann Karl August Müller

“ I do not propose to discuss the whole question of the color of the eyes, down to albinism; I would simply observe that, as seen through them, the world wears a very different aspect for different individuals—a circumstance which, however, has nothing to do with asymmetry. Some eyes see only complementary colors, e. g., red instead of green; others see no color at all, every thing appearing to them like a copperplate engraving.
But color, too, has its caprices, as shown in the hair. ”

“ I used to think Nature had too correct an aesthetic sense to do such a thing as that. But I know two persons, one of whom, a man, has one eye brown and one blue; the other of them, a woman, has one eye blue and one black—her hair being brown. ”

“ In such cases the face has, as it were, a summer and a winter side, just like the apple, which is round and ruddy on its summer side, but on the shade-side flattened and wan.
We are too much inclined to regard these phenomena of asymmetry as merely accidental, whereas the fact is that they are the result of a universal law. Take, for instance, the case where the mustache is longer or thicker on one side of the lip than on the other; the law is everywhere the same: nothing is like any thing else, as Goethe has said. ”

“ We should expect the convex cast of one side of the face to fit, line for line, into the concave cast of the other; but it is doubtful if there is to be anywhere found one single head of this ideal perfection. Neither the contour of the cheeks, nor the lines of the countenance, are the same on both sides, and they are all the less so because every one unconsciously tends to perform many unilateral facial movements, which in time cause a divergence between the two sides of the face. ”

“ Throughout the entire organic world, and even down to the inorganic creation, down to the world of crystals, nothing that wears a specific form attains the full perfection of that form. I once requested a friend of mine, a mathematician, to reduce to a single formula the curves of an ivy-leaf. ”

“ The arrogant spirit of man revolts against the idea of its so-called bodily shell being a mere natural product, just like every other organized structure; but, for all that, the universal morphological law still remains. Art alone transcends all the requirements of natural production. Where art comes in play, the individual disappears ”

“ Just as the trees of his native land are stunted, so too his features become monstrous, irregular, and one-sided: the frontal bones are forced, as though by spasm, down on the maxillaries, producing the most singular combinations and contortions of the features. A not uncommon form of asymmetry, in more favored lands, is the presence of a dimple on one cheek, while the other has no such indentation, or but a very faint one. ”

“ That the two halves of our body should grow so uniformly as they do, except in a very few instances, is the best evidence of the absolute unity of this form of organism, which is based on the vertebral column, and developed along with it. ”