SECT.  XXXII.  Of the Skin.

Let us consider the flesh.  It is covered in certain places with a soft and tender skin, for the ornament of the body.  If that skin, that renders the object so agreeable, and gives it so sweet a colour, were taken off, the same object would become ghastly, and create horror.  In other places that same skin is harder and thicker, in order to resist the fatigue of those parts.  As, for instance, how harder is the skin of the feet than that of the face?  And that of the hinder part of the head than that of the forehead?  That skin is all over full of holes like a sieve: but those holes, which are called pores, are imperceptible.  Although sweat and other transpirations exhale through those pores, the blood never runs out that way.  That skin has all the tenderness necessary to make it transparent, and give the face a lively, sweet, and graceful colour.  If the skin were less close, and less smooth, the face would look bloody, and excoriated.  Now, who is that knew how to temper and mix those colours with such nicety as to make a carnation which painters admire, but never can perfectly imitate?