Two gratuitous lines of thought on beards:
The 19c German philosopher A. Schopenhauer, just a decade before the Civil War, wrote:
"The beard exaggerates and renders conspicuous the animal part of the face and thus gives it a strikingly brutal appearance. We have only to contemplate the profile of such a bearded man while he is eating!
The atrocious ferocity, given to the countenance by the beard, is due to the fact that a relatively inanimate mass occupies half the face, and moreover the morally expressive half."
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Parerga and paralipomena, Arthur Schopenhauer[/CENTER]
In contrast to this we have Danny the Dealer's caveat on hair in
Withnail and I to which one might add "clean-shaven" in addition to being bald:
"I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight."
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Withnail and I (1969)[/CENTER]
These two views are obviously at odds with each other; nonetheless I would hazard Lafayette McLaws' beard to be an exemplar of the former, and Jeb Stuart's beard the latter.