Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/22

 and progress of humanity are at stake, even these brutal methods must be employed.

Beauty is a term of variable meaning; in fact there is a group of terms—handsome, pretty, attractive, charming, etc.—whose exact relationship is often discussed, and never settled. The way in which I use the term will not be acceptable to many persons, but one may reformulate my conclusions in his own way, using whatever terms he chooses, and the validity of the conclusions will not thereby be affected. I think it will be agreed, when I am through, that I have been discussing something rather definite under the name of beauty, and I hope further, that it will be conceded that, after all, what I have been discussing is that which in the common, and therefore vital, usage is actually designated by the term.

The familiar proverb tells us that “beauty is only skin deep,” which nicely exemplifies the mendacity of proverbs; ugliness, it is true, is often skin deep, but beauty, never. Beauty, as I hope to be able to show, is something which depends upon the whole organism.

The conditions of beauty are in part negative, in part positive. That is to say, there are certain conditions which a person must satisfy in order to be classed as beautiful, yet which do not in themselves contribute to beauty; other conditions, such that their fulfillment constitutes beauty, or