Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/23

Rh at least constitutes a certain elements in the total beauty. Among the negative conditions are, for example, the lack of deformity. A hunchbacked woman or a baldheaded man is debarred by the deformity mentioned from being classed as beautiful, but the fact of having a straight back or of having hair on the head is not necessarily in itself a positive element of beauty. The negative condition is one which may be fulfilled, and yet the individual not be beautiful and not even have the corresponding detail of beauty. The positive conditions, on the other hand, are those which taken together in their fulfillment cause the person to be classed as beautiful. Some of these details may be present, and yet on account of other negative or positive factors, the total may not constitute beauty. Nevertheless we say that, in these details at least, a person does possess beauty.

This distinction between positive and negative elements, I am well aware, is not fundamental; it is at best a distinction of degree and convenience. But it is a convenience, for purposes of presentation at least, and we may make use of it while noting the fact that too great dependence upon it is fallacious. I shall consider first, therefore, the general negative conditions in order to clear the way for a treatment of the more detailed conditions, which, although involving both positive and