Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/38

32 is concomitant with the development of thought, and hence, in races or large groups, an index of mental development. It is worthy of note here, that the marks of beauty will be found throughout to be these generalized characters, which in specific cases may not be associated with the fundamental factors which have made them important.

The nose and the mouth are beauty-characters which are probably more exclusively racial in their significance than the chin. The broad flat nose and the thick wide lips are often repulsive because they suggest the African, if for no other reason. But I suspect that the thick lips are also a defect because they are in themselves a hindrance to efficient speech, and more vitally because they connote an inefficient formation of the mouth, palate and glottis. Yet it is necessary here again to point out that any of these details may be faulty in a particular case, and yet the others be so well adapted that they more than compensate; and that there may be in many cases language, efficient for thinking, but inefficient for communication. Here as everywhere, our beauty judgments are based on conditions which are general, and to which there are many sharp exceptions.

As regards the teeth, we are in no serious doubt. The beautiful teeth are the sound, regular weapons, which by their form and color give