Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/39

Rh evidence of being efficient for chewing as well as for primitive methods of warfare.

While the practical indications of the mouth are important, as I have pointed out, we should by no means overlook the probability of a sexual significance to the evaluation of which the consideration of other beauty characters will rapidly drive us. I need not remind you that popular theory as passed from mouth to mouth and as embodied in literature of all ages, considers both the mouth and the nose as practical indexes of the sex-organs; I should like to express the opinion that popular theory, even popular superstition, is the smoke which always indicates some fire. This particular popular belief is one on which it seems to me it would be worth while for directors of physical culture to make statistical observations.

I need not point out the sexual function of the olfactory organ in the nose of the lower animal; but I ought to warn you against the fallacious opinion that in the human animal the nose has universally lost that function. On the contrary, in a large proportion of the species that function has become more complex. I may add also, that in addition to the significant fact that the membrane lining a large part of the nasal cavities is erectile tissue, there are definite psychological observations, (none published, I believe),