Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/50

44, local or general, is a symptom of inefficiency in bodily functioning, and although under modern conditions the flabby individual may be able to make his living at his particular restricted occupation, flabbiness unfits him for parenthood now, just as much as it did in the stone age. We can’t breed husky children from flabby parents.

The flabbiness which is due not to a specific injury or disease, but to insufficient vitality, is first shown by the muscles of the face. That is to say, it is first shown to the casual observer; a medical examination would probably find it in other muscles first. It is not entirely due to the concealing of the body that the facial muscles have become known as the muscles of expression. Failures of tonicity in these muscles are conspicuous; the sagging eyelids or corners of the mouth, or cheek muscles and other modifications which are readily observed but described with difficulty, are common traits which are fatal to beauty. In fact I do not hesitate to say that, assuming the conformation of the features, and the complexion, to be not actually objectionable (that is, assuming the bare negative conditions), beauty, in so far as it is facial, depends on the proper tonicity of the muscles.

The activity of the facial muscles expresses the mental and still more the emotional activity of the individual in a plain way. Vivacity and dullness,