Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/57

 How, then, can we elevate beauty to the rank we give it, since it satisfies our social demands only in part, and in what many consider the less essential part? We must do so, because it is the foundation on which truth and holiness are built. Only the race which is physically and mentally fit can survive and flourish long enough to develop and put in practice moral ideals. The problem after all is not one of choice between two ideals, but of having such regard for the primary ideal that it may help us to the attainment of ultimate ideals. In a more specific and limited way the problem of right and might exemplifies the guiding principle, which is therein not a choice between right and might, but the bringing of might into the service of right.

So much for the salient characters of beauty in the meager treatment I can give them here. I might now mention two other points which possibly will set off more clearly the conception I am trying to express.

Although beauty, in the primary and fundamental sense of the term, is prospective, we sometimes use the word retrospectively, as when we speak of a beautiful old lady or a handsome old man, indicating thereby a person who evidences the past possession of characters valuable to the race. In a certain sense, the retrospective characters of beauty are the same as those which