Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/403

Rh means certain that it could be reduced to words, or formulated with exactness. Standards of beauty exist consonant with views not fixed and immutable, varying with many factors, racial, national or local, and fluctuating with fashion and accident or precedent. There is great dearth of agreement among the arbiters, and those who have been most industrious in promulgating their views differ so widely that we are, in the main, reduced to accept individual opinions, and our own always seems the most rational or acceptable. However, allowing for the great diversity which exists between the standards prevailing in Darkest Africa, the Valley of the Amazon, the South Sea Islands and New York or Paris, certain rules hold good, with rare exceptions.

As to the features of the face we need offer few comments; this would become too wide a discussion. The largest measure of beauty capable of preservation lies in the contours and poses of the body. It will be useful to indicate briefly what standards should be held in mind toward which to strive. Ease of movement and gracefulness of carriage are at the basis of what is called style. The other elements are dignity and restraint, betraying reserve power; always normality and accuracy of coordination and suitability of action consistent with the demands of environment and circumstances. The term 'well set up' is often used and may be taken to evidence such balance in the tension of the opposing symmetrical muscles as shall preserve a nicety of equipoise with economy in motor energizing, so that each movement follows with accurate and unconscious, though restrained, force. Full relaxation is the starting point of all effort; the conservator of action.

One so endowed will be found, as a rule, to exhibit a straight back, the spinal column practically vertical, viewed from the rear, and when looked at from the side, the normal curves at neck and waist line will be distinctly less marked than common. The pelvis will be nearly on a level and not markedly tilted forward and down in front, so obvious in fat people or those of lax fiber. The shoulders are held well down and directly in the mid-line (viewed from the side), but with the ribs more nearly at right angles to the spinal column than is seen in those who exhibit exaggerated nuchal and lumbar curves. The head is well balanced upon a round straight neck, which is slightly inclined forward, and there will be almost no curve in the upper thoracic vertebras. A vertical line would fall from the back of the head to the middle of the shoulders. These features originally possessed or acquired, as they can be, make possible a slimness of waist fully compatible with health. If this attitude is maintained the depth of the chest consists of an elevated position of the ribs, giving them their largest diameters, anteroposteriorly and laterally.

The level pelvis and relatively straight lumbar spine compel a wholesome action of the abdominal parietes, by which full support of