Knight Dunlap
Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066063320
Table of Contents
Practical Steps in Conservation
Improvement in Sexual Selection
The Significance of Beauty
PART I
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BEAUTY
Human beauty is something which is perennially celebrated in poetry, in song, in romance, and in the petrified conception of the sculptor, but less frequently considered in the cold analysis of science. We are usually content to leave the topic to the artist and the lover, as one of the interesting and thrilling, but nonessential, matters of life. I wish to suggest a different conception of beauty: a conception of beauty as something which, whatever its importance for the individual, is for the race and for civilization of such profound importance that no other fundamental consideration of human welfare and progress can be divorced from it. I shall not touch upon the theme with the golden fingers of the artist, but with the unemotional digits of the psychologist. To some, without doubt, this procedure will seem as sacrilegious as the piercing of the anatomist’s knife into the dead human form; but where the welfare and progress of humanity are at stake, even these brutal methods must be employed.
Beauty is a term of variable meaning; in fact there is a group of terms—handsome, pretty, attractive, charming, etc.—whose exact relationship is often discussed, and never settled. The way in which I use the term will not be acceptable to many persons, but one may reformulate my conclusions in his own way, using whatever terms he chooses, and the validity of the conclusions will not thereby be affected. I think it will be agreed, when I am through, that I have been discussing something rather definite under the name of beauty, and I hope further, that it will be conceded that, after all, what I have been discussing is that which in the common, and therefore vital, usage is actually designated by the term.
The familiar proverb tells us that “beauty is only skin deep,” which nicely exemplifies the mendacity of proverbs; ugliness, it is true, is often skin deep, but beauty, never. Beauty, as I hope to be able to show, is something which depends upon the whole organism.
The conditions of beauty are in part negative, in part positive. That is to say, there are certain conditions which a person must satisfy in order to be classed as beautiful, yet which do not in themselves contribute to beauty; other conditions, such that their fulfillment constitutes beauty, or at least constitutes a certain elements in the total beauty. Among the negative conditions are, for example, the lack of deformity. A hunchbacked woman or a baldheaded man is debarred by the deformity mentioned from being classed as beautiful, but the fact of having a straight back or of having hair on the head is not necessarily in itself a positive element of beauty. The negative condition is one which may be fulfilled, and yet the individual not be beautiful and not even have the corresponding detail of beauty. The positive conditions, on the other hand, are those which taken together in their fulfillment cause the person to be classed as beautiful. Some of these details may be present, and yet on account of other negative or positive factors, the total may not constitute beauty. Nevertheless we say that, in these details at least, a person does possess beauty.
This distinction between positive and negative elements, I am well aware, is not fundamental; it is at best a distinction of degree and convenience. But it is a convenience, for purposes of presentation at least, and we may make use of it while noting the fact that too great dependence upon it is fallacious. I shall consider first, therefore, the general negative conditions in order to clear the way for a treatment of the more detailed conditions, which, although involving both positive and negative elements, are better treated from the positive point of view.
I shall consider herein, primarily, only visible details. Qualities of voice, peculiarities of odor, tactual details, and so on, I shall notice only in so far as they are directly associated with visual characters. This is in accordance with the usual practice which makes beauty essentially a visible phenomenon and only secondarily a phenomenon which appeals to other senses.
General Negative Characters
1. Signs of race. There are certain negative details of stature, feature, color and movement and habits which are important because they indicate in the first instance a race of species of the human family against which, for reasons which may be instinctive or due to education, there is a prejudice. Facial proportions, for instance, which in themselves have no value, may yet indicate or suggest a branch of the human family against whom we entertain a certain bias. If we despise the Irish, an Irish cast of countenance cannot be beautiful to us. If we have an antipathy to the German or Russian or the French people, the type of face which suggests these people, even though there is no indication of actual blood of the race, is a factor making against beauty. The commonest instance of this sort of negative condition is found in the negroid characters. Here, where the suggestion or indication is of an inferior race, the negative condition is especially important.
2. Signs of disease, deformity or weakness. Any indication, not merely of physical weakness, but even in some instances of mental or moral weakness or disease is of decided negative effect. One who looks like an imbecile or like a criminal is never beautiful; one who seems to have, or suggests, a deadly disease, is to that extent lacking in beauty. To a certain degree, these mental and moral standards are relative to the grade of the observer. A weak-minded person has not the objection to the weak-minded person of his own grade that the more normal person has, but I suspect that the person of low mental grade has a certain preference for the normal person. As regards disease and deformity, there is no question. A hunchbacked or an anemic man regards his characteristic as a decided bar to beauty.
3. Significant deviation from the average is a negative characteristic, even if the deviation cannot be classed as a “deformity.” Dwarfs and giants, exceedingly thin and unusually broad individuals; those whose legs are too long for their bodies, or vice versa; those whose ears are misplaced, or whose hair