Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/41

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Racial Betterment
35

amongst psychologists than before a general audience.

Before passing on to the next topic, I wish to protect myself from possible misapprehension by disclaiming any taint of phrenology or blackfordism in the preceding discussion. The significance of cranial and facial characters must be worked out on the lines of physiology and genetics; psychologists have no sympathy with the various systems of so-called character analysis which attempt to decide from a casual examination of an individual what his intellectual and moral peculiarities are in detail.

4. Hair. The hair which adorns the human body (or disfigures it, as the case may be), is of two sorts, in regard to its physiological conditions and significance, as well as to its regional distribution. The hair of the head, or pate-hair, is the one sort, and the body-hair, including the face-hair, is the other.

The conditions which govern the growth of the pate-hair are not definitely known, but are probably connected with bodily changes which have other important effects. That is to say, the stimulation of the growth of the hair, or the failure of its vitality, are probably due to changes in the internal secretions (hormones) of the organism, although it is not known which of the secretions are the important ones in this connection. It is