Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/51

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Racial Betterment
45

cheerfulness and gloom, benevolence and rancor, interest and ennui, and a multitude of other conditions are written in the facial movements for the runner to read. Boldness, modesty, candor, deceit, innocence, guilt, and other moral qualities may be expressed in the contractions of the muscles surrounding the eyes. But in repose, these muscles are expressive in another, and perhaps more important way, for they show the potentialities of the individual; what he is capable of, in so far as the capability depends on the functioning of the nervous system and the endocrine glands. A person may be attractive, while the face is in action, because the action indicates a desirable type of mental or moral activity going on; but she is not to be judged beautiful in face, unless the face in repose expresses desirable potentialities. A common form of expression is “she is beautiful only when she smiles:” a better statement would be “she is attractive when she smiles, but she is not beautiful.”

8. Poise. The consideration of the expression of mental and emotional qualifications leads us over into the general problem of the participation of mental traits in personal beauty. There is no doubt of the value, to the race as well as to the individual, of a high degree of mental development, provided always that the development does not so destroy the physical balance that the in-