Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/60

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54
Personal Beauty

girls who evidently would be splendid mothers; others are primarily interested in the types who are attractive in a more immediately sexual way. The great majority of men, however, are strongly interested in both types, and have little difficulty in identifying the grounds of the two interests. The stage, I may remark, is to social psychology what the laboratory is to individual psychology, furnishing the possibility of experimental tests, especially in the domain of the problems of the family, to which the this of this paper properly pertains.

I have sketched, in the preceding discussion, the line of observation and reasoning which supports my opening statement that beauty is something vitally important for the human race. It is unnecessary that I should fill in this outline with more detail, because, having once become impressed with the scheme, whether favorably or adversely, the details will be filled in from your daily experience, and will in the end leave no doubts as to the truth of the matter. It is therefore the business of the social psychologist to lead the way from this point to the next, and practical one, the conservation of beauty.