DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0101
V
FORMATION OF ARTISTIC TYPES
81
and the want of healthy feeling for what is really beautiful
depress the level of our lives. I venture to say that it would
be far better for us if an admiration for what is healthy and
robust had more power among us, more especially in the vitally
important matter of sexual selection. There can be little
doubt that the principles on which eugenic societies are founded
have deep foundations in the nature of things, however crude
at present may be the attempts to carry out those principles
in practice. The danger of physical degeneracy, carrying with
it in the long run every kind of degeneracy, hangs low over
modern Europe. Our restless rushes from place to place, our
reckless attempts to reach what we think advantageous or
pleasurable for ourselves, make a gospel of rhythm and modera-
tion seem poor and dull. It does not stir our jaded energies,
or rouse us with a stimulating appeal. Yet unless we in some
measure return to the artistic ideals of Greece, we may go from
bad to worse. Overpowering ugliness of surroundings, physical
degeneracy, nervous exhaustion leading to disease and to
sterility, all these have, in spite of the efforts of a few, steadily
gained upon us in recent decades, and the road which they mark
leads to destruction. Those physicians who devote themselves
to determining the conditions which lead to health, rather
than to the patching up of those who have by indolence and want
of self-control lost their health, do us infinite service.
I can but touch upon another possibility. Some of the
evidence put together by Mr. Myers1 seems clearly to indicate
that mental suggestion made to women may modify the type of
child which they produce. In this way the cultivation and
admiration of the physical beauty of men and women may
directly tend to the production of such beauty in the next
generation. In the East pregnant women are anxious to gaze
long and steadily at children who are remarkable for their
beauty, and we cannot say that they are deluded. Among our-
1 F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality, Vol. II., p. 57.
a
FORMATION OF ARTISTIC TYPES
81
and the want of healthy feeling for what is really beautiful
depress the level of our lives. I venture to say that it would
be far better for us if an admiration for what is healthy and
robust had more power among us, more especially in the vitally
important matter of sexual selection. There can be little
doubt that the principles on which eugenic societies are founded
have deep foundations in the nature of things, however crude
at present may be the attempts to carry out those principles
in practice. The danger of physical degeneracy, carrying with
it in the long run every kind of degeneracy, hangs low over
modern Europe. Our restless rushes from place to place, our
reckless attempts to reach what we think advantageous or
pleasurable for ourselves, make a gospel of rhythm and modera-
tion seem poor and dull. It does not stir our jaded energies,
or rouse us with a stimulating appeal. Yet unless we in some
measure return to the artistic ideals of Greece, we may go from
bad to worse. Overpowering ugliness of surroundings, physical
degeneracy, nervous exhaustion leading to disease and to
sterility, all these have, in spite of the efforts of a few, steadily
gained upon us in recent decades, and the road which they mark
leads to destruction. Those physicians who devote themselves
to determining the conditions which lead to health, rather
than to the patching up of those who have by indolence and want
of self-control lost their health, do us infinite service.
I can but touch upon another possibility. Some of the
evidence put together by Mr. Myers1 seems clearly to indicate
that mental suggestion made to women may modify the type of
child which they produce. In this way the cultivation and
admiration of the physical beauty of men and women may
directly tend to the production of such beauty in the next
generation. In the East pregnant women are anxious to gaze
long and steadily at children who are remarkable for their
beauty, and we cannot say that they are deluded. Among our-
1 F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality, Vol. II., p. 57.
a