OCR Text |
Show The Production of Physical Beauty. Popular Science Monthly. Tho idea of beauty is wholly relative, and varies with places and times. Art-isls Art-isls make beauty to consist in certain proportions of the parts of the skeleton and in the harmony of tbe muscular development. We might, perhaps, be more definite by saying that to bo handsome at rest and in motion the man ought to present the traits of health and moderate strength, and in addition to be in possession of his means of locomotion and of natural defense. de-fense. This view of beauty originates in the consideration that there is a necessary nec-essary relation between vigor, skill, agility, and the outer form of the body at rest and in motion. Thus defined, the type of beauty iu a given race or medium is an ideal which we seek to revive tho physical education. It follows fol-lows that a man specially devoted to any one exercise cannot be handsome. This may bo said of all the professions that localize muscular work in a restricted re-stricted region of the body. There are, however some snorts that have the ad- vantage of exercising equally the upper and lower limbs; such, for example, as wrestling. French boxing, swimming and canoeing with two oars and a sliding slid-ing seat. A good gymnastics includes complete exercises, and incomplete or nnsymmetr'cal exercises, under such a condition as that they shall correct one another and that the work shall bear upon the lower and upper limbs. |