OUR BEST FEATURES 



and a slightly warped septal cartilage of the nose, 

 together with slight malocclusion of certain teeth 

 and a failure of two wisdom teeth to erupt. 



Thus I may explain my face although I cannot 

 improve it. A specialist in this subject could 

 afflict the reader with many pages of this sort of 

 thing; but the chief object here is to raise this 

 point. Suppose I asked my grocer to open a credit 

 account on short acquaintance; upon which, if 

 any, of the features listed above would he decide 

 to trust me? Would he not trust equally well 

 many other customers with entirely different types 

 of face.^* And do we not see similar artistic talent, 

 musical talent and traits of leadership, moral 

 courage, etc., embodied in widely different types 

 of face.^ In short, does not scientific physiognomy 

 and even intuitive physiognomy discount all these 

 and many other such before coming to the small 

 residue of features that may conceivably be corre- 

 lated with particular mental and temperamental 

 qualities? And in order to detect the abnormal 

 must one not know at sight the normal range of 

 variations in all the features in all the races for 

 both sexes from infancy to old age? 



The studies of Keith, Stockard and others on 



229 



