44 BODILY CHARACTERISTICS. 



attached to the ribs, stand, with them, either back- 

 wards or forwards. 



It is curious that with the pinker skin and more 

 ^ curved spine there is a somewhat greater tendency to 

 obesity. Since making this statement in the earlier 

 editions of this book I have, as an observer, been not 

 a little gratified to meet with an observation of 

 Goethe's that "brown skins rarely grow fat." It 

 must not be forgotten however that alcoholic drinks 

 it may be even in small quantities tend to produce fat 

 whatever the temperament may be. 



I have so far kept marked examples only in view ; 

 but in all classifications, of either bodily or mental 

 characteristics, sharp lines of division do not exist. 

 Intermediate often happy intermediate gradations 

 are constantly met with. 



It is interesting to note that the stronger spinal 

 curves of the less impassioned figure are more in 

 favour with artists often indeed exaggerated by 

 them than the more, and possibly ungracefully, erect 

 pose of the impassioned. It has been already re- 

 marked that one authority in art states that in a 

 well-formed woman a plumb-line dropped from the tip 

 of the nose should fall in front of the toes. A marked 

 cervical or neck curve, although it involves a slight 

 stoop, gives greater fulness to the front of the neck, 

 which artists consider to enhance a woman's beauty. 

 Strong curvature of the neck bones (vertebrae) shortens 

 the neck and also throws the head forwards ; marked 

 obesity gives the appearance of a short neck. 



In women it is perhaps somewhat easier to judge of 

 the nervous organisation and character from the nature 

 of the hair growth, while in men the skeleton gives, it 

 may be, the more reliable information. Baldness of 



