Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1914 — Is Man More Beautiful. [ARTICLE]

Is Man More Beautiful.

Prof. Wendel’s assertion that man Is by nature more beautiful than woman does violence to the traditions. But Is It true? How mnch have twenty centnrles of uniform laudation of feminine charms by poets sinoe Homer set the example with Helen, and of idealization by painters, contributed to bias the judgment? If in place of tbe Virgils and Tennysons women poets had been in tbe majority a race of Sapphos singing the physical perfection of masculine youth, wo'uld the claim of the German authority appear so revolutionary? > The Greeks were more catholic In their recognition of physical beauty in man. As against Helen they bad Endymlon luring a goddess down from Olympus.- Few the Venus of Milo they had tbe companion Hermes of Praxlteleß. Masculine beauty has ever received from sculptors an equal appreciation with feminine, and among painters, there Is Del Sarto’s St. John. Among the American Indians the braves bear off the palms from tbe squaws. American college youth of both sexes furnish an interesting basis for comparison. Man’s growth rway from the outlines of beauty, Dr. Wendel says, has been expedited by alcohol and tobacco by neglect of hygienic law, by occupations that retard a symmetrical physical development. Inartistic attire accents homeliness. If he could lead a normal life, one devoid both of self-indulgence and worry, man might regain his lost birthright. The professor’s theory is interesting as applied to men and women past their prime. Which sex grows old the more gracefully? As between a thousand men and a thousand women of sixty, in point of wrinkles, stoop shoulders alertness and vigor of movement, which sex may claim the honors of physical attractiveness? ~. ——