THE AVERAGE MAN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3804, 4 September 1936, Page 4

THE AVERAGE MAN

A SORT OF HUMAN PARADOX. If the average man, of whom the head-master of Rugby, has been talking recently, writes “Lucio” in the “Manchester Guardian,” really exists, he must be a sort of human paradox in which Mr Chesterton vzould have delighted. For an allround averageness must surely be exceedingly rare, if not equally unique, and if a man is unique how can he represent the average? But it would be no use telling Americans, for example, that there is no such entity; with that passion for stunts which makes many of them so really charming, they have already actually created the average man. Some time ago members of the Columbia Masonic Lodge to the number of 152 permitted themselves to be photographed separately, all the portraits being the same size and all full face. The 152 negatives were then superimposed and carefully printed on one piece of paper, and' the resultant portrait was acclaimed as that of the Average Man. This individual’s age must have been anything between 25 and 91, and his vaguely handsome features represented an amalgam of weak and strong chins, noses of all shapes and sizes, ears that stuck out and ears that clung; heavy and light eyebrows, keen and watery eyes, firm mouths and slack ones, even beards and no beards. The general impression was that if this man were to commit a crime the compiler of the “wanted” bill would have to broadcast a singularly vague description. Mark Twain, however, had perfectly precise ideas on what the Average Man looks like. During an earlier craze for “composite” photographs that, at times, highly acid commentator remarked that “if a composite photograph were taken of the whole of humanity it would show a man with an axe on his shoulder proceeding in search of a grindstone.”