Hence we have a means of obtaining the normal medial measurements by the seriation of a number of measurements actually obtained from living individuals the number of whom should be sufficiently large to enable us to construct a perceptibly symmetrical and regular binomial curve.
Such medial measurements, although they correspond to the true mean average (as we have already seen), are not for this reason unreal, like arithmetical means which represent a synthetic entirety that does not correspond to the single individuals actually existing; the medial measurements obtained by seriation are, on the contrary, measurements that really belong to living individuals; namely, to that group of individuals that possess this particular measurement. Therefore, it is not a combination, or fusion, or abstraction.
But individuals who have one medial measurement, do not necessarily have all the other medial measurements; that is to say, the individuals who find that they belong on the medial abscissæ in relation to stature, do not find themselves similarly placed in relation to the sitting stature, or the thoracic perimeter, or the weight, or the cranial circumference, etc. Indeed, it is impossible that all the bodily measurements of the same individual should be medial measurements: or, to express it better, there has not been found up to the present among living individuals, in the whole wide world, a man so constructed.
Such a man would represent anthropologically the medial man.
It is also very rare to find a man quite lacking in medial measurements: everyone has a few central measurements and certain others that are eccentric.
At the same time it must be admitted that there are men who have many, and even a large majority, of the central measurements; while the rest of their measurements are eccentric or paracentral.
One of the objections which used to be made was that if we should wish to unite all the medial measurements, they would not fit together, or rather, that a man could not be constructed from them; but that the result would be a monstrosity. Nevertheless, this assertion or objection has proved to be absolutely fantastic and contrary to the actual fact.
Professor Viola has observed that men who have a very large number of medial measurements are singularly handsome.
More than that: the medial man reconstructed from medial measurements really gathered from living persons, has the identical proportions of the famous statues of Greek art.