628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



face reveals something of the superfine genteelness of the flunkey, 

 the other a shifty truculence acquired among the chafferers of 

 Barnet or Ballinasloe. In like manner we may distinguish be- 

 tween the many sections of the great tribe of Jehu. In the ex- 

 pression of the 'bus-driver, still more in that of the driver of a 

 tradesman's or carrier's cart, but most of all in that of the brew- 

 er's drayman, the extra coats are so numerous as to obscure the 

 original grounding. In the two former, traffic with humankind, 

 and other circumstances, such as constant exposure to the weather, 

 have entered into competition with the feature-molding power of 

 the horse ; in the last, all equine traces have been dissolved clean 

 away by malt liquor. Should a certain popular belief, to the 

 effect that contact with horses has a malign effect upon the char- 

 acter, be borne out by more exact researches in moral pathology, 

 the phenomena observable in the drayman's face might suggest 

 a powerful antidote, and one which would readily be taken by 

 the afflicted although (as is often the case with new remedial 

 measures) it would, without doubt, be denounced by a consider- 

 able section of the public as ten times worse than the disease. 



One would have thought that the riders and ringmaster at a 

 circus would exhibit a marked degree of facial horseyness ; but, 

 strangely enough, this is not so. The reason seems to be that 

 in a circus the achievement of certain difficult feats to the satis- 

 faction of the audience wholly occupies the minds of the perform- 

 ers, and the horses, large as they loom in the eyes of the public, 

 are regarded by the circus folk as mere " properties." 



Now it is plain that, in the cases given, numerous agencies 

 of a widely diverse character are responsible for the total results. 

 Association with horses can only change a man's facial aspect by 

 first influencing his mind, and hence the general common ground- 

 work alluded to is essentially psychic in origin. 



On the other hand, certain of the supplementary touches in 

 the cases brought forward seem at first sight to be purely acci- 

 dental, and to have no mental significance whatever. Hence it 

 might seem that those who study the human face as an index of 

 the mind might safely ignore such physiognomical items as are 

 due, let us say, to exposure, to heat, or cold, or to other purely 

 direct causes. This, however, is only partly true, if it is true at 

 all. Every student of the psychology of expression must be ex- 

 tremely cautious in neglecting any particular trait because it 

 seems due to some accident of environment which has no appar- 

 ent effect on the central nervous system. 



That there is a continual stream of influence passing from the 

 brain to the muscles of expression, which tends to give a perma- 

 nent cast to the features, has been shown; but it is not so gen- 

 erally recognized that there are also reverse currents from the 



