598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



manuals sold to simple folk to teach them the art of reading faces and 

 futures.^ 



All this would be as irrelevant retrospectively as it is to our central 

 purpose, were it not that it indicates the presence throughout the ages 

 of a considerable body of popular lore and systematized doctrine — 

 both saturated with flimsy analogy and engaging prepossessions — which 

 was available for the ambitious renaissance of the interest in character 

 and its signs in the face, through its best known apostle, Johann Caspar 

 Lavater (1741-1801). The contrast between Lavater and such men 

 as Cardan and Porta is as marked as that of the spirit and scope of the 

 scientific study of their respective times. The vagaries of the sixteenth 

 century may have stood measurably aloof from the real, if slow and 

 uncertain, advances in the knowledge of mind and nature then matur- 

 ing ; but they were not wholly remote, not wholly tangential to its orbit. 

 This was no longer true of the eighteenth century. Lavater, despite his 

 reputation and associations and the imposing effect of his ambitious 

 publications, failed to affect seriously or to divert the increasing stream 

 of scientific discovery to which the early eighteenth century gave mo- 

 mentum. The scientific contemporaries of Lavater judged his views as 

 critically, appreciated their wholly subjective basis in a personal 

 predilection and their lack of objective warrant quite as justly as we of 

 today. The contrast of attitude appears equally in the all but complete 

 desuetude of the old persistent pseudo-sciences, astrological and others. 



Lavater had nothing new to offer in principle or data or method. 

 He was an impressionistic enthusiast setting forth conclusions with a 

 minimum of argument, and convictions with a minimum of proof. 

 His system was based upon subjective interpretation. His delineation 

 of character has a direct reading of detailed mental traits by an in- 

 terpretation of their equivalents or representatives in features and ex- 

 pression. Lavater's activities were manifold. Preacher, orator, philan- 

 thropist, political reformer, dramatist, writer of ballads, he was a con- 

 spicuous man of his times, highly regarded by his eminent contempo- 

 raries — among them Goethe, whose contribution to the Fragments of 

 Physiognomy have been identified. He was quite without scientific 



2 Nothing less than a glance at the illustrations which the earlier physiog- 

 nomists employed will convey an adequate impression of the vagaries of Porta 

 and his kind. They show that what was once pictorial proof has become the 

 artist's pastime. The material presented for amusement in Lear's "Nonsense 

 Botany" or Wood's "Animal Analogues" is hardly more remote than that 

 which served Porta as a serious instrument of research. Thus a portrait of 

 Plato is printed side by side with that of a dog, and one of Vitellus Caesar is 

 paralleled by that of a stag ; and in each case some of the most deserving qualities 

 of the animal are regarded as typical of the human embodiment. Similarly dis- 

 torted illustrations show human resemblances to a lion, or a bull, or a donkey, or 

 a deer; while the picture of a girl is ungallantly made to approach the features 

 of a pig. These and yet more capricious ventures in animal physiognomy were 

 incorporated into later systems, often in complete ignorance of their source. 



