THE STUDY OF CHARACTER 599 



bent or training. Yet his name was so commanding in the annals of 

 physiognomy as to distract attention from the slightness of the founda- 

 tions upon which his elaborate superstructure was raised. Indeed, the 

 impressiveness of elaborate plates and luxurious editions, and the 

 support of distinguished but uncritical patrons, were responsible for 

 much of his fame. The reader who desires first-hand acquaintance with 

 Lavater must be prepared for tedious assertion, for generalities that do 

 not even glitter, for persistent avoidance of real issues, for the futile 

 contention and misunderstanding of a propagandist. Of method he 

 had little, and for the most part translated directly and by use of a 

 dictionary of fanciful etymologies, from the language of a superficial 

 anatomy into that of a wholly arbitrary psychology. He presented a 

 popular, empirical grouping of feature-interpretation by virtue of a 

 certain common-sense shrewdness, which he elevated to the dignity of 

 a universal physiognomical sense — "those feelings which are produced 

 at beholding certain countenances, and the conjectures concerning the 

 qualities of the mind," which the features suggest. The extensive col- 

 lection of portraits alone offset the tedium of the text. Lavater was an 

 expert draftsman, and a diligent collector of engravings, outline 

 drawings, and the silhouettes then in vogue. To each picture he 

 attached a character-reading, which refiected little more than his 

 personal impression or knowledge of the subject, to which occasionally 

 were added special correlations of such traits as prudence, cunning, in- 

 dustry, caution, determination or what not, with the forehead, the eye, 

 the nose, the mouth, the chin. 



It was inevitable that the practical interest, lacking the compensa- 

 tions of Lavater's serious purpose, rapidly turned physiognomy into 

 vulgar quackery. The followers of Lavater developed a craving foi 

 handy recipes by which to interpret the meaning in terms of character, 

 of chin, forehead, eyebrows, and of the several distinctive combinations 

 of feature, by an arbitrary or plausible system of signs. Physiognomy 

 degenerated into a baseless and senseless empiricism. Oblique wrinkles 

 in the forehead were held to indicate an oblique or suspicious mind ; small 

 eyebrows with long concave eyelashes were made the sign of phlegmatic 

 melancholia; long high foreheads were advised not to contract friend- 

 ships or marriages with spherical heads; such was the detailed but 

 arbitrary correlation oracularly set forth with no more analysis or 

 understanding of facial traits than of mental ones. 



Lavater's work supplies a convincing and not too ancient example, 

 if such be needed, of the limitations of impressionism as a basis for the 

 study of character and of its utter futility for the purposes of a sound 

 psychology; and that apart from the like disqualifications resulting 

 from an ignorance of the significance of such somatic features as those 

 which formed the basis of the system. It shows how readily an en- 



