70 Kansas Academy of Science. 



effect to cause, but as things derived from a common origin and planned with one 

 design. . . . The Divine mind has made them both according to one idea, and 

 there is perfect congruity between them, and in the visible the invisible is revealed. 

 In this view the study of symbols in the human form is but a branch of that which 

 seeks them in the whole world." The argument of design is, in our day, superseded 

 by the principle of evolution; the mind and body are developed together and both 

 partake, of course, of the hereditary influences which control the growth of both, 

 and both are impressed also by the after experiences of the individual. "Men have 

 in all ages been accustomed to symbolize their own ideas, and this is evidence of 

 their consciousness that internal things may be aptly expressed in corporeal form, 

 and they are aflfected by them as by the ideas which they incorporate. This estab- 

 lishes the antecedent probability of the doctrine of symbols ia the human form. 



"Thus, certain peculiarities of form and feature are so characteristic of the man, 

 that we naturally call them masculine, while others are essentially feminine, because 

 they are characteristic of woman. These signs symbolize the sexes. Feminine feat- 

 ures in a man and masculine features in a woman always reveal a corresponding 

 misplaced cast of mind. So it is with child-like features in adults. So the evident 

 coincidence between national and mental characteristics presents us with a large 

 series of symbolic forms admitting of rational interpretation." But the weakness 

 of the whole system of physiognomical character-reading is in the inherent weakness 

 of this same law of coincidence. A given expression and a given mental or emo- 

 tional characteristic occurring together in a hundred cases might, if the observations 

 were extended no further, be taken as revealing a relationship between them, and 

 that they always occurred together. But if another hundred cases were observed, 

 many exceptions to the rule would be found where th expression and the mental 

 peculiarity occurred independently. Of course there. i.re exceptions to all rules; but 

 in physiognomy the exceptions are so numerous that it is unsafe, with all the ex- 

 perience of more than two thousand years, from Aristotle to Darwin, to attempt to 

 formulate a law for character-reading. 



"Another series of symbols are those of the likeness of the normal and constant 

 features in some persons to those expressions which more commonly disclose the 

 transient or habitual states of the mind. These transient expressions, as symbols 

 universally acknowledged, by which the natural pantomime of life is carried on, 

 indicate in their ordinary occurrence only the present or passing state of mind. 

 They tell what the mind now is, but, by frequent repetition, the marks of any of 

 them may become fixed in the features, and soon they indicate the acquired char- 

 acter — they reveal the habitual nature of the mind, and tell what the mind has 

 become. But both the transient and habitual expressions must be distinguished 

 from those symbols which, though like them and interpreted by them, are inborn, 

 or which, as the features are gradually fixed, become more marked, even though the 

 disposition which they commonly symbolize may be resisted, or, by education, quite 

 suppressed; for these natural, permanent expressions are among the symbols which 

 tell, not what the mind is or has become, but what it was or might have been. That 

 the natural propensities, as indicated by the appearance, are often subdued, is a 

 matter of common remark. 'I have seen,' says Addison, 'many an amiable piece 

 of deformity, and have observed a certain cheerfulness in as bad a system of features 

 as was ever clapped together, which has appeared more lovely than all the blooming 

 charms of insolent beauty.'" It is the incongruities of physiognomy that militate 

 against the pretenses of the character-reading theories; fine physical form of features 

 by no means indicates a beautiful soul behind the face, and no more does mere 

 physical deformity mean that the soul is deformed — although we would all prefer 

 that a beautiful soul should look out of a beautiful face. It is too often this desire 



